Episode #046: 4 Facebook Ads You SHOULD Be Running In Your Business
4 Facebook Ads You SHOULD Be Running In Your Business
In this week's episode of the podcast we're talking my ALL TIME FAVORITE TOPIC - Facebook Ads. We're going to breakdown the (4) ads that I recommend everyone be running in their online course or service based business if they want to grow their list, their business, and their sales.
When you tune in you're going to learn...
The (4) types of ads that everyone should be running
The simple process we use to grow our list - and do it more affordably
The power of omnipresences and how to beat the organic reach with low cost ads
And more...
I can't wait to hear what you think - and as always, reviews on the show are uber appreciated!
Links Mentioned on the Show From Zach:
Full Transcript:
This is Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast, episode number 46. And on this episode, we're talking about Facebook Ads you might want to be running in your business if you're looking to increase your list, increase your profits, and generate more business. So if you've been thinking about, dabbling with, or just need some insight on Facebook Ads, this episode is for you, so stay tuned.
Hey, hey, hey, not so average marketer. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. Now, I'm really excited for this week's episode. I feel like I say that every week, but I'm always really geeked out to talk to you guys, and really, especially this week, because I get to talk about one of my favorite things, which is Facebook advertising. And I love Facebook Ads because they've done so much for my business over the years. They've helped me grow my audience, they've helped me reach new people, they've helped me generate more sales.
But a lot of people come to me and they say, "Zach, I love the idea of what Facebook Ads can do for me, but I don't really know where to start, and I frankly don't know what I should be and shouldn't be running for my Facebook Ads. What should I be doing to grow my audience, to grow my reach, to grow my sales, as you say you can do?" Well, on today's episode, what I'm going to talk to you about is four different ads that I recommend you be running pretty much all the time or most of the time, or in times when you want to generate more revenue, that are going to help you grow over time. So for me, there's four different ads that I like to run, and I just want to run through them really quick and then we're going to break them down over today's episode.
So for me, the four ad types that I like to run are lead generation ads, engagement ads, retargeting ads and launch ads. So just to give you insight, lead ads are ads that I'm running all the time to grow my list, engagement ads are ads that I'm running to keep my audience warm or warm my audience up, retargeting ads are me putting specific offers or funnels in front of people who are already in my audience, and launch ads are the ads that I run during a launch to get more people signed up for my thing, whether that be a challenge, a webinar, a video series, a training. That's what my launch ads are for. So let's go through these one at a time and really break down what they do for my business. So lead generation ads, we are running pretty much 24/7 these days. There are times where we don't run them, and that's usually when we're doing a promotion, or we're in the process of creating a new freebie or our ads die off and we want to do something new.
But lead generation ads, I think people think they're expensive and complicated, and with iOS 14 in the Pixel, it's like, "What do I even do to make these things work?" And so I wanted to share with you first that the type of lead generation ads that we run and love are what we call lead form ads, okay? And you've probably heard me talk about these on the show before, but if you're new or you need a refresher, that's okay, I'll tell you, lead generation ads or lead form ads that we run are ads where people fill out their name and email address on Facebook. So the big thing about this is people sometimes say, "I love the idea of this, but Zach, if people are filling out their name and email on Facebook instead of going to my website, what about all these different elements? What about the fact that less people are going to see my website? What about the fact that less people are going to engage with me? Or what about the lead quality? How do I know that it's a quality lead?"
And so I just want to share with you some data and some insights that we've had that have really given us the insight into the fact that these can be really, really powerful leads if you use them correctly. So first and foremost, let's talk about why we would use these leads over driving people to our website. The biggest thing is that they cost less in my experience. And the reason they cost less is that Facebook, in my experience, rewards you for keeping people on their platform, okay? What that means is that you have a lower CPM. And I don't want to freak you out or anything, make you think you need to know all these terms, I just want you to have the full picture, okay? But CPM basically stands for cost per thousand impressions, okay? The M stands for thousand. So cost per thousand impressions. With Facebook, you don't actually pay for clicks or leads, you pay for the ad to be shown, okay?
And that means that if your cost per thousand impressions is lower, which Facebook tends to do when you run lead generation ads, you pay less money to have your ad be shown. Now, the other side of the coin is that we find with lead gen form ads, we get more people who click on the ad actually converting, okay? We see anywhere from 60 to 90% of people that click on an ad actually fill out the form with their name and email, and go on to join our email list. So it's a really powerful strategy when you think about it. And so I tell people all the time, if your cost per lead is dramatically lower, which we've seen as much as a 50% decrease in the cost per lead, then what that means is you're ultimately paying less money for the leads. And so I'm not saying that the leads aren't quality, because we find that they are, but even if the leads are slightly lower quality or you need more leads to get the same quality, ultimately, it's either a wash or better because you're paying dramatically less.
So couple things to know about lead form ads. First, is they're ridiculously easy to set up, and because everything happens on Facebook, they are iOS proof. That's my favorite thing. You don't need to use the Pixel, you don't need to worry about iOS 14 or 15. They are pretty much 100% trackable, virtually, some people have ad settings turned off, but they're virtually 100% trackable for people who click, fill it out, and give you their name and email. The other really cool thing about lead form ads is that because they are iOS proof, because you don't drive people to your website, because everything happens on Facebook, they are retargetable. So when someone fills out your form, you can actually drive another ad to them to retarget them with various offers, engagement ads, different content, just to continue to keep people warm and move them through different funnels that you might have. So lead form ads we're running all the time, and I'll give you some insight into what we've seen.
We're running a lead ad currently for our 2023 quarterly planner. We create a 2023 planner, and we did this in 2022, and then we're relatively aggressive about advertising it over the course of November and December. And so far, we've generated 493 leads at $1.19 a piece. Now, I do want to make a little note here, not all of those leads are brand new. We do run it to our warm audience because we have a new funnel on the backend, but still, we're getting hundreds of leads for $1 to $2 a piece. It's totally worth it to be growing our email list. And when you look inside of our CRM software, the software that we use to grow our email list and house our emails, you can look directly at our subscriber numbers, and you can see there's a clear line, a trend line upwards, when we started running the lead generation ads. And so between you, me and the wall, and I guess anyone listening to this, we actually had really stagnant list growth from pretty much October.
Yeah, pretty much through October. We saw a really slow growth of our email list. And what we've noticed is that when we run these lead generation ads, we pause them in October for a few different reasons, but as soon as we turn them back on, our list immediately started growing again. And here's the thing, I know that people like to say, "The money's in your list, grow your list and the money will come." That is true to a point, but one thing that I like to tell people about lead generation ads is that my goal with lead generation ads is to connect with people to build a long-term relationship. It's not about saying, "I'm going to fill my funnel and convert and make a profit in five days." Those days are frankly over. It's about allocating a percentage of your revenue to ads that grow your email list consistently so that someone may be on your list 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 months before they make the decision to purchase.
And I just want to make sure that we understand that and know how important that is because it's not about this instant gratification that we used to see with Facebook Ads, it's about long-term sustainable list growth and relationship building, okay? So that's the first type of ad that we're running, our lead generation ads to grow our list and build long-term relationships. The second type of ad that I like to run is an engagement ad, okay? And if I'm being completely honest with you, I'm a little guilty of slacking on these lately, but when we run them, we see really great results. And what these ads are, are we take an Instagram post or a link to a blog and we run it as an engagement ad to everybody who is on our email list, who's visited our website, who's engaging with us on Instagram and Facebook, and we run an ad to these, what we call custom audiences, which are audiences that only you have access to. So again, that'd be like your email list, your website traffic, your Instagram audience, and we simply run them for engagement to stay top of mind.
Let's face it, in 2022 and going into 2023, organic reach on Facebook and Instagram, it's probably not going to get easier. And we just have to know that going in. And if it's not going to get any easier, then what we have to do is be thinking, "How do I stay top of mind? How do I connect with people when my organic might be a little slower, or when I might not be seeing the engagement that I want to see on my post?" And for me, advertising is a great way to cut through the noise and get this content in front of people. So what we typically do, and I truly, truly want to be honest with you, we could improve on this, but we take a static post of our podcast, and we just run it for engagement to our warm audience. And you don't need a crazy amount of money, we spend $5, maybe $10 a day for a week or so, and we just run that engagement ad just to stay relevant, just to stay top of mind.
And it costs us $100 to $150 a month, but we're always in front of our customers, our potential customers. We're always reaching the right people. So I just think it's super important that we pause for a second and say, "Well, why would I be doing this?" Because here's the thing, there's this concept that I like to talk about called omnipresence and awareness. And omnipresence is about being everywhere. So once somebody signs up for my freebie, I want to continue to show up everywhere. I want to show up in their inbox, I want to show up on their Instagram, I want to show up on their Facebook, I want to be omnipresent, I want to be in their ecosystem. The reason I do that is because it's about awareness. So there's been some studies done and there's been some research around this, and what we found is that the more somebody sees something, the more they trust it.
And so whether it's your face or your podcast or your logo or your brand, people are going to trust you a lot more if they recognize you, your brand, your voice, and see you on a regular basis. And so it's not about, "Oh, you have to have the best content," or, "You have to have incredible engagement ads or beautiful photos," you just have to have something that matches your brand, your style, your face even, and put it in front of people consistently so that when you make an offer, they go, "Oh yeah, I know that guy, I know that girl, I know that person." That's what you want to have happen, okay? So that's the second type of ad that I'm running, are engagement ads to say top of mind with my warm audience. The third ad that I run is a retargeting ad. And retargeting ads can be really, really, really powerful because very similar to engagement ads, you can get in front of your warm audience, but with retargeting ads, when I say retargeting ads, technically, yes, your engagement ads are retargeting ads.
But when I say retargeting ads in this context, what I'm talking about is putting an offer in front of your audience. So we've tested this with a number of different offers. We've done this with our Challenge Launch Toolkit, which is a $37 mini training that teaches people how to launch with five-day challenges. We've done this with offers for our membership, whether it be a free trial offer or an offer to join us monthly or on the back of a launch, where we put the offer in front of people again. Our strategy is that we're constantly, when we run these, we're constantly making an offer to our audience. We're making an offer to our audience to get that lead that we've been generating, that relationship that we've been nurturing, those people we've been engaging, we're putting an offer in front of them to hopefully convert to a purchase.
And the thing about this is, it's really easy money, okay? Now, I'm not going to sit here and say it's always easy in the sense that... You know what? I actually take that back, and I'm going to leave this on the recording because I want you to understand it's simple money, but it's not easy money. That's what I should have said. It's simple money, not easy money. And it's simple in the sense that you can run an ad to your warm audience, you can set it up easily, but it's hard in the sense that you need good copy, good creative, good offers to actually convert, okay? You have to make sure that your offer is dialed in. So I tell people, these ads are a little more advanced because they need to come on the back of you having done the legwork to make sure your offer works, having pre-launched or launched your offer, know that it's actually going to convert to sales when you drive traffic to it.
And then I, with retargeting, tend to focus on my warm audience or with offer ads, tend to focus on my warm audience, because it is harder to convert. Whether it be a $37 product or a $3,000 product, it's harder to convert on cold traffic. Now, is it easier to convert my $37 offer than my $2,000 coaching program on cold traffic? 100%. But it's still challenging, and it's a puzzle that a lot of people try to crack, and it doesn't always work for them. So that's why I say for offers, I like to focus on my warm audience. But if you think about this, if I'm always growing my list, if I'm always running engagement ads, then my warm audience is always growing and I'm staying top of mind with them. So when I do make an offer, more people are seeing it. And that's the subtle difference that I want you to think about. More people are seeing my offer when I make it, okay?
So those are the ads that I'll run to generate some revenue, or if I'm in a lull and I want to just kick up sales or I want to drive more people into an offer funnel, I'll run simple retargeting ads. The last type of ad that I'm going to run are what we call launch ads. And you're probably familiar with launch ads, you know what they are, you've seen them before. But what we know is that launching is a little bit different than when we just drive traffic to grow our email list. When we're launching, we're driving people into a state where we want them to ultimately purchase from us. And so launch ads are actually two-phase ads that I run in my business to drive more traffic. And what those are, are phase one, we're driving leads to our offer, okay? Leads to our offer. And I'm sorry, not our offer, our launch mechanism. So what that means is, if you're doing a webinar, a challenge, a video series, we're driving people to sign up for that thing. That's where we start, we're starting with sign up for my thing, okay?
These, I don't recommend lead ads for as much, and there's various reasons why, we can totally get into that. I just find that lead ads get decent open rates on my emails, they get good engagement on my emails, they get good clicks on my emails. But the show-up rates and the engagement rates that I see in my launches do tend to be a little bit lower on lead ads. And so I promised you on this episode that I was going to be really honest about what we see, and I see that for these types of ads, I don't want to run lead generation ads or lead form ads, I want to run lead generation ads where I'm driving traffic to my website, okay? Now, these ads, that's phase one. The second phase is that I'm going to retarget people who went through my launch and put my offer in front of them. Now, this is very similar to what we just talked about with retargeting ads with an offer, except I'm retargeting them with a specific launch offer, and I'm doing it only to people who went through my launch, okay?
The reason I do this is because these ones are an easy win. And I don't mean simple, I mean easy, because people have gone through your launch, they've seen your offer, they may have even been pitched your offer, and now what they're seeing is, "Oh, I may not have made that decision to purchase today, but I can still make that decision to purchase later." But here's the key. How many of us have gone to a webinar, a video series, a sales page, a low-ticket offer, and then one of two things happens; we either lose track of the link or we forget about the offer? How often does that happen to us? For me, it happens a lot a lot, more than I care to admit. It happens a lot. And so these ads are a simple way to increase the engagement of your launch while also increasing the sales of your launch.
So we increase the engagement by driving more leads, and we increase the sales by retargeting the leads that we generated. This is a really simple but complex process to learn, okay? So the retargeting ads, simple, easy, the lead generation ads a little more challenging. And the reason lead ads are a little more challenging, when it comes to generating leads for a launch, is because there's more that goes into them. There's more targeting research, there's more copy and creative that has to be perfect, but most importantly, there's less time, okay? That's the big thing with launch ads, they're time-bound. My lead form ads, I'm running all the time. There's no timing, if I run them and I don't get great results, I can try again. There's no, "This has to work today," there's only, "I can make these work with time." Now, the launch ads, you might only have 10, 14, 7 days before your webinar or challenge, and you've got to get them dialed in fast.
So launch ads are a little more complicated only in the sense that you're time-bound. But fundamentally, the way we set them up and use them is very, very similar, okay? Now, if you're listening to this episode and you're going, "This sounds great, Zach, but how do I even start?" Well, we talked about four different ad types today. Lead generation, engagement, retargeting with an offer and launch ads. The reality is you're not going to deploy all these campaigns at once. If you're listening to this and you're saying, "What's the one I should deploy?" I always say start with lead form, lead generation ads, because they're a simple win, they're easier to set up, they are really higher converting in most cases, and you can get started with them in just a few days, even if you have no prior Facebook Ads experience.
And if you're listening to this saying, "Yes, please, that sounds great, but how do I get started with no prior Facebook Ads experience?" Then I want to share with you something we're doing starting November 14th, 2022 called Automation Week. And Automation Week is a five-day training series that we are running that's going to help you set up Facebook Ads to automate your leads and sales with those ads in about five days, okay? It runs Monday 14th through November 18th, and what we're going to do is we're just going to get you up to date on what's working now with Facebook Ads in 2023, kind of like I did today, but we're actually going to go over the shoulder and walk you through how to run Facebook Ads. So by day five, if you follow along with this training, you will actually have Facebook Ads running as long as you follow the process. And so it's a free five-day training series.
You can head over to heartsoulhustle.com/automation. Again, that's heartsoulhustle.com/automation, and you can sign up for this free training series. We're really excited for it and we would love to have you. And if you're listening to this episode saying, "It's time for me to stop dabbling in ads and start running successful ads," this is where you want to be. So I hope you got immense value from today's episode. I really am such a sucker for a good Facebook Ad, and I hope that you can get to the point in your business, if you're not already there, where you are like, "Facebook Ads are fun, Facebook Ads can be great." That's my goal for you. So if you enjoyed this episode, you can head over to heartsoulhustle.com/nyap046. Again, that's heartsoulhustle.com/nyap046, for Not Your Average Podcast episode number 46. And we will have the show notes, the links I talked about today, the entire transcript of the episode, all waiting for you over there.
So that's it, that's the show. I hope you got lots of value, I hope you check it out, we would love to see you at Automation Week. And until next time, stay not so average.
