Episode 45: Growing Your Business While You Sleep; Meta Ads Demystified with Kristin Longacre

Hello and welcome to the Mum Means Business podcast, where we shine a light on inspiring women who have one thing in common. When they’re not managing tantrums, homework, P.E. kits and play dates, they are busting their gut to create something from nothing, to turn their passion into a thriving business and build a better life for themselves and their families. We dig into what motivates devoted mothers to pursue entrepreneurship and how they integrate their work and family life.

I’m Victoria Phipps, your host, and if you’re an ambitious mum in need of some solidarity whilst navigating the messy middle of making your big dream a reality, then stick around. This is for you.

NOTE: This is the transcript from the original recording, rather than the edited episode so timings may vary.

Victoria (00:01)
My guest today is a mum of two who has been deep in the world of digital marketing for more than 15 years with the last decade laser focused on Facebook and Instagram advertising. As a meta ads expert and Facebook blueprint certified strategist, she spent long working days inside ads manager running campaigns for everyone from Fortune 500 companies to small business owners launching their very first ad campaign.

She’s watched as products go viral online without ever posting organically on socials. Yes, apparently that is a thing. Kristen Longacre has seen just about everything inside ads manager and believes that meta ads aren’t just for the big players. They can work for anyone with a small budget and a smart strategy. After years of managing six figure ad budgets, Kristen began to realize that small business owners were getting lost in the shuffle. Perhaps this sounds familiar.

Seeing this gap in the market, she started her MetaAds Power Hour program to start working with female small business owners in the UK to help them realize that not everyone needs to be an expert to run a simple, successful ad campaign. I had spent the best part of two years putting various photography-related lead magnets out into the world through my organic content and had an email list of about six people to show for it.

until Kristin came along and showed me a better way. So Kristin, I am one of your biggest fans and I’m so excited to dig into your story. Welcome to the Mummy’s Business Podcast.

Kristin Longacre (01:39)
Thank you for having me, I’m so excited. I seriously love looking at your bootcamp results from January. Like they make me happy every time I see them.

Victoria (01:48)
my gosh, I was obsessed with it. think there’s a lot of mystery around setting up meta ads, which we will definitely come into. And I had obviously tried at various points to do this by myself and then just got so mind boggled and terrified that I just bailed. And so I’d never actually set up a campaign successfully and slogging away, putting out these lead magnet links.

Kristin Longacre (01:54)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (02:16)
every day, like day after day, and seeing such poor results, I mean, there’s lots to go into there. It was probably a fail on my social content as well. But I was obsessed. As soon as I started seeing these actual leads come in and my email list grow, I think I was posting in Telegram to you like every hour. Like, I got another one, I got another one.

Kristin Longacre (02:37)
Yeah. It was so exciting. No, it’s

so exciting because it’s the same thing I hear all the time from business owners, especially small business owners. You we don’t have a lot of money to invest in ads and it’s like you don’t want to.

you don’t want to give away your grocery money or you know, this is your small business. It’s still growing. You’re still building your foundation. And it’s like, if you just take that tiny amount, that little bit can just take you to the next level that so many people are afraid of. And it’s so fun to see. I got so excited every time I got a telegram message.

Victoria (02:59)
Yeah, exactly.

Okay, good. I’m done. I felt that maybe I was being a bit irritating and also obviously there a group of us and I was like, I’ve got nine. Yeah, yeah.

Kristin Longacre (03:20)
no, I love it. I love it. Because then I start bragging to everybody else around me. I was like, look

at what my students are doing. Look what they’re doing. It’s so awesome.

Victoria (03:33)
Yeah,

there was a little bit of like mild competition as well between all of us and I think just like setting up these, setting up these different creatives and like seeing what lands on what doesn’t and you just feel like, wow, this is it. Like I’m actually doing, this is what those Fortune 500 companies are doing. And because of the perceived barriers to entry in terms of the tech, I had not been able to access that. And you’re right, it was leaving me stuck.

Kristin Longacre (03:37)
It was awesome.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Victoria (04:00)
You’re so right again on the money issue. And again, we can dig into it, but you don’t want to spend the money if you don’t feel like you’re justifying it in your business. But it’s a vicious circle, isn’t it? Because actually I spent so much time, so much precious time when my kids were babies, putting this stuff out and tweaking and refining and trying again and trying again, trying something different that had I just thrown a hundred quid at it.

Kristin Longacre (04:16)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (04:29)
I’d have had an email list to actually start and get in the game. And I think obviously the algorithm has changed. Like it’s not as easy as it was in 2020. And this is like a magic shortcut. And I’m so grateful to you. But I wanna go back in your story. So you have this big corporate career. You are in the thick of it managing some serious ad budgets. What made you decide

Kristin Longacre (04:29)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes. ⁓

Victoria (04:58)
to do this or what made you decide to start a sideline business of your own?

Kristin Longacre (05:05)
It’s my journey into teaching ads is a very, very random one. ⁓ I like to say I accidentally started this business last fall because it’s true. It was fully accidental, ⁓ but it came out of ⁓ a need that I saw was there because

Victoria (05:16)
Okay.

Kristin Longacre (05:28)
I started talking to so many business owners. in another group with our wonderful coach and mentor, Teresa Heath Waring. We love her. You know her. She’s been on your podcast. ⁓

And I had been working with her on another business for about 18 months. And throughout that time, I had been running ads in the background for that business. She knew my day job. She knew what was going on with that. And she was like, can you come talk to the group? So I came and I talked to her group and she’s like, why are you not doing more of this? And I was like, I don’t know. But then I started talking to more of the people in the group and I realized like the need is there.

Victoria (06:03)
Hahaha!

Kristin Longacre (06:09)
and I just, I had had this idea a couple years ago of how do I teach ads?

but how do I keep it from interfering with my full-time corporate job? And I never wanted to mix the two and two together because I love what I do with my corporate job. I work with some pretty awesome clients. It makes for some amazing stories. But at the same time, I never wanted to take away from that to then go teach small business owners ads because I don’t ever want like…

to me they’re two very tracks, different tracks, and I never could figure that out. Like, how do I do this? And then when we started working with Teresa, yeah, and I realized, like, I’m clearly American, I’m not British, if you can tell by my voice.

Victoria (06:47)
Yeah, it’s like.

Kristin Longacre (06:57)
I was like, well, if I work with people in the UK, I’m not gonna overlap with my corporate people. So it kind of was the right fit at the right time to pull it together. Because the need is there. It just feels like there’s so many people that should be doing ads like you have talked about. And they’re not because they’re scared. And it’s like, if we can just get through that first campaign, so much can change.

Victoria (07:19)
Hmm.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I understand it’s like you almost felt that there was a potential for a conflict of interest in that if you were working with business owners in the US and you’re working with business owners in the US that that might, you might come unstuck somewhere. And so it seems like the perfect solution. And also via Theresa, you have access to some amazing women if I don’t mind saying so myself. So it’s a good.

Kristin Longacre (07:29)
Yes.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yes, very much so. Yeah,

Victoria (07:48)
Boy, it’s a good lunch pad!

Kristin Longacre (07:48)
yeah, you all helped me prove out the concept because that was the thing is like, is this even something that business owners want? And, ⁓ you know, we did the January boot camp and.

Teresa was like I’ll be an affiliate and I was like that’s awesome. Like I love you. You’re amazing. Thank you so much and it was it really helped to prove out the concept because I was able to put money into ads behind it But through her being an affiliate it helped fund the ads to bring it not only people from her affiliate in but also cold audiences that had never heard of me so

Victoria (08:17)
Mm-hmm.

Exactly. Genius. I love it. I knew there was a reason that we were working with her. So, she is. Let’s go back a step and talk about your gluten-free business. Because when I went into Teresa’s world, this is what you were doing. And we had like some group coaching calls, I think. And I remember the story of you getting your first sale.

Kristin Longacre (08:27)
Yeah, it was awesome. Yeah, she’s amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Victoria (08:55)
in the supermarket, which Theresa cites often. Because anyone who has an online business can relate. And when I made, I actually made my first sale in January and it is so exciting, isn’t it? And it doesn’t matter whether it’s like, yes, well you did in the supermarket.

Kristin Longacre (08:59)
Yeah.

Yeah?

Yeah, you just burst into tears.

Yeah, I did. I literally burst into tears in the middle of the supermarket.

Victoria (09:21)
But it’s hard out there. It is hard to find your people. And then it’s just, it’s that proof of concept that actually there is someone who finds this helpful and it gives you energy to kind of keep going. But that business is not what you’re doing now. So explain to me why, what happened that made you think, I mean, of course, now you’ve replaced it with something that’s way more aligned.

Kristin Longacre (09:24)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

⁓ Yeah.

Victoria (09:50)
What was that journey like and that point at which you decided to pivot?

Kristin Longacre (09:52)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so I had been doing, I got certified as a nutrition coach in 2021. My son is gluten free and I am now gluten free.

So through getting certified as a nutrition coach, it was partially for my own knowledge to help him, but also because I wanted to help other people, especially other parents who were in a similar situation of, hey, you have a two and a half year old who no longer can eat gluten and is limited on fruits and vegetables because of the fructose content. And it was a long journey, but I got certified and I really wanted to help people with these changes. And everybody kept coming to me saying, I want to lose

I wanna lose weight. I wanna lose weight. I want answers right now. I want answers right now. And I’m like, I don’t wanna help people lose weight. Like, I don’t, that’s not, like, that’s not my area.

Victoria (10:48)
Mm-hmm.

Kristin Longacre (10:51)
So I really zeroed in on the gluten-free coaching. I coached ⁓ and I wrote e-books and I wrote meal plans and, you know, guides on how to pick the best gluten-free bread and all that kind of stuff. And I was out there trying to sell them and people just weren’t willing to pay for it. And I was like, that’s great, because I just I really wanted to help people. it was it’s hard to say I’m going to help people for free, you know, like because they would always say, well, why can’t you just give this to

Victoria (11:19)
Mm.

Kristin Longacre (11:21)
for free and I’m like well you came in through a paid ad like I’m paying to get you into my world like I’m not not gonna do that so I did eventually sell one course I sold some meal plans I have a I still have a Shopify store that has all my ebooks on it you know they’re still out there ⁓ making sales from time to time but I was pouring

so much time and energy into a business that was just people weren’t willing to invest in themselves for. And I did that training in T’s World back in, I think it was September, maybe it was early October. And that was when she was like, why aren’t you doing more of this? Like you came out of there so happy, so aligned. And it was that night that I outlined an ebook called No Fuss Ads, which

I sell still, I came up, like my brain just would not stop. Like it was one thing after another. And as somebody who works full time in digital marketing, the absolute worst time for me to start a business is Q4, October, November, December. Like my life in Q4 is 60 hour work weeks. And I was like, let’s start a business in Q4. And so I was like, I don’t really have the time to dedicate to this right now.

Victoria (12:39)
Hehehehehe

Kristin Longacre (12:44)
but I never felt more aligned. My brain just would not stop. Like I had so many ideas and I was having so many awesome conversations with the women in T’s world. I mean, you included about what ads could do for their business that I was like, I can’t not do this. so I was like, I’m done investing in a business that people don’t want to invest in themselves for. ⁓

And then I just kind of pivoted. I truly have never, ever felt more aligned. So it is, it was the best pivot. Like I have zero regrets about it, but it was definitely an interesting one.

Victoria (13:28)
But you probably appreciate where you are right now so much more because of all that battling. And I totally get this because I, for a long time, I said I was putting all these lead magnets out into the world. And for a good chunk of that, I was talking to parents and it was about how to take better pictures of your kids, how to do this for yourself, basically. I was a family photographer, but training parents in photography.

Kristin Longacre (13:32)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Victoria (13:58)
Again, it’s this thing of like nice to have versus need to have. Like all parents wanna take better pictures of their kids in principle, but are you going to pay for that when you have all these other demands on your income and all the extracurricular stuff they’re going to, I know that your boys are like really into their sports, all of this stuff just, it drains your bank balance every month. Are you gonna pay? And also do you have the time?

Kristin Longacre (14:03)
Yes.

Right.

Mm-hmm

Yes.

Yeah.

Victoria (14:27)
to like sit there and dedicate to learning how to use your phone better to take photographs, whatever it might be. And in that sense, it’s this thing of a nice to have investment, which sounds like a very similar barrier that you were coming up against. And it’s again, this is a self-worth thing as well. unless they say, are you gonna help me to drop three stone, like, or however many pounds? It’s like, well.

Kristin Longacre (14:28)
Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Victoria (14:54)
No, then. And it’s so frustrating for you because you knew how much that could help people and because you’d done the

work and you’d lived it and you had seen the results in your son and now you gluten free. You know, it is so frustrating. And again, like I would argue that family photos are like one of the most precious investments that you can make and they’re going to appreciate over time. But to constantly be trying to persuade people to invest in that is hard going.

Kristin Longacre (15:03)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah! Absolutely. Yeah.

Victoria (15:23)
And so I totally relate because when you pivot and you start talking to business owners, it becomes a need to have. And it makes sense.

Kristin Longacre (15:24)
Yeah.

It’s a very, such a different,

different level. And I have nothing against B2C. mean, most of my clients that I deal with in corporate are B2C. But ⁓ when you’re doing, you really have to find that exact pain point. And one of the things that I found with the gluten-free world is,

Victoria (15:35)
Yeah.

Mm.

Kristin Longacre (15:52)
They were so angry about being told that they couldn’t eat gluten, that they didn’t want to invest in anything because they were just so mad. Like they didn’t want to give it up. And it’s like, your health is on the line, but you know, so I don’t know. I could rant about that for hours.

Victoria (16:04)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it’s just noticing that resistance, feeling it and putting all your energy into it. And like, you know, like we said, you’re time poor and this is time away from your kids. This is time out of your sleep at night after they’ve gone to bed and you’re on there and you’re creating a new lead magnet and you’re writing a new ebook and to sort of acknowledge, okay, there is a resistance here. And it’s such a good lesson in business because you have to get to a point where you’re like, there has to be a better way.

Kristin Longacre (16:19)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. for sure.

Victoria (16:38)
because you can’t feel that traction, that momentum. And in comes Theresa, like, can you just do a short training about what you do every single day? And it all sort of starts to align. And I love that feeling that she described in you where you literally, because I remember that sort of hour long webinar that you did, and that you were so aligned afterwards and kind of could feel that positive energy.

Kristin Longacre (16:38)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Victoria (17:07)
Like this is actually, feels easeful. Whereas what you were doing before felt hard. And that must feel so much better.

Kristin Longacre (17:07)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, I have never,

it does, it totally does. And it’s funny because even in the depths of going through the January bootcamp, which I was building as we were going through it, I had done a week’s worth of slides and then I was like, okay, let’s just see if anybody signs up for it. And then we had 15 people join us for January and it was like, I have to finish these slides.

Victoria (17:41)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was exactly the same. I

built my course live too. Yeah, it’s a lot. It’s a lot.

Kristin Longacre (17:44)
Yeah, it’s

yeah, and it was just but going through it and

I being in the US, I’m six hours behind. So I would wake up to the telegram messages in the morning. It’s like 530 in the morning and I’m trying to get a kid out the door and I’m just like, my gosh, look what they’re doing. Their ads are live. They’re doing this. They have this, they have that. And it was just like, there was never a moment where I was like, why am I doing this? It was just like, I’m so excited about it. And it was just so fun. Excuse me, I’m sorry.

Victoria (17:54)
Mm.

Yeah.

That’s just amazing.

It’s all right. That’s just…

Kristin Longacre (18:20)
I’m

sorry.

Victoria (18:23)
It’s alright. It’s alright. I’ll pause while you have a drink.

Kristin Longacre (18:27)
Okay, I’m good. Okay, sorry.

Victoria (18:31)
That’s just so amazing to hear that alignment and that you’re just seeing the transformation happening. Like, this is the thing everyone talks about, like what is the transformation? Communicate the transformation, but to watch it play out live. And it must just have been so, oh God, I’m gonna say such a relief because you’re not forcing it, it’s just happening.

Kristin Longacre (18:36)
Mm-hmm.

Yes. Yeah.

⁓ for sure.

Yeah.

No,

yeah, yeah. And it was just so funny because my husband and I have even talked about this because we’ve done various side hustle businesses over the years and it’s always been so much time, so much effort, very little return. And he’s like, this is it. You found what you’re good at. You found that point.

Victoria (19:03)
I love it.

Kristin Longacre (19:28)
So it’s been very, it’s so fun. Like I just have fun with it. So ⁓ it’s really been a exciting business. Yeah. I’m such an advocate for doing something you love.

Victoria (19:34)
and it should be fun.

Yeah, it should be fun. ⁓

Yeah, yeah, but it has to be like a reciprocal arrangement. the people having been on the other side of it, like I loved it because I feel like I had just had this block up around it. And it was literally, you just made it so easy the way you guided us through, like we were babies. literally, and now you press this button.

Kristin Longacre (19:47)
Yeah. Yes!

Mm-hmm.

Hahaha

Victoria (20:09)
And then that’s going to take you, you’ve got lost. Okay, let’s come and see, you share your screen. Let’s see where you’ve gone wrong. And it was literally like we were, we were toddlers. We just had no idea. And the tech is super overwhelming, but you made it easy. You held our hand.

Kristin Longacre (20:13)
Yep.

yeah I’m

so glad I’m so glad and that’s what I like to hear because I know how many people are scared of ads because of the tech and it’s like if you just

we really slow down and break it down because you can buy every Facebook ads course out there and very few of them take you from we’re gonna create your business manager all the way through to your first ad live. And I think that’s what has stopped so many small business owners because they’re like, don’t have a way to learn all of that. And I don’t have time to learn all of that. And I’m like, give me two weeks, we’ll get you live.

Victoria (20:59)
Yeah. Yeah.

And also you’re terrified of making a mistake because that’s real money. You know, there is an element of gambling to this. You know, you’re testing and in that sense, it’s very like naughty and addictive as well. But like, if you get it, if you get it right and it works, then great. But I would just, I think a lot of the other women that you were working with felt the same. Like if I do this wrong, I’m throwing money down the toilet every day and we’re not in a position

Kristin Longacre (21:05)
Yeah, for sure.

It is very much like gimbling.

It is.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Victoria (21:29)
to feel comfortable doing that. We’re building businesses, we’re trying to grow businesses. We’re not there with like, we’re not the Fortune 500 company that can afford to like lose a few thousand. Every penny does feel like it counts and we want it to convert and we want it to move us forward. So the tech element is absolutely massive. And I think the way that you just in that bootcamp as well, over those few days, just held our hands step.

Kristin Longacre (21:32)
Right.

Yeah.

Right, for sure.

Mm-hmm.

Victoria (21:59)
by step by step and gave us homework and then we come back and literally it was like five actual days of sessions and then we’re up and we’re running. And I, to be honest, I haven’t made that many tweaks to what we set up then and now I feel like my business is doing something without me having to do anything. And that is worth every single penny in comparison to where I was before, whereas I was doing everything and my business was doing nothing.

Kristin Longacre (22:01)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Victoria (22:29)
And this

is the power of Facebook, well meta ads I guess. So why don’t you tell me what you think meta ads can do for a very small business. That first transformation to get them from nothing to something, you go.

Kristin Longacre (22:33)
Yeah, Facebook meta. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so I’m

One of the big things that I found myself constantly telling people over the last couple years as I’ve worked with small business owners in T’s world and as I’ve gotten to know other small business owners is I’ve always said, why aren’t you running ads? Well, it’s overwhelming. I don’t have the budget. There’s too much to do. I don’t know how to write an ad. I don’t want to spend $100 or 100 pounds a day. And I was always like, well, you don’t have to. And I think that’s the thing that people didn’t realize about meta ads.

you don’t have to spend you can spend as little as one pound a day and still make an impact on your business and So what we do in the boot camp is we take that first level we take that first step into meta ads where we start to build our audience and Spending I think we had people that went as low as one pound a day up to five pounds a day ⁓ Meta does force you to start at five pounds a day, but you can decrease it over time to one pound a day

if you wanted and just setting up those specific ads to a lead magnet to grow your email list and that right there gets people

who are cold to you, have no idea who you are, onto your email list where you can now start to warm them up. You can make them become familiar with you. You can introduce them to who Victoria is or who the, this small business owner is and tell them more about what you do and what you sell. And depending on your email funnels, depending on what you have set up, maybe you sell them something in the next step or you wait until your next launch. But having a very small budget of meta ads running

in the background at all times, I say all business owners should at least be spending one pound a day to grow their email list every single day, which would be 30 pounds a month, or 31, depending on the month, how many days are in the month, but 30 pounds on average a month to grow your email list. And if you think about, you you sell one or two products throughout the month off of somebody joining your email list, that pays for your ads.

Victoria (24:52)
Hehehehehe

Kristin Longacre (25:06)
And I think it’s such a simple solution to grow your email list, to build new fans, so the next time you’re ready to launch, you have that warm and engaged audience.

Victoria (25:20)
Absolutely. Tell me about this thing. I remember you explaining that actually meta is learning all the time. So whilst we start with five pounds because they make us, actually that makes sense because they need to gather as much information as early as possible about which ads are working, which ads aren’t. And so then you can take it down to one pound a day, but there’s something about stopping it when you just kind of want it to be on tick over.

Kristin Longacre (25:29)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. ⁓

Victoria (25:50)
and then ramping it up again when you’re kind of approaching a launch or you’ve got something coming up that you want to make a big fuss about, tell me why it’s important to leave it on. Like, why is that valuable?

Kristin Longacre (25:51)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So meta is always learning. And you know how you hear those stories of people saying, I was thinking about a toaster and then all of a sudden it showed up in my Facebook ads. And it’s like, it is weird. It’s creepy.

Victoria (26:15)
Terrifying, yeah.

Kristin Longacre (26:19)
But Meta and Google, everything online, is always watching what you’re doing. So they know if you’re going to Google and you’re searching for something. And they know if you’re visiting a website that’s talking about

buying new kitchen appliances or something like that. So Meta is constantly learning our motions and our actions, but it’s also doing that with your business. So when you’re running ads all day, every day, Meta is watching who’s engaging with your ads. They might see that it’s more moms engaging with your ads and moms with kids who are two to three years old. So if they start to see that it’s going to start showing your ads to more people who are like

that demographic of people. But if you pause your ads, Meta stops learning about who’s engaging with your business. Meta stops getting those signals from all over the place. Sorry, I use hand motions here. But Meta stops getting those signals from all over the place about who’s engaging with you, who’s wanting to learn more about your business, who’s going to your website. And…

Victoria (27:18)
It’s fine.

Kristin Longacre (27:30)
We start with five pounds a day because it gives Meta a lot of signals really fast. So Meta can learn about these people and then we can lower it because the more Meta learns, the more it kind of narrows in on who your niche audience is. But if you pause your ads altogether and you stop sending those signals back to Meta, it loses those learnings because it’s constantly updating. So the general rule of thumb is never pause your ads for more than seven days at a time or never let it go seven days without spending.

money. I personally would say instead of pausing for seven days, drop your budget as low as you possibly can for seven days and then kind of scale it back up. ⁓ And then like you said, as you’re going into a launch and as you want to become more visible, I have a very, I have my

Victoria (28:01)
Mm.

Kristin Longacre (28:22)
With launching, I have a very long runway of when you should start running ads. So instead of saying, I’m just going to put ads live when I sell my product, like the day my cart opens, you’re doing yourself a disservice by waiting until the day your cart opens. Because Meta doesn’t have any of those learnings about who your audience is. And if your cart’s only open for a week, it’s going to take a couple of days to learn who to sell to. So by having those small budget ads already

running in the background, Meta already knows who you’re selling to. Meta already knows who your ideal client is. So when you turn on those ads, it already knows this is who I want to send these, this is who I want to show these ads to. ⁓

Victoria (29:09)
And what’s amazing actually is this is really valuable data. a lot of us might feel like, you know, we’re working, if you’re like a solo business owner, you work a lot in isolation. You know, we go out and we network and then we come back home, back to our house and we work again. And you can have misconceptions about your target audience. And meta is obviously all seeing and all knowing.

Kristin Longacre (29:25)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, creepy.

Victoria (29:38)
So what I found really

creepy, really creepy, but you can use it to your advantage and you can use it as data to inform what you do in your business. Because I remember I went into my ad campaign and I said to you, like, I wanna target, a bit like you’re targeting female business owners in the UK, I wanna target female family photographers in the UK. And you can suggest a matter that they target females, but I have had so many men sign up.

Kristin Longacre (29:56)
Mm-hmm.

You

Victoria (30:07)
to this lead magnet. And at first I was like, ⁓ Kristin, we’ve set this up wrong. Like we need to go back into it. Help me. Why are all these guys coming in? And then obviously we checked in, there’s nothing wrong. And Meta is telling me that actually there are more guys out there doing this stuff than I thought. And that’s information. That is really valuable information. So then I get to make the decision, okay, well, why am I limiting myself to

Kristin Longacre (30:09)
you

You

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Victoria (30:37)
female photographers, do I need to do that? I I run a podcast that talks to women. I’m in, I go to networking events full of women. Like I’m in a very female world. However, I have nothing against men. Like I will take a man’s money. Like that’s fine. I will talk to a man about this stuff. I will train a man and teach them in what I’m talking about. So.

Kristin Longacre (30:38)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Victoria (31:02)
It gives you an opportunity to kind of see what’s actually going on. And that’s, think, something that I didn’t expect to get from meta ads. And it can be so informative and it can help you strategize and give you information that means you can make decisions in your business. You’re not limiting yourself. You can be open-minded about it. And I didn’t expect that at all. I think that’s really interesting.

Kristin Longacre (31:08)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. And I love that I love your example so much because it shows that even like…

you’re running ads and all of a sudden you’re like, my gosh, there’s a whole other world of people out here that I could potentially sell to that I wouldn’t have even thought of when you’re writing organic social media content. so I always tell people when they’re like, I’m getting people on my email list, but I’m not making sales in the backend, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, yeah, but what does your data tell you? And I went through with somebody the other day in our inner circle call, which is for people who have graduated through the bootcamp but still want support,

Victoria (31:44)
Mmm. Mmm.

Yes. Yeah.

Kristin Longacre (32:09)
you are in and I was going through it with somebody else the other day who had quickly thrown together a campaign and she was said I just wanted to get ads up and she made a couple sales but it wasn’t what she had wanted.

Victoria (32:10)
Yes.

Kristin Longacre (32:25)
It wasn’t what she expected and there was some things that we needed to tweak, but we pulled up the data and I was like, look how many people saved your ad. You ran ads for five days and she had like 15 people save it. And I was like, that tells you right there that 15 people are interested and they’re gonna come back to it. But because the ad, the runway was too short and just, there was other things going on with the campaign. But I was like, look at that.

you’re proving out the concept just because people are saving your ad. They’re interested, but they’re not ready to pull the plug on a $600 product, you know, or 600 pound product. So there’s so much you can learn about your audience from ads.

Victoria (32:53)
Mm.

Yeah, and actually you can take that data and that can inform your social media strategy that is the organic strategy. So when we were building out the creatives, which is another thing that you kind of guided us through, and we did so many still images and we did a couple of videos or whatever, and we put them all out there to test. And this is all about the testing. It’s where it gets fun because actually, you know, you get to hone in on what hook is landing.

Kristin Longacre (33:14)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Yes!

Yeah.

Victoria (33:36)
what’s resonating, which pain point is forcing people to take action and click the ad. And that then is something that you can take into your social media content, your Instagram organic, and it can inform the way that you are trying to connect with those people in your organic content, I think. It’s so interesting because…

Kristin Longacre (33:36)
Mm-hmm

Yup.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Victoria (34:02)
I spent

so much time going down the wrong rabbit hole or, you know, put focusing on the wrong pain point maybe. And actually by testing out those different creatives, different hooks, different images, that gives you a really good straight away. think within a week there was like one that was flying way ahead of everything else. And so I’m like, right, well, that’s it. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. And so then you can test various.

Kristin Longacre (34:06)
you

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yes. And it was the one that we least expected, right?

Victoria (34:31)
iterations of that and you can kind of get obsessed I guess. I mean I guess you must be obsessed. You must be in your corporate job like yeah but it’s so interesting to kind of see what lands and it can be so surprising. I could see that it could be completely addictive if you were in that world but it’s getting over that initial barrier to entry to just start to get in the game with it and that is

Kristin Longacre (34:33)
Mm-hmm

I am obsessed. It’s bad.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Victoria (34:59)
what you are so good at and you didn’t even know it. So I am.

Kristin Longacre (35:03)
We had so much fun. Yeah.

It’s so much fun to see because and I always warn people when we’re setting up ads and I always say the one you least expect to work is going to be the one that works. And I think your instance was so fun because there was one ad I remember of yours that was it was so pretty. I loved it. It was such a the photograph. You know what I’m talking about, right? There was the the frame photographs. Yeah. And it was

Victoria (35:23)
Mmm.

Yeah, with the framed photographs on the wall, this beautiful interior. Yeah.

⁓

Kristin Longacre (35:31)
It was a gorgeous image and I was looking at it and I’m like, that’s not gonna work. We got it, we got it. It’s so pretty that it’s not gonna work. And it was true and we tested it and we did test it. We tested a variation of it I think and.

Victoria (35:40)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kristin Longacre (35:47)
it wound up being an image that just had a lot of text on it is what your audience gravitated towards. And you never know until you test. And I always show an example when I’m training in boot camps and stuff of the ugliest ad I’ve ever made next to what I think is a very pretty ad. And if you had to guess which ad would work, it would not be the ugly ad.

Victoria (35:52)
Mm. Mm. Yes!

Kristin Longacre (36:10)
But I always say like sometimes ugly works because ugly stops people on their scroll. And that’s, it’s all a game. It’s all a test, you know, so we’re always learning.

Victoria (36:15)
Yeah.

I mean,

the ugly offends me because obviously I’m a photographer. I really… No, no, no, no, no.

Kristin Longacre (36:23)
I know. Well, and it wasn’t even an ugly ad that you did. I just used the word ugly because it’s not the ad that we

would have expected. Yeah. Yeah.

Victoria (36:30)
don’t mean that you offended me. I mean, just the fact that often it is the ugly thing that will stop the scroll. I really cannot

bring myself to put something out that’s really ugly. And so I’m like, ⁓ I’m just glad that we found one that was like not too offensive to my aesthetic sensitivities that actually did roll and did work. And it’s still bringing in leads now. It’s brilliant, honestly. Yeah, exactly. obviously I’ll tweak and…

Kristin Longacre (36:44)
Yeah, we did.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, two months later.

Victoria (37:00)
and whatever going forward. But I have to say that it’s given me a huge amount of peace of mind that especially as a mom who is dealing with all the other stuff in life, like growing your children and extended family and like just school stuff and friends and whatever it might be that actually, and I too, I have a day job just like you. I’m in the office two days a week. So there’s just a lot, isn’t there? And in those moments when I can’t

Kristin Longacre (37:00)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Okay, yeah.

Victoria (37:30)
put all the energy into my business as I would like to, I know that something is happening and it’s so freeing. And this is where the kind of automation aspect comes into it. So tell me about how automation in general helps you out as a mom with two boys who also has a lot going on.

Kristin Longacre (37:43)
Yeah, for sure.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

We have, so I mean, to set the background, my kids are in sports. ⁓ They’re nine and 13 years old. So we are gone most weekends at.

usually a volleyball right now. We’re coming out of volleyball season. So I have built this entire business during volleyball season over the last six months. And we’re coming out of volleyball and going right into running and soccer and baseball. So it’s busy. Sorry, football. It’s busy. But.

Victoria (38:27)
Yeah.

We get it. We get it.

Kristin Longacre (38:35)
Having these ads running in the background is exactly what small businesses need to take care of those times and I know you guys have like you had half term while you were on half term you grew your audience you didn’t have to check in with your business you didn’t have to post on social media every day or you know, have Easter holidays coming up and ⁓ You don’t you’ve got Easter you have holidays you have family time you have things going on You don’t have time to be on your phone. But by having

running in the background that’s growing your email list and then building a full funnel once they get on your email list of you do you sell them a digital product next do you opt them into an evergreen course do you have a master class coming up for them to opt into and it’s like it’s almost taking those ads the ads is the first step it gets them on the email list

automatically while you’re doing all of the life things and then you can automate your email to run in the background to turn those leads into sales. And then one of the other things you can do with ads is you can get them on your email list but then you can start running ads targeting those people that just got on your email list with the product to sell them.

So there’s so many things you can be doing where your business becomes almost hands off when you need it to be. You know, during the breaks, the half terms, the Easter holidays, the summer breaks, you know, I, there’s so much that can be going on. Like I said, I, I’ve built this in the background while my kids are in all these sports and you know, we’ll be sitting at volleyball matches all day long. And it’s like, but my email list is still growing. So.

Victoria (40:18)
Yeah, it makes such a difference. Yeah, it makes such a difference. And I feel like I’ve known about all these possibilities in automation for a long time. But I think it’s almost like you can’t start to actually action that until you get in the game and have an ad that is converting. So I knew that it was possible to set up an email nurture sequence. I knew that.

Kristin Longacre (40:18)
There’s so much you can do with it.

Yeah.

Mm-mm.

Yeah.

Victoria (40:45)
Lots of people have told me through my ears, mostly Americans on podcasts. And I’d never, I’d never got to that point because I’m not going to do that for the six people as much as I threw them an email every now and again. Like it, it, didn’t have, it didn’t have the conversions in place to justify it. And now again, it just, I feel like it’s worth doing that. So I’ve set up like a three email nurture sequence. So as soon as people come on,

Kristin Longacre (40:53)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah.

Victoria (41:12)
they’re going to get a sequence of three emails. And I know that something is happening and they’re short and they’re personable and they send them to other places where I know I’m going to be active so they can get to know me. But there’s something there and it does just take the pressure off. It’s such a relief. And I’m so grateful to you for getting me over the line. yeah.

Kristin Longacre (41:12)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I’m just so glad you

came into the bootcamp.

Victoria (41:39)
I’m honestly just loving on you so hard because it does just make some difference to your mental load because I think it is hard when we are, you know, trying to come up with different content day in, day out and pushing these lead magnets on stories. And it’s all that, and it gets into this realm of like, should, I should post my lead magnet link now. I should, and you just quickly fire it off. But every time you,

Kristin Longacre (41:41)
you

It does, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Victoria (42:06)
Do that, every time you post a lead magnet link to your story, that’s like five minutes and your kid is probably looking at you when you’re on your phone. And then it comes back to like, what is more important really? And if this stuff can just be happening, then we are taking such better advantage of all of these tools that are available to us now, which we couldn’t have had, you know, 10 years ago. And why not? Why not make life easier?

Kristin Longacre (42:17)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right, we become more intentional about our

businesses and our time when we don’t have to worry about that aspect of it.

Victoria (42:34)
Yeah. And there’s a kind of.

Yeah, exactly, because you feel like you’re in the weeds, like you’re in the business. And actually, you know, this is idea that if you’ve got a nurture sequence in place, that it’s kind of like, I don’t know, that it’s cheating, or it’s not as fresh, or it’s not coming from the heart. And actually, it’s just nonsense, because I put a lot of heart into those emails. And I really did think about it intentionally. And I sat down, I planned, right, what are the first three things that I want people to know when they hear about me, when they kind of opt in?

Kristin Longacre (42:42)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Victoria (43:09)
It’s very intentional, but then once it’s done, it’s done and it happens. And then they can drop onto your main list. Yeah, yeah, it’s a dream. It’s a dream. What would you say, having had this experience where you have given yourself a side hustle on top of being a mother, on top of having a big corporate job where you are working for these enormous companies with massive ad budgets to somebody who

Kristin Longacre (43:12)
Yeah, it’s automatically running in the background.

It’s yeah.

Victoria (43:38)
is thinking that maybe their business is too hard. And there’s so much about like, ⁓ be persistent, be consistent, be tenacious, keep going, you’ll get there. The people who win are the people who stick at it. And of course that is true, but if you have a sense that you’re sticking at the wrong thing, like you did, what would you say to those women?

Kristin Longacre (43:44)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

gosh, that’s a hard one. I mean, in my case, I would say trust your gut. ⁓ If you’re not feeling aligned in your business, there’s a reason that feeling is there. And I don’t say that to tell somebody to give up on their business, because that’s not at all what I would ever, ever tell a small business owner, because I believe that everybody has a business for a reason. ⁓

Victoria (44:09)
Mmm.

Kristin Longacre (44:34)
but that maybe there’s something you’re missing in the alignment that if it’s feeling forced to take a step back. And one of the things that we joke about ⁓ was when I was feeling this with my gluten-free business. I had come off a launch, it had not gone well. had 200 people opt into a master class and four showed up live.

Victoria (45:02)
Yeah.

Kristin Longacre (45:02)
And

I was like, I got on a call with Teresa, my wonderful coach, her wonderful coach, and I cried. And I was like, this something’s not working right now. And she said, I want you to shut it down for a week. Just go dark on social media. Stop sending emails. Stop thinking about your business. Pour into your corporate job, your family, life, et cetera. And

That’s when everything changed because it gave me time to step back from the this should happen to where do I really want this business to go? And taking that time to step back helped me reflect on what I wanted to do with it, the price points, why it was feeling so heavy on me and just having that time to really think it through. So when business feels heavy, I’m not saying shut it down permanently, but

Victoria (45:35)
Hmm.

Kristin Longacre (45:58)
take a pause and really evaluate what you want to get out of it. You know, do some journaling.

Do some thinking, stop looking at competitors, unfollow all of them on social media. They are terrible for your mindset. But also remember, what you see on social media isn’t always what’s truly going on. Because I was showing up every day, day in and day out, being like, gluten-free is so easy, while I’m fighting with a child who will not eat gluten-free. So, you know, it’s just, I think, just take a step back.

and see if it’s really where you’re aligned because you might find that your alignment is somewhere completely else in a totally different business.

Victoria (46:46)
Yeah, I think that’s such good advice because we can just keep going on that hamster wheel, know, keep sending the weekly email and we can be so disciplined and that is a good thing when you’re putting that in the right direction. You need to build up that muscle of discipline and consistency and showing up. But if it, and it’s that, it’s that exact word that you said, if it feels heavy, like now I’m presuming you feel like quite expensive.

Kristin Longacre (46:53)
huh.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Victoria (47:15)
Like this

is, this is gonna fly. This is going somewhere. And I feel really good and I’m having fun.

Kristin Longacre (47:20)
I literally sent a message yesterday and said, guys, my brain won’t stop. This is a problem. Because I needed to work on my corporate job. And I was like, I have 20 ideas. So yes, when you find the right alignment, you’ll know it. Yeah.

Victoria (47:27)
Yeah, but that’s good. That’s the buzz.

Yeah, yeah, I love that. And there is power in the pause, if we can give ourselves just that moment of stillness.

Kristin Longacre (47:43)
Yes!

Victoria (47:46)
which is hard to find when you’re a mother. Like you literally probably have to leave your own house to get that. Like go and journal in a cafe somewhere away from your life. Yeah, go for a walk. Go and touch grass. Yeah, good advice. If you’re feeling stuck in your business, go and touch some grass and the answer will come to you. ⁓ I love it. Chris and I have one question that I ask everybody at the end of the podcast. So if you could go back and have a conversation,

Kristin Longacre (47:46)
Mm-hmm. Yes, very much so.

Yes, go for a walk. Touch grass.

Go touch aggressive. Yes. Yes, exactly.

Okay.

Victoria (48:16)
with your eight-year-old self, what would you tell her?

Kristin Longacre (48:22)
Dear my eight-year-old self. I remember my eight-year-old self. I would say don’t give up even on the days where it feels hard because those hard days are what’s going to make those easy days so much better.

Victoria (48:49)
Love it.

Kristin Longacre (48:53)
I even remember what I was at eight years old.

Victoria (48:56)
love it.

It’ll get you thinking, but that’s perfect. And it sums up this whole conversation really beautifully. Where can everybody go and find you, Kristin, and learn more about how you can help them to change their lives and actually start running meta ads and grow their email list and set up an automation so that they feel good every day, even if they haven’t opened their laptop.

Kristin Longacre (49:03)
Mm-hmm

Yes.

Yes, ⁓

so I’m on Instagram and Facebook as NoFussAds, ⁓ N-O-F-U-S-S-A-D-S. I’m on Instagram and Facebook with that, and that is my website is nofussads.com.

You can find me on LinkedIn, but I promise you I will not accept your request for the next six months to a year because I am never on LinkedIn. And that’s where small business owners tend to look for me first, but I just don’t do it. Instagram and Facebook are the way to go. My website is no fuss ads dot com where you can get on my email list. You can see all of my guides, the boot camp and a new course that will be coming in the next month or so. Being realistic. Yes.

Victoria (50:02)
Amazing, exciting. No, exciting,

Kristen. Honestly, I’ve loved this conversation because I think there’s nothing, having kind of gone through a prolonged period that happened to coincide with early motherhood where I just was like lost and not being able to find that alignment. The stories of women.

Kristin Longacre (50:21)
Yeah.

Victoria (50:27)
And I guess moms especially, where they have finally found their thing are like, it’s my favorite thing to talk about. And I think, well, I hope that other people who perhaps feel a little bit stuck will feel inspired by this because it is about trusting the process. And like you say, listening to your gut, your intuition, and that you will get there in the end. If you keep going, you will get there.

Kristin Longacre (50:34)
So fun.

Mm-hmm

Yeah. And I love how you’re highlighting

all of these on your podcast. I love that you highlight all these stories. It’s so fun and it’s so inspiring.

Victoria (51:02)
I’m glad. Thank you so much, Kristin. This has been lovely and I will see you probably in Telegram in maybe an hour.

Kristin Longacre (51:10)
Yes, yes, I will be there.

Excited to see all the messages.

Victoria (51:15)
Thanks for your time, Kristin.

Kristin Longacre (51:17)
Thanks Victoria.