The #1 Ad Everyone Should Be Running | 144
It’s a fact of business: we all need leads in order to continue growing and keep our business alive. But reaching new people and generating leads seems to get harder and harder each year.
Unfortunately, growing your email list can be slow and organic social media traffic is basically nonexistent these days.
So, if you want to get serious about your lead generation strategy, I recommend running Facebook lead generation ads.
Why Do You Need Lead Generation Ads?
Growing your business consistently is the best way to have a sustainable business.
Over time, people will naturally fall off. Whether they unsubscribe from your email list, stop interacting with your content, or simply shift focus in their lives. It happens.
With lead generation ads, you are consistently bringing in new people,
And the best part is that by adding these leads to your email list, you can warm them up and push them along in the customer journey. Remember, our email list tends to be where the money is because they are the warmest audience. With the average open rate being 25%, that is way higher engagement than you’ll see on social media!
What Should Your Lead Generation Strategy Be?
Alright, let’s talk about how to come up with a lead generation strategy so you can begin to utilize ads and bring in new people.
#1 Think About What You’re Selling: If you know what you’re going to sell, you can figure out what free offer you can use to lead them to that sale. Ask yourself what they need to know before buying or what they might be looking for before you offer the solution.
#2 Who Are You Selling To: Once you have a topic in mind, consider your target audience. Are they busy moms? Entrepreneurs? Teachers? This will impact the type of freebie you create. A mom or teacher might find a training to be too time consuming, whereas a brand new entrepreneur might have the time to watch a longer video training.
#3 Stay Consistent: Lastly, you want to have a consistent email marketing strategy in mind. If you’re going to spend money on lead generation ads to bring in new people, you don’t want to leave them hanging. Make sure your have emails planned out that will continue to warm your audience and lead them towards a purchase.
Want help putting together your lead generation ads? Explore our Facebook Ads services and learn more about how we can work together.
Don't forget to follow me on Instagram @heyitsjenzaia and tune in next Saturday for more business tips and strategies!
xo, Jenzaia
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Episode Transcript:
Today we're going to be talking about the number one ad that everybody should be running. And that is your lead generation ads. Now, if you listened to episode 14, it was my fall marketing tips, strategies. I did talk pretty extensively about the layers of your marketing plan, the brand of brand awareness and visibility, lead generation and sales, and that you need to have a strategy in place for each one of those.
What I didn't really get into is what the number one ad is that you should be running, but that's lead generation, which is the middle kind of like tier of those marketing layers. It is the first ad that I recommend everyone use. Especially with the digital climate the way it is right now, it can be really, really hard to grow your email list, grow your Instagram, grow your business organically. And so I think most people really need to be utilizing some sort of paid advertisements to be growing their email list consistently every single day. And the way you do that is lead generation ads.
Why do we need lead generation ads? Well, mostly because our email list tends to be quite often where the money is. I say that because those are your warmest of warm people in your audience, especially the ones that are opening your emails. And we just know that because of the way the algorithm is in email where it's still for the most part chronological, and that people check their email multiple times a day. There isn't that filter like on Instagram where only about 4 percent of your followers see your post. Unless it starts to go viral and really gains popularity, for the most part, only like 4 percent of people are going to see it.
Whereas your emails, your open rate is probably somewhere between 20% and 50%, which is huge. 4% versus 20%. It's like five times more and it does depend on how big your Instagram following is, how big your email list is, but those stats are just undeniable. It's so, so important to be growing your email list. Because those are the people who are actually consuming your content, who are actually interacting with you, and you really have a bit more control over it than your social media.
Growing your email list and bringing fresh people on is just going to continue to build sustainability in your business long term. With buying cycles getting longer and longer, it's important just to remember that if you're not getting people on your list today, your business might start to suffer in three to six months. So growing your email list, consistently bringing those new people in and then nurturing them consistently is the best way to continue that sustainability in your business.
So growing your business is really important. And there is a natural fall off. People will be unsubscribing, people will leave your orbit, people will no longer need your content and they will unsubscribe, unfollow. And if you're not consistently replacing those people, then you hit this like stagnant-ness or even decline, which is not good for business growth, obviously.
So by running a lead generation ad, you are bringing those new people into your business. And then when the time is right to start running a brand awareness campaign which is going out to completely cold people, you already have that lead generation ad up and running. And hopefully it's set up in a way that once somebody sees your brand awareness ad, they automatically start to see your lead generation ad and it can be a really good pairing to bring people into your world in a low pressure way.
Because you're just showing them content; a video that you've created, or leading them to a podcast. You're providing them with free value, high quality content, and they probably want more of you anyway. So then when they see your lead gen ad, then they're like, “yes, I'll go on their email list. I want more content from this amazing human.”
I would be really interested in what your lead generation strategy is or how you're continuing to bring those new people in without utilizing a lead gen ad. There's lots of different options. You could be on Pinterest. You could be doing collaborations, guest podcasting, summits. There's lots of different options, and ads definitely are not the only option.
So just make sure that you have some sort of lead generation strategy in place!
Now let's talk about what your lead gen strategy should be. And to do that, we need to think about what you're selling. How are you making money in your business? This is like reverse engineering or backwards planning. If you're in the classroom, backwards planning refers to writing the test first and then building your lessons backwards from the test or assignment. Then once we get there, the students have everything they need to be successful on the test because you created that first. So you know exactly what lessons they need to be successful.
Reverse engineering is the same thing. We start with the end goal and then we backwards plan. We figure out from the end goal where we need to start to be successful. So starting with what you sell is reverse engineering.
So you start with what you're selling. Then think about if someone's going to buy that from you. What free thing do they need? And then that is going to help you determine what your freebie is. And also thinking about who these people are. Are they busy moms? Are they CEOs? Are they brand new business owners who have very little money and more time to spend potentially? Or are they those really busy CEOs that have almost no time and lots of money to spend?
Should it be video training? Should it be audio training? Like what is that person going to need and in what format? Because you can give basically the exact same content in a free ebook or a free guide that someone downloads a PDF. And then you can do the same thing in video training. And considering who your person is, will help you to create a freebie with the content that they need and also in a style that they're actually going to consume.
That busy mom who is running in 12 different directions and barely has time to breathe probably isn't going to want to watch a three hour training. I don't know if anyone's going to want to watch a three hour training session. But that brand new business owner who has very little money to spend and has a bit more time might be interested in watching an hour long training where they are able to take something very tangible away and make noticeable changes in their business. So just taking that into consideration will help you to determine the freebie for your business.
So I'm just going to list off some of the different examples in order, just to give you ideas.
Free download of some sort, like a checklist, ebook, a PDF, worksheets.
Swipe files, something that they can use immediately.
Templates are really great.
Video training or a video series.
Audio series or audio training.
Private podcasts are really great.
Something that's really, really popular right now for lead generation is summits or conferences, specifically the online ones.
You can have a resource. So if you have some sort of really big bundle, maybe you're selling it on TPT or Etsy, you can pull out a small piece of it and offer it as a sample for free. And then obviously it leads to a bigger sale.
And then you have things like booking an appointment, or like a free video call, or phone call, free consult, free evaluation, free audit.
The options are endless for what you could use as a freebie and just as long as it meets those two things. It has the content your people need and it needs to be in a format that will make sense for your consumer. You can further reverse engineer to come up with your visibility strategy and create your content so that once someone is on your email list, once they have signed up for this lead magnet that you've created, then they're going to be nurtured further towards buying.
And once you've created it, then you can run those ads. And depending on your niche and what the content of that is, you could be running an evergreen ad. You're always running this exact same freebie. And every three to six months, you refresh the messaging. You refresh the images. You just keep everything fresh and seasonal.
If it's working, it's bringing new people into your business. And that's part of why I love ads and why a lead generation ad is the first one I always want all my clients to set up. That is going to bring the people in. It's going to keep your business steady. And you don't even need to think about it.
Yes, there is maintenance. Yes, you should be tracking the numbers and the data every day and looking at your ad and making sure it's going well. But once it's up and running, leads will be coming onto your list while you're sleeping, while you're playing with your kids, while you're working in your classroom, whatever it might be, leads are continuing to come on your list without you having to be posting a zillion times a day and to coming up with different ideas for reels.
And I'm not saying you shouldn't be doing these things. You should have a content strategy that may or may not include reels, but should include some sort of social media, whether that's Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn or whatever it might be. You have that strategy. And also, you have an email strategy. So you're consistently emailing your list. Also, you don't need to be stressing out as much about getting people on your list because the ads are working in the background.
Okay, this wasn't meant to be a rant but I feel like it turned a little bit into a rant of why you need to be doing lead generation and why that's the number one ad that I recommend everyone is running. Lead generation is just so important.
Just as a bit of a recap, if you are running lead generation ads, then your list is constantly growing. You're going to have a more stable, sustainable business in the long run. And if created properly using reverse engineering, then those people who come onto your list will be the right type of people who are looking for that type of content that you provide in your paid offer. And so it makes that sale a little bit easier, even if it still takes people three or six or 12 months to make the purchase. You've brought the right people onto your email list. So they're ready to buy when they're ready.
Thank you so much as always for being here for this Saturday strategy session. I'll be back in your ear again next Saturday!