Organic vs. Paid Social Media Pros and Cons for Your Membership Website in 2025
Organic vs paid social media for membership websites in 2025: Which approach will bring you more success? Click to find out the pros and cons.
In this show, we dive into the essential pros and cons of organic versus paid social media strategies for your membership website in 2025. Explore how each approach can impact your growth, engagement, and overall success. We break down key metrics, costs, and actionable insights to help you make informed decisions for your business. Don’t miss out—watch now to enhance your social media strategy.
With Special Guest Nicole Ouellette, Founder of Breaking Even Communications.
#1 – Nicole, can you give the audience some more info on how you got into online marketing and helping clients get the results they are looking for?
#2 -Nicole, what are the key things people need to know to understand the major differences between organic vs paid social media?
#3 – I personally feel that paid social media should not only be used to get leads for a membership website but also as a tool to build up a subscription email list. What are your own thoughts on this?
#4 – Regarding paid advertisement on META Facebook and Instagram platforms, what are some of the regular mistakes people make connected to understanding these platforms?
#5 – How do you see AI affecting social media and especially paid advertisements on the META platforms in 2025?
#6 – Recently, my own views have changed connected to using paid traffic. I’ve been influenced by “Evelyn Weiss” connected to using free or low-priced lead magnets to build your email list. What are your own thoughts on this?
This Week Show’s Sponsors
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
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The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:41.190] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode I had a bit of a break in December, folks. I was traveling to the UK, to Europe, whatever. I lost track which country I was in. I’ve come back, came back about a week ago, and been catching up with everything. Now, I worked through December a little bit, but only a bit less. But I needed a break from podcasting. I needed a bit of a break. I feel slightly refreshed. But we’ve got a fantastic guest coming back on the show. She came on the show in last year, 2024, and I was really impressed with Nicole. We had a really great discussion about all the drifters and grifters and all the other people she has a little dig at on her great channel. She’s got over a number of years helping clients in social media, organic and paid. It’s a subject It’s a project that I really wanted to do a dive, so I thought she’d be the person to ask back.
[00:02:07.190] – Jonathan Denwood
She’s got a load of knowledge to give. Nicole, do you want to introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers?
[00:02:15.210] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, sure. John, thanks so much for having me. Welcome back. I also took a little bit of time off, and I’m feeling slightly refreshed as well. My name is Nicole Willet. I have a marketing company. As of January, as of this month, it’s 17 years old. So my marketing company is getting up to some trouble. It’s old enough to be doing so. And in that time, I’ve worked with hundreds of clients on their marketing strategy and implementation. And it all started, I guess, with… I live in a small town, and I had a blog, and this was back in 2008, when blogs were among the… There’s a lot more things online now than there was in 2008. And I remember I went to go to my local coffee shop to get my usual order. And the And the owner said, wait a minute, you’re that girl who blogs. And I said, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of other people blog, but yeah, I do have a blog. And she said, can I pay you to help me with my blog? And I said, you’d pay me to do that? And as they say, the rest is history.
[00:03:15.340] – Jonathan Denwood
And you should have run away straight away, shouldn’t you? But you look very sane for somebody that’s been running an independent agency for almost 17 years. Because normally, if you’re an agency owner, the principal, and you’ve I’ve been doing it for more than 10 years, you normally lose your marbles.
[00:03:34.050] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, I think I hide it well. But also at a certain point, you just realize… I mean, the more you do anything, the more you learn about anything, the more you realize that there’s more to know. There’s always going to be more to know, and there’s always so much you can’t control. So at a certain point, you just give it up to the internet gods and just hope it goes your way.
[00:03:54.720] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, you got to learn when to do your battles and when just to go with the flow. Otherwise, I am bonkers, but I think I’m not insane because I know I’m bonkers. It’s when you don’t know, that’s when you’re a little worried, isn’t it?
[00:04:10.060] – Nicole Ouellette
There’s definitely a continuum, right? I feel like I’m on that scale, too. Like I said, I just hide it well and try to occasionally get off the internet.
[00:04:18.940] – Jonathan Denwood
In your heart’s in the right place, even though you’re batten hard and I get the feel that you do really want the best for your clients.
[00:04:26.320] – Nicole Ouellette
Oh, of course. Who doesn’t?
[00:04:28.350] – Jonathan Denwood
I think a lot of people To be truthful. I think you’ve covered quite a few of them. Before we go into the meat of potatoes of this get show, I’ve got a message from our major sponsor. We’ll be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I also want to point out that we’ve got a fantastic a curated list of the best WordPress plugins and services if you’re looking to build your membership community website, and flexibility, cost, and ownership really are important to you. Wordpress is still the best platform if those things are really important to you, and I think they should be. So we’ve got this fantastic list of resources, plus some great special offers from the major sponsors of the show. You can get all these goodies by going over to wp-tonic. Com/deals, wp-tonic. Com/deals. What more could you ask for, my beloved audience? There we go. Even Nico I was impressed.
[00:05:46.250] – Nicole Ouellette
That’s what I’m not doing. It’s a related holiday gift.
[00:05:48.290] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re excited. I’m not doing too bad for somebody. I’m not really here. Half of me is still back on holiday, and half of me… I’m in a strange mental plane, so. But there we go. So You gave us a quick intro about the coffee lady owner, and she got you into blogging, and you start doing blogging. But when did you… There’s a lot of people that do blogging, and doing blogging for other people, but a whole different cup of tea running a small to medium-size digital agency around social media, Facebook advertising, paid advertising, It’s a whole different world. How did that start to build up, Nicole?
[00:06:37.360] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, well, when you write a blog or put anything online, as you know, whether it’s a podcast or a blog post or whatever, it takes you the same amount of time to make it, whether five people listen or 500 people listen or 500,000 people listen. So at a certain point, you’re into writing with the blog, but then you say, I wonder what would happen. How would I get more people to read it. And then you start digging in. Oh, search engine optimization. Oh, social media at the time was still pretty young, but there was at the time Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Those were the big three at that time. Oh, what about… What if I sent these via email newsletter? So then as you start doing that yourself, you realize you can help other people with it. So like I said, I started helping Leslie with her blog, the coffee shop owner. And then we set We have an email newsletter for her. We helped her with our Facebook page. Then as you start doing that with other people, and again, this is 2008. I don’t know how old people are who listen to this podcast, but there wasn’t really a lot out there.
[00:07:43.360] – Jonathan Denwood
I do hope they’re younger than me.
[00:07:47.110] – Nicole Ouellette
But at that time, I explained to people all the crazy stuff we used to do for blog traffic, blog carnivals, and all this stuff. People were like, Why did you do that? It’s like, Yeah, you had to be creative because there was less tools back then than there were now. As I learned the tools and as I started helping other people with them, obviously they told other business owners they knew, and it grew from there. So I would say, yeah, we’re a small agency. But But I feel like we do have a lot of experience, and we’ve worked with a lot of different kinds of clients. And the main thing that I do when I meet with someone is I like to understand their marketing objectives. And if you go to fill out the consultation form on the website for a free consult, It’s like, okay, what are your marketing objectives? What resources do you have to work with? Whether that’s your personal time, like I’m willing to spend three hours a week on my marketing, or I have a membership to this organization, and they do X, Y, and Z, so maybe we can utilize that a little bit better.
[00:08:48.070] – Nicole Ouellette
So objectives, resources, and then I say, sometimes I don’t ask for the budget right away, but that’s important to know. And then I balance those things and I try to give them something that I think is doable because marketing is like anything. You can always do more, right? But doing something is definitely better than doing nothing.
[00:09:05.530] – Jonathan Denwood
I tend to give them some options.
[00:09:08.750] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, for sure.
[00:09:09.730] – Jonathan Denwood
If you go for this package, this is roughly what it would cost.
[00:09:13.790] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:09:14.930] – Jonathan Denwood
So they’ve got some idea and it cuts back. So you’re based in Maine, but you’re also based in New York, aren’t you? You seem to oscillate, and they’re from those two areas, don’t you? Because of your name, I presume that you have an element of French ancestry. Beck is across the border from Maine, am I correct?
[00:09:41.230] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, you are.
[00:09:42.470] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, not bad, is it? You could tell I’m not American because I would have… Sorry, Americans. Where’s. They’re two very different, I would presume, Maine and New York are two very different type of markets, or I’m not right.
[00:10:05.720] – Nicole Ouellette
It’s all really the same. Well, so I’m in extreme upstate New York. I am on the Canadian border. I’m actually an hour and a half from Montreal when I’m in New York State. I’m very I’m very north. Oh, right. And Maine, obviously. It’s similar in terms of the outdoor recreation, rural area, so a lot of small businesses. It’s interesting that a lot of the challenges, even businesses in two very different places are relatively similar. I’m mostly working with small businesses in a rural place, serving typically the year-round community. There’s usually some seasonal element to things in both places where certain times of the year, usually summer, there’s more people around, whether they’re enjoying the ocean or whether they’re enjoying the mountains hiking. Although some people do hike in the winter and good for them. Yeah, I do.
[00:10:56.630] – Jonathan Denwood
But it sounds very similar to Lake Tahoe in some ways, which I see. It’s very the local aid marketing agencies based in Reno. There’s some based in Lake Tahoe, but most of the agencies are based in Reno. It’s very tourist orientated, or it’s… Because it’s Reno, you’ve got the gambling element as well, and they do work maybe in Las Vegas, but a lot of it is tourist-based, so there’s similarities. So on to the next. So on to the next thing. Obviously, the focus of this podcast is membership and building community, because the two things are very interlinked at the beginning of 2025. If you want a successful membership business based on learning and some element of one-to-one or group coaching, which is, seems to be the mixture that the most successful individuals in this space, they obtain, they use their training for a more cost-effective solution. And then if you want, you have group, and then if you want one to one, you can normally have it, but that’s the most expensive option. What are some of the fit things? Because I’ve I changed my own philosophy during 2024. I was never against paid advertising, but I always been more about organic.
[00:12:47.920] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve had my ups and downs in 2024 with what Google’s been doing and how it’s seen my website, because I didn’t get penalized, but they were doing updates Oh, yeah. And a lot of people have been really crushed. I was doing really well, and then about four months ago, I got really hit. But it’s coming back, but it’s taking an enormous amount of work on my part. But I’ve also changed my attitude because I think there’s definitely a place for paid advertisement if you’re trying to build a membership website. What are some of the things that you think, misconceptions that you regularly observe with working with your clientele between all GAC and paid social media?
[00:13:44.210] – Nicole Ouellette
I think that a lot of times it’s easy to think that organic doesn’t cost you anything. But if you think about it, organic costs you time, and your time is worth something, contrary to your own belief, right? Especially if you’re in a small business and you wear a lot of hats, right? When you’re doing something, it means you’re not doing something else. And if you think about organic measures that people do to get new people, right? Because let’s face it, yeah, If you have people that are already in your membership platform, obviously there’s other things that you can upsell or cross-sell them. But a lot of what people want to do with marketing is get new people in the pipeline. That’s a major objective that most people have. So in terms of getting people in your pipeline, a lot of people think, well, I’ll just post to social media. But if someone’s following you on social media, if someone’s on your email or your texting list, if someone is visiting your website, they already know about, they already got there. So how do you get new people And some ways to do that are what you’ve been, your journey of redoing your search engine optimization on your website, which, as you know, is time intensive.
[00:14:55.960] – Nicole Ouellette
And it takes time, even if you do it right, it takes time for it to work. Other times, other organic things people do are maybe you want to nurture relationships with the press. So whether that’s you’re putting out regular press releases and trying to get into publications, or whether that’s you’re hanging out on a website, help a reporter out, and you’re looking for media queries that you align with, you can hold events. But all of these things take a lot of time to do. But if you want to get in front of new people, something that is an easy thing to is to run an ad. That takes… Yes, it costs money, but it takes way less of your time to do. And that’s a reason that if you look at a lot of big companies, they run ads as part of their mix because it gets new people in the pipeline. So I think if people see paid ads as a tool, and again, you don’t spend a majority of your money on them, and you don’t have to spend your entire marketing budget on them at all. But if you see them as a tool in your tool belt, I think it’s a nice way to get new people into your funnel, your pipeline, to get you on their radar in a general way.
[00:16:06.920] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I understand exactly what you mean, Nico. I think the other thing is, because I’m really I think understanding there’s different stages of people through your marketing funnel. And I mean a marketing funnel in a very broad sense, because there’s part of me that has always been very resistant, and I think for totally fair reasons, to this whole marketing spiel around funnels that comes from Brancet and ClickFunnel Funnel’s and that whole business. I don’t like him. He’s done me no personal harm, but because he’s a successful entrepreneur, I don’t mind. But this whole concept, this whole focus around the mechanics of a funnel and not understanding the broader, but he would say, Well, you need to buy my books and come to my paid webinars to understand that. But I’m a bit resistant to that, to say the least. But Where I’m going, I think the other area that’s really hit people with social media is all, and I wanted your insight because anybody gets paid for social media strategy, and doing it for clients is a much bigger expert than me, is all these social media platforms, a lot of people is relying that they put a link and people click that link and it drove traffic to their website and all these platforms, to my understanding, if you put a link in the social post, the problem is ding-dong, they don’t show it to anybody.
[00:18:04.460] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re nodding, but also you don’t totally agree with my statement. So what is the reality then, Nicole, based on your experience?
[00:18:13.900] – Nicole Ouellette
I mean, a One time I got this mean comment on one of my videos, and the person said, Well, you clearly don’t know what you’re talking about because you didn’t mention social media as a driver of traffic to a website. And so I made a whole video saying, It’s because it’s not great at driving traffic to a website. If you pull up your Google Analytics, or the average person, I pulled some data, I even forget what the study was, but it was less than 10 % of your overall traffic comes from social media, the average person. So social media is actually not great at driving traffic. And the reason is, partially what you said, which is that these platforms want to keep people on them as long as possible. That’s their whole thing. That’s how they make money, right? They show you ads. They collect your browsing data so they can sell it to other people. Their whole monetary model is keeping you on that website. So they don’t want you as a person being like, Oh, go over here on this other website and click on this thing. They don’t want you to do that.
[00:19:17.250] – Nicole Ouellette
So they’re going to obviously incentivize content that keeps people on that site so that they can make more money off of them. So the thing with all of these sites, right? And Russell Brunson or whoever, they could sell you a whole book, but I don’t think you need a whole book to understand that people are at different stages of considering buying something from you. There, that’s a marketing funnel, guys. People are at different stages of consideration. And so you have to hit them at different stages of consideration. So with ads, you can hit them at those different stages of consideration. So I want to tell you, whatever platform that you decide you want to run ads on, you will to be able to take the knowledge that you’ve learned from that platform, and you’re going to look… Let’s say I was like, I want to learn to run ads on Meta. And then you look and you see, oh, there’s audiences, there’s remarketing pixels, there’s all these things back there. Once you learn what those are, you open up Google. Ads, AdWords, guess what? They have audiences, they have remarketing pixels. Basically, anything that you learn is very transferable to other platforms, and they’re all set up very similarly.
[00:20:27.540] – Nicole Ouellette
They might offer you different options, they might offer you different ways of making audiences or whatever, but fundamentally, they’re all the same. But ads basically have three levels in a low, a mid, and a high level of objective. That’s the first thing they ask you when you open up the ad platform, they say, What ad do you want to run? And you have three choices. You have an awareness ad, and all awareness will do is put my ad in front of a set of eyeballs. So if I’m looking at my phone, Okay, I saw your ad. I’m scrolling and I see your ad. That’s the cheapest ad to run because you’re not asking people to do anything and you’re keeping people on that platform. Those ads do pretty well. The second level up is an action, which is what you were talking about, which is click on this website. Now, instead of my eyeballs looking at something, I have to lift up my finger and press it, or I have to watch more than 50% of the video, or I have to do some action. Those ads cost more money to get people to do stuff because it’s more effort.
[00:21:39.220] – Nicole Ouellette
The highest level ad, the most expensive ad, it’s called a conversion ad. What you have to do is take your WordPress site, your membership platform, and connected in with your ad account, and you’re willing to pay when someone goes through some conversion. And those ads can be pretty expensive. But obviously, if you know that the average member sticks around for eight months and they pay X amount of money per month, you can do those calculations and figure out what amount of money is worthwhile to pay for someone to convert. If you think about what are you willing to pay for someone to be aware of you? What are you willing to pay for someone to take some action, which is usually a website click, but doesn’t have to be, or for somebody to go through some purchasing and make a purchase. We think about conversions typically for e-commerce, but you can also consider these lead generation ads, which is where someone fills out a form and gives you their exact contact information so you can reach out to them directly. That’s also considered a conversion for a lot of people.
[00:22:45.770] – Jonathan Denwood
I think obviously we’re talking about meta properties here to some extent, aren’t we? Because I think this is just my opinion. Before we go for our break, I just want to put this to you and get what your thoughts thoughts, is that I think for the people that are listening to this podcast, people that are thinking or are in the trenches trying to build their eLearning, their membership business, is that I think meta really don’t… Still the meta properties really dominate. I, Facebook, Instagram really do still dominate because I think I do post a lot in LinkedIn, I’ve got a specific different target audience, and I’ve built up people that’s more B2B, but it is a bit of a… I call it ghost feel, LinkedIn. I call it ghost feel as well. A lot of the people that you want the content, the problem is they’re not very active on the platform. I think you’re going to disagree with me, but that’s my thing. I do I do call it Ghostville.
[00:24:03.530] – Nicole Ouellette
Well, and they’re also more expensive to reach on LinkedIn.
[00:24:06.740] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, unless you’ve got a very expensive membership established or unless you’re at a certain price point, you wouldn’t even consider it, I don’t think.
[00:24:20.520] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, LinkedIn and Google are more expensive, just as an entry point to run ads, I find.
[00:24:27.920] – Jonathan Denwood
I just think they’re I think they’re between a rock and a hard place about how to deal with AI. They don’t know what to do because… So they’re in It’s a bit of flux. Youtube, obviously, the average that I see is really tailored by the analytics they know about me. But what I see on YouTube, awful efforts from awful scammy companies and products.
[00:25:06.600] – Nicole Ouellette
Are you talking about the skippable in-stream ones?
[00:25:09.030] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, all of it, literally.
[00:25:11.350] – Nicole Ouellette
Well, the long-form ones, you know why they’re terrible, right? Which is that they only pay if you watch 50% or more of it. If they have this long, stupid seven-minute commercial, and maybe you’re in the middle of cooking and you’re listening to a YouTube video, and then all of a sudden this person starts talking and you’re like, What is this? Then you have to walk over and- In general, Nicole, these are broad statements.
[00:25:36.930] – Jonathan Denwood
These are to get a reaction. Of course. I just think it’s Scamville.
[00:25:42.800] – Nicole Ouellette
Oh, yeah. No, that’s where I get most of my Nicole, I also react to marketing gurus on YouTube for those people who don’t know. And I get half of my people off of the YouTube ads that I get served, honestly.
[00:25:53.850] – Jonathan Denwood
And when it comes to TikTok, I know nothing about TikTok, and it’s something I should look at, but I really honestly don’t But I should. So would you agree that the real action for the people that are listening to this podcast is probably Facebook and Instagram, or should they also look at TikTok? What’s your thoughts about TikTok? Because it’s something I know nothing about.
[00:26:22.080] – Nicole Ouellette
I mean, TikTok is going to be banned in the US here on January 19, right? You think so? Yeah, I do.
[00:26:29.940] – Jonathan Denwood
I think it’s one of those- They’re going to find a buyer quick?
[00:26:33.650] – Nicole Ouellette
I think they’re going to take their ball and go home for a little bit, and it’s going to make people mad. I think it’s going to go offline for a bit, just to teach us a lesson. And then I think something’s going to happen. But I’m acting like it’s going away just for all intents and purposes. Unfortunately, I love TikTok. I think it’s great. I don’t know if people are buying necessarily memberships on TikTok, because I think most of the ads that I see are for specific products with TikTok shops. I think almost 50 % of the US bought something on TikTok shop over the holiday season.
[00:27:07.970] – Jonathan Denwood
Do you think if it does come back, do you think if you’re in the membership space, it’s a platform that you should consider with meta properties?
[00:27:18.010] – Nicole Ouellette
I think that… I don’t know if I would run necessarily ads on TikTok if I had a membership website, but I think I would be posting content there, organically, for sure.
[00:27:27.110] – Jonathan Denwood
Something it might be- I’m just noticing they’re prioritizing ads for physical products because honestly, they make more money off those. Right. But the other thing, X, I will always call it Twitter. Yeah, me too. You can call it whatever you want to call it.
[00:27:48.370] – Nicole Ouellette
Let’s call it Twitter together.
[00:27:49.860] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, let’s call it Twitter. I’m still active. I just use lists, and I just don’t go into the because I’ve got no interest. I just use it for my business and I got my lists and I promote. I just haven’t gone to Blue yet because I just don’t need another social platform on my list, basically. Basically, it’s the last thing that I need. I’ve got almost 7,000 followers on Twitter on my private account and about a thousand for my business. I’ve been concentrating on YouTube and I’ve built that up to over 4,000 over the year. But it’s just the advertisement on YouTube. I think it’s an organic mechanism. I agree. I think it’s really quite good. It takes a bit of effort, too much effort. But I must have last year published over 400 videos to YouTube.
[00:28:57.270] – Nicole Ouellette
That’s amazing.
[00:28:59.440] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I just do a very basic edit. I would love to hire an editor, but I’ve been going… But they’re very niche videos, and they don’t get in… They gradually build up because they’re about plugins or they’re about getting They have a niche focus. And I know some of the biggest people that book a free consultation with me through my WP Tonic website, a lot of them have watched… They’ve done a YouTube binge. They’ve seen one of my videos, and I tend to link a video with a post, and it’s one of the main signals that I give to Google. I do use AI, but I edit everything, and I try and humorize it, and I use tools that make it difficult for Google to see that it was AI. I spend a lot of time editing and checking the facts. I’m not utilizing this term, that’s escape me, where you’re using one of these AI post tools to make almost 200 posts, and you just burn them. Because I know there’s people that use that technique, and they’ve got I’ve got here, but some of them are still getting some success from it. But I use video as a signal to Google that it’s a legitimate article, and I spend all this time editing it, and And I also got some people that write real articles for me as well, so I mix it all up in the podcasting.
[00:30:37.250] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m trying to give as many signals to Google that this is a real business website in a real niche producing content that’s about that niche. So I’m trying to give as many signals to Google as possible. And I’ve totally lost track of where this bloody question was going, but-Well, When we were talking about this episode, you had mentioned that a lot of people use ads to get a paid membership directly.
[00:31:09.120] – Nicole Ouellette
And then you were thinking about using ads as an additional tool to build your email list.
[00:31:14.190] – Jonathan Denwood
I was going to put this when we go for a break, and we need to go for a break.
[00:31:19.820] – Nicole Ouellette
Okay, okay. Sorry.
[00:31:20.450] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s what we’re going to be talking about, because I’ve been influenced by another lady. I’ve asked her to come on the show, but I just want to put the concepts that she’s put forward, which I thought about, and they have some logic to me, or they have some appeal to me. I just wanted to check out what you think about this. Sure. We’re going to go for a break, folks. We’ve had a binge. Hopefully, we’re giving you some insights about organic mixing with paid and the different platforms, because there’s a lot of options out there. Nico has got a ton of experience in this whole area. And she’s not so high up in the… She’s still in the trenches with herself and her team, because some of these other people, they’re so high up in the feeding chain, folks, that their world has no relation to where you are, folks. But we’re going to come back and we’re going to be talking about using paid advertisement to increase your email list. And I think this is a really important area which I need to up my game as well. So we’ll be back in a few moments, folks.
[00:32:46.360] – Jonathan Denwood
Three, two, one. We’re coming back. We’ve had a feast. I’ve had some very long-winded questions to Nicole, but she’s coped with my very long-winded questions very well. Great. Yeah, thank you, Nicole. I don’t think… But it’s my first episode back from a bit of a break, so there we go. I wanted to point out, folks, that if you’re looking to host your WordPress membership website, community-focused website on WordPress, and I honestly think you should do for ownership, flexibility, and just pure power and cost savings. You need a great host. At WP, Tony, we just specialize in that area. We got some great great packages that give you all the tools, plugins, hosting, email, everything in one hosting provider at one great price, plus some great training and other resources. If that’s of interest, go over to WP-Tonic. Com and have a look what we got to offer. It’s part of my little break. You listened to people on YouTube in the background, or you’re having a half hour off because you’re a bit burnt out, and you’re watching other people’s videos, or you’re listening to podcasts, whatever. This lady comes on my radar, Evelyn. How do you pronounce her, second name?
[00:34:20.910] – Jonathan Denwood
Weis, West? Weis. Yeah, Weis, probably. Weis. She comes on my radar. She’s based in British Columbia. The thing is, which she’s totally open about it. She’s got over 10 years experience as a Facebook paid advertisement agency, straight freelancer consultant. She’s got a lot of experience in Facebook paid advertising. But the area that I failed on the most is building up my email list, Nicole. I’ve got about a 500 list, but that list does regularly open my weekly newsletter. Because of my dyslexia, she’s given me some tips about how to use AI but still personalize it, which are going to be that attracts me. I also do a list of articles every week that come on my radar. That’s how I provide value in my weekly newsletter. But I’ve been moving from one target to the other, and I’ve decided that where my target audience is going to be in 2025. But the main thing that she really pushes is using free or low cost lead magnets. She does offer higher price courses, but it’s It’s mainly she uses either these free or very inexpensive lead magnets linked to get people on her email list. Then she keeps the relationship going by investing time in the newsletter, and then she uses the newsletter to put the offer, the higher price offer in front of those people.
[00:36:25.480] – Jonathan Denwood
I find it a very attractive concept, and it makes a lot of sense to me. So what’s your own view about this whole thing I’ve just put in front of you, Nicole?
[00:36:38.910] – Nicole Ouellette
No, I think it’s a great idea. When I opened the co-working space that I’m in out of state New York right now. When I opened the new co-working space here, I was looking to build the email list. And the first thing I did is I made a free e-book download, basically gathering all the business resources in the area that I found out as I was trying to set up the business, like places to get funding and places to get business counseling and all this stuff that I didn’t find written down anywhere. I just slowly learned it. And I thought, well, I might as well just put this together. And so then I started running ads to it, Hey, type in your stuff and just get this free download. And so I got a bunch of people who were interested in starting a small business or small business resources. And I targeted, obviously, a very geographically a civic area. And these are the people who use co-working spaces. So I was basically able to grow. I doubled my email list in two weeks. And honestly, it did take a couple of days for me to gather up the information and proof it and then put it into a format and stuff.
[00:37:50.490] – Nicole Ouellette
But it was worth doing because I was able to basically open with a nice size email list, well, at least for the small area that I am in. So I think it’s… I’ve certainly used it, like I said, myself, clearly, but I think it’s a great strategy. And I’ve definitely fallen for it, and I say fallen for it, and I don’t think anyone’s trying to put one over on me. I was thinking as when you sent me this question, I was like, oh, I started thinking through the things that have worked on me the last month. And I actually got a Facebook ad, and it was this woman, and I forget what her name is, but maybe I’ll find it after if if anybody’s interested. And she does these… She basically shows you how to make a Google Doc not look like a Google Doc. They look really nice. And I was just like, how does she do that? And so I bought her course for… I forget what it was. It was $27. But then as I was checking out, it was like, Oh, do you want the premium bundle? And I was like, for $45?
[00:38:51.380] – Nicole Ouellette
And I was like, Yeah, I want the premium bundle for $45. But it was really useful information. And going through the course, I see that she has a membership community. And I thought, wow, if I learned this much in a few 15-minute videos she’s made, how much could I learn from her and other people who are doing the same stuff as part of her membership community? It really put me in that mindset. So You can think about these lead magnet things, whether it’s a book or some free… I’m in the middle of a challenge right now from a different person, and it’s seven days getting better at AI. And it’s lovely. I get a little email every morning, it’s for seven days, and it’s like, here’s the objective for the day, here’s the background, and then here’s your assignment. And I’m like, oh, this is great. So like I said, you don’t have to make an e-book. You could do a series of emails. You can do a free template, something like that. I think it’s a great way to get people on your email list because otherwise, revisiting the part when we were talking about- I don’t find any…
[00:39:57.180] – Jonathan Denwood
People say it’s the quality, it’s the I think they are important, but I think I see no other way that you could touch up a wider… Going on other people’s podcasts, doing partnerships with other more established business. I think affiliate marketing, they’re all possibilities, but I know no other concept that I’ve come across that could properly get your email list Well, and being able to target a specific person.
[00:40:33.490] – Nicole Ouellette
Obviously, your podcast targets a specific person, but a lot of podcasts don’t target as specifically as you do. Just because someone listens to that podcast doesn’t mean they fit your customer demographic When you run an ad for a free thing, and then you collect their email, you can run it to a very specific person.
[00:40:56.640] – Jonathan Denwood
Obviously, in Facebook manager, this whole concept, she actually runs courses that show you how to run the adverts, but I don’t think she’s actively, I think you got to go on a waiting list. The only problem I think she’s a pretty… I don’t know her personally, but I get the vibe that she’s a reasonably legit individual.
[00:41:23.880] – Nicole Ouellette
I agree. The stuff I’ve seen from her looks really good.
[00:41:26.250] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, but the only thing is she’s gone in with this school platform.
[00:41:32.220] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, I saw that.
[00:41:33.650] – Jonathan Denwood
And the guy, one of the major investors, I’ve got to be a bit cagey here because I don’t want to get sued, but some of the major investors in that platform are people I don’t have a lot of time for. She’s got in with them, and that’s her business. But I think she’s made a mistake getting involved with those people. But she’s a experienced business individual, and that’s her business, isn’t it?
[00:42:04.530] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, absolutely.
[00:42:05.910] – Jonathan Denwood
So that’s the only quantification I want to put on it, is that I’m not keen. But on the other hand, they’re direct, I wouldn’t say direct competitor, well, in some ways to WordPress and that. But it’s still… We’re with school, folks, where it’s combining something like Mighty Networks with a marketplace, So the reason why they’ve got some traction is that you can build… I’m not sure if they’re providing their app at the present moment. They probably aren’t. It’s probably totally web-based unlike Mighty Network. Mighty networks, but they combine it with a marketplace, aren’t they? So they’re saying, We’re getting this traffic, and your course, you can get customers because it’s a marketplace as well, and that’s their pitch. Would you agree with that, Nicole?
[00:43:02.600] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, I mean, I’m with you. I’m a little suspicious about it based on who I see is involved with it.
[00:43:09.500] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m not keen. I’m not keen because of the people we’ve got.
[00:43:13.090] – Nicole Ouellette
I’m not keen either for those reasons. And I think whenever people say that they offer us, in particular, oh, we have a marketplace, it’s like, okay, cool, so you’re putting me… I know, but you’re like, cool, you’re putting me right next to my competitors. I don’t know. I feel like marketplace is just such It’s a nebulous term.
[00:43:31.880] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, Uname, isn’t it? They’re pitching it as a competitor to Uname. But I think you can use Uname as a way of marketing yourself. But when I look at what they’re charging, because they’re charging almost A hundred dollars a month, plus they want to pay a percentage, don’t they? I think it’s five % or something, plus $100 a month.
[00:43:57.070] – Nicole Ouellette
Oh my God.
[00:43:58.340] – Jonathan Denwood
No, thank you. I know. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
[00:44:02.130] – Nicole Ouellette
I was going to see if I could look it up really quick, but I can’t type that fast. I feel like I looked into it and I thought, you know. But I agree with you, the information she has is good. And I understand when you first log in to MetaBusiness Suite, it feels a little overwhelming. So I myself took, I took a Facebook ads course about eight years ago. That was pretty detailed. And it’s one of the most useful things that I’ve done. So I would understand people wanting to do that for sure.
[00:44:30.840] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s something I think my response when it comes to the membership is that I always advise people to not fixate about the interface. Obviously, the course has to have some quality standards, but don’t build what I call war and peace. A lot of people, when they’re building their first course, they fixate about offering tremendous value, and they build this enormous course. And a lot of the content you’re going to put into it, your students aren’t going to be interested in, because you’re always going to be… The things that you think the students are really going or what really be passionate about and really love. They won’t care less about. And things that you think that they wouldn’t really be interested in care about, they’re the things that they want you to build more content about. So it’s It’s really important to get your first batch of students in. And I call it, it’s very important to get what I call a soft launch under your belt and get a small group of students that are getting a discount on the proviso that they know that you expect them to give you some good feedback. And you got to work out all the bugs because every course has different bugs in it and different things that the owner didn’t understand or expect about running a e-learning business in 2024 at the beginning of 2025.
[00:46:07.650] – Jonathan Denwood
And you got to get all these bugs out of the system before you start investing money in paid advertising.
[00:46:15.860] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, I agree.
[00:46:17.130] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah?
[00:46:18.370] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, I do. Because I think people just get really focused on like, oh, I have 25 hours of content. The Google Docs course that I for $47 with a deluxe bundle or whatever. I mean, it is like two 15-minute videos, but the information packed. She gets right into it and it’s like, Oh, cool. I think more people want to learn in a a time-efficient way, too. So this idea of having to build up this whole big thing, I don’t know. I don’t think it has to be like that.
[00:46:56.640] – Jonathan Denwood
Now, when it comes to the meta Facebook Instagram advertising, especially Facebook, I’m going to use the wrong language here, so I’m going to need your assistance here. Sure, sure. So you have, which you outlined in the first half, you have these three main concepts about the advert outcomes. But then you’ve got the advert that will take somebody to a landing page, but then you’ve got the other type of advert which doesn’t take you outside of Facebook. It takes you to a Facebook form, and you have to fill in the data there. Is there a price difference between the two types, the one that takes to external landing page to convert, which then you need the… You should have the Facebook pixel on, shouldn’t you? But then the other way you’ll use lies in the internal Facebook form, and they’re not being taken outside of Facebook, are they?
[00:48:01.850] – Nicole Ouellette
Well, I guess the difference is, I guess with the action, if you send somebody to… Okay, so the three things are awareness, action, conversion. If I was taking out an action, I am paying for someone to click through to a website. Now, they may fill out the form on the website. They may immediately close the window. They may leave it as an open tab like the 25 I have open on my computer right now. Once they get on, you’re just paying for them to click through. You’re not paying them to do anything. If you want them, if you want definitely their contact information, you’ll have to use that conversion form that sits on Facebook, that collects their information. It’s called the lead gen ad. So in case you guys want to- Yeah, right. Right? And the thing I always prepare people when I first start working with them, I say, prepare to spend at the start Like 25 bucks a conversion. And everyone’s like, holy cow. And it’s really funny because I was cleaning out… One of my New Year’s activities was I was cleaning out my Dropbox folders, as I like to do every year, getting rid of all the stuff that builds up.
[00:49:17.240] – Nicole Ouellette
And I found this HubSpot screenshot that I took in 2012, and how much leads cost back then, and it was like $21 on average. So it’s like, okay, that’s Even back then, that’s how much they got. But what I tell people is that over time, and I’m not sure if we want to get into misconceptions people have, but people don’t understand that the first ads you run on any platform are going to be the most expensive ads that you run, because what you’re going to do over time is you’re going to learn about your audience, and your ads are going to get less and less expensive. So for example, they It wasn’t really a membership, but they had a tutoring company. It was like, okay, let’s run an ad for you. We ran an ad. Everything was the same. Same audience, same timing, same text, same everything, except on the graphic was a picture of a little boy in version A and a picture of a little girl in version B. Then we did what’s called an A/B test. Every ad platform has these. It basically takes whatever budget you’ve set, it spends half of your budget with A and half of your budget with B, and then you’re able to see what is less expensive.
[00:50:35.350] – Nicole Ouellette
You would think that a picture of a little boy writing in a notebook versus a little girl wouldn’t make much difference. The little girl was converting at half the rate.
[00:50:43.660] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, that’s because I’m a member. I’ve interviewed John. I’m a member of John Loomers. I really like John, but the only thing is he really goes into the weeds. But I joined because he was offering… I’ve interviewed him, but he offered a special offer before Christmas of lifetime membership, and I took it up. He also got some for the intermittent because I’m just dangerous, basically. But I’ve been doing a lot of his training, but he really goes into the weeds, and I have to be pumped up with coffee before I can really go on that journey with John, because otherwise, I just doze off. I just fall asleep because he really goes back. He really does know his stuff, and I’ve interviewed him a couple of times, so I don’t really know him that well. But he seems a pretty straight guy because a lot of people, and this is just my take on it, that’s the main reason I like discussing things with you, Evelyn, because I Nicole, sorry, I got Evelyn on the phone.
[00:52:02.350] – Nicole Ouellette
It’s okay. No, she has great stuff. I get why. She’s great. Minus the whole problematic connection with school.
[00:52:10.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, that’s the only problem, isn’t it? But nobody’s perfect, are they? Hey, nobody is. I’m definitely not. But I’ll get back to it, Nicole. I get the same buzz from you is that you’re a pretty straight person. But the pain with John, a lot of people in the Facebook training area, they’re pretty slimy people.
[00:52:31.780] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, totally.
[00:52:32.750] – Jonathan Denwood
They’re pretty slimy lot. I normally am not prepared to pay because a lot of it is covered on you But the problem with YouTube, you have no… If I’m going to do a big dive on a YouTube channel and watch a lot of their Facebook stuff, I do go to their website, their LinkedIn. I check them out to see if they’ve got any background or any evidence that they know anything that they’re talking about, because you’re basically taking advice from somebody that you got… Unless you do a bit of research on them, you have no idea if they’ve I don’t have any idea what they’re talking about, do you? With John, even though I’ve got to be pumped up with coffee, he does know what he’s been doing, training in the Facebook space for almost 10 years. So when it comes to the actual form, if you’re going to utilize the Facebook, my only observation is that they’re going to use the email that was utilized when somebody was setting up their Facebook account. No?
[00:53:52.870] – Nicole Ouellette
You don’t have to. No, you can have a separate information. You can make that form as many fields as you want. And one of the things I can collect is an email address. Would you recommend- It might auto- No, it might auto-fill in their Facebook email, but obviously they can just delete it and change it or something. But I recommend… I did some ads for a Medispa, and again, I I got down and I prepared them for… It was $25 lead, but I was like, How much is your average customer? They’re like, I don’t know, $5,000. I’m like, Okay, well, you know? We ran this sweet little ad set and we got them $13 leads. It’s right. So if any one of those people even came in, they’d be fine.
[00:54:33.950] – Jonathan Denwood
It depends. But you got to be very careful in the terminology that we’re using. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Because we are using this terminology of lead.
[00:54:44.190] – Nicole Ouellette
Yes. Yeah, a lead. They’re interested in Botox, right?
[00:54:49.870] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, that’s not it. We all do it, Nicole. We use this terminology lead. But you’ve really understand the customer that’s hired you. What do they see as a lead? A lot of people see a lead is that they see the advert, they are converted, they buy the product.
[00:55:15.050] – Nicole Ouellette
Well, let’s define lead.
[00:55:19.530] – Jonathan Denwood
Thirteen dollars turns into $5,000 automatically. But the reality isn’t there, is it?
[00:55:28.630] – Nicole Ouellette
No, of course not. A lead is somebody who has contact information you have, who has expressed interest in what you have to offer. That, to me, is what a lead is. So they’re not like some random list that… Do you get these spam emails? I get random spam emails all the time. It’s like, I had this list of business owner, over 15,000 small business owners with their full contact information for $89. And I’m like, who are these people? What did they agree? So to me, when I I run an ad and I present this. Part of the ad is they see a creative and they’re like, Oh, cool. They click and they see this form. They don’t ever leave Facebook or Instagram, and they fill out the form on Facebook or Instagram, and I get their contact information. They haven’t signed a contract, they haven’t sent me any money. They have expressed interest in what I have to offer, and they’ve taken the time to give their contact information.
[00:56:25.080] – Jonathan Denwood
But you’ve got to be very careful, and this is the concept that I wanted to get across in this interview, because we got another five minutes before we call it a day, is that these are targeted leads that if you got a low-price lead magnet or you’re offering, which is probably what you’re going to have to offer some value, and then you have their contact list. You have then the possibility of offering them something else, and they have showed interest. But then a guaranteed purchaser.
[00:57:11.180] – Nicole Ouellette
Is there any way to get guaranteed purchasers?
[00:57:14.630] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, A lot of people, but they won’t verbalize this to you, Nicole. Obviously, but they can’t keep paying as To have somebody like yourself manage their account and put a fair bit of money depending on what their budget is every month, and not see any of those warm leads, indicating they got interested in the service or product you’re offering, that don’t ever convert, because they just can’t keep doing it. They can’t keep putting money into a campaign see no conversions. But the process of turning that warmish lead into actual real conversion, that’s where a lot of confusion and miscommunication happens between consultant, freelancer, agency, principal running the campaigns for the client. What’s your reaction to what I’ve just outlined?
[00:58:31.560] – Nicole Ouellette
No, I think part of what advertising can do is it can get new people in front of your product or service, and it can get you some… If they’re interested, they will give you their contact information. But once you have their contact information, it’s up to you how you’re going to follow up with them, with what you’re going to follow. So if, for example, I was interested in learning more about your WordPress hosting and I filled out a form, okay, how are you going to follow up with me? How often are you going to follow up with me? Are you going to invite me to follow you on social media? And do you post things that I would like to see on your social media? So Ads go with the organic content. And that’s the reason that these platforms offer a way for you to post content, but they also offer a way to run ads, is because they do go together. So, yeah, You have to nurture. You have a lead, but you have to nurture it before that person becomes a customer. Most people don’t wake up and say, yes, let me immediately join this membership organization where I’m going to learn from this person and spend a lot of time in their community.
[00:59:43.900] – Nicole Ouellette
Yes, let me just buy this on Impulse. It’s not a coffee, right? They’re going to have to look into you.
[00:59:48.700] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, unless the timing is totally spot on. Because I think there’s inexpensive courses, there’s cheaper, there’s free or very inexpensive lead magnets, and then there’s the medium, which I’m a great fan of the course, that’s 497.
[01:00:13.760] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah. Oh, it ends in a seven.
[01:00:16.280] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes, it ends in a seven. The 497 course, because even people like me, if it’s pitched in the right way, it’s not a substantial amount of money, but it’s not a ridiculous amount of money. And if I’m really interested, I will probably buy it, and I probably won’t ask for a refund after I’ve checked the course out, if I think the person is providing some value. Now, if it’s up to 1,000, 997, which a certain group of people are very popular about, I’ve got to have a real need. If you’re looking at the mastermind group or the one-to-one counseling with the course, which is normally 597. I’ve never bought a 597 course, but if I did buy a 597 course, I would want a real need, and I want some real one-to-one. But on the other hand, it’s a balance, isn’t it? Because they can’t keep giving you one-to-one consultation, because it is a fair bit of money, but there needs to be boundaries there to be fair to the person offering, even that higher level. But Nobody from a Facebook advert, unless the real timing is, in my opinion, going to give you 1,997, you need to warm them up with people like Microsoft.
[01:01:58.340] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, they need to get to know you.
[01:02:00.090] – Jonathan Denwood
And the 497, unless you’re a certain personality online, which we’re not going to go into in this particular show. Is this making sense? Why am I taking you on, Nicole?
[01:02:13.460] – Nicole Ouellette
No, I think you make sense. If you think about the last thing you paid $497 for, almost $500 for, how many times did you have to see that ad? Or how long did you follow that person before you bought something? Chances are you didn’t see one ad and just immediately buy it, right?
[01:02:29.090] – Jonathan Denwood
They were on my radar anyway. Yeah, exactly. And so what you’re using- I knew them anyway.
[01:02:34.920] – Nicole Ouellette
Well, that’s what I’m saying is, so they used ads to get on your radar. And as a membership website, that’s what you’re using ads for. You’re getting on people’s radar. Now, like I said, if you want to get their specific contact information, you’re going to pay for that on the platform. But you can also just take out a really cheap awareness ad. In the awareness ad, you can advertise that you have a free download. You’re not paying for the action for them to download it, you’re just paying for them to see it, and then they can make the decision from there. So I mostly start with awareness ads with people, honestly.
[01:03:11.400] – Jonathan Denwood
If you’re up to it, I want to end the podcast here, but I feel up to it. Because I want to talk about the thing that we didn’t discuss because I’ve been waffling, is retargeting. So if you’re up for 10 minutes of bonus- Sure, absolutely.
[01:03:26.410] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, let’s do it.
[01:03:27.610] – Jonathan Denwood
Which people… We’re going to end the podcast here, folks. But like I say, we’re going to have a bonus bit of extra 10 minute content where we’re going to be talking about the concept of retargeting, which I think is really important because it can be at a lower cost. What what I’ve been studying. It is. And it’s linked to getting people on your email list as well. So Nicole, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and some of the knowledge you regularly share with people?
[01:04:03.470] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, sure. So we’re on most social media platforms. Your line was TikTok, my line was Snapchat. So we’re on every platform as breaking even communications except Snapchat. Actually, I deactivated my X account. So I’m on Blue Sky now. She’s gone blue. She’s gone blue. I’ve gone blue. You can also… Our website is breakingeveninc. Com. And there’s a free consultation consultation link. It should be right on the top of the page if you want to talk a little bit about your marketing needs.
[01:04:35.130] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, there’s a lot of people in the WordPress that gone on over to blue, but I just.
[01:04:41.580] – Nicole Ouellette
It’s okay. I’m just being… I just didn’t want people wondering around X being like, Where are you? I was there. I’m gone now and my data is deleted and everything.
[01:04:51.220] – Jonathan Denwood
I don’t blame you. I don’t blame you, though. We all have to make choices in this life, don’t we? We’re going to end the show. Like I say, If you want to watch the bonus content, go over to the Wp-ponic. Com YouTube channel. We will be back next week with another techie or marketing episode to try and get the results that you’re looking for your membership community website in 2025. We will see you next week, folks. Bye. Bye. Right, on to retargeting, and I’m not going to waft on. So give us an outline and give us some thoughts around what people need to know about retargeting on Facebook.
[01:05:40.540] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, so retargeting or remarketing is essentially getting people who’ve already done something back to your website. So every single ad platform, Pinterest, YouTube/GoogleAds, Meta, they all have what what’s called a remarketing or retargeting pixel. So what you do on those platforms is you go there, you generate the code, and then you stick it into your website. It’ll tell you, you can look up how to do that in WordPress or whatever. But a lot of them have We’ll guide you through that process of exactly where to put it. And what happens is when someone is on your website, it is collecting some information. So let’s say that I go to Wp-tonic. Com, I visit, Oh, I have a Facebook account, right? So then I’m on Facebook later in the day, and suddenly I see an ad from WP Tonic. So that is retargeting. Now, obviously, Jonathan would be paying for an ad to retarget me. What you’re doing with the pixel is giving the option of taking out an ad to people who’ve already visited your website. So the basic retargeting event is a view. But if you If you have, for example, an e-commerce website, you can set up different events.
[01:07:04.860] – Nicole Ouellette
They’re called events. So a view is an event, but it could be that they looked at a certain category in your online shopping cart. They added something to their shopping cart, or they finished the checkout process. So what that allows you to do as a website owner is, let’s say that I went to WP Tonic and I started the checkout process and then I left. Well, Jonathan is tracking all those events, he can take out an ad to everybody who started the checkout process, minus the people who actually checked out. And he could say, come back. I have a coupon code. Come back. Come on. Come back. It’s It’s not the abandoned cart email, but an ad for it.
[01:07:46.490] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve said that quite a lot to people. Come on. Yeah.
[01:07:49.100] – Nicole Ouellette
Come on. Yeah, no, but it happens to everybody. Not 100 % of people who go to your website, finish the checkout process. Do you finish the checkout process 100 % of the time? No. Of course you don’t. Everybody else is in the same boat as you. What retargeting allows you to do as a website owner is to take out ads on these various platforms. If you wanted to retarget people on Facebook, you would need a Facebook retargeting pixel. If you want to retarget people on YouTube or Google, you’d have a Google retargeting pixel. Like I said, the default event is views, but you can set up these different events if you want to track different things on your website. They filled out certain forms, they visited certain pages, whatever. You can make events for everything. The thing that you need to know as a website owner, if you’re going to use these ads, is you have to update the privacy policy of your website to say that you’re collecting this data. Now, when you go to set up the pixel, it will ask you the default length of time it will keep this information are different.
[01:08:58.540] – Nicole Ouellette
I think the maximum Facebook will keep this information is 180 days. I think the maximum that Google will is like 540. It’s some weird amount because it’s more than one year, but not quite two years. It’s some really weird number if I remember correctly.
[01:09:14.970] – Jonathan Denwood
No, but I am correct, Brettniss, Nicole. I think retargeting has proven to be very effective. But the thing is, the elephant in the room, all of this, it’s all in the nitty-gritty, isn’t it? Is A lot of people are misled because you’ve got to get a certain level of volume of traffic to your website.
[01:09:37.060] – Nicole Ouellette
Well, yeah, it’s not going to keep everybody who’s ever visited your website. It’s going to keep the traffic from a certain- You got to have a certain monthly level of traffic to your Absolutely.
[01:09:45.560] – Jonathan Denwood
But on the other hand, you could use the Facebook combining it with a Facebook campaign that is linked to an effective, free, or inexpensive lead made make that. Then the people that go to you, you would be advised to also have a certain budget to retarget those people. Would you agree with that?
[01:10:12.050] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, I think that’s definitely an approach for sure. But the two things you need on your website, I just want to say this part just to not get people in trouble, is you need to update your privacy policy to say that there’s this pixel on the site and how long the data is kept for and all that. You also need to have a cookies notice or Cookie’s banner on your website. And if people opt out of targeting, you actually have to stop targeting them. And they will ask you, when you set up your ads account, they will ask you for the link to your privacy policy. They will ask you. So You do have to… If you are going to run ads where you’re retargeting people, in particular, you have to have those two things on your website to be compliant.
[01:10:54.920] – Jonathan Denwood
I think it’s been great news for the founder of Facebook, but time It’s probably a couple of years ago now because we are in 2025, so you got to say two years now, but I think it’s over two years. Obviously, things were… The money was pouring in people, and then Apple did the dirty on Facebook, and things started going downhill, and there was a lot of chatter that Facebook advertising managers and that. I knew a lot of people in the WordPress paid plugin that utilize a lot of Facebook who wouldn’t sponsor one of the longest running podcasts in the professional WordPress, but would put down 10, 20,000 a month on a load of Facebook ever. They weren’t getting the results, but AI appeared and really saved the bacon, I think, because I think people are getting results. Am I correct in my tongue-in-cheek little remarks that one of the big winners of using AI technology has been Facebook. Am I correct in saying that?
[01:12:18.690] – Nicole Ouellette
Well, yeah. Have you heard that they’re going to start having bot users on meta?
[01:12:24.790] – Jonathan Denwood
No, tell us what this is about.
[01:12:27.520] – Nicole Ouellette
They’re going to have basically They’re going to have users, but they’re not going to be users. They’re going to be AI. They’re going to be fake people on meta. They announced this two days ago.
[01:12:39.140] – Jonathan Denwood
I thought they all were anyway, but what’s this about?
[01:12:45.290] – Nicole Ouellette
So in my mind, Facebook or Meta, what they’re realizing is that people aren’t on the platform as much, and they’re not posting content. So these fake influencers, probably or whatever, are going to be in our feed now posting content. Also, Meta is one of the… So TikTok is being banned in the US, as of January ’19. Guess who has a ton of- I’m not saying you’re wrong.
[01:13:12.910] – Jonathan Denwood
I have no idea.
[01:13:14.190] – Nicole Ouellette
And then Meta, in my mind, has eliminated the competition that was TikTok, in their mind. They lobbied to get rid of this thing that was doing, is where people were spending their social media time.
[01:13:24.840] – Jonathan Denwood
They would never do that, Nico.
[01:13:26.180] – Nicole Ouellette
They would never do that. To me, between those two things, it’s going to be an interesting landscape out there. I think what they’re trying to do is change the feed. So instead of just a bunch of information from your old high school friends and your old boss and your grandmother, it’s going to be more around your interests. That said, I think if you have a membership website to me, rather than your potential customers’ feeds being clogged up with people they know, they’re going to start being shown content that they might be interested in. I think it might not be terrible. I think it might be slightly terrible, but not as terrible as we would think.
[01:14:09.620] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it’s Facebook. It’s Meta.
[01:14:11.790] – Nicole Ouellette
Slightly terrible is their unofficial tagline.
[01:14:14.290] – Jonathan Denwood
My expectations aren’t too high. But on the other hand, they’ve got to do something because you are spot on. I just thought it was because you don’t know if it’s… They’re just showing you based on your own habits. But I really don’t spend that much time on Facebook. Me either. But even though I’m interested in it as a marketer, I have seen a decline. But because of the political… Because I’m left of center because I come from England. I’ve always been running my own business, but I am center-left. But I don’t believe in banning people, so I had to, in the end, ban a load of people from my focus. There’s a certain group on the extreme left and on the extreme right, and they must spend all their time on it. Either they’re totally retired and they’ve got absolutely nothing to do in their lives anymore because they troll people constantly on Twitter or Facebook, don’t they? They spend all their time, literally, don’t they? And it’s only so much hard contour, right?
[01:15:32.140] – Nicole Ouellette
Absolutely. No, I don’t blame you.
[01:15:34.330] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ll ban them, but you have to. All right, I think it’s time to wrap it up. Thank you so much, Nicole. I think I’ve waffled a bit, but it is my first episode of 225. I think you’ve been Asia-focused. Thank you, Nicole. And we will be back next week with another great show. We’ll see you soon, folks.. Bye.
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