Most product-based business owners think they need something new to grow, a new strategy, a shiny tool, a game-changing idea. But the truth, you don't need more exciting. You need what actually works. Because the businesses that win on profit and cash flow, yeah, they've mastered the fundamentals. And this is exactly what we do inside the Inventory Genius program. We clean up your financials so that you have a clear, accurate picture of your inventory and your real margins. We fix your product mix, making sure every single SKU is actually making you money, not just creating revenue. And we build a profit plan so that you can pay off debt, generate cash, and run your business with confidence. No fluff, no guesswork, no chasing trends, just a proven system that helps product-based businesses win again when it comes to profit and it comes to cash. Because long-term success isn't flashy, it's consistent. Join us in the Inventory Genius program. Let's make your business work for you. Hey friend, welcome to the Inventory Genius podcast, where we work together here to make you an inventory genius. We talk about profit, we talk about cash flow, and we definitely talk about your paycheck. Because at the end of the day, it's all related to your inventory. Let's go. Well, hello everyone. Welcome to the Inventory Genius Podcast. I am your host, Sierra, and I know you guys have been waiting for this. I have a Facebook ads expert here today. I'm so excited because so many of you, especially those of you who have e-com stores, are looking for ways to get more people, more eyeballs on your product. And Tara Zirker's here. She is the ad expert queen. I have been highly recommended to her by people that I trust. And I'm so excited, Tara, to talk to you today about digital advertising.

Thank you, Sarah. So excited to be here.

Okay, so tell me first how you got into this. Why do you even care about Facebook and Instagram ads?

Well, I'm a marketing, you know, that was kind of always my specialty was marketing marketing. And I had a client years and years ago who I took on for social organic. And this was 15 years ago. So this is how my whole advertising journey started. And they bait and switched me. So I took on organic, and then they're like, actually, we need you to run our ads. And I got in there and figured out a system that really started to work well enough that Meta actually called me and they said, Hey, you are outperforming all of your competition. Can you share with us how you're using the platform for your clients? And so that started like a really cool relationship with Meta and you know, back before they were Meta. And the rest is history. I launched a training platform and I've had uh right now I own three companies with an advertising. So uh e-com, uh advertising agency, a training platform for business owners who are not quite spending enough that they should outsource it yet and want to learn how to do it, and then um also an agency in the brick and mortar space. So uh it's it's my whole life is advertising. Everything is ads, ads, ads. And um, and I love it.

So let's talk about the difference between Facebook and Instagram ads because I'm just curious. Yes. Um, do you typically run through Facebook and then it just show, I mean, and I don't know. So it does it just show up on Instagram? Do you run different kinds of campaigns? Talk to us a little bit about that.

Yeah, everybody says Facebook ads, right? And when you're running quote unquote Facebook ads, you are logging into Facebook, you are doing them on what looks like the back end of Facebook. And about 60 to 80 percent of your budget will automatically, if you just give Meta full control and you say, you know, run this to the right people at the right time who have the right intent, then about 60 to 80% of your budget typically gets allocated to Instagram without you doing anything. So when you're running Facebook ads, you're actually more so than anything running Instagram ads. But Facebook is uh, I mean, it is uh it is underrated. People do not realize the actual platform of Facebook, they do not realize how powerful it has become over the last couple of years. And I would say increasingly, especially on e-comm, it is becoming uh, you know, a number one platform for acquisition, hands down.

Really? That's so interesting. Okay. Yeah, I mean, you've been doing this for many years, so you've seen the evolution of things. Um tell us like from a small business perspective, should a small business owner try to run their own ads? Should they hire an ad agency? I know I've had trouble with agencies in the past, you know, because I didn't know what I was doing and I didn't know what they should be doing, and I hired them and then they didn't really do a good job, or I thought they didn't, who knows? I probably didn't even give them good info. I don't know. You know, and then I tried to dabble it in it on my own, and that was confusing. How do you know when you're ready for an agency or shouldn't you try it on your own?

Well, let me tell you this. And I have interviewed the top of the top of the top uh industry performers in so many industries at this point. And I'm gonna tell you the one thing that you know, any big e-com brand, any big um, you know, digital brand, and I will tell you the top performers will all tell you, because I've heard it a hundred times, um, I learned how to do ads, I got my account to a certain place, and then I turned it over. And they will say over and over again, same journey as you. I um, you know, started to do it myself, but it was confusing. I would hire it out, but then I have no idea if those people are doing a good job or not. It's a very difficult thing to hire out until you know how your account specifically runs. And what we always tell, and I also, you know, any bookkeeper or accountant in our um in e-commerce in digital, any anybody I come across that does accounting for these types of businesses, I will corner them uh and I will, you know, go through my list of five or ten questions with them. And I number one question I always ask is um, how much should your clients be spending before they outsource their ads? What are they wasting money on? What are their margins like? You know, I obviously no specific client information, but just kind of broadly, what are you seeing across the industry?

Yeah.

And every single time I ask this, especially on to like e-comm, they will always say, um, clients typically it doesn't make sense until they're spending about five to ten thousand a month in-house for them to outsource it. And you have to imagine because most e-com agencies that are good and know what they're doing, they are typically charging. I'm just gonna share with you the numbers, anywhere from five to ten thousand a month starting retainers. And yes, you can find people that are charging less, you absolutely can. They um may not have the experience to grow, you know, an e-com is brand is a whole different animal, right? And so you want to you want to bring this skill in-house. And as a founder, an owner, um most of your audience is kind of like founders, owners. Yes. Um, but if there's any CMOs listening in, anything like that, I would say until you're spending that level of spend in-house, I would not, I would not outsource that because you also need to develop because and everyone listening in knows that um traffic generation through ads is a huge part of most e anybody that's big in e-com, that is a major part of their strategy. Yes, you need to develop a familiarity with your account, what it's sensitive to, what it likes, what it doesn't like. If I stack up 10 client accounts right now, all next to each other, there's so much nuance between each one. That yes, while they're all kind of running on a generalized um strategy, it is so tailored and specific to them and it accounts for their nuances, their messaging, um, their particular audience. It is very nuanced. And so if I were to take the exact strategy of one and apply it to another, I can guarantee you it's not going to work as well. You need to be able to translate those nuances that you learn, and you need to be able to give a team who knows what they're doing learnings. You know, most teams will not even begin to take your account until you have some learnings on it because they want to elevate success. They do not want to spend the six months and the you know 25k in mistakes that it's going to take to really figure out your account. Now, that's not to say that 25K will be unprofitable. It'll be far less profitable though if you're hiring someone for 5K a month to spend 10K of your budget and they have to do all the learnings on it. And you will need to be patient for with somebody if you do decide that's the route. But the other thing is you will need to manage these people and these teams for the rest of your business career. And so I would much rather that you have the experience, the hands-on experience of learning how to do this, even if it's at an entry level yourself, so you can appreciate what you're outsourcing and also manage it properly.

Yeah. So that's probably why we hear this story all the time. I hired an agency, it wasn't working. It's not necessarily, I mean, I'm sure there's agencies that aren't great, but a lot of times they were probably still in learning mode and we don't know that that's the process. And so it's frustrating. I'm spending money, I'm not getting results, but they had to really build the the account from scratch. And so that's yeah, you don't have the patience. And a lot of small business owners don't have the budget, like they don't have six months of $3,000 a month to spend on experimenting. So it's nice to do that yourself.

Now you should be getting results along the way, right? But where let's say your cost per acquisition or um, you know, your CAC, let's just say you start at three or four hundred bucks to get a customer. Well, that's just where you're starting over time as you're spending that money. So a good agency or someone who kind of could guide you is going to say you've got to be experimenting along the way, not just throwing more and more money at it, hoping someday something is going to click. You say, okay, what were the learnings from that creative? What did people like? Now you go and produce another batch of creative and you get better and better and better. I will say though, like advertising, and I would love to hear your thoughts on this, Sierra, but I do think it needs to be part of everybody's eventual goal. And you probably won't start to see accelerated success in the e-comm space unless you have an army of affiliates, and we all know that is an option as well.

Yeah.

You're probably not going to see the kind of traction you want until that does get added to your mix. And that's why any brand that explodes, they explodes, they add that to their mix early and they start perfecting it, right? Because it's a it's a massive thing. And this goes beyond meta. I mean, you want to have ads on Google, you want Pinterest, you want Reddit, you want um, you want a multi-platform approach ultimately.

Yeah. So interesting. Okay. So I know that you really have a passion for helping the entrepreneur, the small business owner, figure out how to do the ads. So let's talk about that. Like what is your kind of what's your system or what's your approach to that? And is this something, because we have you have a class coming up that I want people to make sure to participate in to learn? Can they teach someone or have someone on their team do it? So could I have my store manager join me and learn that? Let's talk a little bit about what your approach is to teaching the small business owner that has a million and one things going on and how to manage their ads.

Yeah, well, and that's exactly right. A million and one things is no joke. And so over the years, I've had to figure out how to teach this fast, simple, easy. Um, our approach right now is we have, you know, our learning system, we have six levels, and each level is 22, uh 50 minutes each. So very fast and digestible. And you are launching your ads at level four. So it's very fast. You have a coach that goes with you through it with you to make sure that you are doing everything properly from the get-go. So you're tracking properly, you've got the right creative approach. Um, so it's a really hands-on, done with you program. It's also very affordable. And so um that's kind of, you know, that's I've just learned over the years. And anybody who's developing product, you learn through iteration, right? And you see how your audience is responding to it, and then you make improvements. And so I would say um Successful Ads Club is my training platform, and it is this is its seventh year, eighth year. Oh my gosh. So we've had a lot of experience. We've taught thousands of business owners how to really do this themselves and save a bundle, you know, and then really help them to get to that five to 10k a month. And then we make recommendations on where to outsource based on their industry, their niche, and we have a lot of relationships in the space. So um it's it's a wonderful way to get in there. We have a second seat with every enrollment. So if you want a VA to go through, or you're a marketing assistant, or just a second, and you know, maybe they're they're kind of the ones that are learning that skill in-house, and maybe you are learning a little bit as the owner or founder. But ultimately, I do think that you want this, you want to start with something in-house. The cool thing, and this is something that agencies won't tell you, when you are when and it there's certain niches where it does make sense to outsource earlier, right? But again, e comm, when you are spending $5,000 a month, this should not be taking you more than two, three hours per month to manage. And yeah, that is that is it's oh, that's a relief. That's great. When you get into that maintenance phase, now to learn it, to learn it, we recommend setting aside about an hour per week for eight weeks. You're gonna be totally in good shape. But to actually maintain it at that level is not very much time. Now, I want to contrast that, right? So if I've got, you know, let's just say on my agency side, some of our clients are spending 300K a month or more. At that level, I've got four or five team members each putting in 10 hours a week. So there's there's the case for when does an agency become very valuable? Um, that's where you get into very valuable, right? I mean, this is like you're you're hiring basically uh very, very deep expertise, full-time. Uh you know, you're contracting that out through an agency, but you're hiring like really significant help and really significant expertise. And then that's not to mention, you know, the layers of strategy support that we bring in that would cost thousands of dollars per hour. You know, there's just there's so much that goes into it. But when you're spending $5,000 a month, this is a few hour a month project. So easily you could have a team member um who has a little bit of capacity and maybe who loves social themselves or um just has a passion for digital marketing. That's an easy assignment to make. And we do that all the time where we help kind of guide them on here's what you should report to your founder, here's how you want to think about these metrics. And so there's a lot of guidance that we do to help even train them up to where they're developing an eye and a touch that they could then go and manage when it is time to outsource, they could manage that well.

Yeah, I love that idea of a second seat. Um, because really, as a owner, I think it's important that you know and understand at the basic level what's going on with your own business. You can't just hand the keys off to other people, like you need to know. But you don't have to be the expert yourself at everything. So having that general understanding, but then bringing alongside a team member who, like you said, has a passion for it already. Maybe they're already doing your socials or they're doing photography, or you know, they're in that marketing kind of space and letting them lean into really getting it done well. And then I love how you teach them to report back to the founder. Here's the metrics, here's the information so the founder can make decisions, but that someone else is starting to do the day-to-day. That's such a great, great method. I love that. So tell us a little bit about your class that you have coming up. What can we expect? And make sure to drop the links in the show notes for people so they can sign up.

Yes. Okay, so we have a wonderful training coming up where we're going to teach you honestly just the mistakes that people are making, you know, right now on the platform. Something that you'll want to know is that the platform changed pretty dramatically in October of 2025. So if you are running patents, um, this is kind of I'll I'll explain it in the technical terms and try and also explain what it means. But basically, we got a brand new algorithm update and it's called Andromeda. And that is kind of the in-between of where Meta is going, which is to an algorithm called Jam. All right, what does it mean? It means basically that um what it's almost as if uh meta layered onto advertising an organic algorithm. So if your ads get a lot of engagement, if they get a lot of excitement around them, then the algorithm is actually going to reward your account. And if your ads are just a little bit blah, then your uh then the algorithm will penalize your account. And so it's a crazy new system, and it is more creative hungry. So I'll just put a few little hints out there, but it wants more creative diversity, it wants um more types of creative. So, you know, we've got a whole stack that we teach you, but you want to have static ads, carousel ads, memes, gifts, uh, collages, videos, UGC. Um, you don't have to have a ton of each of those types, but if you feel like you're advertising right now and your account feels stuck, if you will just get more creative types in there, and I go into this in much more detail, but that will unstick almost any account right now. So give that a go. Um then we're going through the mistakes. You know, what are people just over spending on? When people say I spent a ton of money and it didn't work, it's often because there were things that were working, but they overspent on the things that were not working. And so I teach you exactly how to mine your account and get rid of the stuff that's not working and how to actually spend on the things that are. Um, so much of the value of a great media buyer is, and you know, that's kind of the the name we give people who basically buy ads, right? Within if you're hiring an agency or freelancer, you're essentially hiring a team of media buyers. Um the value of a great media buyer is to make sure that the spend is working at the right price. And really their whole job is to test things as quick as they can and get rid of the junk and scale. And when you think of it that way, it sounds really simple, right? There's a little bit of art, a little bit of a science that goes into how to do that. But that essentially is what you want to do, whether you're doing it yourself or you're hiring someone to do it. You want someone who will have an eye and can scale the winners and get rid of the losers because the losers are what waste all the money. So you just want to have as many winners on your account as possible. Anyways, we go into all of that inside of our free class. And so, yeah, if anybody is considering ads or wants to do them better, we'd love to have you join us.

I love that. Okay, I'm gonna put the information for that in the show notes so people can grab that link and we'll email that out to all of you who are listening and you're in the middle of something, you're driving down the road, we'll get this emailed out to you. Um, anything else people should know about ads as a small business owner?

Oh man, I have seen so many across so many industries, so many businesses just explode, blow up in the best ways, right? In the right ways. We want a business to explode from advertising. So many people have said, I wish I'd done this years earlier. And I think it's just something you don't know until until you see the power of it when it's done well. Um starting yourself, and I again I will promise you that every big player in the space and in your particular niche, they started, they did it, they figured it out, they got into the game, and even if they were hesitant, reluctant, hated it. And by the way, very, very, very few people actually hate ads once they see the power of it. I would say um most people end up obsessed, loving it, feeling almost like it's a game, because it's something that you can win at if you know the rules. And um, and in fact, I would say it's something that is inevitable that you will win at if you know the rules. It is virtually impossible to not win um unless you just don't know the rules of the game, right? And so uh you will win, it will be a huge thing. And I just, you know, I'm thinking of one of my clients who was um, she had a really great like wholesale business uh for her skincare line. And she also had like a lot of um, you know, she was doing farmers markets and things like that. And she, when she came to us, she Just said, I uh have just been giving, I may as well just send Mark Zuckerberg a check for hundreds of dollars a month, absolutely zero conversions, absolutely nothing has ever worked. But she decided to give us a try. And this is not nothing's overnight. And I think we all know that. That's part of the maturity of being business owners for a while, right? Nothing is overnight. Um, but it didn't take long before um, I think it was eight weeks into our program that she had a record, her first record. Uh well, every day was a record because she actually got her first sale, and that was like that was a record. But within a few weeks, she had 36 sales in one day. I mean, that was not an everyday thing. It took a while for that to become an everyday thing, but like tears of joy. And she then went on to build a seven-figure e-com brand. And it's just when you know the rules of whatever game you're playing, whatever industry you're inside of, um, it just becomes so much easier to win. And none of us went into business to like struggle for years and years. You want to figure out the sales piece of it, you want to figure out what's going to work for you and just start maximizing that and expanding on that and growing that. And that I've just seen over and over will yield the results that we're all looking for, right? We want to change our own lives and our families' lives and our employees' lives, and that's the road to how you do it. So I'll just everybody with that.

I love that. Well, I know that you are really good at what you do. Um, and so I'm excited to recommend you to those that are listening. And I think you gave us actually a lot of hope today because I've heard that a million times. I feel like I'm just writing a check to Facebook. I can't do it anymore. I've spent so much money. But then we're so overwhelmed with there's no new people coming to my store or walking through my doors. What do I do? Because I need more people. So I'm excited about this. I really want to emphasize what you said at the very beginning that the way you teach is bite-sized actionable steps. So just small, tiny videos, easy to watch, you digest it, you do an activity. So it's not gonna be sit down and listen to six hours of Facebook ads, you know. Like we make it super simple, easy to implement. By, I think you said video four, you can start kind of going to work on your account. So I really love that process too. I think that makes it very manageable for the small business owner. So I'm excited.

Thanks so much, Sierra. Yes, and I we love we love working with small business owners and showing them there's nothing like the freedom that will come from learning this skill set. It will follow you business to business, the rest of your business career. And I really do feel like it's being able to control your own fate. So yeah, it's a great thing.

I love it. Okay, where can people find you on socials and your website just if they want to learn a little bit more about what you do?

Yeah, our website is uh www.successfuladsclub.com. And I'm at Tara Zerker on Instagram.

Perfect. Okay, well, thanks for joining me today. We'll get this out and we'll get the links for your free class so people can learn a little bit more and they can check you out on socials. Awesome. Thank you so much. All right, thanks for tuning in today, everyone. I will see you next week. Bye for now. Hey there, friend. Okay, if you've been around me long enough, you know how important I feel it is that you have a good bookkeeper on your team. And that's why I'm really excited to welcome TO to the inventory genius world. At TO, they help businesses organize and streamline their accounting, set up smart systems, and actually use their financials to make good decisions. They give you the financial tools that you need to grow your business and remain successful. And here's what else I love about them. They have a dedicated team member that will work on cleanups. That's right. So if you have books that are a disaster, maybe you've never kept your books in the past, maybe you kept your books and your past bookkeeper did not do a very good job. Whatever the case, TO has a dedicated team member on staff that works specifically to clean up books and bring them up to date. So if this sounds like something that you'd be interested in, check out TO. The link for their information and their contact information is in the show notes.