EPISODE 26 - The Seb Rusk Show : Facebook Messenger Ads

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Are you ready to know what you don't know about social media? And this is the second time to go on the top of the past. And now, here's your host.

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Oh yeah, that's my name. Don't wear it out. Thanks so much for that warm, warm intro there, Mr. Ian Intro, I like to name him. Hey, what's happening everybody? Welcome. This is the Seb Rush show on Social Buzz on Air. I like to call it my podcast. What's what we're doing here? We're giving you tips, tricks, tools, ideas, and things that really matter and pertain to social media and your brand. How do you take your brand to the next level through social media? Well, let's just start with you become a media company as a brand. Well, that sounds fancy and adorable, Sebastian, but what does that mean? How do I become a media company as a brand? Well, a couple ways to do it. And by the way, side note, there has never, ever been an easier time to become a media company as a brand. Why? Because there's so many platforms, so many opportunities, and so many ways to actually make that happen. Well, give me some examples, Sebastian. Listen, as a brand, if you're an insurance agency and you decided to launch a podcast strategy or a video web series on YouTube or on Facebook, you're producing media. That media lives on a platform that you control. You don't own it, but you control it. You have a YouTube channel, you put content up, you control how the community grows, how the community engages, and what content you put on there. It really is as simple as that. So I don't know how I got off on this tangent, but I think it's that ongoing conversation that people constantly ask me, Sebastian, where do I start? And I just say somewhere. There's several places to start within the social media space. It's where your brand resonates. Not every brand is a fit for Instagram. Not every brand's a fit for Pinterest. But when we're talking about producing online digital content, every brand is a fit to produce digital content and tell the story of their brand. That's the goal of social media, is to be able to build a community by creating content and providing value to that community through that content. Hey, if you're just tuning in, this is the Seb Rush show on Social Buzz Onair. You can tune in uh live. Maybe you're listening to this in the middle of next week because you downloaded the podcast. I really do appreciate you. Go to socialbuzzonair.com, click subscribe. That's gonna take you right to the iTunes Store. You'll be able to subscribe to our show. And every time a brand new episode drops, you'll have the 411 via a little push notification from our friends at the iTunes store. And for all you Android freaks, you can find the store. I'm just kidding, kind of. You can find the show in the Google Play Store, whatever the hell that is. Hey, we do this once a week, or at least we try to give you tips, tricks, tools, ideas. And next week we're starting to introduce the interview portion. I used to do it, I built the show doing interviews because I quickly learned that if I can find people that are cooler than me, that have a larger platform than me, and a larger following than me, they'll promote the fact that they're going to be on the show. Why? Because let's face it, friends, everyone loves to talk about themselves. That model works really, really well. I am reintroducing the interview portion of the show, which will, instead of me talking about a specific subject, chiming in, etc., we're going to have special guests on that are going to be able to provide even more value pertaining to what's going on. So I'm really excited. Yes, it's something definitely around the place. Absolutely. Something I'm really, really excited about and proud of. We're going to kick things off next week with my buddy Marie Forlio. If you don't know who Marie is, you need to look her up. That's F-O-R-L-E-O, Marie Forlio. She's the brains behind B-School. She absolutely crushes the game. I watched her launch unfold a few years back with her B School product. Uh, and uh the way that she rolled it out through influencers within her circle were unbelievable. She had people like Tony Robbins and people like Gary Vanderchuk and people like Lewis House talking about this and actually helping her launch it. And they were an affiliate, so they were incentivized uh and motivated to do so. But it was just an absolute brilliant launch. I've watched her videos. I think she is absolutely just on point when it comes to her personal brand, and she's stunning, she's brilliant, and her brand is just badass. So make sure you check her out. I'm fired up to have her on the show next week. Uh, we were trying to get her on the show last month. She's a busy girl and she fell ill last month. So we had to reschedule. Show's not going to be live, it's going to be uh pre-recorded, and the show will probably drop late next week or early the following week. But I can assure you, you are absolutely going to love this interview. Uh Marie has um I'm excited to learn from her through that interview. That's another plus to doing these interviews and having people on, is that you get to learn from those people. So, hey, that's what goes down here. This is the Seb Brush Show podcast on Social Buzz On Air. This week we're diving into the topic of Facebook Messenger ads. So let's not waste any time, let's just get right down to it. I stumbled across a couple of articles uh this week that kind of filled me in on what's taking place here with Facebook Messenger ads. Now let's back up real quick. Facebook obviously has an ads platform that allows us to display ads currently in the Facebook newsfeed. Um, to the right of the Facebook newsfeed, um uh the ad platform is coming to groups very, very soon. You can run Instagram ads. Uh, I firmly believe that uh there will be a WhatsApp option as brands continue to adapt WhatsApp as a customer service tool and a sales tool and a marketing tool to be able to reach an audience that they're already connected to or not connected to. But this is the next step in the ad plat Facebook ad platform being scaled to other areas on here. Facebook Messenger ads. Now, as you know, Facebook forced everyone to download the standalone Facebook Messenger app. The reason for this is they really wanted to utilize this as a communication tool, very similar to a WhatsApp, for people that weren't currently on Facebook, but still wanted to utilize it as a commercial uh as a as a communication tool. In addition to that, there's a huge opportunity to be able to monetize this for brands and for brands to be able to really streamline the customer service and really the sales and marketing aspect of their business through a little bit of automation. It's not set it and forget it, but um Facebook, the automation through Facebook Messenger has is is grown exponentially and brands are really starting to adapt to it. If you if you haven't experienced this yet, let me give you a great example of a brand that went in and set up um face uh Facebook Messenger automation has done a great job. Go to Poncho on Facebook, just like a rain poncho. P-O-N P-O-N-C-H-O. Yeah. So send him a message real quick. Poncho the Weather Dude, and uh that's a great example of uh how brands are utilizing it, but it can be used for customer service, etc. etc. Facebook understands and sees all that. So as the automation comes along with Facebook chatbots, so does the ongoing scalability of the Facebook ad platform. 1.2 billion people are using Facebook Messenger app on a monthly basis. That's with a B, friends. 1.2 billion people. They've been testing out this Facebook Messenger ad platform in Australia, in Thailand, uh, getting an overwhelming uh success rate on the test, so they're deciding to roll it out to everybody very soon here. Uh users can hide ads, but you cannot stop the ads entirely. You cannot stop the machine, but you can hide parts of it. So Facebook's plan is to monetize Messenger and make it a global game on here. Facebook starts running out of real estate as Facebook really starts to run out of real estate uh to place ads in its flagship app of Facebook. It's opening up more in its messenger app. The company announced plans to expand its messenger ads globally after a successful test in Thailand earlier this year. Same ads new place. So same type of ads you've been running for your business, it's just going to be different placement. It's just like, oh, I was running Facebook ads in the newsfeed before, and then they opened up the opportunity to actually run ads uh uh within the messenger app, or excuse me, I was running them within the normal news feed, and then they rolled out the ability to run ads on Instagram. And then it's you know, do you want your ads to run on mobile? Do you want to run on desktop? Do you want it to be on Instagram? I think that your the the eventual choices are going to be uh the news feed, mobile, desktop, uh Instagram, uh, messenger, uh, WhatsApp, and whatever other companies they decide to acquire that have some sort of communication on how we now communicate it. I mean, as if we're not digitally addicted and like crazy hyper connected as it stands. Same ads new place. It's a huge opportunity with messenger ads uh that advertisers don't have to change much, but they can take advantage of ads within the messenger app. The ad inventory and messenger is just another placement option for Facebook ads similar to the third-party apps that Facebook's audience network use to monetize their apps. Advertisers will be able to buy messenger ads using the same exact tools they use to buy Facebook and Instagram ads. So, what that means in layman's terms is all you simply do to do is make your way over to the Facebook ads platform. For those of you that may not be familiar and newbies looking to dive into that, if you've ever hit boost a post, it will bring you right to the Facebook ads platform to set up your lovely Facebook ads platform, and Facebook would be so graciously willing and open to take your credit card and bill you for as much as you'd be willing to spend on their Facebook ads platform. Now, as much Facebook doesn't have to do much to work to attract advertisers to the platform. Why? Because they already have the advertisers in the Facebook ad platform, millions of them. The challenges in helping advertisers produce strong results on their investments in the ad units. You know, the downside of ads is that people tune them out. You know, we don't like ads. We're living in a convenience D VR, fast forward, been watching, I want it right now. I'll pay 40 bucks for a whatchamacallit bar if I can have it delivered right now. Hello, Amazon Prime. Amazon Prime, what's the one where they deliver right away? Yeah, that one. Ads that prompt users to start chatting with a business could particularly be useful for business within Messenger. These ads have been available through Facebook for some time, but ought to be more effective within Messenger itself. Further improving the efficiency is Messenger's other ad product, sponsored messages, which allows businesses to send unprompted messages to users if they've previously had a conversation. So you can pretty much just barge right into a potential customer, prospect, or customer's Facebook feed and talk to them if they've ever inquired or engaged with your brand. Why? Because Facebook knows more about you and me and your customers and prospects than you think that you do know. I think that's really neat. Now there's no more room for ads on Facebook. I'm reading from an article here on the Motley Fool. Facebook's decision to open messenger ads globally coincides with the timing of Facebook's lapping CFO Dave Weiner's announcement of ad load saturation on his flagship app. In other words, the number of ad users see in their newsfeed hasn't increased in a year. It was a big driver of revenue growth at Facebook, but Werner told analysts they should expect growth to slow meaningfully in the second half of this year. There's only so much space for so many advertisers to spend so much money to be seen in so many places, is essentially what that breakdown, like James Brown, is what it's all about. You know, Jack Nicholson's a great um fan of the show, and I tell Jack, you should really use some Facebook ads, even though you're a tried and true actor. You can continue to build your brand through it. You know what he tells me?

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I eat breakfast 300 yards from 4,000 Cubans who were trained to kill me. So don't think for one second that you can come down here, flash a badge, and make me nervous.

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Just trying to help. Thanks for always uh supporting the show, Jack, and chiming in with your warm and fuzzies. Happy Friday to you, Jack. Big hugs. Uh anyhow, Facebook Messenger ads are, in my opinion, a little bit of a game changer. I don't know that they are the game changer because my concern is that we tune as quick as people can tune us in, they can tune us out, right? So you've got to be very strategic with your Facebook ad strategy just in general. As Facebook continues to open up these other areas to be able to expose your message. Again, it needs to be strategic and a fit. If I start getting DMs or messages via Messenger, and I already do from Facebook business, they send out their tips once a week, and it drives me a little crazy. I don't know that I like it that much. But I could be wrong. Um, but when I'm bombarded with a message that I didn't really ask for, I'm like, huh. When I go and inquire with a brand, and I go to a brand and I say, Um, I'm inquiring about this product or this service or this rate, and they have some automated responses that answer my questions right away. Awesome. What I don't like is when I go inquire to a brand, I won't mention any names, SoundCloud, but when I tweet you or I send you a message on Twitter and I'm having a challenge with your platform that I'm paying money for on a monthly basis, I don't want a canned response that sends me to your help section, your help knowledge center that helps me understand what other people and other challenges have happened. I'm looking to resolve my specific issue. And oh, for the record, SoundCloud, I don't mean to put you on blast. I've been a longtime user, but I sent you a tweet yesterday, actually two of them, and you said, we're getting a lot of tweets. Check out our who check out our help section. And all that basically says is that, you know, we our custom customer service is just not a priority for us. Uh, we can figure out a way to automate it, and if we don't, then oh well, and if you don't like us, then go use Libsyn or another platform. That doesn't work. Uh same applies with Facebook Messenger bots, when you're responding back to people and you're asking them to um uh or you're trying to respond back to them, but you're automating them and sending them elsewhere that's not really helping them out. If you have a video that actually answers their questions and does it, that's another question. But again, this is this episode is not about automation, but it'll it is still in the realm of Facebook Messenger per se, and kind of the Facebook Messenger etiquette, if you will. So if you're just tuning in, hey, you might want to rewind, go back to the beginning of the show. The show's only 18 minutes long. We're talking about Facebook Messenger ads. This is another additional area that Facebook is opening up to allow you to have your ads exposed in. Right now you can have your ads exposed in the uh Facebook newsfeed. You can have them exposed in uh on mobile, on desktop, and Instagram, and now Facebook has been testing out Australia and Thailand to be able to put ads. So if you look in your Messenger Facebook, Facebook Messenger app, you're just gonna see ads in between, not all over the place. They'll be strategically placed and not annoying because you'll just completely tune that out. But some people aren't all up in the news feed as much as you are, or maybe they are, but a lot of people use Messenger because it's a communication platform, especially for brands. So if you're running Facebook ads, keep an eye out here. This is going to be rolled out to everybody uh very, very soon, including you, Jack Nicholas. And uh so uh it says here how Facebook can move forward. Overall, messenger ads are a big opportunity for Facebook to keep growing its ad revenue despite the challenges it faces with its flagship app. Investors should expect a slow ramp of ads on the platform, and it may take several years for Facebook to take full advantage of the opportunity. At the same time, Facebook has plenty of other growth avenues, i.e., their video platform, WhatsApp, virtual reality, et cetera, et cetera. So just one step closer to us all being killed by robots. Uh 10 stocks we like better than Facebook. Okay, we're not going to review that. That's not really pertinent to the actual um subject at hand and what we're talking about with Facebook Messenger, uh, et cetera. Uh but we're approaching the uh 18 minute mark, and I don't know if we're we're actually on time. I can't believe we're on time. Uh I usually go way over because I get off on a tangent talking about this, but this was kind of a quick update. I should stop saying kind of, because kind of and sort of, I mean, this is the most overused filler words on the planet. So if you do that a lot and it's sort of like, and it's kind of like, and it's sort of like it's a good drinking game. Every time he says sort of drink, well, you're gonna be drunk real quick because everybody's kind of it's sort of like and it's kind of like, and I haven't really figured it out, but if you do that, stop it. Right? Jack, you need to stop doing that.

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I eat breakfast 300 yards from 4,000 Cubans who are trained to kill me. So don't think for one second that you can come down here, flash a badge, and make me nervous.

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I'm not trying to make anybody nervous here, Jack. My goodness. I have uh Facebook Lives tuning in right now. Uh we do that as we record the show every time, and people are probably like, why is there a pause in silence? So I always tell them go listen to the show at socialbuzzonair.com. You can listen to it live right now, and then you can hear what Jack Nichols has to chime in. Something about sleeping by a bunch of Cubans, and you're not gonna come down and scare me. It's a good little bit there. Thanks for tuning in again, Jack. So, well, we know what that sound means. We are out of time. Hey, my name's Sebastian Rusk. I'm the host of this show called the Sepra Show on Social Buzz on Air. It's social media radio, tips, tricks, tools, ideas, and things you need to know that you didn't know about social media and your business. If you like the show, do me a favor, go down to the review section. If you want to one-star it, cool, but if you want a five-star that bad boy, I ain't mad at you. Leave us a review on Instagram. Make sure you subscribe, you download some episodes, show us some love. For all you Android freaks, you can head over to the Google Play Store and subscribe, leave a review, download it, etc. etc. Tune in next week. I got my homegirl Marie Forlio on. The brains behind B School. If you don't know who Marie is, look her up. She's making some crazy moves and she's just awesome. Hey, I'm Sebastian Russell signing off from our studio here inside Business Miami. We'll talk to you next time.