Scale Facebook Ads: Marin Istvanic Interview

People ask me like what's most important when it comes to running Facebook ads. And I always tell them it's product. You need to have an edge with your product. It needs to like either be better than the competitors. If you're finding value in what you're watching, consider hitting the subscribe button and turning on the bell notification. Oh, and don't forget to drop a comment. I love hearing your thoughts and ideas. By the way, we have got a ton of other videos waiting for you. And if you are ready to level up your mindset, come hang out with us in our private Facebook group called Mindset for Business Success. Welcome to Super Entrepreneurs Podcast. My name is Shahid Durrani. Today we have with us, Marin Banik. From managing over a hundred million dollars in Facebook ads to scaling brands like the Odi and Vessi, hopefully I pronounced them correctly. Let's dive into Marin's strategies and learn how he's reshaping performance marketing. Welcome to our show, Marin. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. No, it's a pleasure. It's all mine, my friend. Great to have you. I love your calm demeanor. It's good to sense that. So that's a huge feat, a hundred million plus in ad spend. Is there a story how you got into this? Yeah. So there's a, there's definitely a story. I was on my senior year of college studying computer science, trying to like figure out, should I pursue with that or should I continue with football? Cause I was playing in second creation division, which is semi-professional. So it was like, okay, which route should I go? But somehow I stumbled upon digital marketing. And started learning everything there is about it. Like I went through the whole Facebook and Google support literature to find out how things are working. But then like I had this theoretical knowledge, but didn't want to spend my money just for the sake of learning and spending money, luckily I had one friend that was like, probably the only guy in Croatia at that time. It was doing Facebook ads. And I said to him like, Hey, like, I just want to learn from you. Can I like, can you give me some tasks and stuff like that? Yeah. And he said like, perfect. I'm just like looking for someone who's going to do all those tasks like on a daily basis that I don't want to like, you know, doing the reports, finding the audiences, checking the competitors. And I'm like, it was a perfect way for me to see how it's actually, how it's actually working to spend some money because he was working for some other clients. So basically that was like a entrance for me in this world. I got a grasp of it like pretty quick and I realized that like this job is suited for me perfectly because I'm, I'm very detailed. I'm good with numbers. I'm trying to find some way to hack the algorithm, try to find some like shortcuts and that's like what a great media buyer needs to be. So soon after that, like I graduated, but I never worked like any day in, in like my computer science, I started freelancing with that friend of mine. Soon connected with Matt, who's my partner at the current agency. So basically I went from a freelancer to junior media buyer to senior media buyer to head of performance, currently partner at the agency. So basically my whole journey started with the same agency and I went like on the, like the lowest, lowest role to the partner at the agency and I'm here. Like how I spent $100 million, that's probably due to the fact that we work with a couple of nine figure brands that already have high budgets. They're spending on Facebook ads and it was just me who was trying to maximize the, the efficiency of those ads. Yeah. That creativity for a media buyer is super important. I worked with someone in the past as well and he was just naturally gifted when it came to buying media and the per the cost that it was, that he was providing was at least 30, 40% cheaper than anyone else at that time. And it was really exciting to see that and someone to find, like you mentioned those loopholes or not loopholes, but just the creative edge, those details matter so much, especially when you're dealing with huge numbers, like you're like you are right. Yeah, definitely. Like sometimes when I'm like looking at the ads manager, which is actually the dashboard that Facebook has for running the ads, I feel like I'm in a matrix that there are numbers running around me and I can see some things that other people not necessarily can see. So I'm definitely say that this is probably, I'm super lucky that I stumbled upon this digital marketing. Uh, although like I wasn't young when I stumbled upon it, I was like 24. So it wasn't like that. I knew what I would do like from the start when I started going on college. So I'm definitely considering myself lucky, but then on the other side, on the other side, there's like a lot of, a lot of podcasts that I was listening, a lot of literature that I went through, a lot of trials and errors that like brought me to this point that I can actually effectively scale an ad account. And you've been working with these brands and I personally haven't heard of them, but I know they're, I never heard of them before you, because I Googled them and I saw they're pretty big brands that it's hard to keep up with all of them, but did I pronounce it correctly? The Udi? Yeah, you were exact. Okay. The Udi and Vessi. So can you share what specific strategies did you use to scale them to nine figure revenues? And how do you adapt these strategies for different brands? Yeah. So that's a good question. So for example, I could speak about Udi because I was working with them for three and a half years. Although I was like an outsider, I was a freelancer that they hired. I was almost like as a part of their team, because when we started working together, they were spending maybe 2K a day on Facebook ads. And it wasn't even their like primary brands. They had some other brands that like they were prioritized. But then I saw, okay, this is an amazing product. This is a one size fits all. There's not much returns. You can do a lot of iteration with the different designs. I also realized why people are buying and that it is mostly girls that are buying like for chilly mornings or like for their camping trips for movie nights. So we started highlighting like in what situation you can use those, you can use that product. So basically I did the customer review mining. So basically I went through the existing reviews that existing customers left to understand why people are buying. And then we started highlighting that in our ads. That kind of propelled us from 2 to 5K. Then obviously I had my, at that time, like Instagram story and Instagram reels became the new asset, new placement in the ads manager. And they were like very underutilized because mostly girls were like using it. Like the CPM was cheap and the conversion rate was good if you had a good ad. So like we create a native ads that are like 9 by 16. That was like five years ago. But then we, that was like a one of the loopholes that we exploited. We got cheaper clicks, but still a strong conversion rate that again took us to the next level, let's say 20K instead. Then the COVID hits and this is a product that actually you can use at home and it's perfect for home. So during the COVID we went like from 20 to 50K just because more people were at home. Then obviously it's not me who's responsible for the growth of this brand. I was just like trying to maximize the Facebook side. Then the Davey was the founder of the brand. He got into touch. He actually got like some licensing deals. So we had a hoodie with the Disney patterns, hoodie with the Harry Potter patterns, which we tapped into the, not necessarily the audience who is interested in the oversized hoodie, but into the audience that are interested in Harry Potter, the audience interested in, I don't know, Batman or like basically those licensed deals. So that kind of propelled us to the next level. Then we started adding other products because you cannot sell the same product like 10 times. Although we had some customers that like showcased us the collection of duties. They had 10 different oversized hoodies, which was crazy to me. So you have to sell them another product. Then like, it's important how you're going to frame that in your Facebook ads. Hey, you like the comfort of duty? Here are like, I don't know, our Uggs boots or like here's the softest pillow there is. So basically we try to connect the dots and actually cross sell people. So by the time when I left, it was like, we were spending 100K a day on Facebook ads and the team was like probably 70, 80 people in-house, although when we started, it was me, Davey, who's the founder and the girl that did customer service. So that was definitely like quite a journey. So that uniqueness probably is not available in every type of brand out there. Yeah. Obviously people ask me like, what's most important when it comes to running Facebook ads? And I always tell them it's product. You need to have an edge with your product. It needs to like either be better than the competitors. For example, our product was more softer and longer and we had those licensing patterns. So it needs to be either better, it needs to save you time, save you money, or it has to have some deep, some feature that other competitors don't. That would allow you to actually spend more on your Facebook ads because you have a superior product. That's number one. If you're just selling a random stuff like that, you can drop ship from Ali Express to the States. Like you're not going to make it. Yeah. You'll get some sales, but it's not long-term. So definitely the product is most important. Honestly, depending what kind of category of products you have, we use different approaches in our ads. For example, for brands that are into clothing, into apparel or into jewelry, we mostly run catalog ads. So like you can swipe and see different products right away on the ad without actually going to the website because the most important thing there is like that the product is appealing, that it looks good. While on the other side, where we have products that are problem solving, then we use some ESL ads, we use personal story advertorials so people can identify with the problem that they potentially have. Let's say we have shoes that are helping with the plantar fasciitis, so then we create a story how one nurse or like someone else had a problem with plantar fasciitis because they're working for 12 hour shifts. So then if you're reading that and you're a nurse, then okay, that's me. Like I need this product. So basically depending on what you are selling, your approach needs to be different. Yeah. And that's what typically is done in e-commerce. Investors look at products that are out there and look for an angle where the top sellers can become better as a product and they kind of piggyback on that success. Yeah, definitely. That's 100% true. I know some people in Europe that took a product that's selling well in states. They took the same product, just name it differently. They source it from China and they're selling it and they have major success in Europe just because they took a product that they know there's a demand for and then they just localize it to the languages they are selling. So that's definitely a sign that you'll have the biggest success if you actually exploit the existing demand. If you create a product that there's no demand for and you need to educate people about it, how it's used, you're going to have a hard time to actually sell that product unless you become like an industry trailblazer. But that's like a very lengthy and very expensive process to get to that point that you're like recognized as the household brand. Marin, do you partake in coming up with ideas and investing and creating a product and marketing it? For our clients? No. My agency, yeah, I'm a media bar and I have an agency, so I run ads for other people who have e-commerce business. So basically when they're like at certain level, they reach out, Hey, we want to scale, I think you can help us. So that's where I come in and my team. On the other side, we realized that we scaled so many brands with Facebook ads and that running Facebook ads is like one of the most important things that you can leverage to scale an e-commerce brand. So we then realized, okay, why are we scaling other people's brands? Why not start our own brand? So then two years ago, we started our own brand. In our second year, we hit 15 mil. On this year, we are on a path to do 30 mil. So like we're doing, I would say extremely well. To be honest, we are a bit surprised how well we are doing. We did not expect this, but it's a combination of Facebook ads, of influencers, of a great product. For our internal brand, yes, I'm participating in that stage of finding a product, but for other clients, no, I'm just selling what they are selling on their websites. Yeah. That's good. That's good, Marin. Do you have some sort of a system or a open door policy for anyone to come to you with an idea that you partner with? I have a couple of suggestions like that. When someone launched a brand, they didn't have necessarily success, but they think it could be successful. So then I can evaluate, but truth be told, I'm a bit too busy with agency and with our brand to start a new project because like everything else in life, you need to be focused. You need to be devoted to that project. And at this point, I'm already juggling between the roles on the agency and the internal brand. So I did not take it. So the internal brands, you're capped on it. So whatever you have right now, that's where you're working. Exactly. So you're not going to start like five brands and then, okay, let's try five. Cause then the focus is divided and potentially we could not get to the level that we could get with this one. We had two other brands, but then we realized, okay, it just doesn't make sense. Let's like focus on this one. Let's go all in on this one. And it's proving to be working at the moment. And you could potentially flip them as well and then find new ones. Okay. So what advantages do you see running a boutique agency compared to larger agencies? Can you share some advantages? Yeah, definitely. So basically all, I have a brand and I know a lot of people that have brands and their main objection and potentially running, trying or working with an agency is that, hey, like I hire you, I pay you a lot of money, but then like, I'm in, I end up working with some junior media buyer because you just sell me the service, but you're actually the one that's delivering the service. So brands don't want to get their job of the running the ads outsourced to some junior, like maybe from even some other countries. So basically the approach of us having a boutique agency is that we have only three media buyers. All three are seniors and two of them I trained from scratch and they're working with me for the past four or five years. So basically when you work with us, you get a senior media buyer and there's no junior media buyers. You know that this is someone who already scaled a brand. It's not someone who doesn't know like elementary stuff, like how to take the post ID, how to put exclusion of the buyers, because that has a very big impact. And that's what a lot of these agencies are doing. Imagine like agency with 20, 30 media buyers. There's no way that anybody who's like remotely good would be like working for a salary, he would open up his own agency. So that's one thing. The other thing is we have a limited number of clients. So basically I know that none of my media buyers is over overwhelmed with the number of clients and with the number of daily optimization and the communication he needs to be doing. So even if I get inquiry, I'm not going to onboard if I don't have a slot because I don't want to grow with more people. I don't want to grow with more clients. I don't want to grow with more services. This is a sweet spot. I know what we are best at. Facebook is like our bread and butter. That's what we are best at. We know we can do Google ads. We can do TikTok ads. It's not our specialty. Like we want to deliver what we are best at. And like when you work with us, you get a specialist in that area. We are not a full service agency and I don't think there's an agency that can be superior in all of those fields. So yeah, like when you work with us, you get a specialty and you get a full dedication because like we are not just a random agency. We are extension of your team. Extension of your team. That's wonderful. It's a, that's how you can scale when you bring on an extension. Yeah, exactly. Because we are 100% focused on growing you. Can you share any particular innovation or technique that you use as a go-to when it comes to media buying that could potentially help someone? Yeah. So there are a couple of things that I could share. I could share that like most important thing when it comes to running the Facebook ad account after you have a product and like product market fit is actually your creative because even Facebook told us that creative has 56% impact on the performance of the ad. So basically that's your image or a video. So ad copy, headline testing, audience testing, those are irrelevant. And I still see people running the ads like they were running, I don't know, five years ago when you want to test like a lot of different audiences, then you want like small budgets and like incremental change, like small changes, like it's not the same. So basically you need to focus on your creatives. I also found out in a couple of tests that when it comes to video, it's super important to test the thumbnail of your video because Facebook algorithms sometimes favor certain part of the algorithm. Let's say close up of a face, close up of a product, something like weird or something, something different that catches the attention. Although most videos on unlock timeline are played on autoplay. So basically users don't even see the thumbnail necessarily, but for some reason Facebook is favoring that one. So I would say the biggest impact that you could have in your ad account is actually testing creatives. Usually I'm a fan of doing a custom review, mining to actually understand why people are buying, then testing those angles. Each angle is a new ad set and then we have four variation of each creative because that actually maximizes our chances of finding a winning creative. So when it's a video, we test first three different seconds, which is called hook. When it's an image, we test different texts on the headline or we test different layout of different colors because that way we can see, okay, this hook is working. Let's double down on that. Because for me, Facebook ads are just an assumption. You have an assumption, you test it, you get the data and then you iterate on a winner, then you double down on a winner. And that's how you're actually getting the learnings fast, getting the learnings on what's working. And that's allows you to scale because otherwise you're just like playing a lottery game and hoping that something would stick. So you need to have a hypothesis. You need to analyze the numbers and you need to double down on what's working. So when you systemize it like that, running Facebook ads seems pretty easy. Great, Marin. Thank you so much. It was wonderful speaking to you. I think you added some good value for people. The information that you shared is needed. A lot of people try to hold on to the information, but the more we share, the more we give out there, the better it is for everyone and we are part of something that is as much grander than we can visualize or see, so helping another human being, helping each other, it definitely adds a boost to what we do. Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate that. I'm used to sharing the value for free because like you would find on my Twitter or on my YouTube, pretty much I'm going into details of all the stuff that I'm running in the ad accounts, what it's working, what's not working, what are some strategies, what are some tips and tricks, because like I was the guy that like when I started, I wanted some actionable tips that I can try into my ad account right away. I had going on the conference and like just getting general advices, so that's okay, let's give back and people love that. So I'm like doing that for two years now, so I appreciate you giving the opportunity to share it on your podcast as well. My pleasure. Thank you so much, Marin, and keep in touch. Incredible.