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Facebook Ads That Work: Visibility, Targeting and Sustainable Marketing with Natalie Alaimo

Ros: Hi everybody. Welcome back to the Travel Agent Achievers podcast. I am Ros and today I am joined by somebody who brings a refreshing blend of strategy, clarity and real results to a topic that so many travel business owners and business owners in general, struggle with. What I'm talking about is Facebook and Instagram Ads. Social Media and Natalie Alaimo she helps service based businesses, course creators and experts turn their skills into predictable, profitable revenue using smart, well structured Facebook ad systems.

Now, after managing more than $5 million in ad spend, she's seen the same pattern repeat itself over and over again. And it's not that people lack expertise. It's that their ads are sitting on top of funnels that aren't built to convert. And you guys know that I love a good system, and funnels are fantastic. So Natalie specialises in building the infrastructure behind the scenes, the messaging, the audience journey, and the systems so that your ads don't just get seen. They actually work for you. Her clients have moved from launch to launch pressure to sustainable, Evergreen sales, with many achieving three or four times return on the ad spend through strategic, consistent campaigns. She supports business owners at every stage, from hands on consulting to her, just add magic program to her support driven membership, the pay me formula. Now we all love money, so I love that the pay me formula. And what I love about her approach is that she brings everything back to one core idea that your expertise is already strong. The magic comes from getting it in front of the right people in a way that converts and this is one thing that I absolutely love as well. We want to get you as the travel professional in front of the right clients that book with you. So, Natalie, welcome to the podcast. I am so thrilled to have you here. Are you ready to dive in?

Natalie: I am. Thank you so much for having me. And what an intro.

Ros: What an intro. That's pretty cool. Now I know that you do lots of different things with a lot of different people. I am so excited about your Black Friday specials that you've got out right now, but this podcast is really to support, educate and give information to travel business owners. Can you tell us a little bit about you?

Natalie: Oh, wow, yes. In terms of what I do, my travel, I don't know so many things so

Roslyn: my Natalie, we haven't met like we haven't met, we haven't met. Okay, what you do and what drew you to helping business owners, specifically with Facebook ads, because what you do so well, you and I talk numbers. We love the data, yeah, investment, the systems. But for those that haven't met you,

Natalie: Yeah. So I am, like, considered old on the internet. I think I've been online since, like, 2000 I started my business 2008 so a very long time ago, and I was actually teaching organic Facebook and so I was teaching people how to create content, how to set up Facebook pages. And I started, like, with 15 people in a room with their laptops, and that kind of evolved, and I created an online course around it. And what was happening was I couldn't get enough people onto a webinar to sell my course, and so I started to teach myself ads. And so it was way back, so far away, like it seems like forever now, and ads have evolved so much since then, but I think the reason I started was I couldn't get enough people onto my webinar. But what I very quickly realized was the ads were just one piece, and that's why now I really like to focus on not only the ads, but your messaging and where you're leading people through because not anyone, but anyone can kind of get traffic, but it's all about getting good quality people into your business, because we just don't want a, you know, people in our business that are not going to buy, or time wasters or whatever, we want to really start attracting the right people. And so that's kind of how I started. And then I remember I had a little break from my business, and I remember years ago, my mom's like, why don't you teach people ads? And I'm like, no, no, I don't want to teach people ads. And now here I am teaching people ads and funnels. And to be honest, I love it like I love the fact that ads with the right system behind them can really just turn on. And kind of turn on that tap. So not like it'd be. It would be easy for me to say cash on demand, but we know that business takes more than just turning on a tap, and it's cash on demand that that's a nice little bro marketing kind of strategy, but it really what I like about ads and funnels and when they work together, is the time freedom. I'm not a massive content creator. I like to show up and do what I need to do online, but I don't want to be a content creator. I don't want to be an influencer. I just want to have the impact I want and do the work I love, which I think is probably, like a lot of your clients, they're in there doing it because they love helping people, you know, plan great trips and corporate stuff and all of those things. But they don't want to be a full time marketer, but they obviously we need to market 

Ros: It's a piece of the puzzle. Yeah, what you were just saying about you've been doing this since the early days of social media, really, so much has changed in social media in few years. It's very similar to the travel industry. There is always something changing. There is something evolving. You know, there's a something dramatic happens. You know, people change destinations. Things become popular at different times. And you would have certainly seen that in the social media, you know, environment as well. But I love that you say that this is a piece of the marketing puzzle. It's like one thing, one thing. Yeah, so let's have a look at, you know, something that's a little bit that matters beyond just getting eyeballs onto your business. And we were talking earlier about vanity metrics, you know, and visibility versus conversion and what ads actually can bring you now, I often have advisers that say to me, Ros I just, I just want more people to see me. I want, you know, more people to like my posts, or I want, I want more people that are going to comment, and for me, I always say to them, is that going to equal a sale? Because the goal is to have qualified visibility, working with the right people. And as as you said, as professional travel advisers, we're providing value. We have peace of mind, but we're curating experiences for our clients that create memories. Yeah, you know. So can you share an example of a client or a campaign where they were feeling as though more views weren't necessarily translating into bookings or sales, and then they shifted something and yeah,

Natalie: I think one of the biggest things that I kind of really tell my clients over and over again is it, a lot of it comes down to, and you probably do a lot of work with your clients on this as well, is really knowing who your ideal customer is, and really being able to communicate to them very clearly how you can help them, but at the same time, knowing the difference between someone who is over here dreaming about a trip to, let's say Japan, for example, and someone that is here that is ready to book and actually has The budget, they have the idea, and then they value the expertise. And I think what a lot of people are trying to do is they are trying to build this massive list, or following, of these people that may one day travel to Japan, where instead, if they focus on finding the people who know that they want to go to Japan, but they know they want to ski, they want to go in 2026 or 27 they, you know, getting really specific of who that person is and what they value and why they would work with you like, I think before the podcast, we're also talking about, you know, perhaps an older demographic that will drop 100,000 or $200,000 on An on a trip. They're not spending their time googling stuff because computers are not their natural thing, but they would 100% value someone going actually. You don't need to go here. It's actually better if you go here, and this is a great experience and do this. And so it's about understanding who it is that you want to serve. And but then I always call it, what is their trigger point, as in, what is going to get them to actually book? Yeah, and I think that's really, really key, because your clients could build this massive following of people that would never book a holiday, or they use their content for free information, but are never actually going to convert. So it's about finding the messaging that is going to lead people to convert. 

Ros: Oh, I love that. So say it's that qualified visibility.

Natalie: Yes, 100%

Ros: Your client is what makes them tick, you know, yeah, the intricacies of that and understanding that person so well. I love what you just said about and. You know the demographic that that might drop. You know your parents? My mom, I love her dearly. Every time I talk to her, and she's like, I hate my computer. I do not want to open up. I haven't looked at my emails.

Natalie: My dad was fascinated one day when I taught him how to copy and paste. He's like, wow. And I'm like, blow your mind. Clearly, the computer skills are not there,

Ros: No and we can laugh about it. But it also makes me now to like, my 11 year old son and the things like, I just honestly, I hand him the TV remote because it's just easier, isn't it? I have no idea. And I'm like, what show like? What show is that? You know, what channel is this show on? Is done and don't fool me, thanks. It works for different people, alright, but when we think about having that qualified visibility, that's super important, and the best place to start if we then have a look at paid ads, you know, we used to say it was pay to play, yeah, yeah, social media, so the paid ads and organic strategies still have to be paid. Or is there still room for having organic strategies these days?

Natalie: I think it's personal preference. I don't think you can. I think it's like everything. And, you know, ads are one piece of the puzzle. We're in an age now where people need more touch points to build that relationship, like your clients are very relationship based. So it's very different to someone buying like a widget off the internet, and they don't care who sold it. You know you need to have enough touch points for people to feel comfortable with you and want to actually invest for their holiday and know that, you know you're going to be there if the shit hits the pan. I don't know if I can say that on this podcast, but you know, all of those types of things. And so I think you can't drop organic altogether. But I don't think to be successful, we need to be a full time content creator. I think you can still have some presence organically. The other reason I love ads is like Instagram have reported that their organic reach is down 20% year on year this year. So it's even so, even if you feel like you're doing all the right things, like you might be posting stories or reels a couple of times a week. You would have noticed that maybe you used to reach 100 people, and now you're reaching 50 people. And so I think that's pretty disheartening. Like I struggle creating content. I was having conversation, we talked about your son. I might picked up my son from baseball practice, and I'm like, Oh, I just spent an hour trying to do this thing in Canberra. And he's like, Well, why didn't you just do this? You just do this? And I'm like, literally, I spent an hour, and you just told me the solution in 30 seconds. I struggle. Yeah, I so I struggle with keeping up with creating a massive amount of organic content. Adds to me a kind of like they're not set and forget, but there's, like, a lot of different principles that are really easy to follow to get good ad content out there. And so I, for me, the reason I love ads is it saves me a huge amount of time in creating organic content. And then we can also, if you but if you love creating content, that's fine, but then you can use your ads to amplify what you've already got. So I don't think it's an end or I think they can work really well together. The other thing is, some people are like, I don't want to do organic, and they just focus on ads. Other people like, I want to do both, and that's fine as well. So they work really, really well together, but they don't have to be and or they can be together.

Ros: I think that. I mean, one thing that I hear as well is that there are many travel advisors who are still nervous about spending money on ads, or they don't, they don't have a strategy around it, and so they might just go, oh, instagramrs or Facebook told me to boost this post. So, yeah, they don't know what they don't know. So when you're saying there, there's definitely work in being organic and having a paid strategy. Are there particular times? Do you think that there's a right time to move more from the organic into paid visibility? Or do you see that there are certain points throughout a customer journey that it's a great idea to add paid a page?

Natalie: That's a good question. I don't think there's. There's never a perfect time, right? What I do find in a lot of female founded businesses is they potentially wait too long. Like a lot of men are like, oh, let's just do this. And but women are like, I will do this when I have achieved this. Or ads are for only people that are making over a certain amount of money, or whatever it may be. And so that's I find, is a barrier. And also, the other thing that a lot of female founded businesses struggle with is the extra layer of visibility. So ads are obviously. You know, if you're used to posting on Instagram, and 50 people see your story, for example, and then you're going to ads and 5000 people are going to see that video, that can kind of bring up some emotions as well. But I think that the the motion I like to go with is if you deeply believe and are passionate about what you do and know that you can help people, which clearly your audience are, otherwise they wouldn't be listening, then all you're going to do is ads are going to allow you to have a bigger impact. So they're going to allow you to reach more people, to be able to help more people. And there are certain ad strategy I talk about kind of four simple ad strategies that you can use at different stages. So it could just be, if you're trying to combat the lack of organic reach on Instagram and you want to grow your overall visibility and audience, then you know, you can start with one or $2 a day, just putting some money behind a really targeted message that is calling out the specific audience that you want to talk to or then if you are struggling with keeping up with creating more and more content, I have another strategy that's about $10 a day. GST kind of throws things out where you're basically getting your best organic content, and you're putting it back in front of people, so you don't have to keep feeding the algorithm. And then one that I think everyone should do is lead gen, so generating names and email addresses of people that you will then continue to nurture, and then probably less so for your audience, is direct to sale, because you're more consultive and you want to book you could you know, to people that know, you could get people to book a discovery call. So that could be considered direct to sale. But I don't think that your audience really wants to be flashing up, you know, this cruise deal and that cruise deal, that's not the type of people that you want to deal with. 

Ros:So I think you could get started from like, dollar cruise and people just drop that by, yeah, go for it.

Natalie: Yeah, that might work. But, like, if you've got $10 a day, you could or even like $5 a day will get you started with some visibility and nurture $10 a day if you want to start generating leads. And so if I guess it, part of it becomes down to time versus money. So if you don't have a lot of time, but you do have a little bit of extra cash, then it's a great time to do ads, instead of, like me trying to figure out how to do one Canva post in an hour. So that's, that's, I think, the conversation that people need to have with themselves.

Ros: Yeah, absolutely. I mean that that is just a big light bulb moment. And where you, you say $5 a day or $10 a day. I think as business owners, there is some sort of perception that it has to be hundreds of dollars, yeah, 100% I don't have that kind of money, so there's a lot of mental blocks to hold people back from in the plunge and just putting themselves out there or trying something,

Natalie: Yeah, oh, sorry. Just gonna say, I have clients that run the same four strategies, but they're spending $200,000 a month on ads. And what I say to everyone is, start small, like $10 a day, $300 a month is a perfectly acceptable level to start to start to see some traction. And then as you get traction, and as you grow, you start investing more, like I had one lady that joined my challenge and then joined my membership. I think she's doing July I ran the challenge. She has since then spent about $1,000 on ads, but she's got 500 leads into her her database, and then she she's selling mini courses, so she's already started to sell those. But like, can you imagine, like, 500 more people in your world within two or three months for 1000 like, I know, $1,000 to some businesses is a lot, but if you were going to spend $1,000 on sponsoring an event, or, you know, where, where would that money be better suited to is, I guess, the question that people need to target it,

Ros: As we were saying right at the beginning, yeah, yeah. Understand who your ideal client is, and you're finding those people, finding those people, the right people that actually fit for your business, yeah. And they can be a lot of talk in the industry. You know, people are just wasting my time. I look at it as every lead that I get is an opportunity, delight, to connect with somebody, to build a relationship, to find out what their travel bucket list is, all of the different things. And so I think that that's also a mindset shift 100% Yeah, and when we talk about a Facebook ad strategy, it is then, you know, having those conversations, are they the right fit for your business? If you don't have that conversation, you're never going to know, no.

Natalie: And there are certain things that we can do from an ad level, in terms of copy and creative, to make sure you're going to attract more of the right people. And then that becomes a process of making sure that you're having discovery calls with people that are most likely going to. Of it. But I think the other thing is, you know, we're in business to build a profitable and sustainable business. We like Facebook ads, like, everything else you do in your business is not a get rich quick scheme. Like, every time, if you've seen people like and they, you know, within five minutes, they made a million dollars. It's like, it's all lies like that. That doesn't happen, like with anything in business, it's all about building a sustainable business that is going to sustain you. And if that means spending $300 a month to generate X amount of leads into your business, as opposed to three hours trying to create organic content that never got you any leads, then in my opinion, that's the better use of of time versus money.

Ros: Yeah, and you and I, we both love the data, so that's also really important to understand from a you know, when you're finding your ideal audience and you you're reaching out to them, and you're targeting specifics, but having the numbers behind it. So if you then say, right, I spent $300 and this is what I got from it being back and measure is really important. You don't want to just be throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping that it sticks. Actually want something that is going to provide a return on investment in sort of marketing, but whether that is a visibility thing, or whether it is driving leads, or it is getting people onto your a email nurture sequence, or into your database, or it is, there are, there are different end rules, I would say, in any of the strategies that you've spoken about. But it all comes back to targeting. 

Natalie: Yeah, it all comes back to targeting and then knowing your data and your numbers, and then optimizing. Do you know what I mean, like if you, if you end up running a campaign, you spend $500 you get three discovery calls, and they're all completely wrong, then it's like, well, we need to go back to the drawing board and be like, okay, so what happened was it that the did we target the wrong people? Did we talk to them the wrong way? You know, there's so many, so many elements along the line that the data can give us clues of to where we need to make changes. You might have done the same thing. You get three discovery calls, and you're like, Oh my God, these are my favorite people to work with, exactly. And then you're like, let's just dial this up and get more of these people in.

Ros: Yeah, got you alright. And so we're talking about targeting. Then used to be quite complicated on Facebook, find who your ideal audience is.

Natalie: Yeah, that changed 100% so particularly in the last, I would say two to three months, meta has Yeah, like really recently. So it's been coming for a while, but the biggest changes have happened in the last couple of months, meta have been investing heavily into AI and their their dream, I don't know if they'll ever get there, is you basically say hi, I'm a professional travel consultant, and I want to book Disney cruises for blah, blah, blah, blah, and it will create everything for you. I don't think we're quite there yet, but basically their intelligence system within targeting is getting very, very sophisticated, but what it means for us as people placing ads is we need to know who our customers are. We need to know the niche we want to be in, and then the ad copy and created the images or the video is what meta scans to find those audiences for us. So if you want to go like if you went general and say, Hey, I'm a travel professional, and I can help you plan your family holiday. You're going to end up with a whole random bunch of people that meta will find. But if you're like, if you want to make sure that your kids are on the slopes by 9am you know, and they have their lessons, and you can sit back and drink Saki in the hot tub all day in Japan, like that is really specifically, and meta is going to help you find those particular people. And so that's so in so it's easier on the platform, but it just forces us as business owners to really know who we're talking to, so that meta can find those people.

Ros: Yeah, helping you find them, which is, I mean, that makes all the difference. You want to get those right people, yeah. Then, you know, look at we've got some attention, and we want to convert that attention into action looking at potential lead magnets. So a lot of the advisors that I work with, I encourage them to have some sort of value that they are then showcasing to their clients as well and ready to buy leads. It's one of the things that we've spoken about. What does that actually mean, and what needs to be in place for that as to generate those kinds of leads?

Natalie: So a couple, so a few things. So firstly, it comes back to the lead magnet. Yeah, and what you're actually offering, and we spoke about briefly before, the difference between someone who is maybe one day thinking I'll travel somewhere in the world in the next 25 years, to someone who is I have a budget. I'm ready to go. I want to go to Europe, or whatever it may be. And so it's about making sure that you are your lead magnet is attracting you. The specific people who are ready to book, right? And that could be just trying to think of a good example. I've got lots of other so I'm trying to think of a travel example. So it could be, and this is a bit cheeky, maybe you wouldn't do this, but like, just got your divorce settlement ready to have a girl's trip or something like that is clearly targeting someone who is just got divorced, has a bit of cash and ready for a girls trip, yeah? As opposed to, I'm traveling at some point in some random time, or kids finally left out the home. You're ready to have that European dream, or not sure what you're going to do over the next eight weeks of school holidays, book a cruise. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's that kind of really specific measuring messaging, rather that gets someone that's actually ready to book, as opposed to, here's a packing list for when you might go to Japan one day. So it's that's the first step is making sure that you're targeting someone that is actually ready to take action. Then the second step is the email follow up. So you get them to download it, then you have to send them emails. A lot of people will be like, I got leads. And I'm like, Are you sending them emails? And they're like, No, I didn't send them any emails. So it's the follow up sequence. And I always like to get people to because HubSpot did a study that the most time people buy is in the first 14 days of being on your email list. So obviously, people aren't necessarily just checking out for a holiday. It's a consultative service, so but within that 14 days, you need to be in communication with them via email. You could also include like SMSs and bonduros and a whole lot of other things, but I would be offering to get them on a discovery call multiple times. Do you know what I mean? So you want them to take action to move towards booking that holiday, or it could even be you have them in your email marketing system, but you also send them a personal outreach email. Do you know what I mean? It's making sure that within that time you're getting contact with them. We did also speak about just before we recorded like you could also, if you wanted to do like a webinar where it was like a Disney planning trip or something. And so then, from the PDF, your follow up is to get people into that webinar, and so that could be another step to move them closer to booking a call with you as well. So it's not just the PDF and it's not just the ad. So it's making sure we're talking to the right people. Our ad copy calls out those people. We are following them up, and we're asking them to take some action within a certain time period. And then what you probably also teach anyway, is then you're putting them into your regular nurture email sequence, yeah. And I also think it's important that you are regularly asking people to take the action you want them to take, which may be visit, go to the webinar or book a call or send an email. Because we think that we get, I don't know, do we feel like we're too polite or too salesy if we keep asking people the same thing? But you know yourself, you might see your email. You might scan it, you might not even think about it. But we want to stay top of mind. We want to make sure we've got all these touch points, and people will often forget how they can work with you. We're leaving it up to them to make the decision where, if you have a simple PS, remember, if you're thinking of going to Europe in 2027 click here and book a time in my calendar like it's just a nice reminder. It's not overly pushy, but it dramatically makes a difference to how many people are going to book in.

Ros: It's fascinating. You saying because I have a lot of advisors that will send out an email about a group trip that they've put on or they're planning for in 2027 and they send it once,

Natalie: Yep, and then it's like,

Ros: but then I also have advisors that say, Yeah, but I now feel as though I'm talking about it every second day. So when it comes to having an organic strategy on Facebook or a paid strategy, that's the other part of it that I have advised to say, oh, but if I post about it like three times this week, it's too much and it they say it's the same thing. But I mean my rebuttal to that is, yeah,

Natalie: But not everybody's gonna see it, yeah, like I'm you mentioned at te beginning, like I'm in Black Friday, and so when I'm in a promotional period, I'll post. So I'm posting every day on my feed for like two weeks, and then I'm doing a story every day. I'm literally talking about the same thing in a different way every single day, like the

Ros: I haven't been on social media for a few days, so keep going. And when I'm on there, yeah, and

Natalie: When you'll see it, yeah, do you know what I mean? It's like, I think. And again, that's a mindset thing where we're like, oh, but what if they see it again? It's like, there used to be a study where the new people that sold movies worked out that people need. To see the movie promotion seven times before they make a decision. This was like way back in before the internet. So you can imagine now where we're bombarded with 1000s of messages every single day, and most people like I sent the email once it didn't work. If they don't want to see it, they'll unsubscribe. Do you know what I mean? I think I always say to people, send more, one more email and you feel uncomfortable that you feel comfortable with and post about it a few more times. The reality is, most people won't see it. They won't notice it, and then you will find, once you you know, close doors or the offer to end, people like, Oh, I didn't see that. And you're like, I posted about it 15,000 times. So true, yeah, so true, yeah. And the other thing is, if people feel bad about it, this is another way you can use ads. Is you can retarget anyone that's visited your website or interacted with your Instagram or watched a video or your Facebook page. So it could just be you have that group holiday, for example. Then you create five or six different ads that are talking about the inclusions, the itinerary, the dates, you know, the bits and pieces of it, and then you just run those ads so then you don't feel like you're posting about it all the time, because you've set it up once, and the ads are just running in the background. Oh, my God, that's another that's another thing you could do.

Ros: I love that. I'm also thinking about the movies that have been done recently, and when, when you're talking about seeing things over and over again, or we feel as though it's too many times to be honest with you, I saw one piece of news this morning that Devil Wears Prada have just dropped their very first release of number Two, The Devil Wears predators. I'm gonna see it. I mean anything, but I was like, I just love it, so I'm gonna say so I look at that. And I think, from as a business owner, Apple business owner, you know, have something that's captivating and as the right message to the right person, because they will see it and they will want it, but if you continue to talk about it, yeah, messaging becomes stronger. You become more well known. That visibility all comes into play. And there is the organic as well as the paid strategy. Well, aren't going to see everything like, I don't know. You know that trailer could have been out for weeks?

Natalie: Yeah, who knows. And I think also,
for your clients, you're not like we're all competing for everyone's attention, regardless of our business, so we're not necessarily just competing against other people. But I think a big part of what you need to have in the messaging is why I would use a travel consultant, and why you're the best one. And so I don't like to be kind of negative in marketing, but it is a big reality of what can happen when people try and sort out their own stuff, and then they're stuck in wherever for whatever. But explaining the process of why you would use a travel consultant and how, you know, even behind the scenes stuff, it's like, oh, here I plan this trip. And, you know, this took me 20 hours. Like, I think that's another thing. Like, there could be, there's heaps of busy people that don't have 20 hours to plan a trip. So that's why they would. You know, there's so many little snippets of content that makes you stand out amongst other people, not only within your industry, but within eyeballs in general that can be used both organically and in ads.

Ros: I find that really interesting hearing you say that, because as somebody who's in it all day every day, it's just something that comes naturally to me, like we're talking about. You know, for me, I go, Well, yeah, it takes 20 hours to put together this fit trip. That's just normal for me. But hearing you say, That's massive, that's right, who has 20 hours? And so I think about it, and I'm like, Oh, wow, that's a really take for you to say that where it's just so normal, right from what we do in travel, there's a lot of time, a lot of thought, a lot of care, a lot of education, talking to the right suppliers, understanding and meeting hoteliers. I'm about to head over to Europe for two weeks, specifically so that I can see hundreds of general managers from hotels all in the one place at the one time to meet all their marketing people, and what's called a DMC and the wholesalers and suppliers, I want to see all of them in a concentrated period of time, strengthen and build those relationships. Yeah, I know my clients, they don't have those relationships. It's something that is absolutely crucial and key to my business. And hearing you say those sorts of things, I'm like, talk about all that sort of.

Natalie: Yeah, that's massive. Do you want to like, for you to be able to share how you know, 20, however, many of the the best hotel managers and marketing people in the world, all in one place, like, just like that connection. Do you know what I mean? Like, before the podcast we're talking about? AI, I tried to plan a road trip. In the end, I threw it out the window because chat GP had all the all the the hours wrong. I'm like, Do you know what I mean? It's like, it's, I think we get too close to our own stuff. And as a professional, you think, oh, anyone can do this, but people can't do it like we don't know how to find, not only the best flights. And you know, should you fly into this airport or this airport, or do you want to do this? I remember one of the best trips we've ever had was a travel agent organized. We went and stayed at this villa in Tuscany. We had all these cooking classes. My husband and I were, yeah, we were married at that stage, we're drinking all of this wine, and we're like, crap, this bill is going to be huge at the end. And it was all included. It was like, it was like, it's such a fabulous experience, where we and they picked us up and they drove us there. And you know what I mean? It's those things where it was like, Oh, you would much prefer this. And I remember we arrived into London, and our our room was magically ready because they'd organized that for us, and we could have a shower before. And it's those little things that you don't think of, but once you have it, you so appreciate that moment, and that's the that's the value that you offer your clients, and that's the stuff that you need to share with people.

Ros: That's the stuff to share, which for me, hearing you say those things that is all very natural and normal for me, everyone my clients, is treated like that. Very important person to have those experiences and we understand and as an advisor, and the professionals that are listening to this as well, they know their clients inside. Yeah, they know if they're wine drinkers or Yeah, want to arrive and get straight into their hotel room at 6pm in the morning after that flight from Australia or wherever it might be. They know and understand that, but hearing you say that you value that. Oh, it's massive. So thank you for sharing that. Yeah, validates, but it reminds me that not everybody does these sorts of things. 100% value that we're providing to you, the client, to make sure you have incredible experience, because we want you to walk away, you know, having those and having an experience that you want to tell everybody else about. So then it's that memory for you that's and you will, I mean, you just said that that was before you got married. You think so this is a long time, long time ago. Yeah, you remember? I remember, yeah. So that is yeah. Thank you for sharing that. 

Natalie: Yeah. And it's such, I think it's such a Yeah, I think, like we were talking before, how we get too close to our own stuff, and we don't value enough what we do on what we offer, and it is hard because we feel like we don't want to self promote, but they're the things that our clients really want to see.

Ros: Yeah, they do, you know what I mean? Like, they can't read our minds. No, that's the other thing. It'd be nice if they could. They can't see what we know and what we see. They don't have the relationships that we know. Yeah, I absolutely hear you with that. That's awesome. So how can travel advisors measure success? Or what do you believe that they can measure success beyond just those immediate bookings we were talking about relationships, so maybe things like brand recognition or email growth. So do you see that way to build more from Facebook ads and Instagram ads or social?

Natalie: I think that, I think the first metric would be so visibility is one of those things that's a little bit hard to measure. And I don't think that we should be measuring followers as kind of, necessarily a metric of success in terms of, you know we were talking before, before we started, you might be better to have 50 clients that spend $100,000 every year, as opposed to 5000 that spend 5000 every five years, or whatever. So I think I would be looking at overall like email growth. I think we don't, you know, we don't own Facebook. We should have bought shares years ago, but we don't. And so I think a value of a sustainable business is building that email list and building those relationships with people. So I would do that as a initial measure of success, like growing that list. And then I think the next level would be those discovery calls. And then I think you would have to then the third one would be actually converting into clients, yeah, into the sales. And I think, though, with your with your industry in general, the the time period is potentially longer than, say, you know, you're buying a widget, you see it online, and you're going to buy it. So you just have to be mindful that if this is a strategy you want to go down, it's a long term growth strategy. It's not a quick fix, kind of, you know, get me through the next eight weeks.

Ros: And that's possible,though, like, if somebody's running an event or, like, a cruise or something, yeah, Facebook ad strategy could, potentially, yeah, that could. Work. Do you mean like a to be like, a long term strategy? 

Natalie:No. So Facebook is favoring more evergreen campaigns. So like, if you create, say, an ever webinar, so like, always on campaigns. So I think there's certain things that you should always have in your business. Like, you should always be generating leads, which then lead people to book discovery calls, if you're doing events, live events, that's kind of a completely different, not different strategy, but it's more of a On, Off type thing, as in the events. Now, I always make people I always believe that people need to start marketing it a lot earlier than they think they should, particularly if it's face to face, like if people are getting out of their house and going somewhere, you need longer than you think. If you're doing group holidays and those types of things, I would be looking at doing something like a PDF into an information session so that you still have their details, even if they don't attend the information session, but then you can keep following them up. So I think the ads are a great way of getting people into your world. And then there's different strategies you can use to nurture and keep top of mind, but then you can't forget the other fundamentals of business, of sales calls and emails and and those types of things. Like, it's not it's not an only solution. It's part of the overall solution, yeah, yeah. It's a component. It's a it's a component of it, yeah, yeah,

Ros:  Yeah, all it's all pieces to the puzzle. Yeah, all ways up. And that's one thing. As small business owners, I know everybody out there is time poor. They're, you know, trying to feel as though they've got to do all of the different things. Yeah, one thing that I love about you and the work that you do is you've got a brilliant five day Facebook ads challenge. Can you share? You know, what can people expect from that? Or and what is it?

Natalie: So, basically, it's a challenge that you can either get the recordings on, or I run it live a few times a year. And basically you come in, most people have either never run ads before or dabbled a little bit with ads, and within five days, they have set up an ad and have started to generate leads. So I have people that are very green, they set up their whole ad account. I take them through everything, step by step. So this is where you click, and this is what you do, and it's exciting like and then so By day three, your ads alive. Day two, we create your ad copy and images. Day three, your ads are alive. Ads alive. And then day four and five, we focus on what happens after you get the lead, which like we were talking about how to get people to book a discovery call. And then day five is all about the metrics. So when you actually see the ads, because that's another thing, people start running ads and they're like, I don't know what to do. Is this good? Is this bad? Is this cost per lead, whatever it is. And so I show you how to read the metrics and what it means and what is good and what is bad, and then also how that fits into what you're trying to achieve. So if it's a discovery call, you know, you might find that you pay $5 of cost per lead, and no one books a discovery call, but you pay $10 because you've tweaked things, and every not everyone. Numbers aren't like that, but then more people book a discovery call, so you're better to spend $10 per lead to get the right audience that are going to book a discovery call. So we talk about all of that in in helping you understand the data that you're getting. So you'll get your ads live, and then you'll understand what's running and why they're running.

Ros Get it basically jump in.

Natalie: You know exactly how to get a lead ad all set up.

Ros: You get it all set up. It's all there. You can do it over the five days. You could probably do it, if you've got the recordings. You could do it sooner than that, couldn't you?

Natalie: Oh, each each day is, like, I'm very short to the point, yeah, so you could binge it in a couple of hours. I love that. I love it. You can literally go and get ads up and running like, obviously, when we like, we run it live. It's over five days. But otherwise, if you buy the recording, you can just go in and, bam, bam, bam. Get it done.

Ros: Just get it done. Jump in. Just get it done. Now, if somebody's listening to this podcast and they're sitting on the fence about ads, what final encouragement would you give them?

Natalie: Oh, final encouragement. Um, just do it. I think you never the fear doesn't go away. Okay, do you know what I mean? Like, I, I know I often forget, because I, when I started, I started with $100 a month, and I scaled very quickly up to, like, $4,000 a month when I was selling my course. And then, like even now, I spend between one and $2,000 a month on ads and it all. We all have to start somewhere. We all start at zero, and it's the sooner you start, the better. Like no one's ever said to me, I wish I posted more on Instagram. But people are like, I wish I started generating leads, or I wish I started growing my email. So just feel the fear and do it anyway.

Ro: I know just jump just, yeah, like, what have you got to lose? And I love that your challenge is low cost. It gives people the opportunity to jump in, test it out, try it, give it a go. But you also have other programs. Can people, like, actually work with you to get you to, like, walk them through?

Natalie: Through? Yeah. So the other two things I have is I've got a membership site called the pay me formula where people can join, they'll get all the training, and we actually have almost weekly calls to get jump on and get support. And the reason I do that is ads can be complicated for people. They get caught up in tech and those types of things, but I've specifically kept a small group coaching like you're never going to be on a call with 100 people and never get your questions answered, so you can share your screen and all of those types of things. We also have a support forum, so I've got that, and then for people that want a little bit more hand holding, I have another program called just add magic, which is like a done with you. So we set up the ads, and then we consult on the funnel and the messaging and all of those types of things, one to one, and we kind of help you go through the whole process.

Ros: Oh, I love that. Well, I know that there are people in our industry that are going to be reaching out to you, and I certainly hope, in the first instance, get into the challenge test and try it, and then take it from there, because it is an easy way to take action. Yeah, do it anyway. Where can our listeners connect with you? 

Natalie: Nat so on my website, at Natalie alimo.com, or on Instagram, I'm on Natalie underscore a limo, perfect.

Ros: Well, we will link to all of that in the show notes and resources for everybody, including a link to the five day challenge. So don't worry, you're not going to miss out. Yeah, I have all of the details there. Thank you so much for being here, Nat. I really appreciate you your time, and I cannot wait to do more work with you in 2026 and have you hopefully inside the achievers mastermind and talk more about this. Like, I love getting into the night. Me too. Let's do this 2026 is going to be an incredible year, but thank you for joining me today.

Natalie: Thank you so much for having me. Alright.

Ros: Everybody like, wow, my mind is absolutely blown. It comes back to a lot of the things that we talk about here at travel agent achievers, understanding who your ideal audience is, work on that targeting and your messaging and sharing and showcasing the value that you provide out to the wider world. Get the clients that you love to work with. So I hope you've enjoyed this episode today. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. Download the resources that we have access to and certainly jump in and test out Facebook ads. Reach out to Nat, let her know that you've listened to the podcast and what you're actually doing to integrate a paid Facebook ad strategy into your marketing mix. Thanks so much for listening. I look forward to catching up with you, seeing you live and in person somewhere in the world. Take care and bye for now, everyone.