Episode #093: How to Successfully Lose Money With Advertising
How to Successfully Lose Money With Advertising
In this counterintuitive episode, I'm revealing why strategically "losing money" on certain types of advertising is actually the secret to long-term profitability.
I break down my three-part advertising framework that creates sustainable growth while avoiding the trap of obsessing over immediate ROI.
Discover the three distinct types of advertising I use (long-term, launch-term, and short-term) and why they work together as a system
Learn why I intentionally run list-building ads at a slight loss and how I offset those costs through tripwires and email sequences
Understand why cold traffic is getting harder to convert and how this three-part strategy solves that problem
Get my step-by-step approach to implementing this strategy
If you're tired of stressing about day-to-day ad performance or feeling like advertising just "doesn't work" for your business, this episode will completely shift your perspective.
Listen now to discover why zooming out and playing the long game is the true path to sustainable ad success!
Links Mentioned:
Full Transcript:
[00:00:00]:
This is Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast, episode number 93. And in this episode, we're talking about how to successfully lose money on advertising. What's that mean? What's it about? Well, let's listen to this week's episode and you will find out. Hey. Hey. Hey. Not so average marketer. Welcome to another episode of the podcast.
[00:00:21]:
I am really excited to talk to you today about really this concept of losing money on advertising. And and just to kinda set the stage, I came up with this idea for this episode because I was talking to one of our membershippers, and they were kind of like, well, how much do I need to spend to figure things out? Right? Like, what does it actually cost to run ads to, like, figure out if my offer works or if I should, you know, do a launch or when should I do a launch? Should I be growing my list? Should I be running ads directly to a sales page? And I wanted to record an episode where I really talk about, you know, how we think about losing money versus gaining money on advertising. So it's a fun title, but really what I want you to understand is, like, there is an efficient way to spend. Right? Because I think sometimes we get sold, especially in the world of online marketing, especially in the world of advertising, this kind of dream that, like, oh, Facebook ads, you just put a dollar in, you get a dollar out. But not every form of advertising that we do in our business and that we recommend for our students is a direct, like, dollar in dollar out decision. Right? And so there are three different ways that we think of advertising. So I think that's the best place to start. The first is short term advertising.
[00:01:43]:
The second is launch term advertising, and the third is long term advertising. So let's dig into what I mean by this. First and foremost, we'll start with short term, and that is, like, what you traditionally think of when you're thinking of advertising and you're talking about, like, I want to make money with ads. That's I'm gonna spend a dollar. I'm gonna put people into a funnel whether it's like an automated webinar funnel or a challenge, automated challenge funnel or a a video series funnel that you've automated. Right? So it's like people can join this funnel at any time, but the goal is that in a short period of time, you immediately turn them into a customer. Right? The second type of advertising is like a launch term. So it could still be a webinar or a challenge, but this time it's live.
[00:02:29]:
Right? So it's like the live version. This is where you are setting it up that people are going through a specific set period of time where they can join your program, your training, your process, to essentially pay you, your coaching program, you know, whatever that looks like. And then long term is the ongoing ads that you're running to grow your business. And this is where I personally think a lot of people aren't spending enough money and that's what we're gonna talk a lot about today. But this is your ongoing list building. These are the ads that are just running 24/7 that grow your email list. These are the ads that you're running to nurture your audience. These are the ads where the intention is purely growth.
[00:03:15]:
I wanna grow. I wanna get more people seeing my content. I wanna get more people engaging with me. I wanna get more people buying from me. This is the long term ongoing advertising. Okay? So these are, like, the the fundamental ways that you can market. Right? And sure, there's nuance, there's more, there's less, whatever. But for me, I like to start by thinking about these three things.
[00:03:42]:
And when I'm looking at them, the way that I want to successfully lose money on ads is my long term ads operate at a small loss. Okay? So month to month, I'm always growing my list, but I'm not always regaining all the money that I spend growing my list on my list building ads. Okay? My goal is then to regain my spend through my launches, which I do quarterly, and to create funnels, the short term, that scale up and create influxes of cash. Right? So let me just run through that again because I think this is a super important thing to understand. First and foremost, we're we're operating at a small loss most of the time. Not holistically necessarily in the business, but if we look at dollar in for dollar out on advertising, our list building ads cost more than they gain. But once a quarter for us, we do a big launch, and that launch is all of those leads that we've been growing and nurturing and and engaging over the long term, we give them the opportunity to buy from us and we regain the money that we've spent on advertising. And then we also have our funnels kind of running in the background or from time to time, we may create an influx of traffic to our funnels that allows us to create influxes of cash and scale up how much liquid asset we have to put back into the long term.
[00:05:12]:
So it's very cyclical. It's long term goes into launches. Launches allow us to fuel our funnels more efficiently, and the money from our funnels allows us to fuel the long term spend. So it's this very cyclical process. Right? Now I think it's really helpful to, like, dive into each of these. Right? So the long term ads, they are the ones that are basically running all the time, but they don't always have a net revenue gain. So why would we be running them? Well, first and foremost, it creates our audience. Right? So one of my favorite type of ads to run is just a simple list building ad.
[00:05:46]:
If you're running ads, you should be growing your email list. Right? And the reason that we do that is because when I go into other types of things, whether it be launches or promos or summits or affiliate promotions, I have an audience that I can then go talk to. Right? The second thing is we also, within these ads, are running ads that are for engagement with some of our best content, whether it be our podcast or reels or blog post. And we take our content and we run it to all the people who are joining our email list because it creates awareness. It it lets people know, yeah, Zach does have a podcast. Yeah, Zach does have a blog. Yeah, Zach does post on Instagram. And so because you're growing the audience, because you're nurturing them with content, you create, and you've heard this before, but it is true, you create that know, like, trust factor.
[00:06:40]:
Right? You get people engaging with you who are familiar with you. They're familiar with your content. And so when you do things down the road, they're more likely to be buyers. Right? Now on a more logistical side of things, the other things that we're doing with our long term ads is we absolutely have a tripwire for all of our new subscribers. Right? So when someone joins our email list, we absolutely give them an opportunity to buy a low ticket product from us. So we're not just blindly throwing money at advertising saying, oh, there's no immediate return. We typically generate daily low ticket sales in our business. But the the real thing that we're thinking, the real goal that we're shooting for is that we are consistently trying to grow the audience with an offer, a freebie, but then also give them the opportunity to immediately become a customer.
[00:07:35]:
And then once somebody goes through that that freebie, of course, we have an email sequence that warms and nurtures and makes that low ticket offer again. Right? So I'm not saying you have to, like, throw away money on list building, but here's the thing. The goal is not a net gain here. The goal is that we grow an audience, we create awareness, we create the know, like, trust factor, and then we give people the opportunity to buy something from us so that we're offsetting our costs. Not liquidating completely, but offsetting. Now, do I know some people who completely liquidate their costs here? Absolutely. But my goal is never a one to one return. My goal is regular consistent growth of the email list and the audience.
[00:08:22]:
Okay? So why is that? Why am I doing that? Well, here's the thing. Because if I do that correctly, if I do that correctly, then my launch ads, which are ads that I run specifically for a launch, create an influx of sales as a result of that audience I'm building. So if you're listening to this and you've recently done a webinar or a challenge or video series and you're like, I feel like people didn't convert. I feel like people didn't show up. I feel like people just didn't engage with me. Right? That often is because you're going after a very cold audience. And here's the thing, you don't need to go after a cold audience. You don't need to go after people who have no idea who you are.
[00:09:09]:
What you want to do is create a warm audience that is set up to want the products that you're selling. Right? So I think it's just something to consider that you really want to not just launch to cold traffic. You wanna launch primarily to warm traffic, to people who know you, to people that you've created, in your audience, that you've grown on your email list, that you created that awareness, that you've built that know, like, trust factor. Now the way that we do this really simply is a five-day challenge pretty much every quarter. We do them three to four times a year. My goal is always four times a year, but just depending on the schedule and how things are, sometimes we do them three times a year. But we do our Facebook and Instagram Ads for Listbuilding Bootcamp. And what this is is it's a five-day challenge where we take all the people who have joined our email list primarily through Facebook ads freebies, and we give them the opportunity to learn how to successfully run ads to grow their email list 24/7 with Facebook and Instagram ads.
[00:10:14]:
Right? And by the way, we have one of those coming up live April 28 through May 2 at join.theadsbootcamp.com, or you can just go right to theadsbootcamp.com and it'll take you there. But at theadsbootcamp.com, you can kind of see some of what we're talking about, which is we we walk people through this process. Right? So we show them how to run those first type of ads, these long term list building ads that are always growing their list. And then what we do is at the end of the boot camp, we say, hey, if you loved this and you want more, then you can come join us inside our membership program where we dive into other types of ads such as launch ads, such as funnel ads. But here is the key thing to understand about this. We actually give massive value in our boot camp. And I think that this is a huge shift that's happening in the launch industry that I think is worth mentioning in here is people are really getting tired of, like, webinars, workshops, challenges where, like, they maybe finish and they understand the what's not the how. I believe you have to start giving people some of the how.
[00:11:21]:
Right? Whether you do a free or a paid challenge or a low ticket offer or a high ticket offer, people want to actually know how to do the things we're selling them that they can do. Right? And so we do that quarterly boot camp and literally by Friday, people are actually generating leads with their Facebook ads. And because we have helped people actually generate leads with their ads, we've created three clear channels of belief. Belief in themselves that they can do it, belief in me that I can show them how, and belief in the process advertising will grow their list. Right? And so those ads are revenue generators. We run ads to get people into our boot camp. We always generate revenue on that boot camp. Knock on wood.
[00:12:06]:
It's a huge growth factor for us, and it moves people into our membership where it's $67 a month to keep working with us if they want. And we traditionally convert 15-20% of our boot campers into the membership. So it's just this really robust strategy. Right? Now the last type of ads are, like, funnel ads. Right? So these are the shortest term ads. These are what we typically think of when we think of dollar in for dollar out advertising. Right? And this is you're gonna run ads on a Monday. People are gonna go into a limited time funnel, and hopefully, by Friday, they become customers.
[00:12:41]:
Here is the thing, friends. I love these ads, but I want you to know that these are not hands off easy. Run them. Never think about it again. You're just gonna get amazing results right off out the gate type ads. Right? These are ads that you first off, you have to build a robust funnel. Right? Then you're going to launch your ads. You're gonna test your ads.
[00:13:05]:
You're gonna refine your ads, and then you repeat that process over and over and over again. Right? I think there's this kind of, unspokenness, if you will, that with, oh, I'll just run ads to my funnel. It's gonna work great, and I'm gonna, like, sail off into the sunset and passive income this and automated sales that and money in your sleep. It's not quite like that. Right? With these, you always have to be testing new advertising, testing new strategies, testing new creative, refining the funnel, tweaking like, let's say, it's an automated webinar. Right? You may have to refine the opt in page for weeks before you get a primary like, an opt in rate that's converting where you want it to. You may then get people watching the webinar but not closing, and then you have to refine the webinar. You may find that people are watching the webinar but not buying, and so then you have to refine your follow-up sequence.
[00:14:00]:
Right? And I'm not saying that it's bad. I'm not saying funnels don't work. What I'm saying is they're not this simple plug and play, forget everything, just launch, and you're gonna get amazing results type thing. Right? They are something that we like to think of them a little differently. And so after our launches and every few months as my audience is expanding, I will run ads mostly to warm, sometimes to cold. But I'll run ads, you know, just testing, does this warm audience that I'm growing have any interest in this funnel product? So for example, we have a automated funnel for our challenge program that we sometimes use. And every few months, I just turn on ads to this funnel, specifically after launches. And when people are asking me about funnels and asking me about my challenges, I turn on some ads to mostly my warm, a little bit cold.
[00:14:52]:
I run them through. I generate $5-10k in sales, and then I kinda move on. And my long term vision is absolutely to refine that funnel, but I think there's value in saying, like, your funnel ads, your whether it's an automated webinar or an automated email based funnel, there's value in just using them intentionally at specific times to also create really intentional outcomes. Right? So, let's do a recap. So you've got these long term ads that are operating at a small loss. That's your list building, your engagement, your know, like, trust, your trip wires, your email sequences. That is the thing that is always growing the audience and getting you a bigger, group of people that you can market to. Then you've got your launch ads.
[00:15:36]:
This is where you're creating those influx of sales from all of those ads that may operate at a slight loss so that you generate cash that you can bring into the business. Then we personally, a few times a year, turn on ads to a funnel. You could have them running all the time, but those are an influx of cash that we then use to continue to operate our ads at a small loss and continue to grow. So, again, think of it as, like, these long term ads are the slow burn. The launch ads are a big flash in the pan, and then funnel ads are a smaller influx of cash that allows you to sustain the growth. Now I just wanna say this. The real goal, what I want you to take away from this episode is that you shouldn't be so caught up in the day to day or even week to week of how your ads are performing. Right? You don't wanna get so caught up in, like, oh my gosh, I spent $20 on Monday and I didn't make it back by Friday.
[00:16:33]:
Too many people are doing that. You wanna zoom out and look at the big picture. Right? You wanna go big picture and work your way down. So for those of you who are listening to this being, like, okay, I'm I'm semi bought in or you're fully bought in, you're like, I wanna start doing this, but which ones do I start with? Start with the long term ads and work down to the more granular ads. Right? Because the long term ads are gonna get you bigger launches. The bigger launches are gonna mean your funnels operate better. And then if your funnels are operating better and your launches are bigger, you're gonna have more money to pour back into the top at the long term advertising. Right? So there's so much value to just creating consistent growth, consistency in your advertising.
[00:17:19]:
And that's the other thing I'll offer up is, like, it's it's all about consistency. I see a lot of people kind of treat ads like like hand washing. Like, you turn the faucet on, you wash your hands, you turn it off, and then your hands get dirty and you go back, you turn it on, wash your hands, turn it off. This is a faucet that you want to always be running. You want it to not be a faucet. You want it to be a stream. Right? It doesn't have to be a raging river. You don't have to have ads running all the time at max capacity, but you do wanna be consistently advertising because the more you consistently advertise, the more you consistently engage your audience, grow your list, create audience, you know, engage that audience, make offers to the audience, launch to that audience, the bigger the revenue and the growth of the business gets.
[00:18:03]:
So if you're listening to this and you want to learn how you can run these kind of, like, get started with long term ads, I mentioned this a little earlier, but I'll mention it again. You can go to theadsbootcamp.com, and you can join us for a live five-day boot camp running from April 28 to May 2, where we're gonna take you through every step of the process that you need to run Facebook ads that grow your list. Now this is my guarantee to you. If you join this boot camp for just $25 and follow along, by the end of day day Friday, you will have new leads joining your email list as a direct result of your Facebook ads. It's an incredibly powerful strategy. We've taught it to over 3,500 people. We have over a hundred 10 out of 10 star reviews for this boot camp, and we would love to have you join us. So if it's something you'd like to learn, you can head over to theadsbootcamp.com.
[00:18:58]:
So there you have it. How to successfully lose money on advertising. I hope you got massive value from this episode. If you did, please don't hesitate to leave a review. I love hearing from you. And if you wanna access the show notes or the transcript, you can head over to heartsoulhustle.com/nyap093. Again, that's heartsoulhustle.com/nyap093 for Not Your Average Podcast, episode number 93. I hope you have an incredible rest of your day, week, month, or year.
[00:19:33]:
And until next time, stay not so average.
