Episode #050: The Facebook Ads Gold Rush Is Over (What It Means For 2023)
The Facebook Ads Gold Rush Is Over (What It Means For 2023)
The Facebook Ads Gold Rush Is OVER!
You can't just spend $1 and Make $5 the way you could back in 2018, things are changing (and fast!) But don't panic there is still money to be made in advertising your online course business, but it's going to require you to change the way you think about advertising!
In this week's episode of the podcast, Zach talks about trends he's seeing inside his Agency and client work that is requiring a shift in the way we advertise in 2023. When you tune in you're going to learn...
The #1 Facebook Ad that you should be running 24/7 if you want to grow your community and your business
The importance of WARM audiences in launches over driving massive amounts of cold traffic (even if you have the budget)
A prediction about where the industry is headed, and how it affects the offers that you make
The power of Macro Level Consistency to growing your business - and how to automate it with advertising
Tune in to learn the changes you need to make with your advertising strategies if you want better results in 2023.
Links Mentioned on the Show From Zach:
Full Transcript:
This is Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast, episode number 50. And in this episode we're talking about Facebook Ads in 2023. Do they work? Are they dead? What needs to change? And more, so let's get into it.
Hey, hey, hey, not so average marketer. Welcome to episode 50 of the podcast. Can you believe we are 50 episodes in? That is crazy. I've officially recorded almost 200 total podcasts and 50 under our Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast brand. So I'm just super stoked to be here, and I just wanted to take a second before we dive into this week's episode to say thank you. Thank you for being a listener, thank you for sticking through 50 episodes, and if you're new here, thanks for being new, we appreciate you. So this week we are talking about Facebook Ads in 2023, and I named this episode The Facebook Ads Gold Rush is Over. And I really wanted to start by explaining what I mean by that title.
So I think for those of you who are newer to the online marketing space, you may not know, but several years back, you used to be able to just do a webinar and make money. It was ridiculously simple. Not just from a technical perspective, but from the perspective of you could just make an offer and people were excited to buy it. There weren't millions of courses out there, there wasn't skepticism in the market, there wasn't a high level of market sophistication yet, and people were just excited to be learning these skills from online course creators. So what's changed is that it now takes a lot more energy, it takes a lot more intention, and it takes a lot more quality content to convert a lead into a customer, in my opinion. And really, if we were to break this down into a couple of simple sentences, you used to be able to drive a bunch of cold leads to a launch on a Monday and convert them that following Friday, and that just doesn't work the way that it used to.
And so that's why I say that the Facebook Ads Gold Rush is over. You can't just run ads and make massive amounts of money the way that you used to be able to. Now, is that saying that it's impossible or that people aren't out there potentially doing that? No. What I am observing though is that when we work with clients in our agency, our Facebook Ads agency, when we work with clients, what we find is that the majority of their sales are coming from people who already knew them, even if we drive more cold leads than warm leads. So let me say that again. More sales come from existing audiences than from cold audiences or people who don't know you, even if we get more people who don't know you or cold audiences into the launch. So what that's telling us is that warm audiences convert better than cold audiences.
And you might be like, "Yeah, Zach, you've talked about this before on the podcast, and that makes sense. People who know, like and trust me are more likely to buy from me." But what I really want you to hear about this is that you have to be building your warm audience 24/7 because launches, yes, they can bring in lots of traffic and leads, but the audience, the community that you built is what brings in lots of sales. So what does this ultimately mean for 2023? Well, for me, it means that I need to go harder on building an audience and a community when I'm not launching. So if you're listening to this and you're like, "Oh my gosh, this makes sense," or maybe this doesn't quite make sense, we're going to get deeper into this, but you have to understand that you need to be doing something to grow your audience 24/7. And the free version of that is posting on social media, doing Instagram Reels, potentially getting on TikTok, posting on Facebook.
I'm not a huge fan of the social media hamster wheel. If you go check me out on Instagram today, you'll probably see a couple of posts that are pretty recent. But generally, I post a few times a month. I'm not a big poster, and I need to get better at that, and I know I need to get better at that, and I know that organic is important, but for me, what I'm doing to be consistently growing my audience is I'm running ads 24/7 that grow my email list. And from my email list, I point people over to my Instagram, I point people over to my podcast that this might be where you came from is a Facebook Ad, I point people to my blog post content. I'm trying to grow a community and an audience, I'm not trying to make quick cash. And this, to me, is the big theme of 2023. And that is going to be that you can no longer run Facebook Ads for quick cash.
Now, I'm not saying that funnels are dead, webinars are dead, challenges don't work. What I'm saying is that if you're looking for longevity of your business, you have to change the way you think about advertising. What I recommend is that instead of trying to make money in that first five to seven days that somebody becomes a lead, that you grow your email list, promote your free content, expand your reach with organic social all the time, something that we're constantly working on, and then retarget your audience with your hottest offers, your paid offers. So if you are trying to make more money, you're going to have to be willing to invest in ads and play a longer game. And I know that that can be scary, but really, what I think is that you should be adding at least 100 to 150 people a month to your email list. That's going to be really key, is that you're consistently adding people to your email list. Because if you're always growing your list, if we just play with those numbers, that's about 1,200 to 1,500 people in a year added to your email list.
And if you're trying to generate clients, getting 1, 2, 3% of your email list, that's 40 to 50 ish new clients a year. Now, sometimes you can sell more if you're doing low-tickets, sometimes you can sell less if you're doing high-ticket, but just think about that. Adding 100 to 150 people a month is anywhere from 30 to 50 new sales a year. And so you can see that, in a sense, it does become a numbers game. The more we grow our list, the more we can convert to our offers. The less we grow our list, the less people we have to talk to. And I mentioned this earlier, but I don't necessarily love social media. And part of that is that I feel like sometimes the algorithm is against me, and I can't get my audience to see my content, but I know with an email, if I'm keeping a clean list, if I'm engaging my audience, then I can absolutely get a really good open rate.
I can get 30, 40, 50% of my audience, my email list, to actually see the offers and see the content that I'm putting in front of them. So here's what I think, if you want to grow in 2023 and you don't love the social media game, or you feel like you're struggling to grow with social media, you should just run ads to grow your email list 24/7. You should just always have ads running in the background, not spending thousands of dollars, maybe a few hundred a month to get started, that grow your email list. And if you're listening to this and you're saying, "Okay, that sounds great, but how the heck do I grow my email list?" well, I want to invite you to join our Facebook Ads for List Building Bootcamp that I'm hosting January 23rd to January 27th. And this is a five-day Facebook Ads bootcamp where I'm going to teach you everything you need to know to run Facebook Ads to grow your email list. You will literally, if you follow along, be generating leads by Friday, actually a little sooner than that in the challenge.
We want you to have the tools that you need. Now, the cool thing is the cost to attend is just 10 bucks. We want this to be accessible. We know that people who are trying to grow their list, maybe you're in the earlier stage of business, or maybe you're not, and you're just in a place where you're ready to add advertising into the mix.
If you want to be part of this bootcamp, I've got all the details and tons of testimonials from past bootcampers over at heartsoulhustle.com/bootcamp. Again, that's heartsoulhustle.com/bootcamp. You can head over there, check it out. We would love to have you. And ultimately, if you're looking to grow in 2023, a simple ad in the background, always growing your audience is a great way to start. Now, what I want to tell you is that growing the email list is not the only thing you need to do to grow your business. It's great in the sense that you're going to grow your audience, you're going to get people to engage with you, but you then have to nurture that audience. So you have to create content for them. We just created a piece of content that was really popular, we'll link to it in the show notes, and that is our 2022 Year in Review. We did a review of our entire year, breaking down what we spent, what we earned, what our team structure was like, and I sent that out to my audience to be really transparent and share with them.
But it was a high value post, I think we wrote almost 3,500 words for it. And I sent that out to my audience and my list, and it got really great response and engagement. And I'm telling you that not because I want you to go run off and read that post, I'm telling you that because I want you to be thinking, "What can I give to my audience that's really high value?" What can I give to my audience that they're looking for? I think it's really important that we understand that our audience doesn't just want to be sold to 24/7, they want to know that they can trust us, they want to know what we know. And so I know that there's a trend online to be like, "Don't give people the how, just give them the what. Tell them what to do and give them none of the how." I think there needs to be a healthy balance.
And I think that we need to give people some of our best kept "secrets" so that they know they can trust us, so that they know that we know our stuff. Because here's the reality, right now, everything is highly Googleable, everything is highly searchable. There's lots of content on the internet. Why should someone pay you? And I really want you to think about that for a second. Why should someone pay you? Now, aside from the traditional stuff that we say like, "Well, they're paying for access, and they're paying for process, and they're paying for order, and they're paying for transformation and results." Sure, I'll give you all that, all that is absolutely true. But I mean, why should they pay you for access and transformation versus someone else? For me, it's because I've built trust and credibility, and I think trust and cred- [inaudible 00:11:42], we're going to leave that in. I think trust and credibility are built by showing what, by showing up, by playing full out with your audience, even if they haven't spent thousands of dollars with you.
It's about really showing what people need. So with all of that being said, what I want you to think about, or what I want to share with you is what I think is going to be big in 2023, and that is what I'm calling low-ticket sampling, okay? See, with the way that things are, whether you are talking about the state of the online marketing world, the state of the offline world, the cost of things, the economy, the reality is that people are being smarter with the way they spend their money. They're not just throwing big bucks at their problems, and they're not just saying, "Well, I know it's $2,000, but I watched this 45-minute webinar, so I need to invest in it." People want to experience who you are and how you operate before they go higher ticket with you. For example, in our business, we have multiple low-ticket offers, and we find that once somebody buys a low-ticket offer from us, they are way more likely to buy something that's more expensive.
Now, we don't have really high-ticket stuff in our business, but for example, we have a quarterly group coaching program. We take 12 students for $2,500 a piece, and we work with them over the course of a quarter on their business, okay? We find that almost everyone who joins that program has bought something from us at the low-ticket level. That could be our membership, that could be our Challenge Launch Toolkit, that could be our Facebook Ads Bootcamp that we're hosting, but we find that people have to experience us in a paid capacity to be ready to spend more, or to be more readily ready to spend more. So I think that in 2023, the things that are going to thrive are things like memberships, low-ticket offers, toolkits, tripwires, but what's going to thrive the business as a whole is putting your higher ticket stuff, your stuff that's $200, $300 plus on the back of letting people experience you for less.
What it really comes down to, even if you're like, "I don't want a low-ticket product, I don't want a toolkit, I don't want a membership," that's okay, I want you to hear what I'm saying at the core. And that is that it comes down to supporting people first. Offering true, relevant, helpful content before you ask for a credit card. And what's crazy is that this is controversial because there is this common, I mentioned it earlier, but it's very common for people to say, "Give them what and sell them how." But if you tell people what to do and you leave them kind of floundering on their own, does that really build trust if they're not a buyer? Or does that build uncertainty? Does that really build connection or does it build mystique? Does it really build support or does it build this place where people don't know what to do, or, better yet, how to do what they need to do? See, giving people the menu and refusing to let them sample, it's not going to work as well as it used to.
And I know that sounds crazy because you're like, "Well, if they want something off the menu, they have to pay." I agree, I agree that if people want the whole shebang, they have to pay. But if they want to know what the experience is, you've got to give them a taster. You got to give them an appetizer, you got to give them something. You got to give them a way to experience you, okay? Now, in terms of what this means for your business as a whole, I think that especially with the power of a consistent Facebook Ad to grow your business, you need to have what I call macro-level consistency. So for those who listen to the podcast, no bones about it, I've missed an episode or two, or three or four, or five or six. I have weeks where I forget to record a podcast, and I know I need to be better about that. But I have, in my business, I believe, what I call macro-level consistency, and that means that I'm doing something every day to grow my audience.
Sometimes that's posting on Instagram, sometimes that's posting on Facebook, sometimes that's adding people to my Facebook group for customers. But what I'm always doing is growing. And to me, the easiest way to do that is to just have a list-building ad going in the background. We've had one running for the past three or four months that's added thousands of leads to our email list. We're just always driving traffic to our email list. Number two, I try to do something every week to connect to my audience. Now, the easiest is the podcast, but I try to at least email my audience once a week. And I know I've missed an email or two, but I'm always connecting with my audience once a week. So if I don't email, I post in my customer Facebook group. If I don't post in my customer Facebook group, I email. If I don't do either, then I record a podcast. I'm trying to connect with my audience on a weekly basis.
And again, if I do that 50 times out of 52 weeks in the year, that's still macro-level consistency. It's not about perfection, it's about, at a big picture level, am I being consistent? And then every month I'm doing something that generates cash flow or revenue. Now, with low-ticket offers and entry-level offers and memberships, you can be generating money every month and throughout the month, but I try to do something every month that's a revenue generator for my business. And for me, that's so much easier when I have a list, because I can segment my list, I can reach out to particular people in my list, but once a month I try to say, "Hey, I'm going to do this thing that's going to generate revenue." Some examples are we've run upgrade campaigns to our existing members in our membership to move them from monthly to annual or biannual. We have done pop-up classes or paid boot camps, we have done launch of our coaching programs, we've done formal product launches.
The thing is, we want to be doing something on a regular basis that generates cash flow, because I believe in 2023, it's we're going to want continuous income. We're not going to want to rely on these big one-off launches, we're not going to want to rely on launches only. We want to create consistency in our business. And that happens through, or excuse me, I should say consistency in our revenue, and that's going to happen through macro-level consistency on cash-generating activities. So if you're listening to this episode and you're like, "Wow, he started with Facebook Ads, he ended with consistency. What's the big takeaway, Zach? Well, to me, the takeaway is that ads aren't dead yet, and community and audience is alive and well, but it's all about the long game. If you're listening to this in 2023, are you willing to commit to the long game? Are you willing to say, "I want to grow my list, my audience, my engagement, my connection with them every single day, week, month, year to create long-term sustainability in the business, or am I still chasing a dollar in for $5 out every five days?"
I'm not saying that funnels don't work, I'm not saying webinars don't work, I'm not saying stop doing those things. I'm saying supplement those things with consistent growth of your audience so that you always have a reliable community, a reliable audience, and a reliable source to generate revenue. And to me, it all boils down to growing your list every single day, and nurturing that list at least every single week. So let's do a super quick recap. The reality is Facebook Ads are changing in 2023. The big thing to note is that driving a bunch of cold leads to a launch isn't quite what it used to be, because warm audiences convert better. So I would recommend going in harder on warm audiences when you want to sell, and building that warm audience 24/7. Ads to grow your email list are going to become essential, and engaging that list on a regular basis is going to become super important too. I predict that low-ticket sampling is going to become important because people want to experience what it's like to work with you at a lower risk or investment level.
So things like memberships, low-ticket offers and then making offers to existing customers is going to thrive. And all of this plays together in the form of macro-level consistency. Are you growing your list every day? Are you engaging and nurturing your community every week at least? And are you doing something every month that brings money in? So if you're listening to this episode, I hope you got lots of value. If you want the show notes and transcripts, you can head over to heartsoulhustle.com/nyap050. Again, that's heartsoulhustle.com/nyap050. We'll have all the links we mentioned, we'll have a full transcript of the show. Of course, we'll link to that bootcamp as well. And y'all, I just hope that you really enjoy this episode.
I know it can be scary when things change, I know it can be frustrating when something that's supposed to work doesn't work the way it used to, or you're being told, "Just spend money on ads and make more money." I get it, it can be scary. But playing the long game, looking for longevity in business is never going to backfire. Trying to sustain and stand the test of time is your goal. Whether you're trying to make money today or next year or next month, you've got to be thinking big picture. And I hope this episode got your creative juices flowing around that. So with that being said, it's been real, it's been fun, it's been real fun. And until next week, stay not so average.
