Liana Ling is the CEO of AdSkills, a premier platform providing media buying training for marketers. She has a diversified professional background, starting as legal counsel for approximately a decade before venturing into the world of digital marketing. Known for her rigorous approach to marketing, she has become a reliable source for innovative strategies, particularly in the realm of AI integration for paid advertising.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [02:34] How the Xcelerator community catalyzes transformation
- [04:04] The surprising benefits to multifaceted expertise with AI
- [07:22] Liana Ling unveils the marketing wisdom behind AdSkills
- [11:13] Unlocking the ‘Iron Triangle’ of fast, good, and cheap
- [15:56] The secret to the round robin approach for AI ad copywriting
- [18:32] Top tips on harnessing the Captions App
- [20:15] The power of integrating customer surveys into AI
- [23:46] Decoding Meta’s Strategy for ads
- [26:30] How to maximize benefits with customized AI personas
In this episode…
How can you use customer survey data and ChatGPT-4’s code interpreter feature to create ads that resonate with specific demographics? What’s the significance of metaphorical signals and how does Meta interpret them for targeting? Most importantly, how can modern AI transform marketing?
Liana Ling of AdSkills emphasizes the “iron triangle,” focusing on faster, better, and cheaper results. She presents her unique round-robin technique for ad copy creation, utilizing the styles of various famous marketers through the prompt capabilities of AI tools like ChatGPT. Additionally, Liana talks about leveraging customer survey data to create ads that deeply resonate with specific demographics.
In this episode of the Timeless Marketing Podcast, join Brian Kurtz as he features a deep dive into the world of AI-powered media buying with Liana Ling, CEO of AdSkills. Liana discusses her journey from being a lawyer to leading AdSkills and her hands-on approach to maintaining her marketing agency. She also touches on her preference for Magi.co and GPT-4 integration.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Brian Kurtz
- Brian Kurtz on LinkedIn
- Chris Mason on LinkedIn
- Liana Ling on LinkedIn
- AdSkills
- Titans Xcelerator
- Justin Brooke on LinkedIn
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by Titans Xcelerator.
Titans Xcelerator is a private mentorship program for direct response marketers.
It is one of the most giving communities and serves as the de facto board of advisors and marketing insurance policy for over 250 of the best and brightest direct response marketers, copywriters, media buyers, marketing agencies, senior executives, anyone in direct response marketing, who is committed to growing and scaling their business.
And you don’t need to spend 10s of 1000s of dollars either.
Titans Xcelerator is 1/10 of the price of most groups of its kind.
And with a private membership, you’ll receive access to the full presentation from today’s episode, along with the Q&A and discussion that followed.
As an added bonus, you’ll receive access to a vault filled with many more private calls just like this one.
The bottom line: you don’t have to grow your business alone.
If you want to see how Titans Xcelerator can help you grow and scale your specific business, go to BrianKurtz.net/help.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:03
Welcome to the Timeless Marketing Podcast with Brian Kurtz, your connection to insights from some of the top direct response marketing minds on the planet.
Brian Kurtz 0:16
Hey, it’s Brian Kurtz here, host of the Timeless Marketing Podcast. Today’s episode is a clip from one of the two-hour calls inside Titans Xcelerator, my private mentorship program for direct response marketers. Before we get to that, I have one question for you. Do you have a marketing insurance policy? If you don’t, you need one. And that’s why I created Titans Xcelerator, which is one of the most giving communities and serves as the de facto board of advisors and marketing insurance policy for over 250 of the best and brightest direct response marketers, copywriters, media buyers, marketing agencies, senior executives, anyone in direct response marketing, who is committed to growing and scaling their business, the bottom line, you don’t have to grow your business alone. And you don’t need to spend 10s of 1000s of dollars either.
Titans Xcelerator is 1/10 of the price of most groups of its kind. I know because I hosted a group that was over $20,000 a year. If you want to see how Titans Xcelerator can help you grow and scale your specific business, go to Brian kurtz.net/help. That’s B-R-I-A-N Kurtz [dot] net [forward slash] help. And with a private membership, you’ll receive access to the full presentation from today’s episode, along with the Q&A and discussion that followed. As an added bonus, you receive access to a vault filled with many more private calls just like this one. Again, if you want to see if Titans Xcelerators, a fit for you with no obligation, go to Briankurtz.net/help. That’s B-R-I-A-N Kurtz [dot] net [forward slash] help. And feel free to email me directly. I respond to every email with questions about this episode. Or just to say hi, at brian@briankurtz.net. Now onto today’s episode. Ah, How are you?
Liana Ling 2:28
Hey, I’m fantastic. Thank you for inviting me.
Brian Kurtz 2:30
I hope this call didn’t bore you and up to this point.
Liana Ling 2:34
Oh, it’s been wonderful. I love it here. You have such a wonderful community and I’m just loving all the discussion is amazing.
Brian Kurtz 2:42
Yeah, it’s the Titans Xcelerator family. So you got a taste of it. So I reached out to Justin Brooke, to AdSkills, I think on Chris Mason’s recommendation. Because Justin is someone who I’ve admired for many years as an online media buyer. And he’s a go to guy at agora for that over the years and many other people. And I said, What are you doing with AI and he said, I’m not, I’m not and I’m not doing it myself. But Leon is the person you need to talk to.
So you might want to talk about what your connection is to Justin and all of that. But I mean, Liana popped in and we brought her into the thread by email. And she said that, you know, she has so many angles on AI. But the AI and media buying thing is fascinating to me. And I think it’d be fascinating to a lot of people here, but I’m gonna let you go wherever you want to go. Liana if you have a presentation of some sort, you can share a screen and go for it. But you come highly recommended. With a lot of credibility and a lot of successes. So the Xcelerators are yours, Liana.
Liana Ling 4:04
Thank you so much, Brian. And thank you so much for having me here. I am going to share my screen. My thought was, you know, I want this to be almost like a fireside chat. So just please pepper me with questions as well. My goal here is to give you at least one thing that you can take away like right now to go, you know, do whatever you need to do if you’re growing your list writing your book, you know, whatever it is. And so let me just bring up my screen here for a second while I am and again, it’s just very let me just find the Share button here. So based on what I understood that you were really interested in is I’m going to share with you how I’m using AI with paid traffic specifically Facebook ads to basically lower the acquisition costs, increase row ads and all that and because it was in the comments if we have time, you know for Ken I’ll also quickly go through the framework of how you can write your book really easily too. And you know anything else that you guys.
One, I’m an open book. So again, I just wanted to say feel free to just literally ask me anything really, really quickly. My story with Justin Brooke is I am now the CEO of AdSkills I have actually known Justin for since I had skills started i He likes to tell everybody I started with a scholarship I did I I’m in Canada, so of course, the first thing I asked them was, hey, is there like a discount because of the you know, couldn’t conversion rate? He said, Okay, fine, we’ll do it. And that’s how I kind of got into AdSkills. And I’ve been a member there too, just like it’s my family there too. And that’s how I started to get to know Justin and become more and more and more involved in the community and just helping with the community there. And it evolved into our discussions where I acquired the majority stake in the company as of November of last year. I do have my own agency as well.
I believe it’s really important to keep my boots on the ground and stay in the trenches. I work with a handful of clients only since my main focus is on ad skills, but I also have my own agency and just really enjoy that as well. Also, just really, really quick in case you didn’t know me, I do have I just wanted to see if I still have it on the screen here. But I mean, I took it off super, really, really quick, random facts about me, if you don’t know me, I’m in Toronto, Canada, I actually started my professional life as a lawyer, I was a litigation corporate lawyer for about 10 years, I am obsessively a recovering attorney, I am obsessed with escape rooms. So we have a lot here in Toronto that love escape rooms. And I was also a concert harpist for eight years as well. So that’s sort of like weird stuff that I have.
So what I wanted to quickly talk about first before we jump in is, you know, I know that I want to talk about AI. But my approach is very results driven. So what I’m going to share with you here is what’s gotten me results, I do set aside time to play. But I don’t believe in using AI, just use AI. It’s not like when Bluetooth first came out, you have to buy Bluetooth on everything if you don’t need it, right. So I really believe in using AI as a tool. And that’s what I’m gonna be showing you here today. But we can absolutely talk about other things that I’m playing with. The other thing too, is I also don’t believe in completely getting rid of every single human. I know, we have some, you know, copywriters here and business owners and all sorts. I, we, I do hire like I have a copywriter on Tanner.
He’s amazing. But I try to keep him for the more higher strategic things and figure out what I can use AI to do some of the stuff that I you know, he’s like, probably just way too qualified to do and then use it to get information to him. So I didn’t want anybody to think oh, I’m like one of those people where it’s just get rid of all the humans and just do AI again, I believe in results. And I believe in how we can integrate it more with our human humaneness. You know, and keep that in there. So here I’m just gonna jump right in here in terms of how I’m leveraging AI and automation. And I do want to point out here that I always love talking about this is, you know, the iron triangle. This is why I love AI so much. And this is my thinking behind how I’m using it.
You know, I’m sure we’ve all heard of the iron triangle, right? We can only usually get two of these cheaper and better or cheaper and faster. Well, with AI and automation, we can now get all three of these. So I’m not only thinking and I do this in my business processes as well, I’m thinking how can I be faster? Or how can I do it cheaper? But then I’m also saying how can I do it better. And this thinking led to what I’d like to have here too. And what I hope you would come away from this is not just oh like that will give you prompts. And I’ll give you specific stuff, but also an approach so that you can apply this to any business problem that you have, or any marketing problem that you have, and then how you can incorporate AI and automation into all of that. So just kind of think of this as just an example. Especially if you’re like, oh, I don’t run meta ads, this doesn’t apply to me, this absolutely does apply to you. Because you can use the exact same way that I figured this out to your business and into your campaign.
So specifically for Facebook ads I actually took, let me just show you here just really quick on this other screen. So you can send your stand the process here, I actually went through and I mapped out. I have this I mapped out the entire process of how I optimize ads and how I’m solving these problems like how I would manually optimize an ad how I would manually test how it manually kind of gets the CPA down and figure out offers. So I mapped all of that out. And then I figured out Okay, where can I fit in here? And actually most of this decision making, if we have time, I’ll show you like I actually automate all of that with another bot in terms of rules. But this is where I started from. And then I got to thinking how Chad GPT could help me do this faster, better and cheaper. Right and and that’s and that’s what I do now and everything on this was a very complex mind map.
But now When I look at our processes, I think okay, what? Write it, draw it out whoever you can draw it out. And then I just map over, oh, here’s where I think we can automate or like, Hey, here’s where I think we can actually use AI to help things. So this is just how this came across. Something goes over here, to the general approach for Facebook ads. I discovered that when I’m, in order to break through in Facebook ads, especially if we’re sometimes you know, you just, you just spend weeks and you can’t get the CPA down and you feel like you tried everything. So I went back to basics, like what do I need to do in order to break out of this, and for me, what’s worked for me just consistently over the years is to test like a fiend. Like, if you talk to Justin, he’ll say, like, I’ve never seen anybody test as much as she does.
Because what I’ve learned over the years is I needed to set aside my ego, I need to set aside my emotions attached to creatives and copy and all of that, and just, I’m just going to test it, because what usually happens is what I thought was never going to work usually ends up working in some way. So I just wanted to kind of take all that out and figure out a way that I can implement my testing process with AI. And I found out that there were actually three steps that I was following. And I’ve been repeating this over and over again, and I’m gonna show you what we did. So the first step is to assemble. And then we do assessment, and then we do attraction. And then we kind of just cycle through each one of these. So let’s talk about these. And I’ll show you the examples in my chat GBT. How we’re doing this. So the first thing is assemble, right?
So because you need to create your ads. So I use AI to help me create designs and copy them. And in this first step, here, I’m just trying to figure out what’s actually going to work better than others, so I know which direction to go in. And then automation is where we set out just the general rules of how I’m gonna manage the ads, and then we’ll later adjust that based on performance. So let me actually, I am more than happy to share it. Let me just grab a link here. I’ll put it in the chat. I have an extensive Google doc here that I’m happy to share with everybody. So how do I generate the designs and copy, I have a couple of prompts that I wanted to share with you. But I also wanted to share how I use chat GPT, I use Chat GPT quite a bit. And I also use clode, which I’ll show you to introduce you to code in a moment too. But how I approached chat GPT included in these generative AIS is I see them as just and it’s like an assistant.
Imagine if you could create a copywriting or marketing or business assistant that just just imagine all the characteristics you would want in that. And pretty much AI could probably fulfill all of those. So I just see this in the same way as I would just give instructions to a team member. But having prompts absolutely helps, I do not believe you have to have this huge encyclopedia to try and keep track of all of them. It gives you an idea of how you can better instruct them, and gives you different ideas to have. Maybe you didn’t imagine how you could do it this way. But that’s really how I see things. The other reason too, is AI is sort of like your assistant to write everybody responds in a different way. So putting in the exact same prompts, as I’m sure some of you have found is, you know, it’s just going to give you a different answer.
So I think the most helpful thing is how we can get it to answer the way we want. So I always start with something. When I start with, when I start just assembling something, what I’ll do is I’ll just come over here, I’ll either feed the information into chat GBT. Or if you want to, you can use a plug-in or you can use anyone that you want to actually read the URL of the landing page. And the first thing I’ll do is I’ll just ask it to write the Facebook ad. That’s it. That’s just where I start first. Again, I’m not a copywriter. So I just try and do something really quick so I can get something down. And then this is what I do next. So let me just see if I can have the frameworks here, I might choose a different framework, like I just want to try something and there’s a lot that I have here.
But I would just you know, if you just want to choose three, just just go for that you can ask it to randomly choose these. So I just wanted to get started with something. So I’ll ask it to just trade some hooks, I’ll ask it to create some of the body. I do have a variety of frameworks. I have like 17 frameworks that I go through, but you can just pick one, like you just want to pick something to start off with. And especially if you’re using the advantage plus shopping campaigns, what’s really nice about those as you can, you can load I think up to 100 or more than 100 ads if you wanted to. But you can load them all up with stuff to test but what I like to test versus I like to test the messaging first I’ll use the same image and then or I’ll flip it and I’ll just test all the images and then test the copy it doesn’t matter you just pick one.
The key is that you’re just testing. So just when I’m creating it I what I want to do is I just want to create a few to start off with and then this is what really helps me out a lot is I created a round robin prompt here. And Brian’s name is not on here so maybe I should add it but I just created a round robin prompt at To give it to as many marketers and copywriters as I can. And what I do is I just put this in here, and then I ask it to rewrite the ad for me. And no kidding. Like I’ve I’ve also done this and when we get to the optimization where I’ve like just taken winning stuff, and all I’ve done is I’ve just put it through this round robin.
And you know, I’ll say like, oh, okay, like the Joe, I have like one right now we’re just all the versions of the Joe Sugarman ad, are they just just working, and I’ll even take that in, my copywriter might write something. So I’ll try his copy. And then they’ll just run it through this round robin every single time. Sometimes if I want to go crazy, I like to do all of them. Other times, I might just say choose three at random and just just give them to me, but I wanted to find copywriters and marketers that had very distinct styles. So I’m sure you could probably add to this list better than I can. But I’ve just sort of been using this list and been able to get, you know, just been able to get some pretty good results with that. So what