As someone who lives for connecting people, making the connection between consumers and brands is what Akvile DeFazio, President of social media advertising agency, AKvertise, does best. As a conversion-driven marketer, she is passionate about helping businesses expand their online visibility and reach their goals via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest Ads.
Akvile specializes in working with ecommerce brands, mobile apps, events, on-demand services, and musicians. While she has been running her advertising agency since 2014, she began her career in digital advertising in 2007. When she’s offline, she enjoys spending time at home on the central coast of California with her family, hiking, painting, reading, cooking, playing on her turntables, and sipping on a smooth cup of coffee.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you ended up writing a book?
I began working in online marketing about fourteen years ago. I worked in-house for a number of brands and across industries, ranging from outdoor sports gear and apparel ecommerce to pet health insurance, digital publications, and global marketing conferences. In 2014, I took the leap and launched my own digital advertising agency. Our focus was search engine advertising through Google and Bing and social media advertising through Facebook, Instagram, and other social ad platforms.
In 2017, we decided to specialize and pivoted our services to focus on social media advertising (paid social) as we saw an influx in demand for those services and we were more passionate about targeting audiences using interests and behaviors, rather than keywords. Search is still important, but we wanted to build something specialized. With many small businesses understanding the value of paid social, however, not having budgets large enough for us to take on for account management, we began providing more consulting services and discovered an opportunity to further help them by writing a book. I wanted to help every small business that we could, however, there wasn’t enough time in the day.
To give back to small business owners, to provide them with guidance, and to be able to still charge a very small fee for the knowledge, experience, and resources, I composed The Small Business Guide to Facebook Ads. This book easily guides small business owners on how to set up Facebook Ads campaigns, understand the metrics, and find success. It’s an easily digestible, step by step book with pro tips intermingled. While the platform continues to evolve and some of the screenshots are no longer accurate, the context of the book remains intact.
What do you hope your readers take away from this book?
Akvile DeFazio: My goal for this book was for its readers to learn how their business can benefit from using Facebook Ads to drive brand awareness, engagement, website traffic, leads, and sales. In addition, I wanted them to get a solid understanding of Facebook Business Manager, why they should use it, what the Facebook tracking Pixel is and how to implement it on their website, how to structure and set up the account, how to reach their target audience and prospective customers, how to test variables and improve performance so your budget goes further, and how to measure the success of your campaigns.
What were the top mistakes you made writing publishing your first book?
Akvile DeFazio: Self-publishing on Amazon wasn’t the most seamless or intuitive process, even after reading over documentation. The book was published on Amazon as an ebook. I used the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing platform and it seemed easy, however, it took me a couple of attempts to properly upload the PDF of my written and designed book. Overall, it took an entire weekend as my first upload didn’t display properly. It takes time for the system to upload and approve your upload, then to preview it. If it doesn’t look as you wish, you have to unpublish and then try again. I ended up finding more success in using the manual import of my ebook and images using the builder tool, rather than uploading a PDF as I had some links embedded in the ebook that were helpful resources for readers.
When will you to consider your book a success?
Akvile DeFazio: I considered it a success after getting one of my first readers to leave a positive review on Amazon. Over time, I’ve had more reviews and brands emailing me to share their feedback and gratitude. If I could help one person and their business, then their success is my success. I didn’t expect it to make me much money, but if I could help some small business owners to get started with Facebook Ads and for a very small fee, then I’m pleased. If they find success with Facebook Ads, then perhaps we can then later work together in a larger capacity to further propel their success.
“A little-known fact about Boosted Posts is that you can re-boost them and test them with various audiences. Post engagement such as reactions (Likes, Loves, etc.), comments, and shares continue to accumulate over time, making your Boosted Post increasingly more effective. Psychologically speaking, people tend to be more interested in something that they notice is popular. Posts and ads that receive high engagement will also be shown by Facebook to a bigger audience at a lower cost…”
Akvile DeFazio: Hire an editor and use a tool like Grammarly to help you with spell checking and your grammar. When writing a book, it takes time and as authors, we know how our thoughts and words flow. Having an outside perspective and a fresh set of eyes and a keen sense of editing can significantly improve your work. If you self-publish, be it on paper or via a digital ebook format, copyright your work. Find someone who can help you through the process so that your intellectual property is protected. Attorneys are able to do this or if you have a paralegal hook up, they can assist as well as they are well versed in how to accomplish these properly and understand the filing caveats that may range across mediums.
What is the one thing you wish you knew before publishing your book?
Akvile DeFazio: How much time writing a book takes and how to accomplish it. It took me some time to get into the groove, do some research, then organize my thoughts. Breaking it apart by topic or chapter with self-imposed realistic deadlines can help save you time and help you progress faster.
Akvile DeFazio: I created a separate landing page on my company website that was dedicated to my book. I briefly detailed who it is for, what they will learn, an image of the cover, and a strong call to action button where people can easily and quickly purchase my book from Amazon. In addition, I ran some Amazon Ads to promote the book once published, composed a blog post sharing details about the book and who it can benefit, shared it across my personal and business social media channels, and emailed some copies to people that would be interested in it and in return, they shared it with their networks. In addition, I mentioned it on several podcasts I had the opportunity to join as a guest. If I spoke at conferences, especially at small business events where the target audience for my book attended, I made sure to mention it at the end of my talk in case anyone would find it beneficial.
If you had the chance to start your career over again what would you do differently?
Akvile DeFazio: The only thing I would change is that I would have worked at an advertising agency before launching my own. By not working at one before and jumping into running my own, I had to learn quite a bit and think I put myself at a temporary disadvantage by not personally knowing some of the things that go on at agencies and acquiring those experience to bring to my own business. While I’m on year seven of running my ad agency, we’ve found our footing and are proud of how far we’ve come in terms of growing and also being able to successfully service our clients, it was a more challenging start than what I imagine agency owners with prior agency experience have.
Akvile DeFazio: When it comes to books, the book that has had the biggest impact on me as a business owner and what my goals are, is Paul Jarvis’ “Company of One”. I recently finished reading it and it was fantastic. It cleared a path of where I imagined my business heading down next but wasn’t sure if it was possible nor how I could accomplish it. There are ways to scale and find success instead of following traditional growth trajectory. I’ve also greatly enjoyed Tim Ferris’ “The 4-Hour Workweek” and “Contagious” by Jonah Berger. When it comes to podcasts, I enjoy “How I Built This”, “Planet Money”. “Not Bad Advice”, “The Daily”, “PermissionLESS”, and “Oversharing”.
If you only had $1000 dollars to promote a new business or new book, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
Akvile DeFazio: I would promote it using Facebook and Instagram Ads using video ads. Their ad platform has been around the longest in terms of actively used social platforms, their costs are still low, and they have the most robust targeting out of all the social media platforms. I’d use a website traffic campaign objective, target audiences that would benefit from my book, optimize for landing page views so that those that are truly interested in clicking my ads will view my book’s landing page content.
What is your favorite quote?
“Contentment is the highest gain”.
Who should we interview next and why?
Selena Vidya – She is a successful entrepreneur (in addition to being an SEO agency owner, actor, producer, ecommerce brand owner, agency business coach, and podcast host – PermissionLESS). She has vast knowledge to share, is a terrific and multi-faceted storyteller, and is well spoken. She’s put out courses, shared other entrepreneurs stories on her podcast, is a talented creative. She’s personable and very helpful.
Kirk Williams – He is a paid search agency owner called ZATO and he just published his first physical book called “Ponderings of a PPC Professional”. He is a seasoned advertiser, well-spoken, helpful to the online advertising community as he frequently speaks at conferences, online events, podcasts.
How can we get in touch with you?
Akvile DeFazio: Say hello via Twitter where I am very active at @AkvileDeFazio or through my company website AKvertise.com
Author Interview: Pemba Sherpa’s Journey to Success, Guided by Beliefs
