Transcript
Speaker: What's going on Solar Printers?
Speaker: This week we're going to h ave a chat with Jimmy Urkowski.
Speaker: He's going to share with us the top tricks, tips, and mistakes you never knew you were making on Facebook ads.
Speaker: Check it out.
Speaker: Look, in the solar business, there's really only two types of people.
Speaker: There's the ones that crush it, make six, seven, and eight figures, and then there's everyone else.
Speaker: The question is, which one will you be?
Speaker: Over the last four years, we've studied the sharpest solar sales and marketing professionals and how they build multi-million dollar incomes using only the best sales and marketing strategies.
Speaker: So how do these solarpreneurs do what they do and what makes them so successful?
Speaker: This podcast is your answer.
Speaker: Join us and thousands of sales pros, marketers, and entrepreneurs as we take the solar industry by storm and uncover what it takes to sell more solar with less effort.
Speaker: Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast.
Speaker: What's shaking Solar Nation?
Speaker: Today we have a very special episode.
Speaker: We have my friend Jimmy on the line here.
Speaker: Jimmy is a Facebook ads expert.
Speaker: He's a marketing genius and he is here to drop some serious value bombs on us.
Speaker: So Jimmy, thanks for hopping on the show with us today.
Speaker: Thanks for having me, I'm excited.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm super stoked because Jimmy and I, we linked up at Funnel Hacking Live, was about three, four months ago.
Speaker: And we linked up there and we stayed actually in the same Airbnb together, us and Chris Lee, Soul Jam Power Squad.
Speaker: kind of chilling, hanging out in the same house.
Speaker: And I saw Jimmy, uh, mess around with these ads there.
Speaker: And I thought I knew something about Facebook ads, but I, I see Jimmy pull up this Facebook ads manager and he's moving a million miles an hour and doing all this crazy stuff and writing all this copy and,
Speaker: I don't know, just working his magic with Facebook ads.
Speaker: And I'm like, okay, I thought I knew Facebook ads, but guys like Jimmy just proved me wrong.
Speaker: He showed me how it's done there.
Speaker: So, Jimmy, it's cool to hang out with you over in Nashville.
Speaker: But tell us, how did you get started in this whole kind of marketing and Facebook ads and this whole world that you figured out?
Speaker: Yeah, so when I was, I mean, growing up, not to sound cliche, but growing up, I just really knew that I wanted to do something that I was able to tangibly help people with and tangibly be able to help, especially in the business side, because my dad, he started his own company, he was 22, and it was in flooring.
Speaker: And so in flooring, it was, I mean, we moved, I think 14 times is around either between 10 and 14 times before I even hit middle school.
Speaker: And the reason why was because he was just always chasing where there was a lot of construction because he was doing flooring.
Speaker: And so it was just always, always chasing that, you know, where, where there was jobs.
Speaker: And there was times that it was just really up and down where there would be, you know, it was either like feast or famine pretty much.
Speaker: And so for me, like growing up, I mean, my parents are absolutely amazing.
Speaker: They're my heroes today and they have a very successful online business now.
Speaker: But back then it was, you know, he was doing manual labor.
Speaker: And so seeing that, I just thought like,
Speaker: man, I don't want to loop a feast or famine.
Speaker: I just want to be able to always have a good amount of income that's consistent.
Speaker: But I also don't see myself being in a nine to five because I don't know.
Speaker: As long as I can remember, I remember thinking I don't really want to do that.
Speaker: And I just couldn't imagine being at a desk for eight hours a day.
Speaker: And so it was pretty frustrating going through middle school and high school.
Speaker: All my friends were like, oh, I want to be a pastor.
Speaker: I want to be a doctor.
Speaker: I want to be a lawyer.
Speaker: And I was like, I don't, I just want to like travel and have fun.
Speaker: Like how is there a job that does that?
Speaker: And I just couldn't find any.
Speaker: And I,
Speaker: So I got started and kind of just messed around with some online stuff.
Speaker: And then I got hit with an ad for a starting a social media marketing agency.
Speaker: And I thought like Tai Lopez.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: I got Tai Lopez.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so I, I was really skeptical at first.
Speaker: Like I'd been following him for a couple months before he even launched that first round in that 2016.
Speaker: And he started marketing.
Speaker: I think doing ads for it and really promoting it on his social media platforms like in June of 2016.
Speaker: And I started watching it and then one day in January of 17, he posted, or no, sorry, a year later, he posted some screenshots of results.
Speaker: And I thought, and I screenshot the person's name and I found him on Facebook, reached out to him and said, hey, is this real?
Speaker: And he said, yep.
Speaker: And I said, so you really can manage and you get business for local businesses and you help them grow and they pay you like every month.
Speaker: He was like, yeah, I just, and I said, so how many hours are you putting into that?
Speaker: And he said, well, I'm a college student, so I'm just doing, you know, three, four hours a day of work.
Speaker: And then I outsource the rest.
Speaker: And I was like, what?
Speaker: And so I, I,
Speaker: bought the course and went through it.
Speaker: And that's where it kind of started.
Speaker: And so I started learning Facebook ads and I had zero sales ability.
Speaker: So I just was going to local events and saying like, Hey, you know,
Speaker: Facebook ads are great.
Speaker: I've never done any, but I know how.
Speaker: And so no, obviously that doesn't work.
Speaker: So I went about three months without getting any clients or anything.
Speaker: And so I got kind of frustrated.
Speaker: I was like, I just want to run Facebook ads.
Speaker: So I started doing drop shipping and running Facebook ads to sell products from China and made zero money from that.
Speaker: But it taught me how to use Facebook ads.
Speaker: And then I went to, or then I got hired by a local marketing agency to do marketing.
Speaker: I was like, well, I don't really want to trade my job for another job.
Speaker: So I'm just going to, I'm just going to use it as learning, just get paid to learn.
Speaker: So I did that and found out he didn't actually have enough, sorry, he didn't actually have enough work for me.
Speaker: So I was still working my bank job.
Speaker: And doing this on the side.
Speaker: Side hustle.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So after about six months, I was like, you know what?
Speaker: This kind of sucks.
Speaker: So I decided after about six months, I was going to quit.
Speaker: And then I go in to quit my job.
Speaker: And he says, hey, I have something for you.
Speaker: And I was like, what is that?
Speaker: He said, there's a local gal here that owns a business that's having trouble with her Facebook.
Speaker: She just asked if you would be willing to help her out with it.
Speaker: So I said, sure.
Speaker: So I go and help her.
Speaker: And a few days later, and because he said that to me, I didn't quit, even though I was planning on it.
Speaker: After a few days, and then it was the weekend.
Speaker: So I was like, oh, I don't want to quit on the weekend, you know, because I was nervous because I really liked the guy and all that stuff.
Speaker: So then she messaged me a couple of days later and says, hey, I'm part of this network of dentists here and on this online network where, and I'm the social media coordinator.
Speaker: So, but a lot of them are asking like about Facebook ads, but I just really know about posting.
Speaker: Can you like posting and boosting posts, but they actually want like real advertising.
Speaker: Is that something you know how to do?
Speaker: And I had never worked with dentists, but I was like,
Speaker: Yeah, sure, I can do it.
Speaker: So she was like, okay, then I met with her and she told me exactly how big her network was for dentists and it was just massive.
Speaker: So she said, how about we partner up and start a dental marketing agency?
Speaker: So we do that and we grow it from zero to about 60 dentists, between 50 and 60 in about six months.
Speaker: And so at this point I'm spending 90% or at least 60%.
Speaker: and Facebook business manager for dentists.
Speaker: It was just, it was insane.
Speaker: And so eventually I realized like my partners wanted to do more of like have an office and lots of employees and that's not really what I wanted to do.
Speaker: So I ended up leaving that company because I wanted to do things that actually like, you know, that I was in line with what my goals and visions were.
Speaker: And so I ended up leaving and that's when I got connected with Chris Lee and started running his ads for SoulGen Power.
Speaker: And so the last six months or so, I've been working underhand doing all of SoulGen's advertising, doing their YouTube stuff.
Speaker: And it's been a lot of fun and recently started to help other solar companies with their ads as well.
Speaker: Yeah, incredible, man.
Speaker: Incredible.
Speaker: Yeah, it's cool to hear your journey.
Speaker: And I know you've had some ups and downs all that along the way.
Speaker: And yeah, I've been through the same thing.
Speaker: But it's nice to hear that even guys like you had the three months without much results.
Speaker: And then kind of saw the breakthrough after that.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: You've been through the experience and now you're in the solar niche.
Speaker: Now you've been doing solar leads, getting the results for Chris and you guys have grown a ton.
Speaker: But from what I know, Chris is basically, well, you and Chris, you basically grow on the whole company just from Facebook ads alone, right?
Speaker: Isn't that how you, you guys get most of your leads in the company?
Speaker: For the most part.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It's incredible.
Speaker: So what, so we've had Chris on the podcast too.
Speaker: I know he's a, I know he, he knows a lot too about the whole ads and all that.
Speaker: What have you learned from Chris and working with them now for six months?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So what I've learned from Chris is really about how you can, cause solar leads are a solar right now.
Speaker: It's like the gold rush.
Speaker: You know, there's so many people that are jumping onto solar and there's so much opportunity that it's,
Speaker: it's insane how much opportunity there really is.
Speaker: There's a ton of people, anybody who's good at sales.
Speaker: I just talked to a guy this morning that he's like, I've been in car sales for 30 years, but screw that, I'm going to sell solar.
Speaker: I've heard that from a handful of people.
Speaker: I've worked this type of career for 20 years, but then right now, solar is the
Speaker: It's a gold rush, which comes with a lot of advertising being purchased, especially on Facebook.
Speaker: We've got lots of people that know that we're able to make solar work for Facebook ads, and so there's just so much being taught on Facebook ads right now.
Speaker: And so everybody knows.
Speaker: And so a lot of people try it themselves or, you know, they hire somebody that maybe hasn't done it before.
Speaker: So it's still kind of new or, you know, things like that.
Speaker: And so the issue is that there's a lot of ads everywhere all across the country for anywhere that solar is hot, especially like Illinois right now.
Speaker: And so that's, that's where the thing that I've learned is that you can break through that noise by, you
Speaker: Creating a not just a Facebook ad that says hey, here's Here's a you know zero down solar, you know 30% tax credit, you know all that stuff.
Speaker: That's all great But if you can educate people and get people from a place where they're either indifferent or negative about solar and then educate them to where you can flip them then
Speaker: it's a totally different response.
Speaker: And we don't run all of our ads this way, but a lot of our ads are educational based where we have Chris on a whiteboard, like showing somebody how Facebook ads work.
Speaker: Sorry, not Facebook ads, but how solar works, how it can save them money and all that stuff.
Speaker: And it's just so – they have such a good response.
Speaker: Or there's just really good – or getting people to go from – like we've never – at Solzhen, we've never done Google AdWords.
Speaker: And a lot of people do.
Speaker: And the reason why we don't or the reason why we don't is because we want people to not necessarily be searching for solar to find us.
Speaker: We want to convert people to solar people.
Speaker: Yeah, that's really where ads are.
Speaker: And so that's that's what I've learned the bet the most is that if you build a brand.
Speaker: It's Chris the Solar guy.
Speaker: He goes by Chris the Solar guy in multiple parts of his life, not just online.
Speaker: That's really what I've learned is that it's building a brand and educating people is really what attracts high-quality leads and it breaks through the noise of all of those different companies that are just putting stock images up with zero dollars down.
Speaker: Yeah, I like it.
Speaker: And yeah, I know I had the same conversation with Chris, but I asked him, I said, Chris, how come you guys don't have people knocking on doors too?
Speaker: And he gave pretty much that same answer.
Speaker: Like you guys are trying to build a brand's wherewith.
Speaker: You know, our company knocks on doors.
Speaker: A lot of companies knock on doors.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: You get good leads.
Speaker: But the thing is, a lot of times I'll go to people who already have solar, who had their door knocked on and ask them, oh, who'd you get your solar from?
Speaker: And 90% of the time, they don't even know who the solar was from.
Speaker: They don't know where it came from.
Speaker: They don't know anything about it.
Speaker: So what I think is really cool about what you guys do is you are building that brand.
Speaker: I'm sure people remember you a lot better because you're actually educating the homeowner.
Speaker: Like you said, they know him as Chris the solar guy and it's not just some random person that knocked on his door and then
Speaker: and solar, forget about it.
Speaker: Yeah, and if you look at some big companies that are doing TV commercials right now, like a good example is Capital One.
Speaker: I mean, they have their CEO in their commercials pretty regularly now.
Speaker: And the reason why is because people are, it's the economy, not economy, sorry, but marketing switching a lot to people want to buy from people.
Speaker: Like that's why, you know, Steve Jobs is people were felt like they're buying iPhones from Steve Jobs.
Speaker: It hurt himself, you know, because he was a very much a public investor.
Speaker: Everybody knew that Steve Jobs was Apple.
Speaker: And so it was, that's a huge part.
Speaker: People like a character, like the progressive girl, for example, Flo.
Speaker: She's like the highest paid commercial actress or something like that in the world.
Speaker: And they've used her over and over and over again.
Speaker: The Geico Gecko.
Speaker: the Geico caveman, all these things are because people like to buy from people.
Speaker: And even though it's a gecko and even though it's a caveman, it's still a character.
Speaker: And that's why a lot of, I've heard even, even Tai Lopez, he said that, you know, why do you think McDonald's has Ronald McDonald?
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: People like a character.
Speaker: They don't like to just buy from a company.
Speaker: They like to buy from somebody.
Speaker: Like, why do you think Elon Musk is so in the public eye?
Speaker: Because people know Elon Musk is Tesla.
Speaker: And yeah, so like having a brand associated with your company is very important for longevity and for getting higher quality conversions, higher quality leads.
Speaker: Yeah, true.
Speaker: And I mean, you look at like ClickFunnels to Russell Brunson and those boys.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: People that buy anything that Russell puts out.
Speaker: I mean, you don't even have to explain what it is.
Speaker: Russell's got such a devoted following.
Speaker: People are buying stuff right when he releases it.
Speaker: Yeah, and think about, I mean, Leadpages is a big competitor to ClickFunnels, but I mean, I can't, if Leadpages came out with a course, like who's going to buy it?
Speaker: Nobody.
Speaker: And people buy ClickFunnels, like really ClickFunnels is a
Speaker: is an education platform that has a software.
Speaker: Like that's what it is.
Speaker: And so, and that's what, I mean, we're not going to that extent with Solgen, but we're just educating people like what is Solgen, what are the benefits, what's the longevity?
Speaker: And you can do that through written, through ad copy.
Speaker: And that's really the most important part of ads is the ad copy.
Speaker: And so if you can do that in the written form, I mean, you can do that in written form as well.
Speaker: But if you can do a video and you don't even need a high quality video, you can shoot it from your phone.
Speaker: Just teach people about solar.
Speaker: All those things are just so important.
Speaker: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker: Like Russell has talked about it, but people come out all the time.
Speaker: I'm sure lead pages, all these other softwares come and try and compete with ClickFunnels and they'll sell the exact same thing for half the price, but no one will switch over.
Speaker: And it's because like you're saying, they're an education based platform.
Speaker: People love Russell.
Speaker: People love that attractive character.
Speaker: And I think we can apply the same thing in solar.
Speaker: Like we're, we're not the cheapest solar company out here in San Diego.
Speaker: But if we can build a brand, and I mean, if other companies can take that and apply it in the solar industry, then really, I don't think you have to compete on price as much.
Speaker: If you can brand yourself as the solar guy, people are gonna come to you and trust you.
Speaker: And they don't have to go get other quotes, because they already know you're the authority, you're the solar guy, and they'll buy it without that.
Speaker: So have you guys seen Insulgen?
Speaker: Jimmy, have you guys seen that to be the case?
Speaker: As people know your brands, it's like your closers go to them and they don't get people needing to shop around as much.
Speaker: You guys see higher quality leads coming because of this you've done?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: That's cool to have that brand built up.
Speaker: So yeah, let's talk about kind of the copying some of these elements of the ads that you were mentioning.
Speaker: So first of all, I know a lot of people get hung up on this whole Facebook ads, myself included.
Speaker: A lot of us have tried Facebook ads.
Speaker: We fell, we spent a couple hundred bucks and then we give up.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So walk us through what are some common mistakes you see in like people trying to run their Facebook ads and
Speaker: I don't know, people fell in and like how much money would you say you need to do on ad spend, stuff like that.
Speaker: Yeah, so I mean the ad spend thing is really, there's a ton that goes into that because it depends on your area.
Speaker: Like we have some areas that have a higher cost per lead regardless of what we do.
Speaker: And so there's some places that just have a higher cost per lead.
Speaker: And so the budget's different there.
Speaker: And then we have places where it's just cheaper.
Speaker: And so we're able to have a higher or a lower budget but get just as many leads as the higher budget one.
Speaker: And so, I mean, some of the biggest mistakes for sure would be either not really having great ad copy because that's the part that where you get to kind of pitch somebody.
Speaker: If you can get their attention, then that's where you get to, that's really where you can sell them online.
Speaker: And a lot of people, I mean, one of the biggest things, and a lot of people,
Speaker: I feel like are starting to not do this, but just putting your ad in like one big block and not like breaking up the lines.
Speaker: Like I never do an ad that has more than three lines per paragraph.
Speaker: And the first two lines that I always do are always short sentences that are only one line.
Speaker: And the reason why is because your first line acts as your headline because Facebook has a, where it actually says headline is that is in the, under the picture, but the real headline is up top.
Speaker: And so that's where you get people.
Speaker: The goal of that line is to get them to read that next line.
Speaker: And that next line needs to get them to read the next line.
Speaker: And that's how you have to write ad copy is what is going to get somebody to read the next one.
Speaker: What is it going to, what is going to make people imagine like a slide?
Speaker: Like how can you get somebody to go down a slide of your ad copy?
Speaker: And you do that through writing something that's interesting, like stating a interesting fact.
Speaker: There's an ad that I did recently that the first line just said three to 6% with an angry face.
Speaker: And then it said, th is is the average rate of electricity in this, or this is the average rise in electricity per year in blank city.
Speaker: And then dot, dot, dot.
Speaker: So to my target demographic, they're immediately going to be in those two lines.
Speaker: And then if the next line is catchy as well, like...
Speaker: but there is a way to stop this and then just make it.
Speaker: So there's three lines right there.
Speaker: They've now consumed three lines of my copy.
Speaker: So the chances of them, every time you get somebody to read one line, it increases the amount that they will read the next.
Speaker: And so that's really how you got to think about ad copy is just what is visually appealing.
Speaker: If you opened a book and the first page of that book was just a solid block paragraph, what would you think?
Speaker: You would think, never mind, close the book.
Speaker: Unless you had to.
Speaker: But if it was broken, you know, I had some broken lines, some smaller paragraphs, maybe like a graph, you know, all those things make it so that you are visually attracted to it.
Speaker: A good resource for this is a website called Swipes.
Speaker: It's swipes.co.
Speaker: And it's just a file of some of the best ad copy ever written.
Speaker: And somebody just put together.
Speaker: There isn't anything on solar right there because it's more of like direct mail stuff.
Speaker: But if you look up David Ogilvie, who's like the godfather of copywriting or one of them, then you can learn a lot from those and how he structures his pages and all of that stuff.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: And Jimmy, how much of your copy is like, well, Russell talks a lot about, you know, funnel hacking, going and seeing what other ads are like.
Speaker: and kind of making stuff similar to that.
Speaker: Do you guys do that at SoulGen?
Speaker: Are you kind of looking at what competitors are doing or is most of your copy original or how do you guys do it with that?
Speaker: Yeah, I'd say 99% original because, and there's sometimes that,
Speaker: If I want inspiration, then I'll look up some solar companies and see, you know, some of the partners at Solgen, sometimes they'll screenshot an ad and send it to me and say, hey, this is an awesome ad.
Speaker: Like, what do you think?
Speaker: Or, you know, stuff like that.
Speaker: So every once in a while, I'll get some inspiration from other places, but I would say 99% of the time, I just write it myself with inspiration.
Speaker: I have a few tools.
Speaker: I have this thing called the 25 cognitive biases.
Speaker: And I look at that for a copy because it's
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And it's a kind of, it's 25, uh, thing or kind of like mental traps that people put themselves in.
Speaker: And it's not necessarily traps.
Speaker: It's kind of hard to explain what it is, but it's just things in our brain that are automatically in there.
Speaker: Like the, an example is a red reciprocity.
Speaker: So if somebody gives you something, you're more likely to want to reciprocate that.
Speaker: And so that's why people do free trials.
Speaker: That's why people do introductory offers, things like that.
Speaker: Because when they give you something of value, you feel like you need to give value back.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: And yeah, also, I don't know if you guys use – do you guys use Fill Your Funnel?
Speaker: that plug-in thing that Russell talked about at Funnel Hacking Live?
Speaker: You know, what's funny is that I totally forgot about that.
Speaker: I signed up for it, but it kept logging me out.
Speaker: And so eventually I just stopped trying and then I haven't thought about it in like a month.
Speaker: Well, for our solopreneurs, that's another good one.
Speaker: I think it's available, but maybe Jimmy can fool around with it again.
Speaker: But basically, it lets you screenshot other ads that you see.
Speaker: You can go and screenshot other ads, other funnels.
Speaker: So if you're scrolling on Facebook, see one of Jimmy's ads or something like that.
Speaker: Then you can actually screenshot it.
Speaker: It's a Google Chrome extension.
Speaker: And then what it does is it saves all the screenshots in there.
Speaker: You can create folders.
Speaker: Then basically you can just go and look at inspiration for your ads and for different funnels that you do.
Speaker: That's a cool one too we like to use.
Speaker: But no, that's super cool.
Speaker: You, uh, so you write basically all your own copy.
Speaker: How did you learn?
Speaker: Um, I know the copy is super important.
Speaker: How did you learn the copy?
Speaker: Is that something that you've taken courses on too?
Speaker: Uh, mostly books.
Speaker: And just having to write good ads otherwise I don't make money.
Speaker: That helps.
Speaker: So that's really – there's a few books that were really good, which was The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: There is Kick-Ass Copywriting Secrets of a Marketing Rebel by John Carlton.
Speaker: That one's my favorite because even just the title alone, the whole book is written like an ad.
Speaker: It's so good.
Speaker: The amount of similes and it's just such a well-written book.
Speaker: And the whole book is just written like ad copy using fancy words, not fancy words, but like powerful trigger words and things like that.
Speaker: And so those are really good.
Speaker: There's a company called digital marketer that they have a copywriting certification course.
Speaker: It's like a hundred bucks.
Speaker: It doesn't mean anything, but it's, you know, it's a pretty well-known authority in the digital marketing world.
Speaker: And so I've finished that.
Speaker: I have that.
Speaker: And yeah, so I would say a couple of courses and a few books and then just studying, um,
Speaker: people, one thing that you can do to, it's so weird how this works.
Speaker: I can't explain it.
Speaker: But when you write it, when you're looking at somebody's ad copy and you write it with your hand,
Speaker: you somehow tap into the same thought process and the same emotions that they were in when they wrote it.
Speaker: I can't explain how this works, but I've heard that from a few different copywriters that were not even in the same company or anything, and I was like, oh, I wonder if that's true.
Speaker: Tried it out, and I was like, man, I really feel like I know what the person was thinking and feeling when they wrote this.
Speaker: Oh, dang.
Speaker: That's something.
Speaker: That's some black magic going on there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I like that though.
Speaker: So you're saying just like, if you see an ad or something that has good copy, you just write out their exact copy that they used.
Speaker: No, I've only done it a few times, but, uh, but I mean, yeah, that's something you can do.
Speaker: Uh, writing consistently is good too.
Speaker: So writing, you know, like, uh,
Speaker: Writing ads like every day, there was a good month where I was writing an ad for like one, two to three different industries every day.
Speaker: And so it just makes it so you have to think outside the box and it makes it so that you have to perform essentially.
Speaker: Or you just have to, it gets your mind into the writing way, even though we're very, you know, video and visual, very video based world, right?
Speaker: Knowing how to write ad copy is so critical because it also makes us, you can write video ads too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: You can use ad copy to write video ads.
Speaker: Okay, super interesting.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think we mentioned this, probably most people know, but for our solopreneurs who haven't gotten too much into the digital marketing world, the copy is just like the writing that goes on the ads.
Speaker: I don't know if we mentioned that, but hopefully people know that.
Speaker: Yeah, it's the text in the ad.
Speaker: Yes, okay.
Speaker: So yeah, super important stuff.
Speaker: And so Jimmy, walk us through like your process.
Speaker: Say if you're going to start a campaign for someone, if you're going to start running some ads for a solar rep, maybe a company that reaches out to you, they don't have any experience in this.
Speaker: They haven't really ran ads before.
Speaker: Like what's your process?
Speaker: What do you start doing day one to run a successful campaign with a new company?
Speaker: Yeah, so day one, I did this recently, so it's pretty fresh.
Speaker: So what I would do is find out what's unique to their area.
Speaker: So this place was, what's unique to their company?
Speaker: So this place was saying that a lot of solar companies that are there right now just moved in and they are known companies to do
Speaker: get somewhere, make the money and leave.
Speaker: And this company's been there for like 15 years.
Speaker: They've been doing solar for that long.
Speaker: They are, you know, a homegrown business.
Speaker: And so that was something that I could do.
Speaker: The next thing is, you know, figure out if, so figure out their unique position.
Speaker: The next thing I do is I go to and find other companies that are in that area that are doing solar or whatever niche I'm working on.
Speaker: And I will read reviews of other companies and read reviews of that company.
Speaker: So one of the first things I did at Solgen was I saw that all the Solgen reviews were saying how people were so pleased with the customer service and they were pleased with how easy it was to go solar.
Speaker: So what you can do with that is put in your ads highlighting how easy it is to go solar.
Speaker: You know, so, you know, and if you're in a good area that has some really good costs or, you know, cost savings, put that in there.
Speaker: Like if you see 10 review, if you read like 20, 30 reviews and 15 of them say I was able to cut my electricity bill in half.
Speaker: Guess what you can put into an ad?
Speaker: And so reading reviews.
Speaker: And then I also find big companies in that niche and I go on their website and see what they say because big companies pay copywriters thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to write their websites.
Speaker: So they are extremely well researched for the most part.
Speaker: And so you can get some really good ideas just from looking at big companies because they've already spent the tens of thousands of dollars that people normally spend on websites.
Speaker: And a big chunk of that is on ad copy or sorry, the copy of the website.
Speaker: So I researched those.
Speaker: So, uh, so to go back, find their unique position, uh,
Speaker: read reviews of their competitors and of their reviews, read websites of big competitors.
Speaker: So that's the first thing I do because then I am able to have my written
Speaker: Then I go to the 25 cognitive biases and I also have a cheat sheet of the steps that I take in writing ad copy.
Speaker: So I have that cheat sheet.
Speaker: So I have those two things on my computer and then I will start writing and I'll write at least three different ads with three different positions.
Speaker: So I'll have one that for solar example, for example, this one was playing on the homegrown fact.
Speaker: Then there was the tax benefits.
Speaker: Then there was the, you know, the homes increased in value that got solar.
Speaker: So I had three different positions to appeal to people.
Speaker: So now that I have those three, the next thing I do is I, one, I try to get a video.
Speaker: A lot of times getting video from people is kind of difficult.
Speaker: So if I don't get video, what I'll do is try and get some high quality stock images because there is high quality stock images.
Speaker: There's some cheesy ones and there's high quality ones.
Speaker: Some websites that you can get good ones are Dixabay, Pexels, and Unsplash.
Speaker: Those are all free.
Speaker: There's millions of pictures.
Speaker: And so I'll try to look for images that are related to the copy.
Speaker: And then once I have that, then I'll find at least two images per ad copy.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So now I have three copies and two images per each copy.
Speaker: So that's six different variables.
Speaker: Six variations, okay.
Speaker: And then from there, you'll just throw them out there, all like equal budgets, and then just see what the results are with them?
Speaker: So budgets is, there's two different ways to set up ads this way.
Speaker: There is setting them up so each ad
Speaker: So there's three different levels to Facebook.
Speaker: There's the campaign level, then there's the ad set level, and then there's the ad level.
Speaker: And the campaign level is just the overall, like, what is the name of this campaign?
Speaker: Solar in Washington, okay?
Speaker: And then there is the ad set, which is the audience, which is who the ad is going to be shown to, and where.
Speaker: Where on Facebook.
Speaker: So where the ad is going to be showing geographically, where is it going to be showing up on Facebook and Instagram, and then...
Speaker: Yeah, so it's those two and then you can do detailed targeting there then there's the ad level which is what people actually see the Ad copy the image the video whatever it is.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Those are the three levels so there
Speaker: Those how you can set up those six variations is this thing called dynamic created where you put all of those images all of those texts into one ad all of your images into one ad all of your headlines into one ad and then Facebook will automatically shift through those and create hundreds of variations per day and figure out which one works the best.
Speaker: Oh wow.
Speaker: Yeah, so that's one way to do it.
Speaker: Or you can set them up manually, which takes a little bit longer, but it makes it so that you can get kind of a better feel of which ad copy is working the best and which image.
Speaker: I prefer that way, but dynamic creative sometimes works better.
Speaker: And then when it comes to budgets, you can either have it, you can set it at the campaign level now, which is called campaign budget optimization, or you can set it in the ad level or the ad set level.
Speaker: And so what I like to do is split up between four different audiences when I'm first starting out, which is male 28 to 45, and then male 46 to 65 plus.
Speaker: And then I'll do female of those same two age ranges.
Speaker: So now I have four.
Speaker: So if you think about it, I have four ads and six different ads per those four.
Speaker: So I'm really not, I'm not just publishing one ad, I'm publishing like 80.
Speaker: And then I, in the campaign, I like, I really like CBO campaign budget optimization.
Speaker: So that's where I'll set the budget and it depends on how many leads.
Speaker: And if I start a new campaign, I'll typically start low because if you give Facebook a lower budget from the start, it'll most likely try to make it work for you versus if you have a large budget, they're like, oh, they can, you know, $500 a day, we'll just give them two leads.
Speaker: Or if you have like $200, they might get you those same two leads, but half the cost.
Speaker: Not that leads are that expensive, just giving round numbers.
Speaker: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a lot of stuff.
Speaker: And I know Jimmy's going through a ton of stuff, but we're going to link all these resources up so people don't get quite as overwhelmed.
Speaker: If you want to see what he's talking about, you can go ahead and look in the show notes too.
Speaker: And so Jimmy, do you find that video ads convert better than just regular stock images in general?
Speaker: Or what's your take on that?
Speaker: I would say yes for the most part.
Speaker: It's not a 100% every time.
Speaker: It's something that I test.
Speaker: So that's another thing about Facebook ads is you have to test all the time.
Speaker: Sometimes I test doing it, setting up all those ads manually.
Speaker: Sometimes I test dynamic creative.
Speaker: Sometimes I test dynamic or campaign budget optimization.
Speaker: Sometimes I don't.
Speaker: So Facebook is really just a game of,
Speaker: figuring out what things you can test that will change the outcome.
Speaker: I see.
Speaker: Okay, and so once you have all these ads ran, you've run all the variations, do you set on just like a couple ads from there?
Speaker: Do you pick like the two best performing ones and just run with those for a while or how many generally come out converting better than others?
Speaker: Yeah, there's usually two to three, usually two that outperform all the other ones by a good margin.
Speaker: And so I'll just double down on those.
Speaker: So I'll turn off the ones that aren't working and then either slowly increase the budget for the ones that are working.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And then does it just depend on the market?
Speaker: How long they'll keep converting well?
Speaker: How long do they find that they keep converting?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, you can get ads to work for a long time.
Speaker: But if they do get stale, so change a headline or change like two sentences, and then it'll just kind of reboot itself.
Speaker: And because the reason why is because sometimes ads stop working because the same 30 people have seen your ad 20 times.
Speaker: And so if you redo it, then it shows it to a new batch.
Speaker: So even if you just change one word, it'll restart it to a new batch.
Speaker: Oh, cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's one way, or you can, the best way to really avoid ad fatigue is by just changing the image.
Speaker: Change image, okay, cool.
Speaker: Yeah, so I think that's something huge for anyone that's trying to run their own ads or anything like that.
Speaker: Definitely pay attention to how well it's converting.
Speaker: I made this mistake.
Speaker: I was running ads on Yahoo Gemini.
Speaker: I don't know if you've ever tried that.
Speaker: There's all sorts of different platforms, and I thought that I could just pick one headline, one image, and just run the crap out of it for a year at a time.
Speaker: And then I slowly saw that my cost per lead was going up and up and up and up.
Speaker: And I said, what's going on here?
Speaker: I thought I had the winning ad.
Speaker: I thought I was never get free leads for life.
Speaker: But what I didn't realize is that's super important.
Speaker: You got to pay attention to those stats.
Speaker: If you see it go down, then like Jim was saying, you've got to switch something out ahead by end image.
Speaker: Just keep it converting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then from there, I mean, how, so you think you can kind of do the same ad, just keep doing variations?
Speaker: Think it'll work for like years at a time after that?
Speaker: No, I mean, typically like every month to two months, a winning ad will eventually just need to be, you know, redone.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, there's, I think my record for SoulGen was like three months.
Speaker: I had one ad that was consistently getting the same cost per lead for three months, which was very cool.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: So three months, but you still changed out like the headline and the image.
Speaker: Oh, you didn't touch anything?
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: Oh, dang.
Speaker: That's crazy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Dang.
Speaker: And then after three months, did you just change out like an image and keep running the same ad or did you do a whole new one after that?
Speaker: No, I just did a whole new one after that.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, that was cool.
Speaker: Pretty awesome.
Speaker: So don't expect those results.
Speaker: It's your first time, but yeah, pretty freaking awesome.
Speaker: Okay, well cool Jimmy, we've gone over a ton of stuff here and thanks for giving us some secrets.
Speaker: Yeah, I think the key is just go out and just take action, learn from guys that already know what they're doing like Jimmy and I mean because if you just try this on your own then odds are you're gonna get discouraged if you don't have results right off the get-go.
Speaker: That's what happened to me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, Jimmy, tell us where can people, I guess, find out more about what you're doing?
Speaker: I know it takes a while to master all this stuff, but where can you point our audience towards finding out more about you and getting more into this world of Facebook advertising?
Speaker: Yeah, so I'm the Facebook guy.
Speaker: So a lot of my stuff is just on my personal Facebook.
Speaker: And so, which is facebook.com slash jimmy.rutkowski, which is j-i-m-m-y dot r-u-t-k-o-w-s-k-y.
Speaker: So facebook.com slash jimmy.rutkowski.
Speaker: That's where people can see a lot of stuff about me and what I'm doing, get a hold of me.
Speaker: And then for your listeners, I also have a, we talked a lot about copy.
Speaker: So I'm going to be doing a free kind of podcast
Speaker: that process that i just walked you through i'm going to be giving a a crash course on that and also my template that i write all my ads from uh just for your listeners which is going to be at lunar marketing group dot com slash copy awesome and so again that's just lunar like l-u-n-a-r marketing group spelled exactly like um
Speaker: how it should be, lunarmarketinggroup.com slash copy.
Speaker: And you'll be able to get my free copy training and the template that I use.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Well, we appreciate it.
Speaker: And that's definitely a good place to get started.
Speaker: Copy is, like we were mentioning, super important in your ads, something you got to be always...
Speaker: Looking to make better and better, keep your ads converting.
Speaker: So that gives us a good direction to go.
Speaker: And thanks for giving our audience something to look forward to.
Speaker: Hopefully we'll get a lot of guys checking that out.
Speaker: And the last question I had for you, Jimmy, what would you suggest for a solopreneur?
Speaker: I know a lot of guys go out and try this process themselves, but would you suggest for people to learn this on their own or hire someone that's an expert like you and just have it done for you?
Speaker: What's your take on that?
Speaker: Yeah, so my thoughts on that is...
Speaker: really depending on where you're at in your business.
Speaker: So if you have the time to devote hours to learning this stuff, then by all means, learn how to do it and then train somebody in-house to do it.
Speaker: And Chris has helped a lot of people do that and some other good people have done that as well.
Speaker: But if you just want leads handed to you within a week, a week to 10 days, then hire somebody.
Speaker: that's something that I can do as well okay yeah and like Russell says too if you have more time than money then go out and learn go out and learn the steps go out and learn the processes if you have more money than time then go ahead and hire someone like Jimmy hire an expert and they can get you the results a lot quicker rather than you exactly taking the time to do it okay yeah there's value in both for sure
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: But it definitely helps.
Speaker: Even if you do hire someone to go out and do this, I think there's no, there's no exchange for at least knowing the basics of it too.
Speaker: Because I mean, if you don't know anything about this, then it's going to be tough to understand the results you're getting.
Speaker: And, um, you know, kind of know if it's worth your money and you're getting really results for your business too.
Speaker: Helps to learn the basics of it for sure.
Speaker: So, Jimmy, thanks again for coming on the show.
Speaker: Any final advice you want to give to our solarpreneurs as they go out and start getting leads for their own solar businesses?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, really, the best way to scale is by getting an influx of leads.
Speaker: And that's really how you can do it.
Speaker: And if you're a sales rep that might not be able to afford buying bulk ones, do a lot of Facebook organic stuff.
Speaker: There's so many resources where you can learn how to do that.
Speaker: So if you're an owner, like get leads either by learning how to do it yourself or, you know, paying somebody to do it, like what I offer.
Speaker: And then if you're, you know, a sales rep that doesn't have a massive budget to buy leads, then really the best thing to get leads is by using things like Facebook and LinkedIn.
Speaker: and doing organic stuff.
Speaker: Do a selfie with a happy customer, post on your Facebook.
Speaker: Go into research where you look and find Facebook groups where there is
Speaker: You know, people that like, you know, where we live in Washington, there's like a small business owner, like Washington, small business owners, most small business owners are homeowners.
Speaker: So just add a bunch of people, even if you don't have any mutual friends, just add a bunch of people post, you know, text your customers.
Speaker: Hey, you know, what was your electricity bill after solar again?
Speaker: Oh, awesome.
Speaker: It was $10.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Screenshot that post that on your Facebook page.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: And then, and you're going to, if you add 10, 15 people a day on Facebook that are potentially in your target market, you're posting one to two times a week, either, you know, a selfie while there's an installation, like check it out.
Speaker: This, you know, this, these people just went solar because of X, Y, and Z. So happy for them.
Speaker: You're going to get some bites for sure.
Speaker: And even if you don't get people directly messaging you by posting,
Speaker: If somebody likes and comments on your post, you now have permission to message them.
Speaker: Instead of just cold messaging a whole bunch of people every day, post things consistently, add people consistently, and then when they are...
Speaker: when they are like, or when they engage with your content, you now have an excuse to message them.
Speaker: Hey, thanks for liking my page.
Speaker: And you can just assume that they have solar.
Speaker: That's why they liked it.
Speaker: Like, how is solar going for you?
Speaker: Oh, I don't have solar.
Speaker: Oh, really?
Speaker: You know, why is that?
Speaker: Now you have a conversation and then you can easily be getting, engaging with those after a couple, after a couple of weeks of consistent adding and posting, you should have, you know,
Speaker: 30 to 40 opportunities, which could turn into five, six, seven deals every single month.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Yeah, I love it.
Speaker: And I think especially if you don't have money to spend on ads, what Jimmy just said, that's money for getting golden leads.
Speaker: Because if they come reach out to you from just organic posts, chances are they're golden customer, they're golden lead that wants solar up on their roof right away.
Speaker: And I know there's a couple of easiest clothes you ever do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, uh, James, you know, the James that's on the podcast with me here.
Speaker: I know he does a lot of stuff like that.
Speaker: Just reaching out to people on LinkedIn.
Speaker: It doesn't have to be in solar or any of you just reach out to other business owners.
Speaker: Like Jimmy's saying, just say, Hey, how's business going for you?
Speaker: See how you can add mutual value to each other.
Speaker: And then just naturally conversation will flow into solar like that.
Speaker: I know James, he just closed a deal last Saturday from someone like from a method just like that.
Speaker: And he didn't even have to go to the person's house.
Speaker: He just called him up and it was like a 10 minute close because he already had, you know, the expectation set and they reached out to him.
Speaker: So I love that.
Speaker: LinkedIn's awesome.
Speaker: LinkedIn's awesome because people have their phone number on there.
Speaker: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I know.
Speaker: And we need to, that's, that's another episode, I think.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I know we can go a ton into LinkedIn, but yeah, I think LinkedIn is a super valuable strategy too.
Speaker: But anyways, well, Jimmy, thanks again for coming on the show and appreciate you all the knowledge you've dropped.
Speaker: Hopefully our guys go out and check out some of these resources and also this free resource you gave us on the lunarmarketinggroup.com slash copy is the link.
Speaker: We'll post all that in the show notes.
Speaker: So with that being said, Jimmy, thanks again, and we'll look forward to hearing more from you soon.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Thanks, Taylor.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Peace.
Speaker: Wow, what another amazing episode of the Solarpreneur podcast.
Speaker: Now, before we take off here, do us a favor and go leave an honest review on your platform of choice or wherever you're listening to this podcast.
Speaker: It helps us get the word out about the Solarpreneur movement and impact more entrepreneurs, sales professionals, and marketers just like you.
Speaker: And hey, don't forget to head over to Facebook and join the Solarpreneur group for more daily content
Speaker: It's going to impact you and help you take your sales game to the next level.
Speaker: See you guys in the next episode.
