Facebook Ads – Do they Really Work and What You can Get Wrong with Katie Colella

You're listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard.

Are you ready to master your marketing so you can ditch your reliance on the online agents and grow your direct bookings?

I'll be sharing with you exactly what it takes to grow your direct bookings and the simple marketing steps to get more profit in your pocket.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Get Fully Booked podcast.

I'm your host, Sarah.

Sarah Orchard.

Thank you for tuning in today.

Whatever you're up to, I appreciate you joining us today.

I'm delighted to welcome an expert guest to the podcast, Katie Colella, who is a meta ads specialist.

Probably most of us refer to them as Facebook ads managers, those people that can work wonders with Facebook ads when it's a bit beyond most of us.

So we're going to talk to Katie today all about Facebook ads.

We're going to be looking at whether paid meta ads can actually help boost your bookings for your short term rental or glamping site.

So let's dive in.

Welcome to the podcast, Katie.

Thank you so much for having me.

Sarah, nice to see you again.

Yeah, it's great to have you here.

So I thought we'd first start.

I've done a little bit of an intro, but I didn't want to steal your thunder.

So maybe just for the listeners, give them a little bit of an overview of who you are and what you do.

Yeah, of course.

So like Sarah said, I'm Katie Colella and I've been working in the marketing, I suppose in digital marketing for probably around, I say 10 years, doing what I do now, but actually I've been running businesses all my life.

So it's kind of an evolvement, I guess since I was 18, running various different businesses.

But for the last, I think it's either nine or 10 years.

I always get it wrong.

I have been working as, like Sarah said, a Facebook ads manager or meta ad strategist.

I'm also a business mentor and certified business strategist.

And I also own lscrm, which is an all in one sales market marketing system.

So I guess in short, I kind of help business owners get grow a list, get more leads, get more sales into their business and all the kind of techie stuff that a lot of business owners don't enjoy doing.

I guess is where I kind of sit in the whole, in the whole kind of business industry.

The things that we all get very confused about.

But also you, because I know you really well.

I remember you telling me that you actually had a bed and breakfast at one point.

So you, so you've done a little bit in the short, what we now call like short term rentals or Airbnbs.

People call everything now Airbnbs.

But so you do know a little bit about the, the sector and what, what the audience does, which is, which is great.

And obviously I'm sure you've got lots of tales from, from running your, your.

BNB as well as, as we all have.

Indeed.

Yeah, I mean we had it for about five years and at the time I had five young children when we had it.

So a bit of a minefield in all honesty.

I think we started it as a lifestyle choice thinking it was a, an easy thing to do in terms of.

Yeah, being at home with the kids.

But it was, it was very difficult.

It wasn't the easiest five years of my life, I would say.

But yeah, I learned a lot from it and it was, it was just kind of before, yes, we had a website but the whole digital marketing thing hadn't properly kicked in and ads and things back then.

But yeah, I have got lots of, lots of stories.

I'm sure as everybody, every host has.

I'm sure probably like all of us, we get into hospitality and actually the clue I suppose is in the title, it's hospitality.

Being a host is, actually involves quite a lot of effort and it's definitely not a, I would say it's definitely not a side hustle.

I don't know how people do it around other sort of full time jobs because it's fairly all encompassing.

So yeah, so it's good that you understand a little bit about the pain points that the listeners have and also I suppose who they're trying to attract to their businesses as well.

Yes.

So one thing I commonly come across is people are very sort of, sort of skeptical about paid ads and they, and they're not sure really whether they're going to work for them.

What would be your view for the sort of short term rental listeners about your advice about whether you think meta ads could work for them?

I think ads work for most industries is the bottom line, but it's, there's a massive caveat with that and it's when they're done properly.

And I think that the horror stories that you hear of which there are plenty of anything, let's be honest, there's always the bad and the good and there are, I say agents agencies because that's where a lot of the horror stories come from.

There's these big agencies and they're charging these huge fees and the ad spend, you Know you're going into thousands and thousands of pounds ad spend and then people are not getting back anything back from it.

Absolutely.

Understand those unfortunately negative stories around ads exist also from the other side of the coin.

There's then lots of good stories and lots of real case studies where ads have absolutely helped.

But I think a lot of the time where things, people get these impressions is where they're not doing things like what I would classes correctly.

So hitting the boost button, for example, and then kind of saying, I hear that all the time, ads don't work for me, they're a waste of time.

And I go, okay, can you kind of elaborate?

And they say, well I, I boosted for 50 pound and I got nothing.

And I'm like, okay, well let's break that down a little bit.

What exactly did you expect to happen?

You're just putting a little bit of not particularly targeted traffic or any, anything behind an ad on meta when you don't necessarily know what you're doing.

And yes, the boost button is easy to use, but it's not, not necessarily objective or an aim around that or any strategy.

And all that also means is that that particular ad with that particular creative, that particular copy for that particular thing might not have landed.

But you're only also talking about 50 pounds here, you know, and that's what I hear the most.

I think when I get on calls with people who have this negativity involved, they haven't really tested it.

And with anything in business and especially marketing, you have to have a marketing budget and it has to be planned correctly.

I'm not saying ads are the only way forward, not at all.

I believe in a, a really varied kind of marketing strategy that has various different ways to bring people into your world.

Ads are just one small part of that amazing, very, very powerful part of that.

When done correctly.

And that's what I always kind of say, when done correctly.

When done correctly, everything is a test in business, every marketing tool is a test.

And ads are no different.

I can test ads and kind of, you know, be really slow and not doing something.

Just one small tweak, one different optimization, can make a huge world of difference.

But often the people that have these negative ideas haven't actually tested enough, haven't maybe put enough budget in, you don't have to have huge budgets, but they haven't actually tested properly is what I would say.

Yeah, I think that's a really good point.

And actually people misunderstand that the boost button, like you said, really you're just paying for Extra eyeballs, aren't you?

It's visibility, so you're going to get more impressions, but people don't necessarily need to take any sort of action from that.

It's very easy for us to, you know, have an ad float past us if we're on, you know, Facebook or Instagram.

And actually, that's what you're paying for.

But that doesn't mean that they're going to.

Actually, they're not going to book from that.

So they're not.

If they don't come to your website, you're not.

You're not going to get any closer to your booking goals.

So I think that's a really valid point about people understanding the differences between.

And we'll come on to talk about Ads Manager, but doing something within Ads Manager versus just hitting that boost button.

Yeah.

And hoping that that's going to be the Holy grail that's going to, you know, suddenly you're going to get 10 bookings off the back of it.

Magic wand.

Yeah, exactly.

Definite magic wand.

I always say that, you know, ads are not a magic wand.

Nothing's a magic wand.

They're extremely powerful when done correctly and all the rest of it and all the other caveats.

But, you know, nothing is a magic wand that's going to kind of bring you, like you said, 10 immediate bookings overnight.

Yeah, exactly.

And I think, you know, you and I have talked about this, but of course, being seen on a social platform is.

We might refer to it sometimes like top of funnel, which is a sort of, you know, probably quite a marketing expression.

But it's like, it's that awareness piece, isn't it?

It's that being discovered, which I always talk about sort of, you know, being discovered.

And that's just one part of the jigsaw puzzle.

It's not really.

You have to move people from that initial, like spotting you to actually, you know, and your website is obviously your strongest tool for converting them then into a.

Into a guest.

So it's just very.

The, you know, the very first step, isn't it?

It is.

And it's like you said, it's that awareness pace and people knowing that you even exist, you know, and then again, you know, it's.

What is the.

The most recent stats?

I think, like, I don't know, something crazy, like 35 touch points or something crazy before someone takes that next step.

You know, when you hear that and you kind of think, oh, my.

Like, that is.

That is nuts.

But then you break it down and look at your email strategy.

And your ads and your organic social and everything else.

And you kind of think, well, actually, I can probably get to that quicker than I, I think, you know, I, I did in one of my employment stints and like I said, I've pretty much been self employed all my life, but apart from a few years in my 20s and one of those was working for Thompson Directory Sales.

And back then it was obviously about yellow pages and Thompson directories and, and it was very much about seven touch points was everywhere, you know, and that we're nowhere near seven touch points in today's digital world.

It's completely different.

So, yeah, the awareness piece, it's difficult to put a tangible ROI on that.

But if someone's seen you from an ad six times along with maybe your email marketing along, or even if you then get them into your email marketing software and then you continue to market to them, then you don't necessarily kind of think, oh yeah, that they come from an ad.

But that's, that's a missing piece as well.

For a lot of people.

They don't necessarily look at where those people are coming from in the first instance because some people take a long time, you know, they might have seen your amazing properties and thought, oh my God, I really want to come and stay there, but just not the time or the opportunity.

And then an occasion pops up.

I've got right place in mind because now I've seen it six times and that's really embedded in my brain.

So, yeah, there's, there's, there's lots of different ways that you can use ads effectively for your businesses.

And I think, you know, the reality is organic reach on social is minuscule these days.

I mean, you hear between like 2 and 10%, but you know, ultimately the platforms don't want to give you visibility for free.

And yet people spend so much time on their socials and, you know, organic socials do other things.

You know, I suppose in terms of people, maybe if they discovered you in an ad, they might then go and check out your account and if you've got no posts on there or the content doesn't resonate with them, they may not then decide to click on the link in your profile and go to your website.

So it's definitely an important part of, as you say, the strategy, but it's also just relying on organic social reach and hoping that your reel will go viral and you'll suddenly get hundreds of bookings is delusional in terms of that.

Fantasy land.

Yeah, Fantasy Lab.

We'd all love that.

I Mean, to put it into context, we had a TikTok that went, it's got to about 2.4 million.

And I, I have not seen my TikTok bookings sort of going off the chart because, again, it's not targeted.

I cannot control who TikTok shows that, you know, video clip to.

And although we had massive, you know, visibility and reach and going viral, everyone, like I said, gets very excited about it.

My conclusion is I have grown my email list.

That's been important.

I have had a lot of website traffic and then obviously subsequently growing the list, but we've only had a sprinkling of bookings and it's because it's the wrong people that are seeing it.

And I think that's.

We'll maybe come on to talk about targeting, but I think that's the beauty of using Facebook or Instagram ads, meta ads, is that ability to cherry pick who you want to show it to and being able to do that.

You can't really do that in any other sphere of your sort of marketing.

No, it's just incredible how precise you can be with the targeting.

So it's absolutely.

And you can get quite, as you know, you can get quite specific.

But I've got the same sort of story.

I was going to say my.

On my main Instagram channel, I had a reel that went viral and it's my daughter's gender reveal and that's got something crazy like 6.7 million.

Nobody cares.

You know, in terms of my business, they're not my ideal clients and I've got all these new followers and I'm like, that didn't quite work out how I wanted it to because I was aiming for it to go viral.

I was just sharing something exciting, personal in my world, which I think is important to share in your socials, incidentally, kind of behind the scenes and you as a person, side story.

But yeah, just brought in more followers and stuff.

But they're not.

I'm not going to be sharing any of the content like that.

That's not why they're here at the end.

They're here for more content like that.

That's not what I'm sharing.

So, yeah, exactly the same as yours, really.

It's not quite the right people.

Not at all the right people in my case.

I just hear it all the time.

I actually did a podcast episode about the Vanity Metric, so if you interested in hearing more about that, go and check out that episode because it is something that everyone gets very.

And there are a few people who sort of purport to that, you know, all you need to do is TikTok and Instag and your short term, you know, your short term rental, your Airbnb will be fully booked.

And I'm sorry, it's a lie.

That's not the case.

There might be the odd unicorn that does really well, and normally that's because they've got something that is so unique in the market that it really stands out.

But for the majority of us, you know, I mean, our tree house is pretty stand out compared to a lot that's available.

However, it just goes to show that if you don't, I mean, if you don't get people with the right income level or the right age profile, so therefore they have the income level, they're not going to book.

Yeah.

So it's.

Yeah, it's definitely.

I think we can get sidetracked with the spending far too much time on social media trying to get those, those bits of content to go, to go viral.

So let's move on to Ads Manager, because I know that that sometimes triggers complete fear.

Anyone who's like, logged on to Ads Manager and thought, I'll give this a go, I'll give this a go.

I can do an ad.

It can't be that difficult.

I mean, I'm someone who has done ads for our hideout, our Treehouse business, and I have to say, every time I go onto the platform, it's changed and I have to double take and think, oh, where is that button that I normally click on?

Where's that gone?

So I think it is a bit of a minefield.

But would you think that.

Can hosts actually DIY their own ads?

Would you recommend that?

What advice would you give them?

What I would say is, if you're going to do anything yourself that, you know, takes.

I'm not saying you need to be a genius or anything else to run out.

I don't believe that in the slightest.

I believe people can run them themselves, but don't go in blind.

And if I had like a pound for every time someone says to me, oh, I'm gonna dip my toe in this year, I'm gonna.

What's the other word I hear all the time?

Oh, dabble.

That's the one.

I'm gonna dabble with ads.

And I'm like, can you not dabble?

Because what you're doing is jumping in and playing with your own money and your time and your.

Is what you're going to lose at the end of that, because you're probably going to do them Incorrect.

Some people, look, they just get it.

They're techie, they get the head of our software.

You know, it's not user friendly, it's not a pleasant platform.

Like you said, Sari go in, there's a million different buttons.

I don't use half of those buttons.

And I'm in there on a daily basis running all these ads for clients.

But if you don't know that, you don't know that, then you're trying to navigate around.

It's the clunkiest piece of software ever.

Things change, things break, things glitch on the daily.

I have various different ad accounts and they can all be in different places, like you said.

And meta love to change things and they love to hide things.

Like they love to say, you know, you need to hover over this specific part to find a little pencil so you can edit something because.

And you'll sit there sometimes and you're like, where is it?

And I do this for a living.

And I'll be like, in someone.

There'd be one account that's how to roll out something new, a feature.

And you're like, hello, is it gone?

And they'll, they'll use wording that try to.

Almost sounds like they're trying to trick you sometimes, like you said, you want to target.

And as ads managers, that's how we've always grown.

That's how we've taught and that's how we've learned.

We target.

Meta at the moment are trying to make you go as broad as possible.

Most people don't want to go broad.

I don't work with everybody that's on Facebook or Instagram.

I work with people that have got businesses number one.

So yes, meta are very, very intelligent and yes, they can optimize to a certain extent for us and find who we want to show our ads to.

But most people haven't got the money in the budget to be able to test all of that before meta gets to that place.

We want to be able to show the specific people that you just mentioned.

So they'll use a word in at the moment that says, yes, I want to.

I want to.

What is it called?

Narrow my search even further.

And it makes you feel like you're doing something wrong.

And I'm like, yes, I want to bloody narrow it.

Let me do what I want to do.

And that's.

It's infuriating.

And I think if you don't know enough about what you're doing, that sort of question.

And you're like.

And they've got this score thing at the moment and if you kind of follow all their advice and do everything better, tell you they give you like a hundred out of a hundred and if you don't, your score's gonna drop.

And then you see that drop into like 80.

And they're saying you could get so much better results if you listen to us.

And again, you feel like you should listen to them because surely they're the experts, but actually they're not the ones in the trenches and they're not the ones doing these things and testing, especially with what I would call smaller budgets.

Like, most of my clients spend maybe like a thousand seven hundred fifty, a thousand pounds a month type figures.

And a lot of people that I teach ads are doing them themselves because they want to spend less than that.

So there's no budget there to be able to test all these different things.

And these are all.

This is all relative to your question in terms of like, you know, can you do what.

Yes, you can, but don't jump in blind.

Get some help, get a course, speak to someone, have a session and whatever that might be.

Learn there's, you know, there's free content out there before jumping in completely blind.

And then honestly, you will just.

That is the biggest way to lose loads of time, loads of money.

The amount of people I've spoken to have then set ads up and forgot they had them on and then gone.

I've just got a bill for this amount of hundreds of pounds.

I'm like, well, you left your ads on.

That happens a lot.

And then they're like, you know, like I said, the sanity piece is.

I. I mean, I say it in Jess, but it's genuine.

Like the amount of people that have actually lost their mind over trying to figure out ads and then wondering why they're not working.

And then that narrative becomes like the first we first spoke about ads don't work because then you haven't served the right objective.

We haven't done this, I haven't done that.

So, yeah, you can't do them, but please don't go in blind.

Please get some help.

I think that's a great tip.

And actually, if anyone's a member of my marketing club, the.

My membership, the fully booked business club, there is some meta training in there and actually Katie is coming to do some training for us on the Lovely.

We won't talk about it today because we'll be here forever on Advantage plus, which is this obviously new.

Well, not that new, but something that, that meta's added in and keeps popping up and making Ads Manager even more complicated.

But I think you're spot on and I think also we've got to bear in mind that Meta is always going to make suggestions that make it easier for them to optimize the ads to serve them and spend your budget quicker or at least spend all of your budget.

Yeah, yeah.

They are a business and yes, they will, they will obviously, you know, match what you put in Ads Manager in terms of your profiling.

But if you, like you say if you go very broad, they'll just spend your budget.

I mean, at the end of the day that's what they're optimizing for, isn't it?

Is to.

They're not going to go, sorry, we didn't quite manage to spend that 500 pounds that you said you had to spend this month.

They're going to spend it for you.

They're going to spend it.

Yeah.

And actually they're not paid on the results of whether, I mean, obviously we'll come on to talk about different types of campaigns but you know, ultimately they, it's no odds to them if you don't get any bookings.

So, you know, long as they spend the budget in line with what you've set in Ads Manager, they're quite happy.

They sleep easy in their bed at night and you might not be quite happy.

No, exactly.

And I think it feels like you, I think as people we kind of say, well, surely they want us to get results because they want us to go back and spend more.

But often doesn't feel that way.

Yeah, like you said.

I've got a little anecdote about when it can go wrong as well.

And I think this is when you don't understand Ads Manager.

I did a social post about it because I saw an ad and I couldn't quite believe it.

But the image they had in their creative was of a toilet in a shower room.

And I just looked at it and I thought they'd obviously it had pulled it through probably from their, from their Facebook or their Instagram account.

I don't know quite how the, the photo of the, the loo got on the advert, but I was thinking that's not going to make me want to click through to their website and book a stay.

That's not going to be the most aspirational thing that I could have been shown to tempt me in the feed when that ad pops up.

So, you know, if you don't know what you're doing, you know you can end up with content going out there in your ad that you know, you really don't want people seeing.

So there's definitely some.

I've never seen a toilet one before.

I took a screen grab of it.

I couldn't quite believe it.

Yeah, I took a screen grab because I couldn't quite believe it.

And it was a bit like this is how not to do meta ads because this is not going to help your business.

So that leads us on nicely actually to what type of ads?

Because obviously again, when you go into Ads Manager, there's a few different objectives you can set for your campaigns.

What type of ads should a short term rental owner be doing?

There's a couple of different ways to look at this.

I know Sarah and I have had a few different conversations around kind of pixels and things like that, which I won't go into too much just at the moment.

But you basically need a pixel for tracking and a lot of booking sites that people use or booking.

What are they called, Sarah?

The actual booking elements.

The property management systems.

Yeah, property management systems, pmss, a lot.

Of those don't kind of allow you to add a pixel, which causes a bit of a headache if I'm completely honest.

So this one, like Sarah said, there's only six objectives.

If you have been into Ads Manager previous couple of years ago there was like 12, I think it was, it was a bit more complicated.

They have actually made it a little bit easier now.

There's probably three that I would potentially trial within your industry if you are.

And again goes back to your aims and objectives.

Yes, everyone's trying to get more bookings obviously, but how do you go about that?

So most businesses will start off with a lead ad which is trying to grow their email list because you have people on your email list, you have people to market to potentially go and book, etc.

Etc.

That's not the easiest thing to kind of give a freebie necessarily in your industry.

So we were chatting about this before or I've got a memory in my head of chatting to you about it and a way of kind of doing that and a different roundabout way to still build that marketing list.

So you're still targeting people that are your ideal clients.

And then you're potentially offering something, maybe free or you're offering a discount.

And we were chatting about maybe like a free bottle of bubbly or a free mini hamper or something that is like a celebratory gift.

And obviously you could do this seasonally.

So you, oh, Valentine's Day bookings will get a free bottle of bubbly and a box of chocolates.

Mother's Day, we'll get a box of chocolates, bunch of flowers and a bottle of bubbly because they deserve it.

And then, you know, you could do this thing, couldn't do Easter summer and you could do the same type of thing.

But that way by signing up, they're then on your email list and then you're collecting people as well, which is my preferred method while using ads, trying to grow an email list because I think that's where a lot of the power is.

Along again alongside everything else that we're doing.

I think we need to concentrate on building email lists.

We don't own our social, we own our email list from those people.

And going back to those touch points, that's really, really powerful way of doing it.

Another objective you could use is traffic.

Traffic.

I kind of have a little bit of, I guess, negativity around traditionally for me, because traffic is showing something to somebody that is likely to click a link.

So meta will show traffic ads to someone that is likely to click a link, not necessarily someone who is likely to take action once they have clicked that link.

However, in your industry, it's kind of one that we do use traditionally because sometimes it's difficult to think of other ways around how to build a list in kind of the hospitality industry.

That's why I've given you a couple of ideas there with the little hampers or discount, which I think I would sign up for.

And then like you said, you got them on your marketing list to continue to market.

So if you don't want to trial something like that, very, very cheap way of ads our traffic.

But it's then how many of those you can go, oh, wow, I've got, you know, 10 pence clicks.

Like all this traffic.

Amazing, great.

What are they doing when they get there?

If they're not doing anything, then was it worth it?

Yes, test it.

Don't use that as your only strategy, is what I would say.

Sometimes it works for some people.

Some people use it purely as a test process.

But again, I believe meta will be showing those ads to people that are just like this, click a link.

Whereas lead ads that I mentioned Just now they'll be shown to people who are most likely to actually take action, to convert to do the thing.

In this case, it's giving you your, their name and email address in exchange for the thing you're promising them.

So for me that is stronger, you know, and there's some fun things.

Think outside the box, you know, if there are any other guides, if you cater to families with young children, how to actually enjoy your weekends away with your kids, you could be a bit cheeky around it because we all know sometimes taking away, you know, kids can actually be really hard work and you feel like, oh my God, I'm just come away for a break, that wasn't a break.

You know, something could be a bit cheeky around it and then kind of say, actually, do you want to come and check out my, you know, your Sarah, you know, it's exclusive, it's high end.

I presume you just get adults yours.

Just adults?

Yeah, just adults.

I thought you said that.

So, you know, what can you do around that?

How to surprise your partner and be more romantic than she's ever seen?

I don't know.

But just be a little bit cheeky or a little bit different around some of the ideas and it might be something that catches their eye.

And then what's the third one I was going to say is video view.

So video views again, if you have a very small budget to run ads, video views can be really good.

More so for the awareness part, but they can really keep you top of mind.

So especially if you're really good at doing kind of obviously videos on Instagram at least like Tick Tock, you could do this sort of ads as well.

I know we're talking about meta ads, but you can kind of look at Tick Tock as well.

But you know, you can have little short videos on Facebook now as well as Instagram and you could have a bit of fun with that behind the scenes.

Just put even like a pound a day video views against those ads.

So people are seeing you and again, you're keeping on showing up so you can show the same people and you know, you can have a bit of fun with it again and grow your following potentially as a kind of, you know, little cherry on the, on the cake.

But it is around awareness.

And then you could maybe look at that as the first layer of your strategy.

And then I would try, personally, I would try and bring in some ideas for growing that email list and using lead ads.

So you've got those people kind of in your world, in your Email list to be able to market to.

Yeah, music to my ears.

You know, I'm a huge fan of email marketing and it's very often overlooked but you know, your email list like say you own it and you don't own the social platforms and you know, as we say, meta, Facebook, Instagram, you know, they change the rules all the time and they can make it difficult for us.

We've actually done a few traffic ads and I think we've done them around occasions and I think that that's.

The targeting's actually worked quite well because we could, we know who our sort of audience is and we know our profile and we can narrow that down quite well with, with meta ads.

And then I layer on top of that that they've either just got, you know, again proposals, so they've just got engaged because then we might get a honeymoon stay or they've got a birthday or an anniversary and obviously that's not 100% accurate, but that has worked quite well and I do know it's.

Yeah, it's worked quite well for a couple of my club members who've are dog friendly and again, because obviously that's quite a nice little niche that you can target them based on their interests.

And they found that the traffic ads have been quite good.

But like you say, there's a bit of waste because you don't know.

Yeah.

And that's like you said, that's getting clear on and that's testing and that's getting clear on who you're targeting and that goes back to obviously knowing your audience again from the beginning, which everyone should be super clear on.

But sometimes we're not and that evolves and changes as well.

And I think we need to revisit that from time to time as well.

We forget that things change, but that's, you know, that's testing from your part and the dog owners one's a really clever kind of way of looking at.

I've had a couple of clients, not in hospitality but that we were targeting kind of dog owners and pet lovers and stuff and we had some great results using those targeting options because pet lovers and dog lovers, they really do absolutely idolize their pet pets.

And like you said, if you, if you've got kind of, yeah, dog friendly place then it's actually gonna appeal to their nature.

So.

Yeah, that's a great one.

Exactly.

And sometimes it works well also if you've got maybe like shoulder periods and you know that for example, the people that have got the time to come away at that Point are maybe like retired people.

So the gray market.

So if you targeted people who maybe are, you know, 50 to 65 or even over 65 and they're dog, like dog lovers actually that's probably quite a good little segment to then target because they've got the time to go away and they probably can be impulsive and take the dog with them and come away for a little midweek break, you know, depending on like you say, it comes back to your objectives, doesn't it and what you're trying to achieve.

Yeah, absolutely.

Like traffic.

The thing with traffic is that it is low cost.

So yes, it can sometimes be a little bit of a waste of money and sometimes it'll stick.

Now you've tested, like you said, there are a few things and you've had some great results else to test it.

But just be open minded about that.

Tested, don't test 20 pounds and not have a book in a go.

Well that was a waste of time.

You know, you have to be open.

It's marketing it, it does take testing at the end of the day and it's trialing different things.

You know, there's nothing wrong with keeping some basic kind of traffic ads just ticking over in the back end a little bit as well and seeing what kind of what sticks.

And you'll get to learn from the statistics what is working and what isn't and kind of what's hitting the mark.

And you'll see if you tested like one month you tested something specific and then another month you tested something specific even at a low cost you'll go, actually that meant that I had two bookings.

Okay, that's interesting, that worked.

And then you've got a bit of data to go on as well, haven't you?

So you can try it again.

And I think you have to be like realistic about traffic ads that we know that roughly about 1% of your traffic to your website will convert into booking, typically across our industry.

So if you're, you know, only spending £50, you're probably not going to get, you might get maybe under a hundred link clicks.

So the likelihood of you getting a booking is pretty minimal.

So when people turn around like you say, and they go, Well I spent 50 pounds and I didn't get a single booking.

And it's like, well you didn't put enough fuel in the car.

You know, you need to put more money in to be able to get.

The numbers to then convert.

Yeah, because you, you need to spend to be able to get data and stats to see what is and isn't working, obviously.

And that's what I think.

A lot of things just get pulled that little bit too early.

And also what you're, what are you prepared to spend, you know, if you're a high end bespoke property, Airbnb, then what's it worth to you to get that booking in?

You know, how much are you charging and kind of reverse engineer a little bit, I guess, and, and what it's worth to you and also repeat bookings.

Then you know, what percentage of your people come back or recommend you to others or you've seen five times, I don't know.

But, but just think about it in the long term overall picture.

And also, you know those people that have then visited your website, you can retarget.

So that goes back to having that pixel installed, which is just a little bit of code that you pop anywhere.

You send in traffic so you can track actions and you can retarget.

So then if you have all this extra traffic and you know, you've targeted correctly in the first instance, you could then retarget them with a lead ad or a video view and put something else in front of those same people again, adding to those targets touch points again, potentially trying to get them on your email list, you know, and they're already now familiar with you.

They've seen your treehouse, they loved it the first time, but that was that.

It was just a fleeing thought.

Now you've retargeted them and they're seeing it again, they're like, oh yeah, that is cool.

Oh, actually, so and so's birthday in a couple of months, I wonder, you know, and then the more people see things, it just gets the brain going a little bit more, doesn't it?

Exactly.

And people aren't always ready to buy at that precise moment, which is why, you know, email's so effective, because it's staying talking of mind.

But also that's the same with having almost what you described, like an evergreen ad.

It's like if you keep popping up in people's feed the first time or second time they see it, they might be thinking, no, we've got holiday books, you know, we're not.

And then suddenly they go, oh, it's my partner's, you know, 40th birthday.

Oh my God.

Well, you know, that would be really cool.

Let's, let's investigate it further.

Let's go there.

So I think it's, it's a very good strategy.

I mean, we've covered a lot today in terms of what people get wrong.

But if you had one tip, what would be.

It's probably quite hard to put you on the spot and say one tip.

But what would be the one thing that people need?

Yeah, one thing is probably don't dabble, don't.

Don't dip that toe in which I know we've already spoken about.

It probably is the number one way to lose money.

You know, just.

Just get some help.

Guidelines.

Course, you know, whatever that might be, Whatever works for you and yeah, get some help rather than trying to do it all yourself.

You can do it yourself, but don't go in blind.

No, exactly.

I mean, I know my way, like I said Rent Ads manager, but you and I have been working together, you know, and it's like sometimes just going to somebody who does this day in, day out.

If you think about how much time you're going to spend, how many, like, gray hairs or hair you might pull out while you're trying to learn how to do it.

Yeah, actually, you know, we always tend to think our time is free.

It's a bit like with socials, organic socials, it's like, you know, we never add up how much time we spend on it.

No, but you're, you know, even if you allocated like 25 pounds an hour to yourself, which would be very cheap, you know, you spend a lot of time on it and you be much better going to somebody.

And I know from working with you, you get it done so quickly because you know your way around the platform and you've got all this knowledge of this is what people are buying into as well, is that knowledge of knowing what you've tried before, what works, what doesn't work.

So you cut out all that trial and error, which potentially is what wastes your money.

And like you say, you can end up losing money really quickly and getting no results.

So, yeah, and we touched on it earlier.

I mean, I would say to you, Sarah, you know your way around Dad's manager really well, I always think.

And you know, we always have these real cool conversations around ads and I'm up so from that, I always know that obviously, you know, you know what you're talking about when it comes to ads.

So we have really good conversations.

And Sarah said to me before, so, Adam, like, oh, do you really need me?

Because I know you can do it yourself.

And she's like, yeah, but it's, it's like you said, better use of your time.

Number one, giving it to me, I'll do it quicker.

And also I'm keeping up with the changes, because I'm in there every day.

Whereas if you're running ads in between, you'll come back.

Like you said earlier, there can be all these changes.

You're like, what the hell is this?

Am I supposed to say yes?

Am I supposed to say no?

Whereas I think that's the other thing, you know, with someone who does it all the time.

It doesn't phase me now.

I mean, I've been live teaching on the VIP day with somebody and something new and I go, oh, that's new.

You know, I'm.

I don't know everything.

I just take it with a pigeon spot.

Oh, well, it is what it is.

This is a new thing yet again and we have to just roll with it.

Whereas I think some, if you're not overly familiar, it can literally freeze you.

And then you don't go any further because you don't know, or something will stop you in your tracks.

And then you're like, I don't know what the solution is.

So then you halt and you don't go any further again.

That's no use to anybody then either.

Yeah, same with like, installing like the Metapixel or if you get one of those error messages sometimes in Ads Manager, which can be totally infuriating and you cannot see what they're unhappy about.

But you get like, they don't make sense.

No, you read them and even the help doesn't make sense.

And then they say there's an error and you, like, and you can't then make it live because there's an error, but you can't work out how to fix the error.

And that's the benefit of going to an expert who's probably seen that error message like 10, 15, 20 times and knows exactly how to get around.

And honestly, sometimes I'm like, what on earth are you on about?

Meta.

Speak English.

You know, it is.

Because it is gobbledygook that the message they've given you, like you said, it makes zero sense.

But I know the ways then potentially to, like you said, overcome it if I don't necessarily know what they're on about.

Sometimes I honestly don't.

But I'll.

I'll know what to test to get around it, to get it through and get it open, because, yeah, it's very, It's a very, very glitchy software.

It is glitchy software.

Yes.

I think that's the thing.

It's.

And it's designed, if you think about it, for bigger advertisers.

So it's.

You know it is very powerful and very capable.

But that does mean that when we go in with our smaller budget, it's, it's a little bit like over engineered for what we need.

Which is probably why going back to our original point where a lot of people just click on the boost button because when they go into Ads Manager they just go, whoa, this looks like super scary.

And then they just hit that boost button.

But save up some budget.

Don't hit the boost button and come and either, you know, come into my membership or come and speak to somebody like Katie and we'll get you off on the, on the ruck right foot and run the campaigns for you and make sure that you don't waste money.

That's been amazing, Katie.

Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge.

I know you and I could talk about meta ads probably all day because it is, I think it's amazing what we have access to and I think when you show people the data that you can use for targeting, it's quite scary what they know about us.

But it's also as a marketer, it's incredibly empowering and you can run ads with quite relatively small budgets and get, and get amazing results.

So definitely don't be put off from doing meta ads.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you for joining us, Katie.

It's been wonderful to have you here and thank you everyone for listening in.

Next week I'm back with a solo episode and I'll be looking at running marketing promotions and how to avoid being thrown into market marketing jail for getting it wrong.

There can be big fines for breaking the rules.

If you enjoyed this episode, you know what to do.

I'd love it if you could leave me a review.

You know how much us hosts love those five star reviews.

Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard.

If you want to see if you are ready to ditch the likes of Airbnb and grow your direct bookings, put your business to the the test with my free direct booking roadmap quiz.

Head to my website get-fullly booked.com quiz and let's get you more direct bookings and more profit in your pocket.