[Podcast] Meta Ad Strategies: How to Grow Your Business with Facebook and Instagram Advertising (Krista Ripma)

Krista Ripma is the co-founder of Authentic Audience, a boutique ad agency and digital marketing firm serving small businesses that specialize in self-care, self-love, and self-expression.

In this episode of The Lead Generation, Krista shares her thoughts around advertising strategies, thinking about money as an energetic resource, and lessons learned throughout her journey to entrepreneurial success.

Key Takeaways

• The truth sells. Use radical honesty with your team and customers to build a stronger, more authentic connection that supports the long-term growth of your business.
• People connect with people. If you’re in the expertise business, you are your brand. Don’t shy away from that!
• Disconnect your self-worth from your prices. As a service provider, the value you bring is from your experience and the transformation your customers receive.
• See your marketing budget as an investment. Shift your perspective from spending money on services to investing in the growth of your business.
• Your email list is a 401K for your business. Think about your contact list as a long-term investment that continues to pay off.
• Identify your success metric. Knowing the actual numbers (and type of conversion) you’re going for is critical before launching an advertising campaign.
• Use 90-day campaign windows. Give yourself (and Facebook/Instagram) enough time to optimize each stage of your marketing campaign.
• Send paid traffic to landing pages. Avoid the mistake of wasting ad dollars by sending paid traffic to your homepage.

Resources Mentioned

• Krista Ripma on Instagram
• Krista Ripma on LinkedIn
• Authentic Audience
• Authentic Audience Podcast

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Transcript

Who is Krista Ripma?

Bob Sparkins: Hey, Krista, thanks so much for joining me for this episode of The Lead Generation.

Krista: Hi, Bob, I'm honored. I love Leadpages. This is so fun.

Bob: You are a pro at podcasting yourself and doing lots of really cool marketing things. Before we get into the nitty-gritty of today's episode, I'd love to know how do you and Authentic Audience transform the lives of your customers and clients?

Krista: Great question. I would say that we are really great at connecting our customers and clients with their customers and clients. So that space between any external conversation that's happening, whether it's via advertising or email marketing or Leadpages or sales pages, you name it, we play in that arena. So I love helping connect my dream clients to their dream clients, and we've gotten quite good at it. So it's really fun to match the offer with the audience. I think that's the best way of saying it. When you have a winning offer and you can find the right audience, that's when the magic happens, and so that's where we play and transform. It's really fun.

Bob: Yeah, I bet and I know that people who struggle with advertising and connecting with bigger audiences really appreciate what it is that you and your team are doing.

Krista: Yeah.

Using Radical Honesty to Grow in and out of Your Business

Bob: You speak frequently on your show and other interviews that you do about radical honesty, and I'd like to start off a little bit more exploring with you about that. What does radical honesty mean to you and why is it so important for entrepreneurs to wear that mantle if they're going to be successful reaching those larger audiences?

Krista: Yeah, I mean the simplest answer is the truth sells and I think the more vulnerable we can be, especially as business owners or coaches, a lot of our clients are coaches or healers or teachers in some capacity, and the more we can honor and show up truthfully and authentically, the more our audience will connect with us. So it's actually the best marketing tactic, to be honest. We say radical honesty. Within our culture, we're really transparent with our clients on how we're spending their dollars, whether it's advertising or however it is. I find money to be a really beautiful way of energetic balance. So somebody pays you and you offer a service and that agreement is very sacred to me.

So it starts internally just with our team. We're really honest and upfront and transparent just with our services and what we do. Many people find us that have marketing trauma who have worked with big agencies or people who have sold them pay per clicks and just all of this kind of stuff and were not seeing results. So we come in and are just incredibly honest with our strategies, with our spend all of that, and we find it's just such a smoother relationship that way.

So then branching that idea into marketing strategies, where you are sharing your stories, where you're talking about your journey, customer success stories, and answering questions in a real way. I mean, people follow people and then they follow brands and I think you're a great example of that because in our world, we love Leadpages, but we love Bob from Leadpages. You've put a really awesome personality to the brand and it's really fun to connect that way and so I think the more real we can be with our audience, the more they'll trust us and so much about marketing is earning the trust. So it really does come back to that and just earning that loyalty and creating really engaging campaigns from that space.

Bob: Awesome. I appreciate the recognition. It's something that we do believe passionately about with that personal connection. So nice to see that it resonates.

From Hollywood to Entrepreneurship

Bob: We're going to dive into a bit more around advertising, marketing ideas and so forth in just a minute, but I was doing little research before this call, as you would expect, as I'm sure you do as well with your guests. I noticed that in your twenties, you had what I would call very common employment experimentation, right? You went from a few different spots, few different types of roles. So first of all, tell us a little bit about those roles that you had and what's a lesson that you learned from those before you decided to become your own business owner?

Krista: Yeah, that's a great question. So I feel that all of my roles, even though very different, have weaved together to make me the person that I am in business and how I show up, but I originally started out in Hollywood, actually, working at a production company and as an EA on TV sets for actors. I wanted to be a producer and just landed my dream job. I would say that at every point in my twenties, whatever I was doing was my dream job at the time. So I was all in to whatever I was doing and working in LA, I learned a lot about a culture that I did not want to emulate. I got a very strong work ethic and I learned very quickly what sells in terms of stories, which is really amazing because marketing is just really good storytelling.

So I was reading so many scripts for my boss and really in this amazing space of hustle and understanding what sells. So from there, I realized that it was not the culture for me and I dove in the opposite direction, more into the world of spirituality and health and wellness and was doing a lot of production and things like that. So my heart has always been in storytelling, visual storytelling especially. I went to film school and throughout the years, I've also been an assistant to a lot of really amazing people and worked for a lot of different teams. So I realized that, in 2014 or so, that I could do what I've been doing for all of these people myself.

So I started just with yoga studios. I was believing that the more butts on mat, the better the world and I still believe that. People who are very gifted, like yoga teachers, typically do not know how to market themselves. So it was a really great niche for me to start.

Then I realized from there there's so many amazing people doing so much amazing work and no matter what industry it is, you're always going to have the pros and cons. There's definitely cons of working in the spiritual world as a business and community.

So from there, Authentic Audience was really formed under this idea that let's do business with a heart and let's do it our own way. I didn't know if it would work and it turns out people really resonated with our messaging.

So that was in 2017 and since then, I've had to do a lot of leadership work because when you grow a business or when you start a business as an entrepreneur, you usually start it because you're really good at one thing. For me, that was storytelling, marketing, connecting, but now having a team and being a leader and having operations and finances, it's a lot of work, but it's really rewarding work. I love what we do and I think the biggest opportunity I saw was a way to market differently and people were really craving that at the time, in 2017. I mean, authenticity now is quite the buzzword, but it really wasn't then. So we were like, "Hey, we're a marketing agency, but we're going to tell the truth." That's how it all started.

Finding a Partner in Business and Life

Bob: This time also is around that time that you were on a sailboat, I understand, and you got married. So before we get into the next lesson portion of the podcast, I just think it would be fun for you to share a little bit about that story of how you and Clay connected, because obviously Clay is a co-founder of Authentic Audience.

Krista: Yes, yes. He's a co-founder and we're both entrepreneurs. So he now has his other business that he's running and still using Leadpages for that. So big fans, but yeah, we met sailing. I was living on my boat in 2014 in San Francisco Bay and we were introduced through a mutual friend because we both wanted to live on the water and that was it. So we fell in love right away and literally we were traveling and doing lots of work together. I had just started, what at the time, was kristalettko.com, so my maiden name is Lettko. No such thing as Authentic Audience and we were so crazy, now that I think about it.

We started this company before we were even engaged. So we have not really known one another, not as business partners, for most of our engagement, well, all of our engagement and marriage. So that's how we met and we started this company and we do not live on a boat. We sold the boat, but we sail as often as we can. That's our biggest dream really is to continue to create a life where we can take time off and sail around the world and we're very different, but the sailing anchors us, no pun intended, together.

Bob: You can intend that pun. That's a clever pun.

Krista: It really does though. It brings us back together and it's one of our biggest core values is spending time out on the water. So it's been really funny how that kicked off this entrepreneurial life for us and we've grown and we live in Santa Cruz now. So we're still really close to the beach and we're having a baby in a couple of months. So life looks really different than those days. It's funny because when I think about it, I'm still really doing the same thing, just in a different capacity. He's a great business partner. He's a great friend and he loves all of the same strategies I love. So it's been really fun to just sort of grow and evolve. Of course, doing business with your spouse can have its ups and downs, but now he has really taken off in his new venture, Vest Map. So now we are a two-company household, both entrepreneurs running our own businesses, and never a dull moment.

Bob: You're about to have a third enterprise to bring into the world here in September.

Krista: Yes.

Bob: So good luck with all of that. That's going to be amazing as a new parent.

Krista: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I think we're as prepared as we could ever be.

CTA BLOCK FOR TRIAL

Improving Your Money Mindset

Bob: Cool. Let's switch gears over to your zone of entrepreneurial genius a bit more, which is obviously in that advertising and marketing space, attracting audiences quickly turning interest into revenue. Especially in this space, as you mentioned, coaches and healers and transformers of the world, they tend to be really good at what they do and they have no marketing training whatsoever. I'm married to an executive coach. I know a lot of the space over the last 12 years of working in it as well. So my first question to you is why do people that tend to be those that want to change the world have such a difficult time in their relationship with money? It seems like that's really at the root of the issues that come into marketing for me.

Krista: A hundred percent. That's such a great place to start and luckily for me as a marketer, their zone of genius is not marketing because now I have a job. There's these amazing, talented, gifted healers, teachers, coaches with no real idea or strategy on how to reach the audience that they're here to serve. So it's a really fun place for me to come in and support, but money is such a big issue when it comes to marketing. There's a couple of things around this, but I think for people that have service-based businesses like coaches, healers, teachers, it can feel as if you're selling yourself versus selling a service.

So for example, if you have an eCommerce shop, the price of your candle is the price of your candle and that's what it costs, right? But when you're selling your own time, your own course, your own service, it feels like you are putting a value number on you and am I worth this amount? Can I charge this amount for my work? Really at the end of the day, it's about your experience. The service that you're providing, yes, you are a vital piece of this service, but at the end of the day, they're paying for your partner probably has many coaching certifications and has spent thousands of hours and thousands of dollars being able to offer these kinds of services.

It's really about the transformation that they're buying or the service that they're buying. If we can just remove ourselves a little bit from the equation and make it less about us. I think we tend to make it about us too often. My time is worth this amount and my service is worth this amount. No, that's what the service costs. If you're charging less, you're undercutting the market, right? So you're not doing anyone any favors. Oftentimes psychologically, when you charge more for your services, there's a value prop there. People take it more seriously when you market yourself, when you invest in yourself in that way. So that's the first piece of it is what they're charging.

Now, the second piece of it is investing in marketing, right? So that's another hard piece for them because again, it's this investment in self. I like to remind my clients, listen, you're not actually investing in me. I'm not doing anything different than any other marketer would do in terms of growing your email list or running an advertising campaign or whatever it is. I'm not doing anything totally outside of the box, crazy. What you're investing in is your business and yourself and do you believe that this is an amazing offer and if put in front of your dream client, if it would sell? If the answer is no, then we need to think about the offer or why we're having gout around that.

So we go through all of that work, but at the end of the day, if you are wanting to have a successful, sustainable business, say that makes, I'm totally making this up, $100,000 a year in revenue, then your marketing budget, like any company, should be 10 to 20% of that. That's it and it doesn't need to be so heavy. So much of the work that I actually do with my clients is around mindset and the relationship they have with money and being willing to invest in self and see that money return positively for them over time, but it's different, especially with the coaches, because for example, if you're selling a candle, you send an ad for a candle.

They buy the candle, you see that ROI right away, but if you're a coach or if you're trying to grow a real community and online business, you're going to need a community to sell to which means we need to invest in leads. We need to warm up those leads. We need to nurture those leads and we have to do all of this before we can sell to them. So being willing to invest in growth, I often say emails and leads are currency. Investing in that as a success metric is really important to grow your business. People need to know about you.

So those are the two sides. One, really removing yourself from the equation and looking at the value of the service that you're providing when it comes to your pricing. Two, when it comes to investing in marketing and advertising, I'm also a big believer in energy and that is energetically telling universe, "Hey, I'm serious about growing this. I'm serious about making this financial investment. I'm serious about taking this seriously. I'm willing to invest in myself," because if you believe in yourself and your business and your service, and it's amazing, marketing can only make it better.

We can't make a bad product good, but we can definitely expand and find more people. If people are buying what you're selling right now, then marketing is a great investment for you. If people are not buying what you're selling organically, then we want to look at the offer, right? It doesn't necessarily mean you're not worth it. So there's just so many things that come into play and when you're a healer, coach, entrepreneur in that way, I think ego plays a big role, more so than if you're selling a product or software.

Bob: Yeah. I think that's certainly true. People tend to think all the equation of what you just said is going to stop them from moving forward if they're not willing to take that investment. I think it's important for people to be thinking they're willing to invest in the stock market. They're willing to invest in crypto, or in education, right? But at some point in the day, you’ve got to make that translation over into your business. Will you have an ROI if you're making the right choices, right?

Krista: Yeah and it should. If your marketing strategy is not returning some sort of ROI, then you should probably fire your marketer, right? But at the end of the day, that initial investment, I deal with that mindset so much. We can see it. We'll read through an application or we'll get this email and I'm like, "Oh man, she's in such scarcity. The self-doubt is so loud and we need to work through that and let them know." Oftentimes it comes in the form of, "I can't afford this, or I don't know if I'm the best fit for this, or I need to see revenue right away."

Well, what are we really saying here? You're scared to invest. There's a really powerful energy that comes with spending and seeing that abundance come right back to you. So if you can get in that mindset of I'm investing in reaching my dream client so that they invest in me and that's that energetic exchange that often comes with money. So I'm going to spend X amount of dollars to reach you so that eventually, hopefully, if my offer is amazing and I love you up in the right way, you'll invest in me and then around and around we go.

Approach Your Marketing ROI with a Longer View

Bob: So this brings up one idea to explore a little bit further, which is there's a metric that we're told we're supposed to pay attention to called ROAS, right? Return on ad spend. When you're having that discussion with your clients, first of all, what does it mean in your world that you're sharing with them? Then how are you approaching that metric, because as you mentioned, seems like the instant ROI is going to be challenging if you're just doing lead generation, so how do you discuss that a little bit further? Let's dig into that a bit more.

Krista: Yeah. That's a great question. So I believe a return on ad spend, it totally varies client to client, depending on how much you're spending on advertising, depending on how much your product service costs, right? There's just a lot of factors that can go into that. Now it needs to be positive. That's the first thing. So that's really important. However, we have had clients that are one-to-one. So they know that they're actually breaking even on that first purchase, but because they're so confident in repeat customers, they're willing to spend that dollar.

For example, say your thing costs $20 and we're going to spend $20 to get you to buy. So your ROAS is 1x. That's actually what a lot of companies are excited about because it gets them in the door. They don't lose any money. They break even on the purchase and now they have an opportunity for repeat customers. It's really easy to sell to repeat customers versus cold leads. So even a one ROAS, a one X ROAS, a lot of people see a success. Now I want it to be much higher than that, but I just wanted to say that because I think ROAS is a big conversation.

So for example, the other thing I want to explain is whatever you're spending to reach that person, if we can make five to 10 x that, people will spend it all day. So we have a client right now. It costs us roughly five to $10 to get a purchase. The purchase is $70 over a three-month commitment. Okay, so now we'll spend all day, because we're seeing such a positive ROI there.

Lead Gen as a Long-Term Investment

Now, when it comes to leads, this is our core strategy at Authentic Audience is growing your email list. For so many reasons which we can get into if you want, but I think that email list growth is the best 401k plan for your business. I think that you pay for a lead and then you can reach them as many times as you want for free. You never have to pay to sell to them again. So it's a really amazing success metric when you can grow leads.

For example, you get an email onto your list for $1, for $2, and they end up buying from you down the road, $200, $2,000, and you acquired them for $2. It's an amazing strategy. However, going back to the ROAS, people want to see a return on their spend right away.

So the strategy that we highly promote is a lead gen campaign with a sales sequence at the end into an evergreen digital product, like early value ladder buy-in. It's not your high ticket, it's not your end of value ladder, but it's that initial way of gauging, one, whether or not we're reaching the right people with your lead gen campaign, because quality is really important.

So a lead gen campaign is a top-of-funnel offer that's free and in exchange for an email address, we provide them a ton of value. So for example, you'll see an ad that says opt in for your free guide to benefit, benefit, benefit. It feels like it's speaking directly to you and you're going to enter your email address. Then over the next three to seven days, we're going to drop you so much value, so much love, so much education, information, nurturing that by the end of that sequence, you're like, "Sell me something. I trust you. I've received value from you. This has been incredible. I feel connected to you." At that point we drop them into a three to four sales sequence email of an intro offer. That can be anywhere between $99 and $297.

At that point we really get to see, okay, how quality are these leads and we get to see ROI. So oftentimes those campaigns pay for themselves. So not only does it pay for us, but it pays for your spend and you end up not only having 500 new leads, but you haven't lost any money. In fact, you've probably made money right away. So that's the win-win for us is when we do lead generation, but we do it in a way that eventually drives to a sale and we can track that sale. So we can say, "This person opted in, they opened all their emails, and then they made a purchase. Now we can continue to sell to them our higher ticket offers, nurture them, warm them up."

The longer the warm-up, the easier the sell. So even if you don't have anything to sell, now is a good time to start that lead generation process and just start warming up your audience with value and love. Then when it comes time to make the sale, it's like they're waiting for it. This is the winning campaign. So when it comes to ROAS, if people are really wanting that, that's the campaign that we suggest is what can we offer them as an intro, low hanging fruit? Evergreen digital, not your time. Please, not your time, but some people want to do a free call and then they see that as a success metric.

So I think before running any paid campaign, identifying your success metric is really important. For me, oftentimes my only success metric is to grow my list and to have a really high open rate and that's it. If my success metric is to sell them something, then the campaign looks a little bit different. So I think just understanding over the next six months, what is a win for you? Is it growing your email list by 5,000? Is it making 20,000 in revenue? Then we sort of go from there.

The 90-Day ROI Horizon

Bob: So I'd love to be specific with this timeframe that you're talking about because for some people ROAS has to be 48 hours. For others, they have more patience and the payoff is bigger if they can wait around a little bit longer, but when you're talking about this lead, nurture sequence that eventually leads to a sale, is that a few days, a few weeks, a few months? Typically, your most successful campaigns, what do they have in that calendar?

Krista: Yes. Our most successful campaigns are 90 days and the reason why, we'll start seeing sales right away, but the reason why is we're beholden to Facebook. We're running our ads on Facebook and Instagram and for those campaigns to really thrive, they have to learn. So the more Facebook can learn and the more opportunity we have to say to Facebook, "Okay, you served the ad to Bob and Bob purchased. So let's go out and find more people that look like Bob," the smarter the algorithm gets. We just want to let Facebook get really smart to find our people.

Of course, we manage it. So we're trying different audiences. We're trying different creative. We're optimizing the whole time, but if you can let a campaign run, which is really hard for people. They want it right away and it's still in the learning phase. People want to spend a ton of money overnight and my clients are all mostly small business owners. So being really great stewards of their dollar is really important to me. So if they're like, "I want to spend $10,000 in a week," we won't do it because it's not the best use of your dollar. It's a crawl, walk, run method.

So we start a campaign at a few dollars a day, maybe 10, 20, 30, whatever is low. Then from there, we can learn for a couple days. Okay, this ad is doing really well. This audience is crushing it. Let's make a new audience here. Okay, now we're getting a cost per click or cost per lead. Now it's under a dollar. Great. Let's spend some more. Let's see how that goes. So then after two weeks or even a month, we're like, "We found the sweet spot." We call it that conversion sweet spot where people are clicking, people are buying, and we're not spending an outrageous amount to make it happen. Your ROAS is positive.

At that point, we scale the campaign and then continue to manage it over 90 days because at that point, Facebook is smart. You get rewarded for spending money on Facebook. We want to make Facebook happy at the end of the day and say what you want about Facebook, but as small business owners, it gives us a chance to play and to shine and to reach our customers in an amazing and accurate and, to me, authentic and effective way. So when we can let that happen and let it roll knowing, okay, we're getting 500 leads in the last month. 50 of them have purchased. Okay, let's see if we can optimize this even more. Let's see if we can get this cost per lead down even more. That takes time and so our campaigns, people definitely hire us for 30 day management, but our dream campaigns and our ideal strategies are 90 days.

Bob: That's really, really helpful to know.

Optimizing Your Ad Campaigns with Landing Pages

Bob: I imagine in those campaigns, as you explore them, not only are you working with the ads, but you're likely tweaking landing pages along the way. So what kind of relationships would you say the landing page plays in these campaigns and a tip or two that you can give for optimizing those conversions on that side?

Krista: A hundred percent, wherever the break in the flow is we focus. One of the reasons why I love using Leadpages is because of the data and the data it provides, the ease of use, the integrations with email platforms, and the ease of Facebook pixeling, all of that. It's the best way to use it and so, for example, what we're looking for is how many people hit the thank you page. That's the win, because if somebody's clicking on your page and they're not converting, that's a big problem. It means the ads are working, the copy's working, the Facebook, your spend is working, and then they're getting to the opt-in page or the sales page, and they're not taking action.

So with Leadpages, we can see that very easily. We can look at the data and say, "Okay, 100 people have hit this page and 70 of them have taken action to hit through to the thank you page." That's a really good conversion rate. We love anything above 50% for lead generation and that's really what we're looking for. If it's anything below that, we're immediately tweaking the sales page. We're immediately tweaking because we know we've got the audience. People are clicking. The ads are doing great. All of those numbers are working and then we're getting a drop-off here. Oftentimes the dropoff happens at checkout. Okay, what's your checkout flow like? We love data.

That's one huge benefit of running any paid campaign, because you get data and data is also a success metric. So you can look at, okay, is the offer reaching my audience? Are people clicking on it? Okay, they're getting to the sales page. They're hitting buy. My checkout process must suck. What's happening? So wherever the break in the flow is happening is where we focus and oftentimes in our campaigns, we have actually built the lead page or opt-in page or sales page. So we can go in and make those tweaks ourself, but if, for example, you've made the sales page or were really beholden to that, then we have to be very strongly suggesting changes that need to be made along the way. That's why it takes 90 days because there's just a lot of steps in a sales funnel and lots of room for improvement along the way.

Steer Paid Traffic to Landing Pages, Not Your Website

Bob: I imagine many of the people who come to you are trying to have advertising campaigns going directly to their website homepage. What's that conversation like? What kind of conversion changes do you see typically when you do finally win them over to send to a landing page?

Krista: Every change. Do not, please, do not run cold ads or even warm ads to a website. I mean, what we want to do is make it really easy for our customers and clients to buy, take action, whatever it is. If we're sending them to our website, first of all, where do you want them to go? That's not very specific. So we want to get really specific. For example, the best sales ad is a remarketing ad. I'll be looking on Pottery Barn, for example, for a new kitchen table and immediately I'm getting served ads for the exact kitchen table I was looking at. Not random Pottery Barn outdoor furniture because I'm not looking for that.

So if I see an ad for a specific offer and then I get taken to a random website where the offer may or may not be on that page, the opportunity for the conversion just goes way down. So the idea for running paid ads is please only sell them one thing and then only take them to a lead page or sales page, whether it's a free opt-in or a sale. Take me straight to that thing and that's where sales pages really come into play because you only want to sell me one thing. What is the success metric here for a lead page, for an opt-in? It's an email address. So all we want them to do on that page is enter their email or exit. We don't want them to do anything else.

Then same thing for a sales page. We want them to buy. Then I always have an opportunity to collect emails, even on a sales page. So we either want them to buy, enter their email so we can put them into our sales sequence, or leave. When we take somebody to a website, it's just so vague. The conversion rate is not going to be as strong and we've seen this time and time again. Luckily I've now earned that trust. So when they're like, "Oh, I just want to run a generic ad to my website," I'm like, "For what? I cannot spend your dollars. I cannot morally take your money and run it to a webpage or a website. It's just not going to convert as well."

So I think that's one of the reasons why having a marketer or taking a course or working with an expert is so important because I think that the average, amazing, talented person would just be like, "Oh, I just want to run ads to my website,” but there's got to be a method to the madness. We need to, as little clicks as possible, get our client or customer to take action. So if we're taking them to your website, then they're going to have to click on whichever page they're looking for. Then from there they're going to have to click more. If it takes me more than three clicks to take action or check out, it's not going to convert. So yes, please use sales pages, opt-in pages, whatever you are selling or sharing, take me straight there.

How is Advertising Online Changing?

Bob: Awesome. Now my last advertising skill question, you've seen, I imagine a lot of shifts over the last few years in the advertising platforms. You mentioned Facebook, Instagram. What is the dominant shift or changes for you? Are you still recommending Facebook and Instagram as the primary channel of choice? Is anything else sort of percolating and getting more of your attention today?

Krista: That's a great question. Yes, because it's the best use of your dollar still. However, the change in algorithms, the iOS updates, it's been making it more and more difficult to reach our people in this way, but we just have to follow the rules. If we follow the rules that Facebook and Instagram lays out, which ultimately are supposed to be in our favor, to protect us, then it's a great marketplace to use and it's not going anywhere.

However, I love Google ads. So the difference between Facebook and Google really quickly is Google ads can be for people searching for something right now.

So if you have a brick-and-mortar location where you offer classes, or you have something that's available right away, or especially retreats, that's something people are searching for right now and people that are searching for something now usually have their credit card out. They're looking to buy and that's an amazing space to capture them on Google. With Facebook, we can only serve interests, and hopefully based on past purchase data, find an audience that is potentially looking for whatever it is that we're selling, but Google they're searching and we want to pop up. So that's a high-level difference between Facebook and Google. Oftentimes we like to run both.

Pinterest is another option that is really awesome and I think is such an underdog in so many ways. Pinterest for organic and paid is a really great platform. It's not social media. So it's more like Google because people are searching and you can show up with keywords. It's also not like Facebook or Instagram because you can put content out there that doesn't disappear after a couple days. We still get leads through our Pinterest campaigns and strategies from months and months ago. The other thing about Pinterest is you don't have to create any new content. The thing about Pinterest is it's guiding you towards your content and work that already exists. So if you have a podcast, if you have a blog, if you have a ton of free resources, if you put out guides or lists or any of these things, Pinterest is a great option.

Lastly, LinkedIn. So we do also run LinkedIn campaigns and that's a little bit different. It's a little bit more, I would say, corporate-y and not a lot of our clients are wanting to play in that arena, but we love Facebook and Instagram. Yes. All the way. It's not going anywhere, not in the foreseeable future anyway. It's evolving and we need to stay on top of the evolution, but it's still a great use of spend. Google I love because they're always competing with Facebook. So it's like they both want your money. So if we just play the game, we can win. Then Pinterest also, we have some really successful Pinterest campaigns and that's a really cool place to play as well.

Final Thoughts from Krista

Bob: Cool. So this has been a fantastic conversation. I've learned a lot and I know our audience has as well. My final question to you, Krista, is do you have a central mantra or philosophy? Some kind of an underpinning idea that you turn to frequently in your business? Maybe it's even on a sign on your wall somewhere, something that just continuously drives you forward?

Krista: Yes. It's the mindset of being of service and this is to my business, to my customers. How can I be of service? This takes my ego out of it in such a big way and it's about what does my business need for me today? So firstly, as an entrepreneur, my business is my baby and oftentimes we have a love, hate relationship. So I do want to share that you are not your business and your business has its own energy. Whether you're an entrepreneur, you work for another business, there's a mission and vision and energy that this business has. You've been chosen to serve this energy and I really believe that.

If you've read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, she talks a lot about ideas not really belonging to you. So an idea will choose you and if you don't act on that idea, it will jump to somebody else. I feel the same way about entrepreneurship. Our business has chosen us. We look the way, sound the way, act the way, have the experience we've had to be the messenger for this mission that our business has. So when I can drop into service and not resent my business, but instead sit in partnership and have morning coffee with my business, it's like, "How can I serve you today?"

For me as a spiritual person, when you can drop into service, it's almost like this energetic hack to just peace in so many ways and so I do the same thing with my clients and customers. It's like, 'How can I serve them today for their highest and greatest good? How can I serve their business?" For my clients and customers, I'm really serving that energy. I'm serving their business and oftentimes they're just the messenger, but I see the soul of their business. I really do and how can I pull that out and create a marketing strategy, create a campaign, whatever it is that brings that essence through and support them in that way.

So how to be in service, I think, is just my biggest mantra and serving that energy is really powerful and it just takes my ego away from it. Even today, I wrote an email to my audience and posted on social media and I just thought to myself, this is, one, the most honest thing I can share. So coming back to honesty, but, two, it's really in service to the people that I'm trying to serve. So whatever it is that you're doing, you have a client or customer in mind that you're serving. So serve them and how can you connect with them? How can you provide them value? What do they need to learn? What can they hear? How can your brilliance serve their needs today?

That's where I start and sort of end each day and that's really the biggest shift for me. When you drop into service, truly the doors just open. It's really a magical thing that happens when you're coming from a space of service. That's when I think the greatest opportunities and revenue comes because we all deserve to be prosperous in whatever we're doing. So just because we're in service, doesn't mean we can't be prosperous at the same time.

Bob: I was going to say, just remember to charge a fair price for that exchange of value.

Krista: No matter what it is and whatever you're charging right now, raise your prices.

Bob: So where can people find out more about what you're up to when you're not becoming a new mom?

Krista: Yeah. So we're not going anywhere. I have an amazing team and you can find all of our services at authenticaudience.co, dot C-O, and you can follow me on Instagram. I'm @KristaRipma and I share a lot of stuff there. Those are probably the two best places to start. Of course, jumping onto my email list. There's lots of opportunities to do that. We have lots of free resources. We have a digital shop. Our best offer is our Authentic Advertising campaigns, talked a lot about that today. So lots of fun stuff there and of course my podcast is the Authentic Audience Podcast.

Bob: Awesome. Well, Krista, I'm excited for you for the next few weeks as you get prepared to welcome your new child to the world and all the great success that you're going to be having in your business going forward as well. Thanks so much for joining us for this episode.

Krista: Thank you. This was so fun. Thanks for having me.