I was a little puzzled when I saw Armand Morin had created a Facebook ad training course since I’ve often heard him say he thinks social media is a waste of time. However, I’ve learned a lot from Armand over the years going back to when I attended his first “Big Seminar” in 2002 so I decided to buy it. In the introduction, he explains why he’s been against social media in the past.
Armand thinks the way most people do it, spending hours interacting on Facebook, Twitter and Linked-In, is a waste of time for the primarily solo-entrepreneurs that’s his core audience. He designed a course that’s designed to capitalize on Facebook’s massive audience without requiring daily participation on the site.
Facebook Ad Secret Training (<–Affiliate Link) or FAST is not a comprehensive course on Facebook. It’s designed specifically to show you how to build a large list (or multiple lists) fast using Facebook fan pages and Facebook ad campaigns. It’s not loaded with free tactics. You’ll need to spend money advertising on Facebook to build these lists but you’ll learn how to do it in a way that will save you a fortune in ad dollars.
Inside Armand Morin’s FAST training – Section 1
The course consists entirely of video content divided into three sessions designed to be used over a three day period. The videos must be watched online, they aren’t downloadable. They are, however, divided into multiple ‘sub-chapters’ making it easy to pick up where you left off if you need to review something or decide not to watch an entire section in one sitting.
One thing I really like about this course is it’s designed to be interactive. You don’t go through the course as an academic exercise and then, someday, take action.
You’ll have a Facebook page and ad campaign up and running by the end of the first session. And you’ll begin building a list immediately. Not just a list of fans for brand awareness but a list you can sell to effectively. Being effective is the key because we’ve all seen tons of people on Facebook get this wrong and alienate their potential customers with marketing messages they don’t want.
In session 1, Armand talks about Facebook pages and give you an overview on how to setup an ad campaign so that the end of the session, you’ll actually setup a page and accompanying ad campaign. He goes against what a lot of other Facebook courses are teaching in terms of how to do this. He feels, I believe correctly, that too many of these courses are built around theory rather than experience. Rather than use FB ads to drive traffic to a fan page about you or your products and services, he recommends you create a fan page around an appropriate very popular topic or celebrity building a massive list which you then siphon off to your main page. He’ll also show you some variations on this theme.
After watching this session, I saw how I could use this for several of my clients and also how this could be used very effectively to market multiple products as an affiliate.
One thing Armand overlooks is how long it will take a novice to set up a profile image. He actually shows you how to do part of this in the course but I think he leaves out a couple of steps that someone without a little experience with Photoshop or a similar graphics program might not get. But don’t let that stop you. Using the examples Armand gives you, you can outsource that graphic for $5 on a site like Fivver.com.
Inside Session 2
On day 2, if you choose to do the course as it was designed, one session per day, Armand gets into much more depth with Facebook ads. He shows you more about how to use FB ads to build a list but also how to use them to market products outside of Facebook. This is where the course will really pay for itself. Armand is showing you how to slash your ad costs while also getting the maximum conversions (visitors to subscribers or visitors to customers) from your ads. Even if you’re a sharp marketer with experience with, say, Google AdWords, it would still probably take you several hundred dollars worth of trial and error before you could match Armand’s numbers. And if you’re a novice, you could potentially save thousands of dollars.
Armand goes into a LOT of detail here showing you the best type of headlines to use, the most effective images, who to target with your ads (and why). By the end of the second session, you’ll be creating a group of Facebook ads and testing them to see which is most effective. And he’ll show you how to do this with very low ad budgets while you get your feet wet.
Inside Session 3: Putting it All Together
In this session, Armand gets into a lot more detail on how to setup effective Facebook pages.
You learn how to customize your Facebook pages, add opt-in pages, video pages and much more. There are a lot of techniques and advanced strategies covered here and, again, Armand provides a lot of detail so you’re not left confused about how to make these changes.
A Facebook fan page is essentially, nothing more than a web page but Facebook does make it challenging to customize your page so it looks exactly how you want it to. Beyond that, Armand gets into several ways to monetize your Facebook page which I haven’t seen elsewhere. I’m still digging into the course and will either come back and update this page or do a follow-up post to let you know how well these strategies work when I apply them to my own pages.
Bottom Line
The value in this course is you benefit from Armand’s extensive testing. I’ve known Armand for nearly ten years. He’s a fanatical tester. He tests everything. Copy, colors, graphics, where to put the subscribe or order button, etc. He’s tested and tweaked multiple campaigns in order to put this course together and he shows you, step by step, exactly what he’s done. And he promises, that in 10 minutes or so, you can have a Facebook fan page and ad campaign up and running. After that, you can start with the advanced strategies, tweaking your ad campaigns and your Facebook fan pages.
Could you buy a book on Facebook for far less than the cost of this course? Absolutely, but the problem with print books is they usually have a lag time of 9 months to a year between when the author turns them in and when they hit the bookshelf. With something like Facebook, a year is an eternity. The strategies and tactics in Armand’s course is current and that makes it worth the price of admission. With ad campaigns, you can easily spend hundreds or thousands of dollars per month driving traffic. What Armand is presenting here will, if you follow his advice to the letter, save you 10x (or far more) what you pay for it on your ad campaigns. That’s why I bought it and I believe you should to.
Click here to visit Armand’s site. (<– Affiliate link)
Great introduction to this course, I have been tempted to buy this but I am a little sceptical, What benefit would this course have for someone looking to break in to the whole internet marketing scene? I like the idea of using facebook as a cheap alternative to Google adword campaigns.
If you could let me know what “experience” you would need to make something like this work that would be great!
Thanks,
Chris.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your comment! The benefit is a list building tactic that’s effective on Facebook. Will it be a low cost alternative to AdWords? Probably but it depends on the niche. It may convert better but it definitely is something that anyone already trying to used Facebook ads needs to know.
What the course doesn’t provide (and wasn’t intended to) is filling in the gaps a newbie might have in their IM education. You still have to know how to identify a niche, find what they want and deliver it to them via affiliate products, services or your own info products. Armand will help show you how to convert but some experience or a book or course on copywriting might be necessary to learn how to monetize that list once you build it.
Hope that helps…
I’m super skeptical on this too, where is the social proof?….Where are the testimonials from his students who have bought the course?… I would’ve bought this already but I think it’s lacking some real proof from people other than Armand himself which makes me wonder…
Hi Eric,
Most likely the reason you don’t see testimonials is since he did a video sales letter, it’s not a matter of simply pasting them in once he launched. I could be wrong, though, that’s just a guess.
I can tell you that within the course, Armand shows you exactly how he applied his strategies and tactics and shows you the actual results. And he did so building lists from scratch in categories that had nothing at all to do with his regular niches. They were just random topics.
I’ll say this about Armand. I bought my first product from him nearly 10 years ago and I was a member of his $500 a month coaching program and have attended numerous Unseminars. I’ve also had several one-on-one conversations with him. I’ve probably learned more about Internet marketing from Armand than anyone else. In that time, I’ve asked for a refund once. It was for PDF Generator and it didn’t do everything I wanted it to. I was given a prompt refund.
I’m about to propose building a list this way for one of my clients (with the understanding that it’s an experiment) but I haven’t personally used it yet. If the client allows it (many won’t for obvious reasons), I’ll blog about the results. If not, I’ll at least amend this review to share whether or not it was successful.
Thanks Bill, cleared up a few questions. This might sound a little bit cynical but surely there are only certain niches that those numbers can be achieved in? I mean achieving those numbers claimed in the time frames outlined rests on is finding the right niche. You pointed out in your review that Armand suggests creating a fan page around an appropriate very popular topic.
I certainly am interested but not for the numbers claimed but the full all round package explaining all of the different aspects of facebook marketing, from creating the page to monetizing your fans.