I’ve been following Justin Brooke on Facebook for several months now. Justin is the creator if IMScalable which is a company who take care of your online ads (if you have the money).
Justin regularly serves up interesting and relevant online marketing tips mainly about Facebook marketing, usually under his Facebook page of The Traffic Strategist. He has several offerings including an inner circle club which is currently over $8000 per year so out of the reach of most small business owners.
Justin put up an offer for his Facebook Workflow Masterclass which was usually $197 but you could name your own price, so I did.
I’ll get to the good parts shortly but a few of my first impressions.
1. The audio quality is terrible in places. It actually because quite infuriating on one presentation by one of his assistants. Loud hissing and general room noise. I know it isn’t a premium product but at the $197 price point I would really expect this to have been taken care of. There is a loud bang at one point which will make your ears rattle if you have headphones on. I presume Justin hit the mike with his hand at that point. Ouch! In later videos you can hear a phone ringing and a jingle when a text message arrives.
2. Many terms such as ROI, CPA and CPC are mentioned at the start but not really explained until later if at all. If you don’t know what any of this means then you will need to do some extra research. Same for the concept of customer avatar. I only know about this because I dropped $2k for Jeff Walkers Product Launch Formula. It’s a vital part of the entire course but not explained how to arrive at this description. It’s very briefly explained but I would really have liked to see at least one or two slides on it or told where to look.
3. From the first presentation you are told you will need to use several other tools to check out what your competitors are doing as well as track your campaigns outside of Facebook. These tools run into several hundred dollars. I run my own online business so I could invest in these tools but I felt a little bit annoyed that this wasn’t explained up front before buying the course. When I sell my IT training course I explain to the students I’ll give them everything they need in the book or website but if will need to get additional software from Microsoft for example I explain this in advance.
4. You are told to post any questions or comments below one video but there is no such facility on the page. Same for downloading a Headline Swipe File which isn’t there.
5. Much of the content presumes you know your way around the ad proces already. I’ve actually been using FB ads for some time now but when Justin mentions Brand Builder Ads for example, I’ve no clue what these are and I can’t find them on FB or even after a Google search.
These are the negatives but the course is actually very good. Justins teaching style is very personable and he’s clearly spent a lot of time working in the online ads industry so his experience comes through.
The course covers a fairly broad range of subjects including:
1. Market research
2. How to use a tracking pixel and split test
3. Creating powerful Ad copy and images
4. Creating campaigns
5. Facebook reporting tools
At 4 hours 30 you have to judge for yourself if it’s good value for money. It depends on what you paid for the course and how much value you get out of the information. Retargetting is mentioned at some length however how to create a retargetting ad isn’t covered.