3 years ago

Coffee meeting with Kasper Knudsen (Meta, AI & Mentor Programme)

Kasper Knudsen is a young, ambitious and talented entrepreneur with strong business acumen. With his agency Sedia and his mentoring programme built a successful career in online marketing.

Kasper Knudsen is a visionary who understands the potential of online commerce. His ability to spot and utilise new trends and technologies has led to impressive success in e-commerce and online marketing.

From his early start as a young entrepreneur, Kasper Knudsen has worked hard to forge his own path to success. He has built a strong network and has an impressive ability to think outside the box and create innovative solutions to complex business problems. In particular, his mentoring programme has been a great success, helping many talented entrepreneurs to pursue their dreams.

If you already know about Kasper Knudsen and his mentoring programme and the agency Sedia, you can skip the introduction and jump straight to the interview where Kasper answers selected questions you can read a little further down. If not, you may want to read on to get an insight into the mentoring programme and the agency Sedia ApS, which forms the basis for all Kasper's perspectives in this post.

Try to describe the mentoring programme created under Kasper Knudsen and how the idea turned into a concrete business?

The more I learn, the better I become, and when I can take advanced topics down to a basic level, I've cracked the code and know that I'm on the right track. In addition, I quickly saw how online education was growing abroad and I wanted to be the first mover here in Denmark - both so I could make a business out of it, but especially so I could help others achieve the same opportunities that I had and still have. I have always focused on helping others through lectures, scaling a business, free help in various forums etc. Now I have the opportunity to offer my learning through some video material and share it with people for a much cheaper price than if I were to coach everyone 1-on-1. This means I can reach even more people, which is why I chose to create an online course.

Besides having a flair for the subject and enjoying making Facebook/Instagram ads, what is the most important quality among the people who have done best after completing a mentoring programme with Kasper Knudsen?

Those who succeed with the business model are people who put their ego aside and are open to learning new things. They are also those who think "I would rather achieve than avoid". Also, people who genuinely want to learn and are willing to trust the process enough to keep going until they succeed. They are the ones who realise that it takes work on their part and they have to take matters into their own hands. It's not something that's just handed to them.

Who is Sedia and the team behind it?

Sedia acts as a performance-based CMO across Danish and international companies. We actively engage and take responsibility in the individual company with profit in mind.

We help webshops scale through a combination of online advertising across Meta, Google, Snapchat, TikTok and email marketing.

The collaboration with Sedia is focused on getting the best out of it for both parties. However, we don't work with just anyone, and we are selective about who we want to start collaborations with. There are only three of us actively working in Sedia. This means that we are not a huge agency with 15-20 customers per consultant, where the customer becomes just "another one". We focus on a small number of cases, so we have the opportunity to take great responsibility and dive deep into the individual case with the long-term collaboration in focus.

3 quick facts about Sedia:

Founded

Sedia ApS was founded and incorporated 23.04.2020.

Employees

3 employees and one freelancer

Full-time: Lucas Grant, Kasper Knudsen, Morten Sjælland (picture of Lucas to the left and Morten to the right below)

Office address

Amagerfælledvej 106, 2300 Copenhagen S

The interview below asks these questions:

How have you experienced the development of Facebook and Instagram advertising over the last 5 years? This includes competition, prices and performance, among other things.
Has tracking been an issue for you with Apple iOS14? Apple iOS14? And how do you solve it?
Do you see tracking becoming a bigger and bigger problem over the next 2-3 years?
Could lack of tracking become such a big problem that Meta loses its competitiveness as an advertising company?
There's a lot of talk about AI today - is it something you actively utilise at Sedia? If so, how?
Can chatGPT be used to set up ads for Facebook and Instagram?
Can you put it very bluntly and say that the image/video means more/less than your description for the advert?
Can you put into words the price development of Meta ads - including when an advert becomes too expensive versus using Snap, TikTok or Pinterest instead? Is there a rule of thumb?

With insight into the Sedia agency and Kasper Knudsen's mentoring programme, you're ready for the interview.

How have you experienced the development of Facebook and Instagram advertising over the last 5 years? This includes competition, prices and performance, among other things.

In recent years, prices have been rising due to increased competition, which is simply supply and demand. As I said, prices are rising due to competition. I'm talking about more and more advertisers, more and more money being spent, but the adverts that are continuously created and placed are also getting better and better. People are getting better at content, copywriting and generally the entire online experience from initial advert to final purchase.

Has tracking been an issue for you with Apple iOS14? Apple iOS14? And how do you solve it?

With the increased focus on personal data security, it has become increasingly difficult to track the 100% correct data, but it's the same for everyone and those who take precautions are just way ahead of everyone else.

This can be solved with different software that goes in and tracks better across the different social media and pairs that data up with your backend, where you have data on the people who buy products from you.

In addition, you can set up a simple integration between the backend and Facebook, which has a similar effect to integrating various software, and where you can send your data from the backend to Facebook and match the two - that way you get more tracking to work with.

The recommendation is to use one of the software on the market that can integrate conversion events directly from their platform into social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

Do you see tracking becoming a bigger and bigger problem over the next 2-3 years?

I imagine that we'll see a growing trend towards companies having to spend more and more money on various software that can solve challenges with data, target groups and general tracking. However, I don't think this will become a major problem. Right now, the focus is on data security, but there have also been huge changes in the way data is handled in recent years.

Could lack of tracking become such a big problem that Meta loses its competitiveness as an advertising company?

I don't think we'll ever get there, as this is where Meta makes their money. However, I believe that the organic part plays a bigger and bigger role both as a public person and as a business. If you start a business today with the hope of building it all up overnight through paid advertising, think again. It's still easy to build an online business, but it's not as easy as it was just 5 years ago when you could build a business on Facebook ads.

There's a lot of talk about AI today - is it something you actively utilise at Sedia? If so, how?

Yes - it's used both to help us create catchy headlines on Youtube and to improve pre-written text. We never use it 1:1, but we use it for inspiration and to help us get out of the starting blocks. Instead of sitting and looking at a white document for 10 minutes before getting started, it's quick and efficient to send thoughts to an AI tool like ChatGPT and ask it to help you get started.

It is particularly useful for preparing content ideas for our customers in the consultancy business, where we help with the whole holistic approach to scaling the business and therefore also help prepare strategic content ideas to be used in our advertising.

Can chatGPT be used to set up ads for Facebook and Instagram?

As described above, it is used for inspiration but never ever 1:1

When creating a Meta advert, isn't it difficult to measure performance in terms of whether it's the image/video that performs well/badly or whether it's your description? How do you investigate this?

As long as you stay focused and make sure you only test one thing at a time, you will always be able to conclude whether image/video, long/short text, people/no people or something else performs best.

So the way we investigate this is by testing various and having only one variable, so we know exactly what it is that actually performs at the end of the day.

Can you put it very bluntly and say that the image/video means more/less than your description for the advert?

It really depends on which case it is.

Typically for a classic webshop with products between 0 and 500 DKK, the text doesn't mean much, but here it's the content and the offer that should catch the eye, whereas if you sell products for several thousand DKK, it's important that there is something punchy and something that can make you curious in your texts.

Can you put into words the price development of Meta ads - including when an advert becomes too expensive versus using Snap, TikTok or Pinterest instead? Is there a rule of thumb?

It's difficult to set up rules here and there is just a big difference from case to case in my opinion. If you have expensive products, you can afford to advertise at higher prices. If you have cheaper products, it takes more to be profitable through paid advertising on social media. Typically, it's more about looking at where your target audience moves rather than looking at where you can get the cheapest advertising.

In my view, it's about fulfilling your needs and desires. If you want to be profitable, then you should aim to be profitable. If you just want an online presence at the cheapest possible price, look at where you can bid for auction space at the cheapest possible purchase price.

Thanks to Kasper for sharing his thoughts and perspectives. It has been very interesting to hear your experiences within Meta Ads - and not least the future of Meta Ads and how AI is used and can be used actively in your working day.

All in all, it's been an inspiring conversation and we look forward to following your continued success and seeing how you will continue to innovate and lead in the digital world.

Kasper Knudsen media coverage: