1306: Build a Killer Personal Brand in Business Using Meta Ads Secrets with Ben Heath

Robert Plank 0:01 Hey, we're here, and we're back on the podcast with Mr. Ben Heath from heathmedia.co.uk, they are the most sought after digital advertising agency in the UK. If your ads aren't performing, if you're looking at scale, they partner with select brands seeking extraordinary results with paid media. And Mr. Ben also has the biggest YouTube channel in the meta ad space, and he is here to talk about business, about being one of the most sought after social advertising agencies, about why perhaps sometimes businesses fail with their social media, and how to cut through the noise and focus on what really works when marketing. So Mr. Ben, glad to be speaking with you.

Ben Heath 0:42 Awesome. Thank you very much for having me excited to talk likewise.

Robert Plank 0:47 And so what's on your mind? What's your current passion and focus? What just has you so fired up lately,

Ben Heath 0:53 work wise or otherwise?

Robert Plank 0:55 I mean, your pick.

Ben Heath 1:00 I think I'm getting to the point where I'm realizing just how powerful personal brands are in conjunction with industries where you wouldn't traditionally have thought that to be the case, right? Everyone thinks about personal brands and influences in selling luxury watches or high end apparel or something like that. But in a B to B space, like I am for my own business, it hasn't really been done as much or thought of as that valuable. But the more and more I do this, the more and more we build my personal brand, the more I realize it is so powerful across the board. So I think it's an undervalued asset. So that's what's got me fired at the moment. I'm trying to build mine as fast as possible, attending a lot of clients. Look, if you could put more time and effort into this, it'll work for you.

Robert Plank 1:51 I think, I think so. And there's a lot to overcome with that whole personal brand thing, isn't there? There's like discovering your identity, and if you're an eagle maniac, then it might be natural to talk about yourself and always be on camera, but for the rest of us, there's a little bit of confidence to overcome there. And you make me think about like, when I log into YouTube, I'm not necessarily looking to learn, or I'm not saying like I want to know more about this. If I had a specific question, I'd go to Google or chat, GPT or something. But for you two, I'm just like, oh yeah, which people am I listening to today? Which personalities am I attracted to? What's Mr. Ben have to say today? And so as far as, like, getting us all on the same page, right, this term personal brand, can you like explain it to us? If someone like thinks they know what it means, but they're not quite sure what it entails. What is a personal brand?

Ben Heath 2:44 I mean, the easiest way to understand it is probably fame. But I think the difference between traditional fame and say personal brand fame is that you're going to be known within a specific industry for quite a specific thing, typically with a personal brand. Now you could say there are people with enormous personal brands that spill out of their space into sort of general culture. But I think that's what that is. There's a recognition between people in your space and the person, just in the same way that there would be recognition around a brand name or something along those lines, right? And just like with a big brand name, when you run ads for a big brand, it's much easier to generate sales. There's that trust factor, there's that recognition amongst the audience. The same happens but with people, but I think when it's a personal brand, so when there's a person involved, as opposed to you having an association with a logo, it's that much more powerful because of the connection that people are naturally much more likely to have with other people, as opposed to with just a logo,

Robert Plank 3:44 oh yeah. And, I mean, there's people from childhood where I listen to them on the radio, and then there's people, there's YouTubers where I've watched them for, you know, 2025, years, and they don't even know I exist, but I if I sometimes, uh, I don't know about you Ben, but sometimes I'll have, like, dreams about people that I like see on YouTube or know from podcasting, and it like it messes with your brain, right? Because it's like seeing a character on TV, but they're not quite that famous, but it's almost better, right? Because if there was some, like, famous actor, it's like, well, that's great for watching that TV or that movie. But what can they really do for me, when there's someone that teaches travel or real estate or, like, luxury watches or something. You're like, hey, there's, there's that, that connection, but there's also, like, learning value. And so that's a great insight. Just right off the bat there, that there's, there's still a niche, right? It's not just hey, I'm Ben and I've got like, 10 kooky hobbies. You're like, Hey, I'm in this space. I'm all about meta ads. And if you want to learn meta ads, then you might like, try to piece together all these different videos, all this advice. But you go to Mr. Ben Heath, and you'll, you'll, you know what you're getting right? You know that you have these certain beliefs, certain way of doing it. You know that you have a path that works. And if you try to piece together like five, six different people's ideas, you're like, Well, what's out of date, what conflicts you might end. More confused than when you started. And so as far as like, so what you do? So does your agency run man ads? Like, if someone comes to you and they say, Hey, I have a problem, I need you to solve it. What's the problem? What's your solution?

Ben Heath 5:14 Yeah. So what we typically do is meta ads, create, manage, optimize for clients. So Facebook ads, Instagram ads. We're gonna do the same on on Google as well. So yeah. So a lot of the clients that we get is through my personal brand. And personal having a personal brand, I think in a in a space, I was gonna say B to B, but to be honest, you could apply this across the board. It's like playing business on easy mode. It takes a lot of time, effort, resources to build it, but once you have it, it's tremendously valuable. So if my face is on a YouTube thumbnail versus someone else's, and it's a video about Facebook and Instagram advertising, the audience that recognize me is far more likely to click on it. So it's easier from step one to generate the traffic in the first place. Then when I say, Oh, by the way, in the video, if you'd like us to manage this for you, they're far more likely to do that than if they're watching a video of someone they don't know, because there's that trust factor. They've potentially seen a lot of my content. They feel confident that I at least know what I'm talking about. Then they come through and book the sales call. They're far more likely to convert because of the same things, etc, etc. So everything through that process is a lot easier, but, yeah, but that's what we do. That's how we operate,

Robert Plank 6:29 very nice. And this is always a discussion that happens, especially with the paid ad guys. It's like, how do I warm up my leads? Right? If I just run an ad one time to one YouTube video or one landing page, then there's this limited time frame of like, well, I have to convert them, and if not, they're gone forever. But then if they're your YouTube subscriber, if they're trained to watch your videos, if they like it, if you're part of their daily weekly routine, then you don't have to, like you said, you're on easy mode. You don't have to try as hard. And you can kind of be gentler with your offer, and just kind of keep at it, and then when they're ready, then they can go and choose to take that next step with you. And so as far as what you've accomplished, like, I'm, anytime I go to anyone's YouTube and it's more than 10,000 I'm like, this person's serious. I'm blown away. And when it's like 100,000 you're like, Whoa. Like, that's really great. And you're at 354,000 subscribers with almost 1000 videos. And so what's the strategy there? I mean, is there, like the keyword research, the time making and the content, the running, the ads to it, like, how do you build up a YouTube channel to that extent?

Ben Heath 7:36 So there's a few components to it. I have about a 50 person team in my business, and a business partner that allows me to focus on content creation, basically exclusively at this point, because I'm the face that drives the business, that gets the leads in. So that's one huge part to it, is I have created a system that allows me to put a lot of time, effort, focus into this. The other part, to sort of bring it back to its simplest thing, is I just try and make the best videos for my audience as possible. So like start there. So when I first started creating YouTube content, I would look at, let's say, within meta advertising, I might want to make a video on campaign objectives, right? So I would look at the people who had made videos on campaign objectives that ranked highest in YouTube, watch their videos, think, Ah, this guy did this really well. This guy did this other part really well. Why don't I try and do the best of both? No one mentioned this. Let's try and add that in. Just try and for the person who's going to be viewing it to make it as useful as possible. Now you start at the beginning, and you can't do it. You don't have the skills, but over time, you keep doing that, and you keep going, and then for me, it's just consistency, like nearly 1000 videos. We've been doing this for eight years. It's my number one focus. When I sort of wake up in the morning, it's right, what are we thinking about? So there's not, there's not anything really in the way of hacks like keyword research or anything along those lines is just what's happening in the space. What do I think would help people out the most? What are people asking for in comments? And let's just try and be as useful as possible in the videos are great. And of course, you need to learn the other skills around it, right? So you need to understand packaging. You need to understand what titles get people to click, what titles don't which thumbnails perform better than others. There are resources you can use to learn that stuff, but a lot of it comes down to experience, particularly in your niche. So like, I've done this so long now that if a new feature is released, and I know whether or not I should make a video on it, whether people are going to be interested or not, because I've just been doing it so long, I've seen what people are interested in in this space,

Robert Plank 9:40 that's great. You have that deep intuitiveness that comes from the focus and the dedication and spending the time to do it. There's the strategies and the tactics, right? The tactics are all the little things that you do, like the thumbnails, but the strategies are like, well, you kind of have enough of the repetition, and you've made enough of a habit. And. When you say, and I kind of like your little like mental workflow funnel there you say, well, there's some new feature, or there's some new news. And then it filters through, like, well, what have other people done? What are they missing out? And it seems like you say you used to, like, second guess that a lot, but now it's like, you're like, Okay, well, I'll get an understanding. But then the objective is just the best video that is possible to be as useful to people. And is there any like video in particular that you're like, really proud of? Is there one that like, really, like, blew up unexpectedly,

Ben Heath 10:34 that doesn't really happen in my space? Nothing's ever gonna go viral. It's only ever going to appeal to meta advertisers, of which there's maybe 5 million in the world, right? So I've got videos with half a million views. That's tons in that space. It's like 10% of the potential audience it could, it could possibly reach. And of course, not all of those meta advertisers are actually looking on on YouTube for how to do things, right? So my best performing video is always going to be a beginners tutorial. I do one of those every year. It's like for from the beginning, walk you through the whole process, show you how to set everything up. And like, with any form of content, you get more views. You get more engagement with beginner related stuff, because there's way more beginners and there are more experienced people. If you're using YouTube as a strategy to then convert viewers into business. Often you are going to need to have more specific stuff, more things that are tailored towards intermediates, in advance, etc, as well, because they're going to convert better. But on like the front end, in terms of getting views, they won't do as well. So most viewed videos are going to be just over half a half a million then it's my beginners tutorials.

Robert Plank 11:43 Well, that's great. And I like hearing about this, this thought process, because even, like, I'm looking at your YouTube, whenever I go to someone's YouTube, I'm like, Alright, what's the most popular videos? And when you see these, like, you know, one hour or 90 minute videos, it's like, kind of like, all of it, like, if you're a beginner to meta ads, like, you watch all this, and we'll walk you through, like, all this, this stuff, and that's amazing. And then there's also those days when you say, you know, I just feel like watching a like, a five minute or a 13 minute, or they just want something specific to inch me along, move me along. And so it seems like, in this day and age of people with their one minute tiktoks and the long form YouTube and the podcast, it seems like you have to have some variety, don't you just to have, like, different lengths, different subjects, kind of keep on cranking it out because different people want different things.

Ben Heath 12:28 Yeah. I mean, you could still succeed with one type of content, like you wouldn't have to have the variety in order to do well. You could just do something that does well enough. But when it comes to thinking of, say, length in that scenario, it's who is this aim for? So beginners, tutorial is primarily going to be aimed at people that are actively searching for how to run Facebook ads they want to learn. So they might be searching within YouTube, or they might be searching on Google, and then, you know, some of the search results are going to be YouTube videos, and then they come through that person has decided to acquire this skill, the chances are they will sit there, a lot of them for an hour, if they feel like they're getting value, and really learn a lot. And it's an amazing way of warming someone up to go from never heard of me before, they've just spent an hour 90 minutes watching a video of mine that told them the whole lot of how to get started. That's a lot of good will generated. But if I'm creating just videos that are that long, not many of my existing audience is going to watch it. The new ones that come out too much like effort, too much hard work, people who already understand the platform for those people, a 10 minute video demonstrating a new feature that just got released that they hadn't learned about, that is going to be far more appealing because they already know the beginning of stuff they don't mean to rehash that they want to know. Oh yeah, I heard about this. Like, what is that? I saw it come up? Such and Such was mentioning it. I'll check out Ben's video. I can get the details on it. So it's different content for different people. And in that specifically, you're talking about the difference between a search based viewer on YouTube, versus someone who's going to be suggested a video on YouTube.

Robert Plank 14:05 Ooh, that's a great insight that, yeah, there's the search people, and there's the suggested people. There's the newbies who are just discovering you, who want those one hour videos, and the ones that are subscribers who are just staying up to date. And if you gave them a one hour video every day, they would quit, right? They'd get just so exhausted. But that is a great first impression. So that's a great insight, because it's so easy, isn't it with content and with paid ads and all this, to get stuck in the superstition like and that's been around since the beginning, hasn't it? People saying, you know, you have to have like, five keywords in your title, or you have to have your your h2 tag has to be 24 point. It's like, is that really true? Or is that like a thing that you heard or you passed along? Does my my call to action button really have to be orange? Or is it like you've read some article and you passed it along? It seems smart. So you're like, well, kind of the the more evergreen strategy is to say, well, who's this for? And then you shape the content, as far as the length, and as far as what it is to speak to that person, give them what they want, that way that you warm them up, they listen to you, they buy from you. And as far as the content itself, like you have all this stuff to say about meta ads, is there anything in particular that you think this really makes you angry, as far as just the things that are done wrong the way meta ads are performed and taught.

Ben Heath 15:24 Yeah, a lot of things. The most obvious one is people, when they first start advertising on meta, often approach it like it's a video game. And what I mean by that is, when you play a video game, the assuming you're not playing like online against other people, the non player characters always react in the same way, and you get basically, what you get out of it is completely based on the actions that you take. And that's not how meta advertising works, because you're advertising to real people that operate in the real world. So I've had clients, for example, that sell sunglasses in the UK, and they might be annoyed that we've had bad results for a week. And I'd be like, Have you not looked outside? It's been raining heavily and really dark for the last five days? Like, of course, of course, we've had bad results. Why would you not? You wouldn't expect to sell a lot of sunglasses. I promise you, when the sun comes out, it'll have he sort of go, oh, yeah, okay. They sort of start to get that so they think it's they think it's a video game. They think that the platform owes them results. Just because they're advertising, they automatically should get customers. And what any online advertising platform is giving you is not a guarantee of leads, it's not a guarantee of sales. It's an opportunity to sell. It's an opportunity to generate leads, and that's a very different thing. So if you want to generate lots of sales, if you do want to generate lots of leads, you have to be one of the best at that within your space in order to to win an app marketplace. It's a competitive landscape. So there's just a lot of misconceptions, honestly, partly because of people like me telling them, You know, I try not to, but others tell people, load a nonsense, that it's easy and you just need to set it up this way and that sort of thing. But, yeah, those are things that I run into all the time, just like, oh, okay, it doesn't work like that.

Robert Plank 17:14 Well, it's but it's exciting. I only wish it were like that, right? This idea of like, well, I It's a video game. I push the buttons. I set it up this way, and then money comes out. And anyone I want, I can just target them, and they'll react exactly in the way that I intend them to. And I I'm always impressed with that, like, I hear that a lot from even like the YouTube people, they say, you know, they look at the comments all the time. They respond to comments. Look at comments to kind of dictate what the next YouTube video will be and so it's like it comes down to whether it's YouTube, whether it's meta ads. It's like you're dealing with people, right? And people can be unpredictable, and you make your best guess as far as the creative and the landing page and the targeting and all that. But like people like you say it might not be raining in the UK, and then the sunglasses aren't selling. So it's like, you're, you're dealing with actual human beings who are looking at these ads, who are looking at your content. And so I'm really just enjoying a lot of the these kind of just like, big ideas you have here. Mr. Ben, right? Instead of saying, like we said, instead of going for like, these finer details, you're like, Well, hey, here's the overall strategy and those little details about with the way that the rules with the ads change, or the way that my approach might change, like that that comes and goes, and that's something to still pay attention to. But there's kind of just, like, the bigger picture as far as what we're doing and what we're building. And so like, like, what is that bigger picture? You say that you are the like, you're just creating the content for this agency. There's tricky people working. And so if someone says, All right, well, I'm impressed by uh Ben's podcast content and by his YouTube content. And I want to find out more about Heath media, like, Who is this agency for? How does someone know if they're a right fit for your services?

Ben Heath 19:00 So we work with businesses across the board. I think we've had to develop a business that does that, because the nature of how people find us is through my content, and that can be big companies, small companies, selling local services, or international e commerce, like the lot. So we sort of span that across a ton of different industries when it comes to services provided, we do have minimum budget requirements, but even people believe that we have, like, a mentorship program where we can coach people on how we do what we do, who might not necessarily meet the ad spend criteria for our like, full done for you. We'll do it for you. Services so people are interested, just come through to our website, heathmedia.co.uk, and they could book free call and whether, whatever category they fall into, like my guys, will sort them out, letting them know how we can help.

Robert Plank 19:47 Very nice. So That's heathmedia.co.uk, and Ben says, Let him have the conversation with you, right him and his team. If you run an E com, a service based business, or you want better results, they can help. They. Have these done for you, services for Facebook and instant ads and Google ads. And Ben has built one of the biggest communities in the advertising space across YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And he has this amazing YouTube channel that we've just been looking at. And he loves his blue shirts, and it's a great looking YouTube channel, and it's very helpful.

Ben Heath 20:23 It's a thumbnail that's an edited trick. The top is blue because they get slightly better click through rates on the thumbnails. But I'm not always wearing a blue shirt.

Robert Plank 20:34 I thought it was some kind of subtle branding, like with the Facebook meta stuff. Zuckerberg loves blue, and there's blue everywhere. No,

Ben Heath 20:43 if I wearing like it on the thumbnail is like a red shirt, it gets less, slightly lower click through rate. So that's why they're all edited to look that way. Okay, in a blue shirt, but just a little behind the curtain thing on the YouTube side of things.

Robert Plank 20:55 Oh, that's funny. It's some photoshop magic. And so on this YouTube channel, it's at youtube.com/B, E, N, H, E, A, T, H. That's Ben Heath on YouTube. He makes Facebook ads and Instagram ads easier for business owners and marketers. And like he said, You go there and there are these, like, full on one hour, step by step, Facebook ads for beginners how to set up a Facebook business discount. There's just so many cool YouTube videos there. So if you're the kind of person that you say, Well, you know, go to YouTube before doing anything else, and I'll click that subscribe button that way, he's in my feed. But if you're serious about solving some of these problems with your businesses, if you felt the the FOMO, the fear of missing out by not writing meta ads, if you've tried meta ads with maybe some other agency, or tried it yourself and failed? Well, you need some better guidance, some better advice. It's not that meta ads don't work. Tons of businesses use them. You just aren't using the right strategy, the right approach. And the next step for you to have this conversation, you go to heathmedia.co.uk, there's a button there that says, apply here. You fill in that form, you have that phone call, you have that conversation, you discuss that situation, and you see if Ben and his team can plug in and help you out. They have spent over $100 million spent on paid ads for their clients. $400 million plus revenue generator for their clients, and 1k to $1 million plus monthly ad budgets. Manage. That's heathmedia.co.uk, but before I let you go, Mr. Ben, it's time for the scary part of the show where I try to stump you. I try to put you on the spot by asking you for a fun quote or lesson that has served you in life or in business. So what comes to mind as far as a fun sound bite quote or lesson?

Ben Heath 22:41 I'm not sure how fun it is, but it's been very useful. And for me, it's it's something I heard from Tim Ferriss. I don't believe he came up with it. I think he heard from somewhere else. I don't know where it came from, but it's one I think of all the time, and it's what Donna, what can I do that if I do well enough, will make everything else that I need to do either completely unnecessary or much easier. What's that like? One thing that's such a force multiplier that just makes everything else easier. So we started the conversation with what I'm interested in, personal brand. For me, it has been that I got a sense early on that if I became a name within this industry, I would have enough clients, enough people wanting to work with me and become clients, that I would have enough money coming in that I would then be able to sell or then be able to hire people who were brilliant to deliver the service and do all the hundreds of other things that need to be done in a business in order to make it work right. So instead of trying to spread myself so thin and juggle 19 different tasks, which I imagine people listening, there will be marketing agency owners, where it's just them or just a handful of people, that's where they'll be. I was like, if I can just get this one thing and do this well enough, everything else will be either necessary or much easier. And it turned out to be true. And I think you don't need to stop, like, I keep doing that. So I reach a new level. And I'm like, Okay, so now where I'm at right now, what's the one thing? I've all these things we could be doing here. What's the one thing? If we just nail this, everything else is going to be a lot easier.

Robert Plank 24:07 That's great. And, and like, you said, like, that's an idea a lot of people have used. And, like, I've heard that from the book, literally called The One Thing. So it's a lot of successful people apply that. And you hear about, like, Apple says our one thing is just the iPhone. We'll sell more iPhones. The rest will work out. And then, like Google in particular, when Google AdWords was, like, their only money maker for a bunch of years, right? They lost money on search, they lost money on YouTube, and they were like, hey, our one thing is now Google ads. But like, it's great to think about is, what is our one thing such that it gets the rest of the dominoes to fall. And if you are stuck on meta ads and you want Mr. Ben Heath and Heath media.co.uk to get your ads figured out, then you can then focus on whatever that one thing is, and do it great and get the traffic and attention it deserves. So Heath media.co.uk, we'll see you there. And thank you. Miss. Ben for showing up, starting the day off with me. I think we might be on different time zones, but it's beginning of the day. It's great to speak meta ads, and I'm glad that you're here. So thank you. Thanks for having me. Awesome. You.