AMY PORTERFIELD: Welcome back to another episode of The Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast. Today we have our resident ads guy in the house. Rick Mulready, how the heck are you?
Rick: I am doing awesome. I’m super pumped up for this Q&A episode.
Amy: It’s going to be really good. This is the thing that gets me so excited, every time we do an episode together all about Facebook ads, I post in my private Facebook groups and ask my students what they want to know about Facebook ads. There’s a flood of questions.
To be quite honest, when I first see all the questions I stress out because I want to help everybody and there’s only a certain amount of time we have on an episode. Then I stop to think about the best questions that will help the masses.
We chose a few of them that we think will be incredibly valuable to most listening today. Give us a little hint as to the stuff we’re going to cover.
Rick: There were a lot of questions. But we kind of grouped them together by topic or category. A lot of questions, probably four or five or six questions, were around what all of the numbers mean.
When you are reading how your ads are doing you want to know what all the numbers mean. We are going to cover that topic. We are going to be covering how to set up your campaign from an ad set perspective: Is there a proper number of ad sets you should have in your campaign, how you set up the targeting per ad set?
We are going to get into strategy as far as list building versus making money from the list you are building. We are going to be talking more specifically about targeting and how to reach a specific audience.
Amy: There are so many good topics that we are going to dive into. You’ve been a busy bee the last few days. I want to mention this because since you come on the show so regularly and give so much incredible value people are always asking me where they can go to learn even more from you.
You’ve got a free webinar coming up, right?
Rick: I do. We are going to be talking about how to create an automated system that brings in leads and sales everyday for your online business using Facebook ads. I am super pumped about it.
Amy: This is going to be a good one. If you go to http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/ rick you can signup for his free webinar. He is actually doing it live. The day this goes live he has one today and one tomorrow. I want you guys to really jump on this so you can be a part of the live experience.
He is going to cover a lot around Facebook ads and dive even deeper than we’re going to go here today. It is definitely worth checking out.
Are you ready Rick to dive in?
Rick: I am ready. Let’s do it.
Amy: Let’s start out with Rachel’s question: I would love to know, for each ad campaign, how many ad sets would be the best amount and how many ads for those ad sets? Are there benefits to how many you have?
I love this question because I think many different ad experts do this differently. It’s not necessarily a black and white answer. Is that right?
Rick: Yeah, that’s correct.
Amy: Great. But I want to know from you, based on your experience and working with thousands of students, what you would suggest for Rachel and anybody else that has this question. I think Christina also had the exact same question. I think it’s a good one.
Rick: Bennett Cohen also had a very similar question. Can we read that one as well? We’ll be able to answer both of them at the same time.
Amy: Bennett said: I have a question on ad sets where each ad set targets the followers of a Facebook Page. I have 17 Facebook Pages whose followers I’m targeting in my new campaign. Thirteen of the 17 pages have 20,000 to 30,000 likes. Only one of the 17 pages has over 64,000 likes. Each page has two ad sets, one for mobile and one for desktop. Each ad set has its own budget.
Thirty-four ad sets seems overboard. I’m thinking of combining the smaller ad sets into one larger one. Any downside to this?
Rick: That is such a great question. Between Rachel and Bennett’s questions that we just read and Christina I want to address Bennett’s question first.
He said 34 ad sets seems overboard. With my last launch when I ran Facebook ads for my April launch of the FB Advantage, I had something like 767 ad sets.
Amy: Okay, shut your mouth.
Rick: Bennett, 34 ad sets is not overboard. The idea is to start off wide so that you have lots of different ad sets to target. When you start off you are testing to see which ones of those ad sets are going to work the best.
If you start off with 34 ad sets you’re not going to continue to run all 34 ad sets during your campaign. You’re going to start off with that many but then start to filter down to the ones that are truly working for you and performing the best.
To further what Bennett is asking about, should he start to combine the ad sets because of the potential target size he feels is a little bit small since 13 of the 17 pages he wants to target are between 20,000 and 30,000? He says that only one has over 64,000.
My recommendation is to still break out each one of the individual Facebook Pages in each of its own ad set. When you don’t do that at first, if you start combining all those different Facebook Pages into one ad set you don’t know which one is performing the best. You don’t know which one is bringing the results of the other ones down.
You’ve got to break them out first to figure out which of those Facebook Pages are going to perform the best for you. After that, one you start to figure that out, if you want to, you can start to combine them into fewer ad sets.
I will say that if you do that you should combine “like” Facebook Pages. If you’re targeting the Wall Street Journal but are then targeting Amy Porterfield, that’s very different. You would want to target the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times together.
Amy: Okay.
Rick: And then Amy Porterfield and Social Media Examiner can be combined. You’re combining interests that are similar to each other…if you want to start combining them.
Amy: I like that, definitely.
Rick: That kind of answers Rachel’s question as well. She is asking how many ad sets would the best amount be. There is no best. It really just depends on what kind of audiences you want to target and what your budget is. You do have to set a budget per ad set.
To take it a step further, Rachel is asking how many ads per ad set? When I am split testing different ads I do like to put one ad in each ad set. I have experimented with this a lot and I have found that when we put multiple ads within an ad set Facebook “declares” a winning ad.
As I said that, Amy, I was using air quotes.
Amy: You are not allowed to use air quotes.
Rick: As I said that…Can you see that? I was doing that.
Amy: I really felt it through the mike.
Rick: As I was doing that I was like, “Why am I doing air quotes right now?” Facebook is declaring a winning ad far too quickly. For example, if you have two or three ads within an ad set you start your ads at 7 a.m.
Within the first few hours Facebook is picking one of those ads that is already out of the gates performing the best and then puts all of its delivery emphasis on that one ad. It doesn’t give much love at all to the other ones.
In reality, the others could still be really good ads but Facebook’s algorithm didn’t give it much chance to deliver to those other ones. That’s why I like to break ads up if I’m going to be doing split testing. I put one ad per ad set.
Amy: I have a question about that. In Bennett’s case, he has 17 different Facebook Pages and he is breaking them into mobile and desktop. He’s got 34 ad sets. Is he using the exact same ad for all 34 ad sets?
Rick: Yes. I would do that.
Amy: When he feels there is some ad fatigue he changes the ad?
Rick: Exactly. He is probably thinking he doesn’t have a big budget, I’m just guessing. If each ad set has its own individual budget and I have 3 ad sets and the minimum spend I can do per day is $5 then I am looking at $150 a day.
He is probably thinking he doesn’t want to spent that much money. You choose…start testing. Instead of starting off with 34 you may start off with five of those ad sets and targeting groups to see how those do.
You can run those for a few days and then start mixing in other ad sets where you are turning off the ones that are not performing well and starting new ones to see how they perform. You are always testing to find out which ones are performing the best.
Amy: Do you like Bennett’s idea of breaking them into mobile and desktop so that they are two separate ad sets?
Rick: I do. Of course you can combine them into one ad set and then once they are running you can see in Facebook’s reporting how the mobile and desktop are performing. That is great and it’s good that they break it down like that.
What I don’t like about that is if you’re getting better results from mobile than you are desktop and desktop is bringing down the overall performance of that ad set…you would be getting better results, in my experience of what we’ve seen, when you break them out with mobile in one ad set and desktop in another ad set. You can see
specifically which one is doing better and you don’t have one dragging down the results of the other one. Does that make sense?
Amy: It does. As you went through Rachel, Bennett, and Christina’s question around ad sets and ad campaigns a question kept coming to mind because I hear my students ask it all the time. You’re not going to love this question Rick; however, I do think you can add a little context around it in the sense that they always ask me how long they should run their ad to know if it’s a leading contender so that they can turn off the other ones.
What’s the period of time they should be running these ads?
Rick: I do love this question.
Amy: Oh good.
Rick: I do love it. This is one of the biggest mistakes I see people make. They don’t let their ads run long enough. Going back to the example of starting my ads at 7 a.m. People really want to know, myself included, as quickly as possible how their ads are running.
Amy: Yes.
Rick: Let’s say you are checking your ads at 2 p.m. and they have been running for seven hours. They look at the results and see they are not very good results so far. You’ve got to give your ads time for Facebook’s algorithm to do its thing. You’ve got to give time to get your ads into the algorithm.
Facebook wants your ads to succeed. That’s what the algorithm is trying to do, get you high-performing ads when you start your ads. I recommend that you not touch your ads for at least two to three days, 48 to 72 hours. Once your ads are supposed to start I would go in and confirm they are live but that’s it.
Confirm they are live. Good. Then go back a couple of days later and check in with your ads. You’ve got to give time for Facebook’s delivery algorithm to start doing its thing.
Amy: Nice. I’m glad we put a stake in the ground with that one. I think my students really needed to hear that.
Let’s move on to the next question. Christina had a two-part question. The second part of the question is: When targeting people who like a certain Facebook Page should you also narrow audience if you want to target specific types of people from that Facebook Page or let people know who it’s for in the copy in the ad.
Here’s her personal example: My personal example is that I’m targeting pages that kindergarten through sixth grade teachers tend to like. But my target market is kindergarten through second grade. I can narrow my audience by including the job titles of kindergarten teachers, first-grade teachers, etc. But should I?
Not everyone that I want to reach might list their job title in Facebook. Should I just write in the ad copy that the information is for kindergarten through second grade? Thanks for all you both do. I’m really looking forward to FB Advantage opening back up.
It is such a cool thing that Christina said that because it is opening up. FB Advantage is Rick’s signature Facebook ads program. That’s where he is going to teach you everything you need to know about setting up your Facebook ad funnels.
If you want to check that out go to http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/rick and that is what his free webinar is all about. Christina, thanks for giving Rick a plug for that because I think he totally deserves it.
Rick: Thank you Christina. We’ve made some changes to it where it’s solely focused on online businesses this time around.
Amy: Nice.
Rick: It’s a change that we’ve made and I’m really, really excited about that.
I want to put you on the spot. In reading through Christina’s question, is there one word that jumps out at you?
Amy: Geez, you are really putting me on the spot. Copy? No, that wasn’t it. That was a good word that jumped out. Wait, how about narrow audience?
Rick: Nope.
Amy: Am I failing here?
Rick: One more. Strike three and you’re out but let’s give one more.
Amy: Okay, so you’re saying in her whole question there is one word that really stuck out.
Rick: It is and I’ll give you another hint.
Amy: Job title?
Rick: Nope wrong, errrr.
Amy: Don’t play these quizzes on me anymore.
Rick: Okay, it’s the word “should”.
Amy: That was tough! I was trying to sound really intelligent with some ad lingo.
Rick: I told you. Actually, she says it three different times. If I’m looking at the question right I am noticing it three different times. Should you also narrow audience; I could narrow my audience by including the job title, should I do that; should I just write in the ad copy.
I’m picking on Christina a little bit, very much lovingly, because so many people are thinking from a should-I-do-this point. The answer is “yes” you should do it. I can give you some guidance on how best to approach it but when you’re asking “should” it is usually “yes.”
You want to be testing to see what works the best. When you are asking yourself should you do something it usually means “yes” you should test this out. There is no cut and dry, right or wrong way to do this. You just have to test it out to see if it works and makes sense.
Are you jiving with that?
Amy: It definitely does, yes.
Rick: To answer her question specifically without being such a wise guy about it…
Amy: No more wise guy, I failed that big time.
Rick: She asks if she should narrow the audience if she’s targeting a page that people who are kindergarten through sixth grade teachers have an interest in but her target market is specifically kindergarten through second grade?
I would say, “yes”. I would test both. There are a couple of different ways to do it. I would target the kindergarten through sixth grade teacher’s page. I would target it and also layer in kindergarten teacher, first grade teacher, etc. I would test that out. That would be one ad set you are testing.
Another ad set could be where you are targeting the kindergarten through sixth grade teacher but then are using ad copy. I love the fact that she said this and is thinking about it this way. We forget so often that we know our audience is on a certain page or has a certain interest and we can target that interest. But our specific interest is within that audience. We can go about it exactly the way Christina is doing it. We can start to layer in additional targets to try to get right down to that audience.
I would absolutely test that out and then I would also test, in a separate ad set, using the ad copy to further target down within that overall kindergarten to sixth grade teacher interest. Speak to the kindergarten through second grade teacher directly while targeting that overall page.
Amy: Perfect. I think Christina is going to find the answer incredibly valuable. I hope you guys can see how it could relate to you layering in some targeting as you are looking for your audience online.
We are going to move to the next question. It’s all about the numbers. Cindy specifically said, “What do all the numbers mean when reading how your ads are doing in the Power Editor?”
Christian asked a similar question. Kendra asked a similar question. And so did Denise. There were a lot of questions around how to know your ads are doing well and what the numbers means. They want to know what they are looking for.
Rick: I love this question.
Amy: Me too.
Rick: This has become one of my favorite questions to talk about.
Amy: You’re really good at answering it. I’ve seen you answer this on stage. We do a live event for my B-School bonus members. Rick was just live on stage for all of my B- School members and he kind of broke down what to do once your ads are running and what to look for.
I saw a little glimpse of this. It’s good so shoot us straight.
Rick: Basically, the first number you want to be looking at is the number that is most relevant to your objective. If your objective is website conversions and you are trying to get webinar registrants or people to opt in to your list then the first metric you want to be looking at is your cost per lead.
If that’s what your objective is that is the most important thing you want to look at first. From there, again when my objective is conversions, I want to look at how many conversions I have and how much money I spent.
Let’s get that right out of the way from the get go. Look at the stat that’s most relevant to the objective you are doing. If you are trying to drive traffic to a blog post then your objective would be clicks to website.
Now your most important stat you want to be looking at is your cost per click and the click-through rate. Your objective is that you want to get clicks so you should look at the metric that is most specific to getting clicks over to your website.
Those are sort of the initial ones. You then want to look at what I call troubleshooting numbers. I like to look at click-through rate, relevancy score, frequency, conversion rate on your landing page. If your objective is website conversions you obviously want to be looking at how many people are clicking on the ad and going to the landing page and then how many of those people are actually opting in.
If you’re using Lead Pages, Lead Pages gives you that stat right in there. They will tell you what the conversion rate percentage is. That’s another reason I love Lead Pages. I know you love Lead Pages as well.
Amy: Right.
Rick: Another reason I love it is they give you that stat right then and there. We’ve got conversion rate. By the way, as I am answering this I should probably give some benchmarks.
Amy: Yes please. That was going to be my next question.
Rick: I knew that was coming and I actually just recorded an episode for my own podcast.
Amy: Which number is? Because didn’t you get into these specifics?
Rick: I did so I broke the stats down in Episode #100 and then in Episode #101, which I just recorded the other day we talk about the benchmarks and all the numbers and stuff like that.
Amy: We’ll link to those in the show notes so people can find that out. Give us a little hint here.
Rick: Sure. For cost per lead everyone always wants to know what is a good cost per lead. How often do you get that question?
Amy: Like 20 times a day.
Rick: I think we’ve talked about it on previous episodes.
Amy: We have but we still need to bring it up.
Rick: For sure. What’s a good cost per lead? It is going to vary by niche. If you’re in one niche you could be having a $10 cost per lead and you think it’s amazing but for other people in other niches they would be like, “Holy cow, a $10 cost per lead is way too expensive.”
In general I would shoot for trying to get under $8. Again, don’t say, “Rick said I have to have an $8 cost per lead and if I don’t my ads are failing.” That’s not true. But, just as a general guideline I would like to see, for most people listening here, if you can get to
$8 or under you are doing pretty well.
On a cost per click rate I would like to see (again, a general guideline) under $1. For click-through rate I like to say 1% at the bottom of the barrel. So, at 1% and above you are doing really well on the click-through rate.
On the relevancy score, it’s a scale of 1 to 10, we really don’t know exactly all of the things Facebook looks at as far as the algorithm that determines the relevancy score but we do know it’s a scale of 1 to 10 and the higher you are closer to 10 the better your ad is performing and Facebook will reward you with lower costs and more delivery.
Basically, the relevancy score in the simplest terms is how relevant your ad is to the target audience you are targeting. Then Facebook looks at whether people are clicking on your ad, whether they are liking your ad, giving your ad comments, sharing your ad, and the feedback they are giving the ad.
Those are the type of things that play into the relevancy score. The closer you are to 10 the better. If you are in the 1 to 2 or 3 range you probably need to look at changing some things up with your ad.
I dive into all of this stuff, by the way, in the live training you’re talking about.
Amy: Oh cool.
Rick: I’m doing it today and tomorrow. I call these troubleshooting numbers because once we’ve determined our initial metric, cost per lead or cost per click, then you can start to use all of these other numbers to try to figure out what’s going on with your ad using these benchmarks we’re talking about here.
The frequency is just the average number of times one person is seeing your ad. I like to say if you’re in that 1 to 4 range you are doing well on that. I think if you get above 4 people start to tune your ad out and tune your banner out. Banner blindness is a term we have used forever.
If someone is seeing your ad too often they will start to tune it out. That’s where you frequency number comes into play. If you have a really high frequency number it’s not engaging the person anymore.
In the simplest form, I think those are the stats you should focus on.
Amy: Good stuff. I love that you broke that down for us.
Rick: Nice. I love talking about that.
Amy: I know, that’s a good one and it comes up a lot.
This next one is actually really good in terms of looking at your overall strategy. It’s from Mary and I’ll read exactly what she says: Hi Amy and Rick. I met you both in San Diego last month and it was an amazing live event.
That’s really cool, we are so glad we got to meet you too, Mary.
“I’ve been selling an online autism course to professionals and “gung ho” (air quotes, for the record) parents.”
Rick: Did you do air quotes as you read it?
Amy: I did, just for you.
“I’ve been running Facebook ads to blogs with content upgrades, thanks to your advice Amy, to webinars, thanks to Webinars That Convert, to lead magnets and even retargeting people who have visited my sales page.”
She is doing a lot there. She says, “I’m spending about $500 a month on the ads and getting really good conversion.” She is basically getting 5¢ clicks to her blog post and when she’s having people opt in for her webinar it’s about 30¢ to 60¢, which is crazy low. That’s good.
“My list has grown from 2,500 to 7,500 over the past 18 months. My question is how do I know how much to budget for Facebook ads going forward?”
This is the part you guys really need to pay attention to because this is where Rick and I found something we wanted to address. “Doubling or tripling my list size is nice but simply growing my list is not generating regular income. Should I sell my online product through an evergreen webinar and/or sell my $7 eBook through Facebook ads?”
She’s asking how to make money with all of this. I have stuff to say about this but I’m going to first let you jump in Rick.
Rick: Okay, first of all I do remember meeting Mary. She was great. I have a niece and two nephews who are on the autism spectrum so it was really cool to talk to her. She gave me a book so Mary, if you’re listening, thank you so much. I appreciate that.
This is a common thing. It is awesome to triple your email list size in the past 18 months. In my head to kind of recap what she is doing, she has spent this money on Facebook ads to build her email list and is getting great results. But she is not ROIing with a plan in place at this time to get her money back that she has spent on ads.
Mary has done this well so far but wants to know what she has to do to start selling stuff. She has a $7 eBook but has an opportunity to sell a bigger program or service with webinars. I definitely think she should do that.
Her initial question of knowing how much to budget for Facebook ads going forward, at this point I would say move from list building into getting people to pay her money now.
Amy: Yes.
Rick: There are a couple of different strategies you can do. She has been building her email list but it doesn’t sound like she’s making sales from it. With her $7 eBook she could continue to build her email list but set the funnel up a little bit differently.
She is building her email list just like she has done. On the thank-you page after somebody opts in you could let them know you are sending a lead magnet. Then you can also let them know (off the top of my head, don’t take this as ad copy) you have an eBook that takes you through blah, blah, blah, and it’s only $7.
Some people call this a trip wire. It’s basically a way to start to make your money back on the ads that drove people to that page. She could offer that $7, inexpensive product that she could put in front of those people who have just opted in.
She can offer the $7 eBook and then there are a couple of ways you can do this. You can send people from your thank-you page right into the email followup series that offers a webinar to sell the online product.
Whatever the product is she could sell it through a webinar and she could get people into the webinar through the email followup series. Or, right after the $7 eBook offer
on the thank-you page you could also be offering the opportunity to register for a webinar.
If you go that route I would be evergreening your webinar. But first start with doing the live webinar. If I’m stealing your thunder, Amy, I apologize.
Amy: No, this is good.
Rick: Do the live webinar first and really hone that in and get your messaging down. Make sure it’s converting and people are vibing with it. Get that down first and then you could move that into an evergreen offering. Essentially, if that’s an evergreen offer you could get people to sign up for your email list and on the thank-you page you can let them know you are sending them a lead magnet to offer a $7 eBook.
They answer Yes or No and right then and there, depending on what they do, you can also offer them the opportunity to sign up for the evergreen webinar.
Amy: That’s good stuff. I love that you got into very specifics for Mary and anybody else looking for advice in this area I think the only thing I’ll add is that it’s all about your overall strategy. If you feel that you are putting all this money into Facebook ads for leads only and you are not seeing a return on your investment then you’re not setting up your funnels and strategy overall to sell something.
With Mary, she said she was running ads for a webinar. I think it came to the fact that she was doing live webinars but maybe not enough to see money come in regularly. Is that what you got from that?
Rick: Now that I’m reading through the question, yeah. She was getting opt ins and webinar registrations for 30¢ to 60¢ a lead. If she can continue this and get the strategy down so that she’s making money back on this and is only spending that much money or is getting that kind of results with 30¢ to 60¢ leads it just becomes a numbers game.
If we can get the sales funnel to converting so that she is making the money back and getting an ROI on this then it is just like opening the flood gates to get people in the sales funnel.
Amy: Exactly. I think a lot of people are hesitant to sell too much or promote too much. But definitely, Facebook ads become wildly valuable when you’re not only
growing your email list but you are obviously converting that list into customers. You have to be promoting. One of the biggest lessons I learned when I took on a business partner (I’ve talked about Devin, my business partner a lot) and you even asked me one time, Rick, what I thought was one big shift I made in my business that skyrocketed my success since having a business partner.
One of the things Devin did really well with me was to encourage me to promote more often and even a little bit more aggressively. I use the word aggressively because I was a little bit timid. I didn’t want to email too much. I didn’t want to fatigue my list and I didn’t want to be too pushy.
Devin kind of put me in the right mindset to say that I needed to be promoting on a consistent basis. For us that turns out to be about once a month. Sometimes it’s a big launch or just a little launch to a segment of the list but we’re constantly promoting.
When Devin says he wants to spend $150,000 on our ads for a launch I don’t freak out because I know we have a system now to turn the leads into customers. You get more confident in spending money in ads when you see they are actually making money. It’s funny how that works.
Rick: I love that. I love the fact that you brought that up. Once Mary does this a few times she can start to see that for every 50¢ she is spending on a lead she is making “this much” money on the back end as she is selling stuff.
I don’t know how much her product is but let’s just say it’s $100. She could say that for every $20 she spends on ads she is making $100. If I am going to 5X my ROI, I’m going to do that all day long.
Amy: That’s a game changer right there. It takes a while to get there but definitely becoming a student of Facebook ads and really understanding, like we said earlier, what those numbers mean makes a huge difference. I’m glad we covered that.
I’m going to deviate one more thing that I actually forgot to tell you about and wanted to address real quick. Then we are going to get into our final question which is about using ads for high-ticket programs and products. That’s going to be our final question to wrap up.
Before we get there, I wanted to address a question that came through from Penny. Penny says, “After hearing the podcast that you and Rick did about the ad spend calculator.” Just to let everybody know, this was super popular for us. The last episode Rick and I did was Episode #123 at http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/123.
We talked about how much money you should spend on your Facebook ads to see success with your webinar. Rick then had a great idea to create a calculator through Google.docs that you can punch your information in to and get the results.
Penny is saying after she played with the calculator she is thinking that Facebook ads aren’t right for her right now. She says she doesn’t have a few thousand dollars to spend on ads to see success on her webinar.
I wanted to address this because the first thing is, and I saw this from a few people, we did the calculator and if you punch in your numbers and you want to make $5,000 on your webinar and you are only using Facebook ads to fill up the webinar you will see that you’ve got to put some significant money to your Facebook ads to have that successful webinar.
One thing that Rick and I really addressed in the episode as well as in the cheat sheet we supplied with Episode #123 is that you don’t need to use only Facebook ads to fill up your webinar. I would love to see people go back to the calculator and if you have a goal of $5,000 to be made on the webinar, let’s say $2,000 of that will come from webinar registrants.
For the other $3,000 you can use your email list, free social media strategies like Facebook Live and Instagram and Insta Stories and whatever else you want to use to talk about your webinar. All of the money you collect on a webinar doesn’t need to come from using ads to fill it up. Does that make sense Rick?
Rick: Absolutely. I’ve gotten that question since then as well. They ask if they do all of “this” and the goal is “x” and the numbers are put in the calculator they are going to be spending more than the goal and they will be losing money. I am so glad you clarified. It doesn’t all have to come from Facebook ads. There are other ways you can do it as well.
Amy: Yes, exactly. Good. I wanted to address that. Then, for our final question let me get back to our document. Katharina says, “I would love some insights on doing Facebook ads to sell high-priced coaching packages. Is this possible without a huge several-week long funnel?
She wants to target people who already visited her Work With Me page. Do they need to go into a huge funnel? She said, “Any insights on that would be appreciated.” What have you got for us?
Rick: This is such a great question. I’m really glad she brought this up and that she mentioned the Work With Me page. I like how she is thinking about this…if people visited her Work With Me page that is probably an opportunity for her to retarget those people and let them know about her coaching package.
That’s awesome. I would do that. I would retarget people who visit the Work With Me page. Do you need a several week-long funnel? Again, this kind of goes back to when I was talking about “should” you do “this”? It’s just a matter of testing.
I don’t want to sound all nebulous with that and make you think I’m not giving a specific answer. But, you do generally need to test that out. I want to give you two examples of funnels that are working right now for high-priced coaching packages.
One example I’m thinking of is a student of mine who is a lawyer selling a retreat for female lawyers. It is how to get more out of your job, be more happy, that sort of thing. She is selling a $3,500 live retreat off of a webinar to cold traffic.
She is converting! The funnel is targeting cold traffic, female lawyers. She is getting them onto her webinar and then from the webinar she is selling into the $3,500 retreat. I think the number she said she spent was $900 on ads over two months. She made $17,500 in sales.
Amy: That’s amazing.
Rick: She is proving you can do that right off of a webinar. I think that is an anomaly. If somebody is coming in cold and they are spending an hour with you but then you are offering them a $3,500 coaching package or retreat or something like that, especially if it’s a retreat because it’s a live event and that’s much different than a virtual course, she’s making it work.
Her webinar is obviously really dialed in. That’s one funnel that is working. I would normally recommend people use the same funnel but, instead of at the webinar selling into the high-priced coaching package, get people onto a live strategy call. She is selling a free strategy session. You are selling a 15 or 30-minute strategy call.
You actually get on the phone with them and on the phone call is where you offer, discuss, and sell the coaching package. The webinar is just their introduction into you. You start to warm them up and give them information.
From the webinar you get them to sign up for a call with you and then you have the call and then you are able to sell your package on the call. Again, test different ways to try to make that work for you. The other way that I think Katharina is talking about too is if I want to retarget people that visit the Work With Me page, how long should the sales funnel be?
You just have to test different things out. In general, the higher the price of the package the longer the funnel is going to be. I know a lot of people who are selling the high-priced coaching off of a webinar model into a strategy call, which sells into the coaching package.
Amy: Your specifics on this episode have been so dang good! Thank you.
Rick: Seriously? I kind of feel when I get into it like that I wonder if I’m losing people.
Amy: I always get worried about that too and then I think that if you can see how somebody else is doing it I think it’s incredibly valuable and I feel that’s what you did on this episode.
Rick: Cool.
Amy: Thank you so very much.
Rick: I love talking about case studies like that of people where it’s working for other people too. Let’s not reinvent the wheel. I know you’ve always talked about that.
Amy: Yes.
Rick: Don’t reinvent the wheel. Look at what other people are doing successfully and see how you can use that in your own business to customize it for what you are trying to do.
Amy: That’s actually a good segue. We didn’t set it up this way but I was going to say that’s what you are doing in your free webinar. You’re showing examples of what
people have done and how they’ve applied it. I think that’s why I tell everybody about your free webinar. It’s incredibly valuable and very, very chucked full of examples.
Rick: Like I said, I like to give examples of people doing different things. I have another example that I hadn’t thought about when I was giving this answer. Spoiler, I do talk about this in the training, I talk about a woman who is a holistic health-care practitioner. She sells a $5,000 or $6,000 certification program.
She runs Facebook ads into a video that gets people to apply for certification. Then it goes into a live strategy call, they jump on the phone and sell it. I love sharing examples like that.
Amy: I do too. While you were saying all that I realized I think I said “chucked full.” I am pretty sure it’s chocked full.
Rick: It is chocked full. I like chucked full too though.
Amy: Chucked full is a new statement you can all use if you would like. It just means a little bit more than chocked full.
Rick:#chuckfull.
Amy: Let’s wrap this up. If you want to check out Rick’s webinar that is so chucked full of g r e a t e x a m p l e s , t i p s , a n d s t r a t e g i e s , y o u c a n g o t o http:// amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/rick. I think you have all fallen in love with Rick’s strategies as much as I have so definitely check it out.
The day this goes live he is doing the webinar live today and tomorrow. Don’t wait on this one if you really want to be a part of it because the webinar goes away. Definitely jump on it.
Rick: Yeah, because when this episode goes live at whatever early morning hours of this Thursday, I have a 12 p.m. Pacific training this same day and also tomorrow at 9 a.m. Pacific (Friday 9 a.m. Pacific) and that’s the last one that we are doing. Be sure if you want to jump on one of these trainings go to http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/ rick and register for one of those dates and times that works best for you.
Amy: Thank you so very much, Rick, for being here. I love to do these Facebook ad episodes with you and I can’t wait until you come back on.
Rick: It is so much fun doing these things. Your students have the best questions. I hope none of my own students take offense to that but these questions are awesome and I love doing these. Thanks.
Amy: We’ll make sure we keep collecting questions from all of you so keep them coming and have a wonderful week. Bye for now.
