Episode 785: Still Relying on Old Funnels? Here’s What’s Working in Meta Ads Right Now

March 20, 2026

Stop guessing. Get the blueprint you need to scale fast.

Book your spot: https://www.tiereleven.com/audit (only 3 spots available).

Is your Meta ad strategy outdated? If you’re still running campaigns with a rigid funnel approach, you’re probably missing out. In this episode, we break down the evolving landscape of Meta campaigns and share insights on how to cut through the noise.

We explain why targeting not just existing customers but new and engaged audiences is necessary for driving real growth. Lauren walks us through her “Five Horsemen” strategy, view-through vs. click-through conversions, and why creative diversification should be at the core of your Meta campaigns.

We also share the metrics you should track and the strategic adjustments that can lower your cost per acquisition. Join us if you want to grow your brand with more engaged audiences and less wasted ad spend.

In this episode you’ll learn:

Creative diversification strategy for scaling Meta ads
Audience segmentation and why it’s critical for tracking new vs. existing customers
Why engaged audiences are often your most profitable customers
The Five Horsemen strategy for scaling Meta campaigns without overspending
View-through vs. click-through conversions: how to evaluate the impact of your ads
How to use reach campaigns to build awareness and lower your cost per acquisition
The importance of audience definition in Meta to target the right people
How to optimize ad spend across different types of campaigns for long-term growth
Real-world case studies on reducing cost per call and improving brand engagement

Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to Perpetual Traffic?

Have some feedback you’d like to share? Connect with us on iTunes and leave us a review!

READ THE TRANSCRIPT:

Still Relying on Old Funnels? Here’s What’s Working in Meta Ads Right Now

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:17:04
Ralph Burns
How do you actually know that your numbers are lying to? How many new customers are we actually acquiring and how much we are paying? To acquire those customers. And oftentimes we have found that hack number. Customer acquisition cost.

00:00:17:06 – 00:00:43:07
Lauren Petrullo
I haven’t spent a full week deep diving in full reconciliation of, okay, if Matt is telling me that I have 85 new customers and 34 returning customers yesterday and going in a per order basis in Shopify or a per order basis inside of a CRM to match the validity of it. So I don’t have a preponderance of proof implicitly.

00:00:43:09 – 00:01:09:03
Ralph Burns
Hey, before we get into today’s show, my marketing manager finally convinced me to run a wild experiment in this episode because he wanted to prove what the conversion engine can do for your brand. So we are giving away three of our $10,000 deep dive audits for free in this audit. And this isn’t one of those audits that you get from some AI generated bot.

00:01:09:03 – 00:01:30:12
Ralph Burns
This actually takes us two plus weeks, 7 or 8 of our team members, and it is incredibly in-depth and will give you insights into your media, buying your creative, your actual business metrics, and find out exactly where the gaps are and where your growth is stalled and what we can do about it, or what you can do about it when you get the audit.

00:01:30:16 – 00:01:42:07
Ralph Burns
Now here’s the catch. We only have three spots, so head on over to tier 11.com/audit right now fill out the form and let’s see how we can scale your business in the coming year.

00:01:42:09 – 00:01:51:06
Lauren Petrullo
Hello and welcome to the pink for traffic podcast. I am your host the Barbie Learning Patroller alongside my fluffy pink microphone.

00:01:51:06 – 00:01:54:18
Ralph Burns
Ken, this is Ken co-host Ken.

00:01:54:20 – 00:01:59:00
Lauren Petrullo
Co-host Ken, who wasn’t there a term in the Barbie movie where we were like.

00:01:59:02 – 00:02:09:05
Ralph Burns
I haven’t seen. Jen hasn’t even seen it. You believe that? I can’t believe I haven’t seen the movie yet, but you haven’t seen a lot of movies that I really like.

00:02:09:08 – 00:02:10:20
Lauren Petrullo
Yeah, I watch good movies.

00:02:11:00 – 00:02:13:07
Ralph Burns
Yeah. You haven’t watched Land Man yet?

00:02:13:09 – 00:02:21:07
Lauren Petrullo
I watched the trailer yesterday. I’m watching Shrinking Season three, and I’m occupying my TV time. At the moment.

00:02:21:08 – 00:02:22:04
Ralph Burns
I’ve lost interest.

00:02:22:07 – 00:02:28:03
Lauren Petrullo
Look, I’ve got 100 books to read in 2026. I want what is your TV right now?

00:02:28:09 – 00:02:35:00
Ralph Burns
Well, as you can guess, here we are, live in Orlando. It’s the only place in the world I would be using a pink microphone.

00:02:35:00 – 00:02:37:02
Lauren Petrullo
That’s not true. He loves it. He’s going to buy one himself.

00:02:37:04 – 00:02:44:14
Ralph Burns
Yeah, you’ve got, like, the cooler microphone over there. Looks like the raspberry sherbet microphone. Sort of icon.

00:02:44:14 – 00:02:47:18
Lauren Petrullo
It’s like a Glinda magical wand.

00:02:47:20 – 00:03:01:09
Ralph Burns
That’s right. You don’t hit anybody with it. We are going to be talking some interesting stuff here today in Orlando. It’s about 43 degrees inside the place that we’re at, which is actually colder than Boston.

00:03:01:12 – 00:03:15:04
Lauren Petrullo
I am so cold in this room, so cold. I always call earlier in this office. And I was like, I’m sorry. I’m like, I’m freezing. I’m coming up with the worst creative ideas I’ve ever had. Yeah. I was like, I’m distracted with my.

00:03:15:06 – 00:03:26:11
Ralph Burns
The teeth chattering. Yeah. I was actually out in the front deck. There’s a front deck that overlooks what street is but Church Street, it’s very, very close. I spent, like, I’ve my day working out there, so I.

00:03:26:11 – 00:03:27:02
Lauren Petrullo
Think it’s orange.

00:03:27:02 – 00:03:31:13
Ralph Burns
Actually. Outside. It’s, you know, it’s 70 degrees. A lot warmer than it is back in Boston.

00:03:31:13 – 00:03:32:21
Lauren Petrullo
That’s cold for Orlando.

00:03:32:21 – 00:03:35:23
Ralph Burns
Yeah. 71. You might have to put on what, a windbreaker.

00:03:36:00 – 00:03:38:20
Lauren Petrullo
I’m wearing pants. Like I’m wearing long pants.

00:03:38:22 – 00:03:40:14
Ralph Burns
Yeah, it’s it’s tough for you guys here.

00:03:40:16 – 00:03:41:11
Lauren Petrullo
Short weather.

00:03:41:13 – 00:03:44:08
Ralph Burns
I know, I know, probably like overdressed.

00:03:44:10 – 00:03:46:08
Lauren Petrullo
No. You’re appropriately dressed for AC in Orlando.

00:03:46:12 – 00:03:50:03
Ralph Burns
Actually, I should wrap a winter coat for in here.

00:03:50:05 – 00:03:52:10
Lauren Petrullo
Like, do you see? My fingers are turning blue?

00:03:52:12 – 00:04:02:11
Ralph Burns
I think it’s like I actually started to get numb earlier today. So anyway, we’re going to be talking about some interesting things today that you want to. I don’t know if we necessarily agree.

00:04:02:13 – 00:04:06:20
Lauren Petrullo
But I feel like this episode’s coming for my credibility.

00:04:06:22 – 00:04:29:09
Ralph Burns
So I we’ve discussed this many times here on the show and the numbers that you get inside your platforms and your outside platform. I’m just going to say that right now, whether it’s a third party tool that you may or may not use, we use the tier 11 data suite, but you don’t have to your 11 data suite.

00:04:29:11 – 00:04:48:10
Ralph Burns
How do you actually know that your numbers are lying to you? And the big number and this is obviously is a very important number for both of our businesses and for all of our clients and for anybody who’s doing this digital marketing stuff. So if you’re a VP of marketing, director of marketing, are you going to do that with your microphone the entire time?

00:04:48:15 – 00:05:13:09
Ralph Burns
This is the stuff that probably you’re holding your team and or your agency, which is how many new customers are we actually acquiring and how much we are paying to acquire those customers. And oftentimes we have found that hack number customer acquisition cost. I know that would get Lauren starting grin because it’s late in the day here. Why are we recording late in the day every day?

00:05:13:09 – 00:05:16:13
Ralph Burns
Because we’re all like punchy like the last couple of episodes 4 or 5.

00:05:16:19 – 00:05:20:07
Lauren Petrullo
Well, today was like back to back smack smack smack smack smack running though.

00:05:20:09 – 00:05:39:09
Ralph Burns
The tomorrow morning. That’s good. That’s true. We’re going to be doing that tomorrow anyway. So your cack finger is trying not to giggle or your Ncac figures. Where do you find the source of truth, and how do you know whether or not all these brilliant Lauren Petrillo marketing ideas from your creative team and everyone else has come?

00:05:39:15 – 00:05:40:22
Lauren Petrullo
For me, it’s like the grand.

00:05:41:00 – 00:05:44:19
Ralph Burns
How do you know what you’re doing is actually making a difference in the business?

00:05:45:00 – 00:05:48:12
Lauren Petrullo
Okay.

00:05:48:14 – 00:05:49:09
Ralph Burns
I just don’t.

00:05:49:13 – 00:06:18:05
Lauren Petrullo
Want to know. I just want anyone that’s listening to understand where this, like, these fighting words are coming from is because I have a level of how do I explain? I don’t know the amount of time that I spend in fact, checking these sources that we’re investing in or the tools that we’re relying on is not the level of a data scientist.

00:06:18:06 – 00:06:44:20
Lauren Petrullo
It’s not the level of someone who’s full time job is. Let me make sure that in the audience definitions inside of meta, that the new customer percentages are within triple Wale, that the Shopify numbers within Shopify are matching those things like I there’s a turning point that I have where I’m knowledge King and this is where, you know, like I I’m being hyper vulnerable.

00:06:44:21 – 00:07:15:05
Lauren Petrullo
I haven’t spent a full week deep diving in full reconciliation of, okay, if Matt is telling me that I have 85 new customers and 34 returning customers yesterday and going in a per order basis in Shopify or a per order basis inside of a CRM to match the validity of it. So I don’t have a preponderance of proof to say I trust the numbers implicitly, but it’s when I have to divide my resources and attention.

00:07:15:07 – 00:07:38:03
Lauren Petrullo
There is a there is a point of no return or no rabbit hole digging, or I accept that I have to assign a source of truth and accept that as the source of truth. Because I am not a data scientist. That’s saying I know without full certainty that my audience definitions of new, engaged and existing customers is correct.

00:07:38:04 – 00:08:04:12
Lauren Petrullo
While it’s relatively new, you know, like a year and some change, it’s still something I don’t see in 90 plus percent of accounts that I look at. People aren’t doing audience definitions and even if you’re listening to this and you’re hearing this and you’re like, oh, do audience definitions, unless you’re in advertising settings, no, you don’t, because most people will think the numbers that I look at for new versus existing engaged audiences are based off of targeting.

00:08:04:12 – 00:08:32:00
Lauren Petrullo
This has nothing to do with targeting its audience definition, where you can do like customer lists, app activity, offline customer conversions, website lead form while you’re limited restriction like it’s five options and you can engage in it because it’s like a 32nd process that most people don’t do anyways. Because I set those up, I admit I haven’t done the line by line check my data to confirm if Meta’s lying to me or not.

00:08:32:00 – 00:08:53:18
Lauren Petrullo
I know in the audience targeting when I exclude an audience. Meta. Still goes after customers. This is something we’ve known is a known truth in targeting. You can say exclude customers and you know that you’re still getting existing. Customers say you’re perfect, small world. You’re only running one campaign on only one channel. It’s the source of 90% of your business.

00:08:53:20 – 00:09:09:13
Lauren Petrullo
And you see you’re like, why am I still going to it? You know the sentiment. And like the business owner has to take a level of ownership on the numbers too, right? So they’re saying like, this is just, you know, I told you don’t resell to my existing customers like I’m excluding them from meta matters. Like so. Sure you are.

00:09:09:18 – 00:09:12:11
Lauren Petrullo
But then I know so we know that’s like a known thing.

00:09:12:11 – 00:09:40:10
Ralph Burns
Wait. My marketing manager finally convinced me to run a wild experiment in this episode, because we want to prove what the conversion engine can do for your brand. We are giving away three of our $10,000 deep dive audits for free. We’re going to look at your creative, your media, buying your actual business metrics to find exactly where your growth is stalled.

00:09:40:12 – 00:09:56:08
Ralph Burns
This is two weeks of our best work, but we only have three spots. So go to tier 11.com/audit right now. Fill out the form and let’s see how we can scale your business. So you put in audience exclusions in an audience. There’s a lot of like I.

00:09:56:08 – 00:09:58:02
Lauren Petrullo
Can not yeah whatever.

00:09:58:04 – 00:10:03:22
Ralph Burns
And they basically say yeah that’s great. That’s great data for us to that are probably like that. And those people as well there’s.

00:10:03:22 – 00:10:24:11
Lauren Petrullo
Some new things where then like now you can tell them like I’m asking you to be more strict. But again there’s like advertising settings, there’s ad account settings, there’s advertising settings where you can do an eight. We work with clients that are age sensitive products. Not I’m not saying, oh, we have a preference for 65 plus audiences or preference for the market at 35 to 45.

00:10:24:13 – 00:10:42:18
Lauren Petrullo
I have products that are legally age restricted, and the only way you can protect it to the highest degree that you can within might at least the to the degree that I understand it is you have to go into the ad account settings and then you have to say what is the age limit? Same as like you can say the country limit.

00:10:42:18 – 00:10:59:15
Lauren Petrullo
Like if you cannot provide your services in France, for example, because France has some of the most marketing laws in all of Europe, I like actively avoid advertising in France. So I’ll go into the ad account settings and and like say, what are the countries we can do that is different than targeting?

00:10:59:17 – 00:11:26:18
Ralph Burns
Yes. So audience definitions explain that I’m not actually looking for. I’m just curious because understanding new versus returning customers is essence of because clients hire us to. If it was all about returns, then yes increasing lifetime value by getting them to buy over and over again, it’s by your product or it’s consumer products. I got them, we can do that.

00:11:26:18 – 00:11:51:18
Ralph Burns
I look at that as that’s the job of email plus retargeting, which is a whole secondary topic, but we’re really talking about if you don’t have exact numbers, where is the best place to, you know, at least you’re not just sending out messaging, spending money on campaign target the same people who have already bought prior. How do you what do you look at inside the platform?

00:11:51:18 – 00:11:58:19
Ralph Burns
And then secondarily, what do you look at inside? Maybe the CRM or the back end in front of our ecommerce business?

00:11:58:21 – 00:12:17:06
Lauren Petrullo
We’ll go to Shopify. Okay. So in the front end I’m just going to speak to Matt specifically. So you go into advertising settings. It’s got the like megaphone. So if you go to the hamburger menu and you’re inside business ads manager, the advertising menu, then you have like we’re events tools and campaigns are you click on advertising settings.

00:12:17:06 – 00:12:39:13
Lauren Petrullo
So again the microphone if it’s I think ad account there’s ad account settings. There’s this is settings. And then there’s advertising settings. So there’s different as one with the megaphone. And then you go into there’s like four boxes at least last time I looked at it. And you have like value rules. You’re engaged customers are existing customers. And then like one other piece like it’s it’s where all that stuff live in the definition set up.

00:12:39:15 – 00:12:57:12
Lauren Petrullo
So if you go into engaged customers then you can create list and then you can upload your full subscriber list. You can add an additional optional which I like doing is you can upload. So you upload your full full subscribe rules and like meta I’ve already claimed them. Right? Flag on the moon. The suckers are.

00:12:57:12 – 00:13:03:09
Ralph Burns
Mine. Is that a do not sell to these people or I’ve already claimed them.

00:13:03:09 – 00:13:23:06
Lauren Petrullo
I’ve already claim them. So when I do, when I go outside of that, I’m in campaigns, I click on breakdown and I can go to demographics. And then I choose audience and then I can see it breaks down on only sales campaigns. Sorry, I know that’s why I use complete registration for leads, but on your sales based campaigns, you can see engage new and existing customers.

00:13:23:11 – 00:13:27:17
Lauren Petrullo
So it tells me where my budget is being distributed, where my conversions are being distributed.

00:13:27:17 – 00:13:29:12
Ralph Burns
What’s your confidence level in that?

00:13:29:14 – 00:13:33:08
Lauren Petrullo
Well, prior to this recording helps.

00:13:33:10 – 00:13:34:16
Ralph Burns
Yeah.

00:13:34:18 – 00:13:35:06
Lauren Petrullo
But again you.

00:13:35:06 – 00:13:58:17
Ralph Burns
Know see learn stuff on this show to hide away. I’m making you aware of something that I don’t. Look, the reason why I’m asking this is because I feel somewhat spoiled that it’s, like, readily available at my fingertips. I don’t have to go through ten different clicks to find it on meetup, but I do think that one of the biggest questions that we always get is, all right, well, what’s my new customer?

00:13:58:18 – 00:14:20:14
Ralph Burns
And how much am I paying to acquire those new costs? And if you have something at least directionally in-app, because we always say don’t trust the metrics that are enough, but you’re talking about a deeper level of reporting for new versus returning. And if a client did want to know, okay, well, how many new customers did I get this week?

00:14:20:14 – 00:14:24:00
Ralph Burns
You can point to that section within meta or just toggle.

00:14:24:04 – 00:14:25:06
Lauren Petrullo
Very clear for us.

00:14:25:06 – 00:14:45:18
Ralph Burns
And for clicks or less, and then produce a report that would show with a moderate degree of confidence, a high degree of confidence that that’s data. Is that great, because I know this is something the meta has been really trying to improve on. So much so that it seems like we get an email every other week from our partner manager on this very topic.

00:14:45:18 – 00:15:03:21
Ralph Burns
So and I just sort of set it aside because we look in other places, which I won’t mention at this point. So but like how does somebody differentiate that in 4 or 5 clicks. And if you’ve just explained but your confidence level is 100% meaning I and I don’t trust.

00:15:03:23 – 00:15:24:16
Lauren Petrullo
Never be 100% okay, I feel confident to 80%, 70 to 80%, honestly. And it’s but the other piece to it is like yes you oh time like we should do. You’re not wrong. I just, I don’t have the time and energy and focus or I haven’t put resources to it to check it. Hey meta, to what degree are you saying what you’re saying is true?

00:15:24:17 – 00:15:45:05
Lauren Petrullo
Because that’s just not been the business. I mean, it’s like focusing on, like, okay, with the data that I have, let’s make some assumptions. And I am and like I admit, like it’s a vulnerable piece because I haven’t explored. And that’s why I’m like, this is so uncomfortable. But like, I have to at some point choose something that I can rely on so that I can continue to drive the numbers that matter.

00:15:45:05 – 00:16:12:16
Lauren Petrullo
And you said, well, how what do you compare it to? It’s at the same time is the bank account like, what is the account growing? Is the client confident that we’re investing more money in our paid ads initiatives because they see what’s growing? You said earlier that for you, marketing really comes down to acquiring new customers. I if you’re watching YouTube and looking at our beautiful pink lights, take a little issue with that, because that’s for me, it’s the role of the CMO to an extent.

00:16:12:18 – 00:16:40:11
Lauren Petrullo
But when I think of marketing and advertising in general, you’re buying attention and earning trust, and then when you’re looking at the systematic of your marketing efforts are to lead to new customers. But I think it’s too much emphasis on the ad alone because it’s not taking into consideration the offer, the upsell pieces. It’s not taking into mindfulness of what’s happening with the your position and Tam, what’s going around in the global marketplace around you.

00:16:40:16 – 00:17:00:17
Lauren Petrullo
Like last week was a bad week. There’s a lot of things that were happening, and we saw last activity. Super Bowl Sunday is always a lower day for sales unless you’re in specific categories. And I know that to be true with like without an iota of a doubt. Because in when I worked at Disney Disneyland California, I don’t know if it’s still true.

00:17:00:20 – 00:17:20:01
Lauren Petrullo
Disneyland, California. Their lowest attendance day is Super Bowl Sunday, so if you want to ride rides at California, you go Super Bowl Sunday because people are socializing on something else so they’re not buying. And so when that Parks and Resorts capacity is like, oh shoot, how do I get someone’s attention away from the TV? So anyways, all that okay, that 7,080% confidence that I have, I’ve defined my definitions.

00:17:20:01 – 00:17:45:06
Lauren Petrullo
I know that meta knows everything about us. Anyways, I’m the saying here’s my flag, here’s my existing customer. So I upload engaged audiences, I do my full subscriber list and then I do two additional options. I do my, high quality leads. Am I disqualified leads? If you’re a Shopify store or if you’re an e-commerce thing, if you have a list of leads that you have grown from lead magnets or have done quizzes, or they’ve signed up for something and they have not made a single purchase in 360 days.

00:17:45:06 – 00:18:05:13
Lauren Petrullo
To me, that’s a disqualified lead by lead. I’m saying subscriber. If they have signed up for your ecosystem and then within a 365 day period did not make a purchase, that’s a disqualified lead and I can upload that full list into meta. And so here are my disqualified leads. Now I don’t know what they do with that. It’s still a definition.

00:18:05:13 – 00:18:07:13
Lauren Petrullo
I can see engaged audiences.

00:18:07:14 – 00:18:09:03
Ralph Burns
I do what they do with it.

00:18:09:05 – 00:18:09:13
Lauren Petrullo
Sure.

00:18:09:13 – 00:18:15:01
Ralph Burns
Well, where are we? Are you trying to target those people and match them with their own user ID? And so, I.

00:18:15:01 – 00:18:33:02
Lauren Petrullo
Mean, they’re still listed as engage because if I, I’m quoting my whole list, I’m saying here’s my engaged audiences and then I do the high quality leads where it’s like, hey, if this is a subscriber and I’ve got proof of life. So I use proof of life and like this works for Legion to where if they’ve click on an email or reply to an email, I have insight.

00:18:33:02 – 00:18:58:01
Lauren Petrullo
I use high level as a trigger that statuses them as one active that shown proof of if I’m not something that shows proof of life, I got that list. And then I can say, here’s all of my subscribers that are not customers, all of my subscribers that are high quality subscribers because they’ve shown me proof of life activity inside of my ecosystem, and we can manually do it like we’re legion.

00:18:58:06 – 00:19:15:20
Lauren Petrullo
So got it. We talk to them. So anyways, I defined those forget the options of like more enhanced because I’m like meta, I’m giving you more data. I’m I am trusting I get it like I’ve not seen documentation that does it. But I have to assume that it was built with intention. So I’m going to assume positive intent on that piece.

00:19:15:20 – 00:19:18:22
Lauren Petrullo
You can be the pessimistic Boston person’s.

00:19:18:22 – 00:19:20:18
Ralph Burns
Completely skeptical and customer, and.

00:19:20:18 – 00:19:22:06
Lauren Petrullo
Disney the most amazing place an.

00:19:22:06 – 00:19:27:11
Ralph Burns
Old I don’t feel any magic what I met this year. Sweaty when I got my presence.

00:19:27:11 – 00:19:29:06
Lauren Petrullo
Does it make you feel magical?

00:19:29:06 – 00:19:37:07
Ralph Burns
Well, you know, we really haven’t even, like, talked about that. Here we are, like together. Finally. We’re not we’re not arguing, by the way. We’re just looking at this.

00:19:37:09 – 00:19:38:01
Lauren Petrullo
But it’s.

00:19:38:03 – 00:19:42:15
Ralph Burns
Good. But I definitely think that all your you’re talking. That’s great.

00:19:42:19 – 00:19:48:00
Lauren Petrullo
But you can do for Optimus too. There’s an existing you upload customers, high value customers, low value customers.

00:19:48:00 – 00:20:09:13
Ralph Burns
What I’m trying to get to three ways you grow a business. You get new customer. You get into buy more. You get them to buy more. Often. There’s no other way leads or precursor or all of that. And preferably you’re bringing in new customers all the time. And if you’re bringing in new customers all the time and you’re not losing the old ones, the business will grow exponentially.

00:20:09:16 – 00:20:30:19
Ralph Burns
And I’m trying. What I’m trying to get to is, is there a way for us and anyone who’s listening who doesn’t have tier 11 data suite or wicked reports? A it sounds like a pitch, but I’m just like trying to understand where do you go to to make sure that you know, what you’re doing is actually making an impact on business.

00:20:31:00 – 00:20:36:23
Ralph Burns
And I’m not trying to pick among this media. I’m just trying to figure out, like, how do you do it? And then you get like this back, but.

00:20:36:23 – 00:20:47:17
Lauren Petrullo
You are picking up. You’re beginning because I haven’t spent the time you’ve invested millions of dollars into tier 11 news with. I know that I have not invested that same level of resource into fact checking meta.

00:20:47:18 – 00:20:59:13
Ralph Burns
But I don’t want to fact check it. I just want to be able to go into a dashboard and say, this is how many we got, this is how many returning, this is how many new. And that’s it. And with a very high degree of confidence, I know that that exactly. That’s all.

00:20:59:13 – 00:21:01:15
Lauren Petrullo
I what’s a high degree of confidence for like.

00:21:01:15 – 00:21:02:13
Ralph Burns
99%.

00:21:02:17 – 00:21:31:06
Lauren Petrullo
Okay. But again like the amount of resources required to get that is something that’s going to pull away from what I know is my zero one day I would love to hire engage someone that’s doing it. But the same time there’s full companies that spend their whole time doing this, and that’s not the business. I mean, there’s a tipping point for me where the amount of resources that I need to go to personally vet the tools that I’m using are doing what the tools are saying, like, I’m not in a tool auditing space.

00:21:31:06 – 00:21:38:09
Lauren Petrullo
I can have preferences and I can say that this is where I’m doing it, but I have to at one point assume I have to assume the data.

00:21:38:13 – 00:21:49:19
Ralph Burns
Okay. Let me ask you. This is if you’re pulling reports and a customer asks you this question or a client’s like how many new customers? How many is it? What do you go.

00:21:50:00 – 00:21:53:11
Lauren Petrullo
Okay, so what I mean, again, I’ll go into meta. I go into the sales campaigns.

00:21:53:14 – 00:21:54:18
Ralph Burns
In a meta first.

00:21:54:20 – 00:21:59:14
Lauren Petrullo
Yeah, because that’s going to be assuming that’s running out there. Yeah. Assuming that we’re running I mean well yeah.

00:21:59:18 – 00:22:00:08
Ralph Burns
You’re.

00:22:00:10 – 00:22:02:05
Lauren Petrullo
Right on. Is there any plan.

00:22:02:06 – 00:22:08:00
Ralph Burns
That our clients like what’s the mix said. Mostly meta. Is it percent meta pay advertising?

00:22:08:03 – 00:22:11:02
Lauren Petrullo
I mean, I don’t think we have any clients that are not running as I’m not a whole.

00:22:11:08 – 00:22:15:18
Ralph Burns
So meta. First, you know why we you have to think. I think I know what the answer is so. Well, yeah.

00:22:15:18 – 00:22:18:20
Lauren Petrullo
Because it’s so that’s the space that I know the best to like.

00:22:18:20 – 00:22:21:11
Ralph Burns
Yes. You’re very meta heavy that.

00:22:21:12 – 00:22:22:06
Lauren Petrullo
For sure for sure.

00:22:22:07 – 00:22:24:16
Ralph Burns
But so that would be the first place you would go.

00:22:24:18 – 00:22:25:23
Lauren Petrullo
Yeah. Because I.

00:22:26:01 – 00:22:27:06
Ralph Burns
Think you’re like.

00:22:27:07 – 00:22:32:18
Lauren Petrullo
I was like I because I don’t live in absolutes and I don’t want to say absolutely everyone. So I’m like going through this. I’m like, well.

00:22:33:00 – 00:22:35:06
Ralph Burns
Maybe there’s some email clients in there right now.

00:22:35:11 – 00:22:39:07
Lauren Petrullo
We have email clients. Yeah. But like it’s still they’re all running ads on meta.

00:22:39:11 – 00:22:40:23
Ralph Burns
Okay. So oh.

00:22:41:00 – 00:22:51:04
Lauren Petrullo
I get so nervous of saying in absolutes. I believe of 99 I think of anyone. I’m in percent ads. And if you’re not running ads on matter, there’s small campaigns you should place.

00:22:51:04 – 00:22:51:19
Ralph Burns
You go.

00:22:51:19 – 00:22:52:10
Lauren Petrullo
Isn’t that’s.

00:22:52:11 – 00:22:52:22
Ralph Burns
Meta.

00:22:52:22 – 00:22:59:16
Lauren Petrullo
That’s the place I know the best. So I go into meta, assuming that they have their audience definitions and if they not, I’m like, who am I yelling at?

00:22:59:21 – 00:23:00:14
Ralph Burns
Mentions in.

00:23:00:14 – 00:23:20:22
Lauren Petrullo
Advertising settings. Look for advertising settings. You go into that, you have to define your audience definitions. You don’t have them automatically. You tell meta. There’s like, so let’s do the customer version. You go into audience settings, and then if you have a purchase pixel on your website, you have to define I know it’s so stupid. I have to tell meta anyone that accesses the purchase pixel is a customer of mine.

00:23:21:00 – 00:23:37:23
Lauren Petrullo
The purchase, not a pixel. I have to tell meta the purchase of the pixel is a customer. If I don’t, it’s not defined. So I’m saying because people may be like, oh, I’ve seen people put the purchase pixel on cart page. Oh my gosh, sorry, I’m getting aggressive. Like, what do you say you do.

00:23:37:23 – 00:23:45:12
Ralph Burns
Or in person podcast. You’re going to be it out. Well now actually it’s no longer fit because you’re angry.

00:23:45:12 – 00:23:46:05
Lauren Petrullo
I’m angry.

00:23:46:06 – 00:23:52:08
Ralph Burns
I can see what review view of. It’s not it’s it’s not just the microphone.

00:23:52:10 – 00:24:09:21
Lauren Petrullo
Let’s get hate hated. Anyways, the audience definition and the advertising settings. The one, the megaphone, existing customers. You have to define the website visitors and you get to 180 days because that’s all you with matter of purchase. Pixel are my customers. If you don’t define it, you will never get to access the level of information I’m trying to tell you right now.

00:24:09:23 – 00:24:23:16
Lauren Petrullo
It takes 10s. I want to be as slow as my mother, who I love her and is 81 years old and can’t go around technology. It will take her two minutes if you don’t. If you go into your. You were saving that things now. Yeah. I was like if you open you have your computer here.

00:24:23:16 – 00:24:27:23
Ralph Burns
However, we’re just trying to explain this story from a high level. So first thing, you go.

00:24:27:23 – 00:24:53:20
Lauren Petrullo
To advertising settings you already have with the purchase pixel and then you’ve uploaded your full customer list. They just download upload full customer. Let’s do match. So to say like name field, email, field, whatever. Then I go into the campaigns manager, I go to break down, I hit a demographics and then audience segments and then all my sales campaigns break down and tell me, like you click you open campaign manager one like you click break down two clicks.

00:24:53:20 – 00:25:15:00
Lauren Petrullo
You choose audience segments under demographic. That’s not a click, that’s it. You scroll down and move over and that’s three. That’s three clicks. So tell me all of my sales campaign clicks. How many are how many of my conversions came from existing customers? Because I defined them, I gave them my full customer list so they know how many came from my engaged audiences because I just defined them.

00:25:15:00 – 00:25:35:06
Lauren Petrullo
I uploaded my subscriber list and I did all website visitors any pixel and then I can see new. So new is anyone that isn’t. Otherwise it says unknown. And if you go into your if you have a sales campaign so you’re running a purchase campaign, it’s like one of the six you can do in Strasbourg, right? It’s a sales can’t be objective is sales.

00:25:35:12 – 00:25:53:11
Lauren Petrullo
Got it. And then you can see that breakdown and it’ll tell you how much of your budget is being spent on new engage audience as an existing customers. That’s where I start. Then I can take it into like we use Looker Studio, we can use GA for that’s going to bring inside of it. We’ll have all that information inside of a dashboard.

00:25:53:14 – 00:26:04:12
Lauren Petrullo
Looker studio is a free tool, like all that type of stuff. And then we can use BigQuery and like pull this information and I can check our dashboards from what I have aligned and ads and what I have a line in J4.

00:26:04:14 – 00:26:13:12
Ralph Burns
Is Looker Studio tied into the back end date or CRM? Yes. So your source of truth, it should match up well.

00:26:13:12 – 00:26:32:18
Lauren Petrullo
So in this I’m saying ga4 because it using Google Analytics as an additional point of reference, assuming that there’s UTM and stuff, I again, this is like a lot of assumptions of best practices in place, but I’m going to look inside meta ad manager. Then I’m going to check our dashboard to like if someone’s like okay, well let’s see where that matches.

00:26:32:23 – 00:26:53:16
Lauren Petrullo
Then you can check inside the dashboards with Google Analytics and then the real source of truth ish could be if you go into the CRM now. Now clients are giving us full customer list view like we have access to Shopify, but if you give me your customer list, I’m not saying I’m doing this, but I know it’s possible for me to download that full list and then upload it to another client.

00:26:53:18 – 00:26:57:11
Lauren Petrullo
So that’s a lot of sensitive data. That’s where I’m like, this is the hard piece.

00:26:57:12 – 00:27:05:00
Ralph Burns
With demand like that. Not about like it’s a partnership, but there’s a not yeah, there’s a non-disclosure agreement that’s.

00:27:05:02 – 00:27:05:21
Lauren Petrullo
Sure part.

00:27:05:21 – 00:27:07:20
Ralph Burns
Of the engagement. So yeah I.

00:27:07:20 – 00:27:23:19
Lauren Petrullo
Was I’ve backed bad players and I’ve fired bad players. I’m not saying that they’ve done stuff like this, but like when it comes up and then like those kind of decisions like, I, I don’t want anyone to ever feel that their customers aren’t anyone but theirs. And I work with.

00:27:23:21 – 00:27:24:16
Ralph Burns
But like, you’re.

00:27:24:21 – 00:27:25:07
Lauren Petrullo
Working.

00:27:25:07 – 00:27:35:00
Ralph Burns
With your disagreements and your clients are like, you have to have the relationship where we are trying to move your business forward in the place to collect the money is in your CRM. I want to know.

00:27:35:03 – 00:27:49:14
Lauren Petrullo
Yeah, no, but we have access to it. But like, are we like if you want to go into a deeper degree and this is again not what I’m doing like, but you can go and look at all of yesterday’s orders. I can look at all of Ga4 transactions of what’s coming from where I can log in meta, what’s the distribution?

00:27:49:17 – 00:27:57:14
Lauren Petrullo
And then I can go count order by order by order. And we have clients that are doing thousand plus hours a day. So I get I admit I haven’t done this.

00:27:57:16 – 00:27:59:13
Ralph Burns
You’re not doing it for to that level.

00:27:59:19 – 00:28:02:02
Lauren Petrullo
Well that’s where I’m like, I know that love the work has potential.

00:28:02:03 – 00:28:13:13
Ralph Burns
Is there a spot? Hey, stay tuned for part two of this episode by subscribing to the channel so you don’t miss the gold nuggets for the metrics that matter and grow your business. I’ll see you on the next video.

Episode 785: Still Relying on Old Funnels? Here’s What’s Working in Meta Ads Right Now

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Still Relying on Old Funnels? Here’s What’s Working in Meta Ads Right Now

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