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If you’ve had a weird interaction with a Facebook Marketing Expert (FME), you’re not alone.
Maybe you run an agency and an FME called one of your clients and had them question your strategy — or maybe an FME recommended the entry-level Meta Blueprint course, even though you’re a director-level growth marketer.
Now, FMEs shouldn’t be confused with the people who run actual Facebook ad campaigns — we’ll call the latter here as external Facebook marketers.
FMEs work for Meta. But they’re not ad reps; ad reps only work on Facebook’s top accounts. FMEs do cold outreach with all external Facebook marketers. Be persistent.
“I get at least one call a day,” says Nick Shackelford, managing partner at Structured Social.
What’s the best way to handle these cold outreaches — especially when they’re helping, or even completely ruining the mood? Here are some tips from Shackelford.
Take FME's recommendations with a grain of salt.
They may work for Facebook and call from a Menlo Park area code (650!), but in Shackelford's experience, they usually offer comprehensive recommendations.
If they recommend a strategy you've already tested and discarded -- trust your own testing results.
"They can't make recommendations before they understand the business," Shackelford says. “Get started
Really valuable marketing advice starts with questions about your current strategy.
If you’re tired of FME’s cold sales pitch, you can opt out. brazil mobile number Facebook recently launched an unsubscribe feature that allows customers to opt out of sales and marketing communications, including messages from FME.
To the same effect, you can also ask the next person who calls to add you to their “do not contact” list.
Don’t disparage FME in front of your customers.
Shackelford notes that your customers may still get outreach from FME, but they won’t always understand the difference between the Cadillac-level support of an ad rep and FME’s approach.
If that happens, Shackelford suggests saying something like this:
We should definitely consider this FME recommendation, but I don’t think it’s our most immediate action. Given current spend and goals, I’d like to stick with the plan you and I agreed on on our last call.
In other words: After taking their advice, reiterate and refocus on your existing, personalized priorities. And consider it proactively—who knows! They’re not always wrong.