In this episode, marketing expert Ralph Burns, known for his deep expertise in Facebook advertising and successful agency leadership, breaks down the sophisticated strategies required to run high-performing ad campaigns for service-oriented businesses. Alongside the host, Ralph shares his experience managing complex ad campaigns in industries like body sculpting, where return on ad spend (ROAS) can take months to materialize. Using a recent case study, Ralph details how his team used a free Botox offer to bring clients into a body-sculpting business, ultimately turning an initial loss into substantial profit through strategic upsells.Ralph and the host explore the challenges of managing ads across multiple locations with differing CRM systems, explaining how initial ad metrics can be misleading if businesses don’t account for the full customer lifecycle. They discuss the importance of taking a long-term view, emphasizing that Facebook and digital ads today are part of a larger ecosystem rather than isolated profit generators. Ralph also shares lessons from his journey, encouraging business owners to invest in skilled teams, enhance financial literacy, and make data-informed decisions. This episode provides a candid look at the intricacies of high-stakes digital advertising, especially relevant for entrepreneurs in service-based industries.CHAPTER TITLES2:00 - The Power of CRM Systems and Facebook Ads4:00 - Understanding the Customer Journey and the 30-60-90 Day Model6:30 - Leveraging Google and Facebook Ads for Long-Term Sales9:00 - Ad Strategy: Nurturing Leads Across Platforms11:00 - Conversion Tracking and the Challenge of Cross-Platform Attribution14:18 - Using Irresistible Offers to Drive Initial Engagement16:00 - Managing Delayed Upsell Conversions and Lookback Windows18:00 - Estimating Lead Value Through Data-Driven Models20:50 - Embracing Long-Term ROI: Lifetime Value and Ecosystem Impact22:00 - Lessons in Business: Success, Mistakes, and Financial WisdomConnect with Ralph Burns:https://true11.com/Linkedin - Ralph BurnsConnect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedInInstagramFacebookTwitter
Chapter 1: What is the reality of marketing in 2024 and beyond?
Multi-objective buying or MOBU is now the reality of how we do business today in marketing in 2024 and beyond.
So this case study was just one example of dozens in which we try to figure out like where is the revenue coming from and then how is it not necessarily a last click attributed, but where did it start and do more of that where it started and get more customers at the top of your funnel and ultimately attract them and scale and grow businesses.
Chapter 2: How can businesses track revenue from multi-channel advertising?
My name is Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast, and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life.
What's up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. Today, we're going to talk about advertising. Specifically Facebook and how it looks in 2025. We're here with my friend Ralph Burns, very famous marketer, advertiser, actually one of the original people I learned back, you know, 10 plus years ago when I really got into this and started spending millions of dollars.
He's got very famous agency, tier 11, and he just came back from the Facebook HQ and where they were diving into more the omnipresence ecosystem of advertising we now live in. And in just one account, they found $2.3 million in revenue and sales that wasn't attributed to the original ad, but was still caused because of Facebook advertising. So, Raoul, welcome to the show.
Glad to be here. I feel like I should have red on, but I'm wearing the wrong color, but forgive me for that. Thanks for having me, bud. Great to find out what you're on and obviously to meet you a couple of weeks ago.
Yeah. So let's dive in a couple of things out the gate and we'll dive into it more to the show. But advertising has changed a lot. We've talked about it offline. Like, you know, it used to be more ad to landing page to offer, make a sale easy. Now we live in this like world where so many things have to come together because the buyers are more sophisticated and there's so many more touch points.
So can you dive into a little this whole like multi-channel buying system and this 2.3 million that you found on this one account for anyone that doesn't fully understand it?
Yeah, I think when we first started, when we first started listening to Perpetual Traffic way back when, it was much easier. I mean, most people and most of the clients that we had in those days, even up till maybe three or four or five years ago, were just multiple, just one channel. It was just basically it was Facebook and then maybe a little bit of Instagram.
So your direct traffic always came from that, but then you could track back to Facebook, specifically your ad spend, and it was pretty easy to figure all this stuff out. But since then, it's gotten a lot more complex. I think a lot of the businesses that we tend to work with right now are multi-channel.
And they, yes, they might use meta and the meta platforms as the basis for a lot of their top of funnel, but they tend to, because we have a Google division, we have a full social division, we have a creative division, we have an after the click division, we integrate everything into it.
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Chapter 3: What is the importance of understanding the customer journey?
Chapter 4: How do you leverage Facebook and Google ads for long-term sales?
Yeah. So let's dive in a couple of things out the gate and we'll dive into it more to the show. But advertising has changed a lot. We've talked about it offline. Like, you know, it used to be more ad to landing page to offer, make a sale easy. Now we live in this like world where so many things have to come together because the buyers are more sophisticated and there's so many more touch points.
So can you dive into a little this whole like multi-channel buying system and this 2.3 million that you found on this one account for anyone that doesn't fully understand it?
Yeah, I think when we first started, when we first started listening to Perpetual Traffic way back when, it was much easier. I mean, most people and most of the clients that we had in those days, even up till maybe three or four or five years ago, were just multiple, just one channel. It was just basically it was Facebook and then maybe a little bit of Instagram.
So your direct traffic always came from that, but then you could track back to Facebook, specifically your ad spend, and it was pretty easy to figure all this stuff out. But since then, it's gotten a lot more complex. I think a lot of the businesses that we tend to work with right now are multi-channel.
Chapter 5: What challenges come with conversion tracking and cross-platform attribution?
And they, yes, they might use meta and the meta platforms as the basis for a lot of their top of funnel, but they tend to, because we have a Google division, we have a full social division, we have a creative division, we have an after the click division, we integrate everything into it.
It's much more complicated to figure out which channel is actually the one that's pulling for you at any given moment in time. And, you know, the example we can use here today is from Meta, but the same could be said on a lot of channels. Like we just met with TikTok marketing this morning, TikTok for business this morning. They have the same sort of challenge with TikTok.
Now they've got sort of more of a full funnel challenge. offering now, which is great, and a lot of new stuff that's coming out. But the point is, even if you're doing YouTube and you're doing anything that has a view and not necessarily a click, it's really hard to measure that. And in this particular case, this is one that I presented at Meta at their agency conference this past week.
in New York City, they're really interested in finding out more about this, because I think a lot of us as marketers, we tend to just go for website conversion campaigns, which is probably what you started on.
Chapter 6: How can irresistible offers drive initial customer engagement?
Like, I was heavily leveraging for years and years, and now this idea of what Meta now calls multi-objective buying, or MOBU, which we sort of termed it last week when we decided that's what they were going to call it. is now the reality of how we do business today in marketing in 2024 and beyond.
So this case study was just one example of dozens in which we try to figure out like where is the revenue coming from and then how is it not necessarily a last click attributed, but where did it start and do more of that where it started and get more customers at the top of your funnel and ultimately track them and scale and grow businesses.
Yeah, it's fascinating. So, you know, I've always been Facebook's been my main driver. And as I mentioned briefly, like I ran ads when I was back living in the UK for my fitness brand and my personal training and dabbled with it. And then when I moved to America, I got way more serious and scaled and spent millions. And, you know, it was very fortunate. I got to learn from people like yourself.
And, you know, back then it was more like the straight to, you know, straight to add byproduct jobs are good. And, you know, I didn't even need organic really back then and all those things. But in my latest business, which is more my coaching consulting side, we scaled to we did about 25 million in the first two or three years.
Chapter 7: Why is estimating lead value crucial for businesses?
And I came into this business obsessed with tracking, which I wasn't in previous businesses, but I kind of learned it over the years. And we actually, you know, we have a lot of high tickets, sales teams, sales too, from 2,000 to 100,000. And every single sale that's ever come through that made up that 25 million, there's a Slack channel where it zaps in and then we actually have a VA channel
all the CRM data and we look at the original source and the call recordings in there and all the payment plans, all the other things you need to know. And I'm always fascinated about the source because, you know, we'll sell a 20K or a 50K sale and it's like, they bought your Black Friday offer that was a Facebook ad, you know, and every funnel's labeled.
We create separate funnels for every channel because no matter how great tracking is, I don't trust it. Like we have a set funnel for every channel. So this was like the Black Friday in 2022 dash Facebook. And it's just so fascinating. And I think a lot of clients or people you work with, I'm sure, and me, they don't understand this because they like say their ads aren't that profitable.
And I'm like, look, even if you're breaking even with your ads, you don't understand the ecosystem and the ripple effect it's creating around it. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Chapter 8: What lessons in business can be learned from advertising strategies?
Yeah, it's really hard. I mean, marketing is hard. Otherwise, everybody would be doing it and making millions. But the point is, is that like most businesses or most skill, you have to learn it and you have to do a lot of trial by error. I mean, I think I'm with you. I don't trust tracking. When I see something, I don't believe it.
And the tracking software that we'll talk about here today, we were very skeptical of it to start. We've invested in all of them heavily. I mean, we spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year on Google and then as well as on Meta. I don't even know how much we spend on Google now. It's an extraordinary amount. So anything that I see, I never believe it.
But when the data is so clear, but it's not reflected inside the app itself, but it's outside of the app and a third party software, you really have to believe. And then you see it in the CRM, you see the physical sales in the CRM. There's no denying that that came from somewhere. You have to sort of backtrack and figure out where the hell did that come from?
Because this unattributed or unknown in Google analytics is going to drive you crazy because unless you're actually tracking from, you know, your black Friday campaign in 2022, to your Black Friday campaign or your Memorial Day campaign in 2024, you might not ever know where that person first interacted with you. And that's data you should know. And it's never going to be perfect.
And even in this case, it's not perfect. It's about 90%, but that's pretty good. So I think just this idea of everyone should be skeptical about any sort of tracking and any sort of third-party application that says, hey, I'm going to tell you exactly where all your clicks come from. I'm going to tell you exactly where your ROAS is from. I think it's a bunch of bull crap.
You've got to figure it out for yourself. But until I saw it, then all of a sudden it's like, it's plain as day. Here's where it came from. And it makes sense from a buyer's journey standpoint.
Yeah, and let's talk a little about, you know, why we're in this position now, right? So, you know, advertising in 2024, 2025, how it looks next year. Why is it becoming so complicated from a tracking side? And it's because it's the way the user's interacting, right? Like people are being used to see an ad, buy an ad, and jobs are good. But now I think trust has changed a lot. People shop around.
They want to follow you. There's a lot more competition. So how do you see this multi-channel buying and what can people take away today to apply into their own marketing strategy to get ahead of this?
Yeah, yeah. I think just accepting the fact that... You know, there's going to be multiple stages, and we can track this. You can actually see it in any attribution software. There's multiple clicks. There's multiple things that somebody does before they actually end up buying. If you've got, you know, an impulse buy for $7, there's probably not going to be a very long buyer's journey.
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