Ep. 11: How to Use AI to Run Ads That Actually Work | Andy Franco

Ever wonder how top marketers are using AI to write ads, research competitors, and future-proof their business? In this episode, I sit down with strategic marketing consultant Andy Franco — 20+ years in the game — and he pulls back the curtain on exactly how he's doing it. This one is packed.
What You'll Learn:

How to use AI to future-proof your business before disruption hits
Andy's 12-part prompt chain for building high-converting ad creatives
Why NotebookLM is a secret weapon for capturing your clients' voice
How Perplexity Computer can reverse-engineer your competitors' entire funnel
The truth about Meta ads — and when you're ready to run them
Why Claude is Andy's go-to LLM (and what makes it different)
Angelina Shively is an AI business coach helping entrepreneurs and creators use AI tools to grow their business without the overwhelm.

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🔗 Show Notes From This Episode
– Find other products, tools, and resources mentioned in this episode
🤝 Connect With Angelina Shively
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– Connect on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/aicoachingwithangelina/

⏰ Timestamps
00:00 Welcome to the Podcast
00:32 Meet Andy Franco
01:29 Origin Story in Marketing
05:49 Entrepreneur Mindset
07:27 AI Disruption and Sora
09:16 Future Proof Your Business
10:38 Ads That Actually Work
13:35 AI Workflows for Ads
15:09 NotebookLM and Client Voice
16:33 Claude Manus and Perplexity
19:58 Reverse Engineer Competitors
21:16 AI Creative Prompt Chain
24:32 Who Andy Helps Today
25:45 Where to Find Andy
26:23 Final Thanks and Outro

Grag Andy'sFree Strategy Guide for Online Coaches & Course Creators:
The $1/Day Podcast Ad Strategy
https://dollar-a-day-strategy.surge.sh/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey friends, you're listening to the AI Entrepreneurs Podcast, where we talk tools, stories, and strategy for today's founders. I'm your host, Angelina Shively, and this show is for entrepreneurs who are curious about AI and want to know how to transform their businesses. In each episode, I share honest conversations about what's working, what's not, and the lessons learned along the way. If you're ready to use AI to save time, think bigger, and build smarter, you're in the right place. Let's go. All right, audience, I'm so glad to have you here and to be able to introduce the wonderful Andy Franco, who is a strategic marketing consultant with over 20 years of experience working with online coaches, course creators, and educators. And he helps them to get more leads, put their offers in front of the right people, and build the growth that actually sticks. So welcome to the show, Andy.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Thank you so much. I feel privileged to be here and to had you invite me to be with you. It's wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Yes. So Andy and I met in our wonderful multiply program, which we are both a part of. And he is just a rock star in ads and did some training with us. And I was like, I want to have him to just be able to share his amazing experience. So why don't you tell us a little bit about how just your career in general and how you got started in the world of marketing?

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Oh my gosh, that's opening a Pandora's box. So I it's you know, it's hard for me to believe in. You mentioned this just in the intro. I've been doing this for 20 plus years, which just seems unfathomable. But in the late 90s, my mom was a child development specialist and she worked at Children's Hospital Los Angeles for 20 plus years and decided she wanted to leave and become an entrepreneur. So in the late 90s, she started a business selling videos and training materials to colleges, universities to on on education, and like basically created a catalog of training materials for colleges, universities, training programs, early education. Very quickly went from a print catalog to an online business. So my mom started an e-commerce, B2B e-commerce in the late 90s.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Oh my gosh, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Insane. And did this all by herself, figured it out all by herself. And I was in college at that time, but I after I graduated college, she had been running this business for a couple of years and was really again seeing the opportunity, seeing the ability to reach anybody around the world and understanding how quintessentially important it was to be an online business owner. If you're gonna have an on, if you're gonna have a business, and it's much easier to sell to the world online than it is to create a print catalog.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

So she and started in like when I graduated college, again, just like most kids, still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. She at the time said, Hey, do you want to come with me? I'm going to a marketing conference. Would you like to attend with me? And I was like, sure, what the heck, why not? So I went with her to this conference, and I can't remember, I think it was in San Diego, and it was a conference called Stomper Net, which was called at the time stomping the search engines was their kind of like motif. And this was all of the gurus at the time that were really focused on SEO and like all the early, you know, creations of SEO and what that looked like, and how you know you had people building websites and selling e-commerce and doing drop shipping. This is like the early days. And I started going to these conferences. I went to this first conference, and at the end of the conference, I was like a deer in the headlights. I was like, this is the coolest thing ever, and I want to learn more. And so over the next years, I started working with her on her business, implementing all of the things that we were learning at the conference. So SEO, web design, like all creating video, and started doing this like in the early 2000s and continued to go to conferences and learning and learning and learning from again at the gurus at the time, even though a lot of the gurus that we're currently still talking about were there. But it was, it was for me, it was eye-opening. And it turned into what I do now. And so I started as a basically as a content strategist doing SEO mapping out like funnel trees based on keywords. Then I started doing Google ads and started doing web design. I was a domainer. I used to buy and sell domain names. I did tons and tons of different stuff trying to get, you know, again, at the time, you're trying to learn all of it. And over the years, I then I started a company just doing, again, doing that same thing, doing content mapping, content trees, building out content for people, working on SEO and backlinks, and then was doing some web design. And then it just has blossomed over the years in terms of starting my own businesses. And then a couple about eight years. Well, I've done consulting for large Fortune 500 companies and entertainment companies and large video game companies. And then about 10 years ago, I was running, I was hired by a company called Square Enix, which is a big video game company, and we managed a million-dollar budget for Facebook ads for a big video game that was rolling out, and we had one piece of ad creative for a million-dollar budget.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

And at the time I was like, this is insane, and people clearly have no idea what they're doing. And I had played a bit a bit around with Facebook ads and was like, this is this is like it's like it just felt like the new great wide open. So I decided to create a Facebook ad agency at the time. And uh and that's the last 10 years on and off to a certain degree, but really running ads for tons and tons of different businesses, helping them grow and helping them implement ad strategies as well as using my other background of just things that I've learned doing this for 20 years, helping businesses grow. So that's in a kind of in a nutshell.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Oh my gosh. Okay, what an amazing story. So I want to circle back to you sharing about your mom and being having her as like this entrepreneurial spirit that guided you. And so tell us a little bit about what it, I mean, what it feels like to be an entrepreneur, you know, starting these businesses. Like, how do you have the I'm just gonna call it like bravery to be like, I'm just gonna do this, you know?

SPEAKER_00 6:11

That's a great question. I think for a lot of people, either it's I think it it comes down to our comfort with the unknown and uncertainty. And I've always been somebody who's really comfortable throwing myself into chaos and thriving kind of in the unknown. Whereas, you know, there's definitely a lot of people. I when I I did some consulting at Universal for Universal Studios or the entertainment, the film aspect, and helping them market either films that were either coming to video or going into theaters. And I remember seeing just walking around the office, seeing people sitting at desks and just thinking about like people's different levels with comfort. Some people need a very steady paycheck, need to understand exactly where their dental insurance, and others don't. And I think entrepreneurs in general tend to be the people who are braver and who are willing to throw, you know, caution to the wind and to jump all in. And because it does really take a certain level of comfort being uncomfortable and then figuring out how to find comfort in the discomfort.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

I love that.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

So tell me a little bit about, you know, how I mean, we're talking because I know as an educator and working in technology, and that's kind of where my passion started, and being able to create just like videos in the classroom, something super simple. How that has shifted over time and like what you're experiencing now. And I I I want you to share a little bit about your adventures with Sora because I know that's been a very exciting journey for you to have taken and what that looks like over time, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Yeah, I think any of us, especially in the marketing space or in the business space right now, have been just completely, I would, I don't even know what the right word, maybe overwhelmed with all of the what's happening with AI and how it's disrupting specifically marketing, but businesses in general. But how it's there's so many new avenues and opportunities in the marketing space related to AI. You brought up Sora, which is an AI video generation tool that's owned by OpenAI and Chat GPT. And so I I jumped into that, I got an early access to that and jumped into it and just started learning as much as I could. And then I created a product and sold a product about how to use Sora. And it's it's but it's one of many of so many tools. And I think you know, it's like drinking out of a fire hydrant right now, trying to think about okay, what are all these opportunities and the FOMO associated with feeling like you're missing out or you're going to be left behind if you don't capitalize on all this is real right now. And I think a lot of business owners are struggling with figuring out how to learn enough, implement, but also not waste time in terms of taking you away from the core things that you do that actually allow you to grow your business.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Do you have any advice? Because I see that all the time with all of the people that I work with, that you know, it's like we get stuck almost in like this training mode where we feel like we had to take more classes and learn more about this tool and that tool. And, you know, how do you balance keeping on the forefront of things, but also implementing those strategies? If you had some magic crystal ball that you were like, hey, this is what you should do, what advice would you give?

SPEAKER_00 9:16

So I think that is a really good question. And I think again, and we're when we're talking about individual people looking at this issue, I think part of it is understanding or thinking about at least in the moment, on what for me as a business owner is generating revenue for me? What is working in this moment or what's worked in the last six months? And if you think, if I know this is working at this moment, how can AI potentially disrupt for me what's working right now, six months or a year from now? I don't even say a year from now, six months from now because everything is moving so quickly. And I would even, you know, you know, use AI to or you know, go into whatever your favorite tool is and say, hey, this is my business right now, this is what I how much revenue I do, this is my whole business process. Like, where, how, what's gonna how is my industry or my business gonna transform in the next six months? And how do I future proof myself to make sure that I don't get left behind? Because there are certain industries that are gonna get disrupted a lot more than others. And I think that understanding how to future proof yourself and let the AI reverse engineer for you how to protect yourself may actually be the best way to again use the AI and to not waste your time chasing all the shiny objects.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

That's a great idea to just take some time to do that. I love that concept. So, can you tell us a little bit? Because I'm always so curious. Ads for me, it makes me so nervous. And I'm like, oh my gosh, it feels sometimes like you're throwing money to the winds. Can you talk a little bit? Because you have a great expertise in this. If someone was just getting started with ads, like what would be your solid advice other than to go sign up for some courses with you that you might have available?

SPEAKER_00 11:03

Believe it or not, I don't even actually have any courses. I've offered courses in the past, but I don't actually have any. There are so many trainings and so many free resources and tools on YouTube and everywhere else. It's almost overwhelming. You know, I the thing about ads, specifically like meta ads, so Facebook and Instagram, is that they've gotten so complicated and so un, they were never user-friendly, but they've become so unuser-friendly now more than ever. It is so easy to just burn money. What I would say, but they've all but they're, you know, wherein that there is massive amounts of opportunity and potential if you know how to use them. Okay, but here's the caveat. You still have to have an offer that resonates, right? Because ads are just one part of the puzzle, right? You still have to have an offer that resonates with an audience that wants that. And there still has to be demand for what you're putting out there and running ads. So I would say that it ads can be an incredible tool in terms of testing things out. If you have a new offer, it can be a much faster way of testing things out or making mistakes and error, or like just figuring out what works and what doesn't work. But typically, if something won't sell organically through your email or your social, then it really won't sell through ads, right? So you have to be really careful. People who are just starting with ads, I actually, you know, believe it or not, I actually think running ads directly through the Instagram ad manager is a lot easier than the actual Facebook interface, which is just it's rocket science. I mean, it is not user-friendly, it takes a lot of reps and a lot of practice to then to want to use it, but then to actually figure out how it works correctly. To be honest, the best way is to really is to hire an agency or to hire someone to do this who has proficiency. You know, it's like in back in the day when I started in marketing, you know, I wore all the hats. But you know, things like this industry as a whole or marketing in general has become so complicated. You don't hire your plumber to be your painter, right? Like you need different disciplines with subject matter expertise in order to really take advantage. But in saying that, there still are a massive amount of opportunities with running ads if the ads are run correctly. But you do need to have a level of competency to make sure that you don't just, again, waste money.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Super fast, friend. If you're loving this episode, make sure you follow the show and leave a five-star review. And if you want help actually using AI to build content and sales, come join us inside the school community, AI Amplified Entrepreneurs. The link is in the show notes. What are some of the ways that you're utilizing AI in your expertise right now? Some of the it doesn't necessarily have to be tools, but like workflows or things that you would say have really helped you to just be able to be more productive with your time and serve more.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Sure, yeah. Again, I'm guilty of you know chasing all the shiny objects and doing all the things. I've been using, I've been using AI for ages to help with to help with ad copy. And I use it more and more now to help with ad creatives, so to actually build out ads. But again, it it's like anything, it's garbage in, garbage out. So it's a tool. So it gets me, I'll rewrite sales pages or I'll recreate ads, and it gets you, if it gets you 50% of the way there and it gives you something to work from, that's amazing. But you still have to have enough understanding of again, of persuasive sales copy, of what your audience wants, of understanding what your avatar looks like. So I use AI a lot of times to just speed up the process of helping me to understand what a client or like a client's audience, or to improve things for a client, or to lay things out, or to actually, I mean, I love the tool Notebook LM, which is a Google tool, especially for client work. I'll put basically all of the different client resources into a notebook LM. And then I actually basically create a mini brain of that client. So I can write ad copy, I understand what their voice looks like, I can map out everything that they're doing. That that would be a tool that I use a lot if you're looking for I use so many different things.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Tell me about notebooks that you put all of those resources in there, and then you know, how do you get the output to be you know helpful in the sense of you know, you have a certain number that you have a user adds, or you know, do you have it take that information and then put it somewhere else?

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Yeah, so that's a great question. So typically, if I'm using Notebook LM, I'll pull in either blog posts or podcast episodes, so voice, so that I can actually really get a sense of how that specific client speaks, their tone, their voice, the words they use. And then from that, without me having to interview them, I can map out what their voice and tone sounds like so that when we write ads, we're writing based on what their tone sounds like to try and make the copy sound as as as much like them as possible. So we'll use all the all of, for example, the blog posts and the podcast episodes to map out what they're what they speak like and they're basically avatar, and then we'll write the coffee based on what that poll what that gives us.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

That's awesome. How that's a great flow that I think that many of us could use by just even uploading our own brand information in and then being able to have conversations back and forth with that. What about if you're using, you know, do you are you like chat GPT Claude? What do you have a favorite LLM that you're using?

SPEAKER_00 16:33

Yeah, I do almost everything in Claude and Manaus. I those are I've I was a hardcore chat GPT user, but I've since migrated. I really don't even use it anymore at all. I primarily use Claude. I I like the ability to have projects in Claude. So again, similar to NoBook LM, I'll create individual projects for clients, and then I'll basically so basically have a resource repository for each individual client that we're working on. And then we'll either, you know, again, and depends on what we're doing. If we're helping with marketing strategy, if we're doing ad mapping, if we're doing content mapping, we can basically do it all within a Claude project that's that understands all the resource documents that are directly connected. And the reason I actually really like Claude is that it's Claude will push back on me and will give me suggestions. It will say, hey, no, you're overthinking this, you're making and none of not a lot of the in my experience of the other LLMs are doing that as much. Chat GPT was just is too agreeable. Um I'm also then using Manus a lot for content. For I've been building websites in MANIS. I've been again using, oh, I've also been using Perplexity Computer quite a bit lately, just in terms of mapping out so for the agents within perplexity computer, I say that 10 times fast. I've been mapping out, for example, doing reverse engineering of competitors for different industries and you letting perplexity computer map things out. So figuring out different content strategies or angles or mapping out their whole funnels.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

Can you tell me a little bit more about that? I may have a client that I'm like, oh, that would be a good use case. So I I am is honestly not familiar at all with perplexity. So do you want to maybe tell us a little bit about how that might work?

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Yeah, so perplexity computer is uh or perplexity is in is basically been like the search engine LLM, right? Like almost like a replacement of Google. But Perplexity Computer, newer feature that is it's only I think available on the more expensive paid version of Perplexity. But I've again I pay for all of these, like I'm depending on how much. Yeah, I but I I've started using it again. A lot of this, and I think for most people who are like again, deer in the headlights, chasing the signing objects, it's testing. All of this stuff is so new and it changes. You really have to test, and you know, whether you're testing out prompts or even seeing what's capable. And oftentimes I'll go into um a new tool and I'll say, Hey, can you help me map out or understand what's even possible with this tool? Or can you give me some use cases based on my industry? And then I'll let actually the tool tell me what it's good at or what's possible. I tend to, when I prompt, I I tend to not tell it, you know, what to do. I tend to tell my prompting revolves more around, hey, this is what I want to do. How do I do that? And I then I let AI tell me how to do it. I just tell it with the end result that I'm looking to for, which tends to give me better outputs. So then, for example, with computer, which is an agent that operates directly within perplexity, I'll say, Hey, I want to do XYZ. Is this something you can help me to do? Please ask me any qualifying questions to help me narrow down specifically what I'm trying to achieve. And it will outline what's possible or how, and then we'll come up with the framework through again, through prompting or through again a back and forth dialogue. And then again, it's just and then it's expanding on what the capacity is or what it's capable of. So the reverse engineering part, I was looking at, I was working with a client and I was looking at just some of their competitors, right? So I knew their website, I knew their socials, and I said, Hey, I need to do a deep dive, or I really want to do a deep dive breakdown of this competitor. And I put in the UR on the socials and I said, Can you please help me understand what's possible in terms of understanding their marketing strategy, their full funnel breakdown, everything that they're doing that is persuasive, what's working and what's not, and then help me encapsulate that and then turn that into a training document. That's what I really want to figure out is how do I basically reverse engineer this entire competitor and then breaking it into a training document that we can apply to our business? Because I knew that competitor was doing really well. And so I went back and forth with Perplexity and Computer to try and figure out what that prompt looked like. And then it went out and then did all the competitive research based on all of those parameters.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

Amazing. And that probably took your time just down to so minimal of what you had to do on the forefront, and then on the back end, you're like, okay, here's this amazing report.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

100%. And then again, these are things that either I can use in internally for me or even things that you can present to the client. I mean, that that to me is incredibly helpful, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:16

Tell us a little bit about, you know, you mentioned about the copy and like for using AI for the text, but what how are you integrating like images and things like that with your agency?

SPEAKER_00 21:29

Yeah, so this is something we're doing more and more. I so in in December when I launched my Sora, I launched a Sora training guide. I actually I built videos that I ran as my ads, and I built all the ads, the video ads, with Sora. So they were Sora's of me promoting my guide, right? So they were all the ads were Which are incredible, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

And everyone needs to run to Sora right now and search Andy Franco. Is that your username on there? What is that?

SPEAKER_00 21:58

I'm pretty sure it is. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it is.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

I will put that in the show notes just for fun because they're incredible.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it's I I again you're the wonderful thing about marketing and also AI is that you're only limited by your own creativity. You're only limited by how you know what you think you can do or what you can come up with. And that's what for me is the most fun about it. But in terms of so I have a this is a good question. I have a script. So I use like custom GPTs or gems or different things or prompts that I have for different I have different things that I use in different use cases. So one of the things that I've built out that I use when I am running, when I'm building creative for a to run ads, is I have a 12 part prompt chain that I use for that I use. And that's basically how it works. So what I'll do is I'll take a so if I'm working with this with a specific sales page, right, that I know that we're gonna run ads to, I'll take a full screen cap of the entire sales page from top to bottom. And then I'll upload that as a PDF. And then I'll start pasting in these different pre-built prompts. And the first prompt analyzes the kind of traffic that that font that that page is going to be sent to. So it's the top of funnel, middle of funnel, is it warm traffic, is it cold traffic? And then it does, then the second prompt is I'm gonna just do an assert, I'm gonna ascertain who the audience is, who we're trying to target based on its current you know, format. Then the next one is I'm gonna create the avatars that would potentially come up. And then the next prompt is I'm gonna come up with all the potential objections of why someone wouldn't be a target here. And again, so there's about 12 prompts in this. So you paste each one into the same chat and it learns from each one. So it's constantly getting smarter and understanding more and more about that product and brand. And by the time we get to the bottom, there are two paste-in prompts that one is to actually create ad copy based on all the other work that was done. And then the other one is to come up with creative image ideas for doing creative, and then one is to create video ideas, right? So those would be used in flow. I typically create all of my ad images in Gemini, so in Flow, which is nano banana 2 or Nano Banana Pro, and then Flux. And so again, it just depends that those are what I use. So I've been using so build prompt custom prompts based on the copy and the ads, and then I and then it becomes just a constant tweaking process to get it to where I want. And then I'll just keep continuing to make iterations of static creatives and videos based on again this full prompt chain.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

So typically, what is your clientele? Like are you working with celebrities, companies? What is your typical group?

SPEAKER_00 24:41

Yeah, these days I'm primarily working with established entrepreneurs who are you typically people who were working online. So business owners, course creators, online educators, coaches who have an established business who already have products that are selling. A lot of actually the people I've been working with lately are people whose marketing was working, but it's having issues, right? Like things were working really well, but what was working six months ago isn't working as well as it is right now. I'm seeing that a lot across the board recently, a lot with like email deliverability issues, a lot with ad performance that's dropped off, unclear marketing plans. So, really helping them so take a much broader picture of what's happening within their business and then trying to figure out what are the current things that are working, what are the current things that are not working, and how do we stay focused on what's working and future-proof again as AI becomes more integrated into our society and daily life? How do we really focus on what's working and how do we give you a direct path so that you're not constantly chasing shiny objects and we can actually really work on the things that are moving the needle for the business?

SPEAKER_01 25:38

We love that. I think that the our audience should definitely think about working with you, at least for sure, following you. So where can they find you on socials?

SPEAKER_00 25:49

Sure. My social is uh Mr. Andy Franco. That's just Mr. Andy Franco, which is pretty straightforward. That's my Instagram. Um my company is called LiveSurge L-I-V-E-S-U-R-G-E.com. And we again we do a ton of things. We run a lot ads for a lot of clients. Again, then we do a lot of more strategic marketing and helping them with again a broader macro picture and fixing what's working and what's not working. And that comes down, comes from everything from offer, you know, refining offers to again running ads to figuring out bigger marketing strategy, podcast episodes. Again, it's pretty much a full service breakdown.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

Awesome. All right, thank you so much for spending time with us today. And I really appreciate all the insight that you've given us. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 26:31

My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 26:33

Thanks for listening to the AI Amplified Podcast for Entrepreneurs. If you want to learn more about my work, head on over to my website at AICoaching with Angelina.com. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe and share this podcast with a friend. See you next week.