Tim Burd Interview – How To Run Facebook Ads

Alex:

Hey guys, we have a very special guest. Those of you in the advertising industry, he doesn’t need an introduction but still I’ll introduce him. Tim Burd.

Tim Burd:

He doesn’t need it, but go ahead.

Alex:

He’s spectacular, a media buyer. Runs one of the biggest communities, Facebook Ad buyers, AdLeaks, private group with excellent training and some of the best moderators and some of the best… Like he just put some of the best people together for his communities. So I’m very excited to sit him and have some questions. So we had a conversation, you remember, like one month or two months ago in my community. And you mentioned that regular ad set bidding wasn’t still as good. So did it change like since then or-

Tim Burd:

I said regular ad set budgets were doing better. They still are, for me right now, but I’ve been recommending to people to wait until as late as possible and to get started with CBO basically just because the longer you wait, the better it is. So now is about that time. We’re in mid July so we have a month and a half, two months depending on when they do it exactly. So now’s the time you should kind of start messing with CBO, just even in a small way. Using the slider method would be what I’d recommend, the one I just presented.

Alex:

Cool. And so basically do you do for example, have you ever tried one campaign, one ad set, this kind of like setup? I see some people-

Tim Burd:

Yeah. I’ve seen people that have a lot of success with that. I’m a big data nerd and if you know how the algorithm works and how Facebook is storing and optimizing your data, a lot of the data is stored and optimized within a campaign level. So when you keep doing different campaigns, it’s like almost starting fresh. So if your past history on the ad account is bad, that could be a good thing to start for fresh. But if you want Facebook to use all the learnings that it got from your past ad sets, you need to have all your ad sets in the same campaign. So I usually recommend putting them all in the same campaign. So you just have one conversion campaign, one PPE campaign, one video view campaign. So a lot of my ad accounts only have five campaigns total.

Alex:

That’s it.

Tim Burd:

In the whole thing.

Alex:

Okay.

Tim Burd:

And then lots of ad sets though in those campaigns.

Alex:

Oh, okay. What are typically the budgets you allocate to the ad sets?

Tim Burd:

It totally depends. If it’s a client budget, most of our clients are spending anywhere from a hundred thousand to a million a month. So per ad set though, it’s really based on the number of conversions. It’s not based on just a random budget number. So it needs to be at least 10 conversions a day. And I like to try to go more for 20 or 25. So if the conversions are like 20 bucks, I’ll probably do like $500 ad sets on each one and then scale up the ones that are working using the surfing strategy. Then I find that usually the highest do you want to spend on any one ad set budget is three to five grand daily. Otherwise usually the costs go up too much.

Alex:

Okay.

Tim Burd:

So it’s kind of like a good spot that I found, once you’re at scale.

Alex:

Cool. And I know you’re big on communities. So you have several communities basically. So what are your best strategies for growing the community?

Tim Burd:

That’s a good question. So one, pick a good topic, good niche, whatever. And then you need to have somebody, if it’s not yourself, then you need to have somebody in that group that is very knowledgeable on that subject. And then when people post and ask questions, every question needs an answer. You need to make sure you answer every single person’s question.

Alex:

Even like in free groups.

Tim Burd:

Especially in free groups, because if you go in a group, you post a question, which is for some people they get very nervous about this and then they get no answer. They’re never going to post in that group again.

Alex:

Okay, so it’s like multi [crosstalk 00:04:02].

Tim Burd:

So you need to respond and then other people will see, hey, when you post, you get a response. So then they post and then the group grows. Then they’re like, hey, over here you can get an answer for your question. Come on guys. And they bring their friends to the group. So that’s been a really important part of growing it for sure.

Alex:

And then so you pay people that help you to moderate those groups?

Tim Burd:

In some cases I have people to do it for free because then they get known as an expert. For example like Google Adwords or something. And then in some cases I do pay if it’s like Maxwell Finn or something and like a known expert. I want to make sure we’re putting out great content to our paid members in AdLeaks. So then there’s some guys like that, that I will pay for content. Yeah.

Alex:

Cool. And what is overall, like what’s changing in your experience like with Facebook advertising overall?

Tim Burd:

Well, one, the costs are going up, that’s for sure. Two, they’re moving towards a kind of a more automated system of doing things, with auto placements and auto-bid and CBO and stuff. There are also, three, I’d say that they’re enforcing their terms and guidelines a lot more.

Alex:

Even harder, yeah.

Tim Burd:

Even harder. And they’re going to keep doing that more and more because now they’re to the point where they have over 6 million advertisers now. They don’t need your money. They don’t care if you’re spending 100K a day, if you’re doing something shady. Whereas they used to need that money, four years ago maybe. Now they don’t need that money anymore and now they-

Alex:

It’s the user experience.

Tim Burd:

So now they care about the user experience. So yeah, to your question, the biggest thing that’s changing is that they care more and more and more and more about the user experience. So if you don’t have a good user experience, you’d better fix it real quick.

Alex:

Okay. And in terms of creative, so if most of the things get automated, for example, I’ve heard from Facebook headquarters that they like to share that they want to, like the targeting and everything, they want to kind of like streamline it. It will not be-

Tim Burd:

I would love that.

Alex:

Yeah. So then there’ll be like a lot of settings there. It’s like most of the impact will be on the creative, right? So-

Tim Burd:

Which is already how it is honestly. You can screw up your conversion windows and screw up your targeting and basically you could screw up almost everything, but if you have a really, really good creative, it’s okay. You still do good. So it’s kind of already like that in a way. And I would love it if they automated that stuff more and I didn’t have to focus on that stuff as much. That’d be great.

Alex:

Cool. And what is your process for the creative? Like do you see what other people are doing?

Tim Burd:

So most of the stuff that we promote is, at the agency and my own stuff is, there’s not a lot of competitors in the exact same niche at least. So there’s not a whole lot of stuff that we can look at to see what our competitors are doing. For the agency clients, we do have some, but in general, I really try not to go based on that. I really try to go based on just typical consumer psychology, just best practice for creatives. It’s like a thumbnail, for example, having someone’s face straight up, not from the side and making a crazy expression like, ah, or something. That is usually always the best.

Tim Burd:

So there’s just best practices and then telling a good story. It’s really about the story. And then it’s about the emotion. I don’t know if you’ve seen them, but in America, all the ads you see, it’ll be like, oh cute puppy running around, like, oh, adorable. Coca-Cola.

Alex:

Yeah,. They’re very good at it.

Tim Burd:

You know what I mean? Like story and emotion, brand. Know that granted that’s a branding ad, right, not-

Alex:

So they associate that emotion with the brand.

Tim Burd:

Exactly. So they’re like, oh, Coca-Cola, like a cute little puppy to me. You know?

Alex:

Yeah. They do it very well. So with information products specifically, do you see any like… So with your own products, own projects, do you see any more restrictions on the policy or you still have no issues?

Tim Burd:

I haven’t had any issues because I’m not making wild claims. The people that have issues are the ones that are like, make $3,000 an hour with just one mouse click. It’s like, you’re going to have a freaking issue because that’s not the truth. So it just comes down to not being misleading, any claims you do make, you have to back them up and then just not ripping people off and having like a good user experience, is honestly what it comes down to.

Alex:

Cool. And do you still monitor the engagement, conversion, do monitor this?

Tim Burd:

I do. I don’t do it quite as much when I’m doing dynamic creatives because then I don’t have a single post I need to work with. There’s a lot. But once I find like, let’s say that I’m doing my breakdowns and I see that one of my dynamic creatives is just crushing it, then I will grab that post ID and throw it into engagement.

Alex:

Oh, okay.

Tim Burd:

Which definitely still helps because the engagement score… I mean, you can see it now. Facebook broke it down to those three scores. It’s engagement, landing page and an ad quality. So it’s super important, engagement rate.

Alex:

And then you’re still running like engagement ads?

Tim Burd:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Alex:

Yeah?

Tim Burd:

Yeah. Just for the added engagement. I don’t expect to ever get sales from them. It’s just so the engagement’s higher and then my conversions costs less because of that.

Alex:

Okay. All right. And so for example, with eCommerce, do you use dynamic products, like dynamic creative?

Tim Burd:

Yeah, pretty much everything these days I use dynamic, even if it’s cold traffic or hot traffic. So, top of funnel or bottom and if it’s eComm, lead gen, info, it doesn’t matter.

Alex:

So you let Facebook optimize it, basically, for you.

Tim Burd:

Yeah. And it helps you to not have to dupe ads and it’s just less management honestly. And your creatives lasts a lot longer and you don’t burn your audiences out as fast. So it actually saves you time too.

Alex:

Okay. All right.

Tim Burd:

Yeah.

Alex:

And so this is not a business question. So, in terms of time management and everything like… What are the major things you’ve learned throughout the years?

Tim Burd:

So over the years, I was terrible at time management honestly for a long, long time and I’m still working on it. But I just worked my butt off for 15 years, hardly took any days off at all, seven days a week working 14, 16 hour days. But it helped me I think get ahead of everybody or ahead of a lot of people, just because I was working so much harder than them. So there is, I think, something to what Gary V says about like hustle, hustle, hustle. I think that’s good, especially when you’re younger and you can, you have the energy to hustle. I don’t have that energy anymore. So now I try to work smarter, not harder, or smarter, not longer, I guess. I’m not great at time management, so I don’t have any hacks to share unfortunately.

Alex:

One hack.

Tim Burd:

Just one. Okay. So one good hack I have is a Sunday night before you go to bed, take just five minutes, three minutes and just write down either typing or I like to physically write what I want to do the next day, my goals for the next day, just on a piece of paper. And then I don’t have to think about it. I can actually get a much better night’s sleep. And then I wake up in the morning excited because I already have my to do list. I don’t have to think about, oh, what do I have to do today? Because in the morning I’m all groggy or whatever.

Tim Burd:

And then there’s this other cool hack where I had this device called a padlock. So I wear it and in the morning it shocks me awake. It pushes a little like an electrical volt.

Alex:

Really?

Tim Burd:

Yeah. But then you’re like, oh, sleepy, whoa. You know?

Alex:

So you don’t use like a regular alarm?

Tim Burd:

No, not anymore.

Alex:

So that like-

Tim Burd:

It vibrates first and then I have like 30 seconds to do 10 jumping jacks or otherwise I get shocked.

Alex:

Really? How’s that worked out?

Tim Burd:

Pretty good actually.

Alex:

So you don’t take it out like…

Tim Burd:

No. I don’t want to game that system but I don’t wear it at all during the day. But what sucks is I forgot to bring it to my Europe trip here. So now my sleep schedule is all weird again, but…

Alex:

You’re using Oura, the…

Tim Burd:

I don’t know, I don’t have that either.

Alex:

It’s kind of like for measuring the sleep score, like-

Tim Burd:

Oh, cool.

Alex:

It’s very cool. [inaudible 00:12:44] just got himself one.

Tim Burd:

The ring?

Alex:

Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Burd:

Nice. I’d like to try that out.

Alex:

Yeah. Yeah. Oura ring. Cool. And how do you hire work people? I know your team, like communities, very like to run smoothly. I know you’re cooperating with some people like with [inaudible 00:13:02] influencers. So how do you find good people to operate, to hire, to work?

Tim Burd:

It’s a good question. So media buyer wise, typically I find that there’s one or two media buyers at each of my masterminds that are very good and that I want to hire. So, sometimes they don’t want a job, they have their own thing, whatever. So those are usually my first go to media buyers. And then if it’s for some other position, then it’s usually I ask my good close circle of friends. “Do you know anyone?”

Alex:

Okay.

Tim Burd:

Usually referrals are the best way to get someone quality. And then my third step, if I can’t find someone that way, is to post in my ad buyers job board group.

Alex:

Oh, okay.

Tim Burd:

It’s about like 10,000 or 11,000 people, all in the advertising industry. And I found in there programmers, copywriters, media buyers, agencies, kind of literally whatever you need. There’s someone in there. And then people that are vouching for them are like, “Yeah, this guy is great. Like yeah, this guy, this guy.”

Alex:

Oh, okay.

Tim Burd:

So then if I see like, okay, I respect his opinion or I respect his opinion or respect her opinion and they all recommended the same person, cool. Then I might hire them. But then I find it’s also very important to do a trial with the person you hire, one week or a month, whatever. But just commit to that first and give them the kind of easier or tasks that you don’t have to give them very sensitive information for, and then see how it goes. Because maybe it doesn’t work out, but tell them upfront, “Hey, let’s see how it goes for a week or two and if it’s a good fit, great. If it’s not, you know…”

Alex:

And how much time do you typically train a media buyer or when they start working with you, they’re already good enough?

Tim Burd:

So that’s a good question. So initially when I had the agency I was training, since I had no senior media buyers, I trained them myself, like Nick Shackleford for example. And then-

Alex:

So, he worked for you?

Tim Burd:

Yeah.

Alex:

Oh really?

Tim Burd:

Yeah. Yeah. I taught him for eight months, man, sat next to them in the-

Alex:

Oh, geez, that’s how he got to the [inaudible 00:15:02]. So now he’s with Common Thread, yeah?

Tim Burd:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, super, super smart guy. I love Nick to death. So now what I do is I find guys that can get at least a 30 on my 50 question quiz. So like a Facebook quiz. And if they get at least a 30 to me, it means like they’re knowledgeable enough and then we hire them and then put them next to a senior media buyer to learn for two to four weeks of training. And then they have to come to my mastermind as like a graduation kind of, and then they can start on their own. Then they can be like a senior media buyer basically.

Alex:

Oh, okay, cool.

Tim Burd:

And then once they have some experience, then the next person we hire can maybe go to them.

Alex:

Oh, so they can train them.

Tim Burd:

Yeah.

Alex:

Okay. Cool.

Alex:

So thank you Tim. It’s a pleasure always pleasure speaking with you.

Tim Burd:

Thank you for having me, man. I love interviewing with you. You’ve got some really good questions.