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Hot Take alert! Learn why sales retargeting ads should be the last (not first!) step in your marketing strategy. Hear the tea on a viral ad that claimed massive success with minimal investment, and learn the truth behind the numbers.

This episode uncovers the key elements required for a successful sales retargeting campaign and the importance of creating a larger ecosystem for your business. Get valuable insights on lead generation, consistent email and content marketing, and building relationships on social media. If you've ever wondered about the effectiveness of retargeting ads, this episode will shed light on their proper place in your marketing efforts!

In this episode, we chat about…

How retargeting ads work {01:50}
Story of a misleading retargeting ad {03:30}
The ecosystem required for successful retargeting ads {07:40}
Importance of generating leads and consistent email marketing {12:20}
Focusing on lead generation before retargeting {14:00}
Using sales retargeting ads in conjunction with other sales efforts {15:50}

Episode Transcript:

It's a hot take week. I'm so excited. I get really excited. I realized since I rerecorded my new intro and I no longer say that, I realized my go to is I'm so excited. And I'm genuinely excited to record all of these episodes. If you didn't know, I don't know if I've ever shared this, but part of my process, I use Asana, so one of my recurring tasks every single week is to work on my podcast outlines.

So every, I think it's Tuesdays, maybe Wednesdays, it pops up in Asana and says just the month, the name of the month, and then I know that that is the podcast brainstorming reminder. And so I open that up, and right in Asana, I do my brainstorming. And then, when it comes to time to record, because I batch record one time a month, and so when it comes to time to record, I just pull that Asana project up, and all of my notes are there.

And it's great. I love it. Right now, I have the two months going because I'm just recording this one, but the next months have started, so that's also fun. Anyway, I'm genuinely excited about the topics that I'm recording for. And I love that I decided to do these hot takes and to go and talk about something that is either controversial or I know a lot of people struggle with the idea of it.

So, this one is, retargeting is last. Not first.

Welcome to Market Scale Grow. I'm your host, Jenzea, and this is a Saturday strategy session where my goal is to bring you practical marketing strategies that you can implement into your business right away. Let's jump in.

I do want to just very, very make it clear that I'm talking about sales retargeting. Sales retargeting are like the sexy ad, if you will, and I'm going to talk about a story and it's kind of the basis for the rest of the episode. But Sales retargeting is where we feel like the money comes from, quote unquote, because how a sales retargeting ad works is someone Does an action actually all retargeting ads are less they do an action and then they start seeing an ad because of that action.

So I go to Walmart's website and now I'm seeing Walmart ads. I go to. A specific coaches program, and now I'm seeing that coaches at I go to somebody's Instagram, and now I'm seeing their ads, right? I've done an action, and I'm going to start getting ads because of that action I took. And that's why we think like.

Oh, is Google listening to us? Like, I only looked up, I don't know, Brazil one time, and now I'm seeing all kinds of flights for going to Brazil. That's retargeting. You've done something that the algorithms and the AI are being like, Oh, Gen Z is interested in Brazil. And then they start giving you all ads and just like pushing them your way.

Now, specifically when we're talking about sales, retargeting ads, it is when they're selling something. And I am talking in the context of like a course. So, you do some sort of action and then start seeing an ad for a course that is on sale. And these, I would say, from my experience, are the last kind of ads that we should be adding in to our repertoire.

So I'm going to start with the story and then we can dive into why retargeting ads are often seen as the first thing that we want to be doing and what we actually should be doing. So I was scrolling on Facebook and I've actually heard multiple different variations of this same story and this is the first time that it happened to me and I was kind of like, oh, finally, I saw one of these ads where it said something along the lines of, I spent a thousand dollars and made 50, 000.

If I can do it, so can you.

I was so mad about that last phrase. If I could do it, so can you, because that is not... Absolutely not true, ever. It drives me bonkers when someone says, if I can do it, so can you. I can drive a car, my child cannot. I know that that's a very extreme example, but just because I can do it doesn't mean everyone else can.

And a better example, my husband, when he is cooking. The kitchen remains immaculate. He washes dishes as he goes. He puts things away as he goes. And after we eat, the only thing we really, really need to do is put the dishes that we were using on the table into the dishwasher and sweep the floor. Because our children are young still and they are monsters and they still get half of their dinner plate on the ground.

It's getting better, thank the goodnesses, it is getting better, but we do still have to sweep, obviously, after every single meal at this point in our lives. People sometimes say to me, this is a total side rant to my side rant, people sometimes say to me, you probably don't even remember life before kids, and every time I'm sweeping, every time I'm sweeping for like the fourth or fifth time of the day, all I can think is, oh, I remember the times when I didn't have to sweep four times a day.

Those were good, which is like the silliest thing ever. But anyway, back to the, if I can do it, so can you. My husband and I have been married for six years now, and we've been together for a few years before that. And like living together for a few years before that. So I've lived with somebody who can clean up a kitchen as they're cooking for nearly a decade now.

And it's one of my like goals in life is to be able to clean up a kitchen and I'm getting better. I really, really am, but the kitchen is not immaculate when I'm done cooking. And when we sit down to eat, there is still everything everywhere. I haven't washed a single pot or pan. Hopefully some of the things that I used have gone into the dishwasher.

But probably not. They're probably just sitting in the sink, which is better than before. So I'm getting better, but if he can do it, and I cannot. I try so hard and I can't. Like, it just isn't something that I can do. And so that's why that phrase drives me bonkers, is because there's some things that we are good at and we, that naturally come easy to us.

He doesn't even think about cleaning up as he goes. It just is how he functions. And it is, like I said, a struggle for me. And then also, beyond that, sometimes it's the wrong time, which is exactly the example of, I can drive, but my children, who are three and four, cannot drive. It's just the wrong time.

It's not that they'll never be able to drive. I hope one day that they will get their driver's licenses and they will become proficient drivers. But right now is the wrong time for them. Maybe it's the wrong idea or just the wrong person or the wrong something. Okay, so the person who ran this ad is a very famous course creator who, I'm not going to mention them because it actually isn't relevant.

As I said, I've heard multiple different stories of this happening. Some of them are course creators, some of them sell on TPT, some of them are in different niches. Like this is not a single time event. This is multiple different people. So who it actually is, isn't important. But the person who I saw is a famous course creator with significant connections.

Probably, I would guess a multi six figure email list. There's more than 100, 000 people on her email list, I would imagine. And so there's this amazing reach that she has. She has a team of people that are producing content, both long form and short form content for her every single week, every single day.

And so, this is like a very big ecosystem that her business functions in. So, I think that that's not always the case. I've definitely heard of stories where someone hits the jackpot. And they create an ad, and it does really well, and they make a lot of money on it. And it isn't happening in this really, really curated, team built ecosystem, like what I'm talking about.

But often it is and often there's a lot more that goes into it. So for this specific example, she was referring to an ad that was part of a launch that she did. And when we're in a launch, the ad budget typically is broken up. I would say like 80 percent, 10 percent, 10 percent. And so 80 percent is going to list growth for the launch mechanism, so the webinar that she hosted 80 percent of the budget is getting more people into that webinar 10 percent is for engagement or content ads to keep people thinking about the person and engaged with the open cart and just like staying top of mind, creating that omnipresence.

And then the final 10% is the retargeting budget. And so if she followed that budget structure and spent a thousand dollars for retargeting ads and made 50,000, her entire budget though would have been $10,000 and a thousand of it went to retargeting ads. And so this just doesn't paint the entire picture of her launch.

At all because she didn't spend a thousand dollars and make fifty thousand she spent ten thousand dollars and made fifty thousand and honestly she's probably spent more money than that she very much was specifically talking about those sales ads. It also doesn't paint the picture of the day to day which is what i was talking about before where.

She's putting out long form content every single week and has thousands of people consuming that content. She's putting out emails multiple times a week and having probably tens of thousands of people reading her emails. She's putting out social media content. And even in the struggle of a world that we are that is social media she's having hundreds of comments he's getting hundreds of comments and likes and shares on her content every single day so there's so much that's going on.

And this, that thousand dollars that she spent doesn't take into consideration that consistency that she has in her business to build her list every day inside and outside of the launch. It doesn't take into consideration the consistency in which she's nurturing those relationships and building the connections through her content and her social media and her emails.

It's an ecosystem. It really, really, really is an ecosystem where all of these things happen together. So. Now that we've talked about that example and I'm curious if you've ever come across an example like that where we're spending a very small amount and making a huge amount and if that made you have like ad FOMO, if you will, the fear of missing out and if so and so can get those results, like I have to try to here are what is required for a successful sales retargeting campaign.

A warm audience because a sales retargeting, I said this at the beginning, but retargeting someone does an action and then the ads start. So in this case for a sales retargeting, typically the trigger action is going to the sales page. I go to the sales page and then I start seeing the sales ads. So we need a warm audience that's a visiting the sales page to begin with.

This can be created through evergreen list building campaigns. Or it can be created through a live launch and in that open cart period, tons and tons of people are hopefully visiting our sales page. So it can be done either way. It requires that ecosystem of growing your audience every single day, month over month, quarter over quarter, year over year, consistently growing that list and also nurturing them with high quality content.

That is what makes that successful retargeting ad even possible. So, what do you need before that? Number one, you need to be generating leads. I think that these, because of all of the words I've said already, because of everything I've said already, what I'm going to tell you now is going to be maybe obvious, but I just want it to be very, very clear.

The first thing that you need to be doing is generating leads consistently. So whether you're running ads, or you're doing collaborations, or Pinterest, or, um, really highly relying on SEO, generating consistent leads is very, very important. Number two, you need to be creating consistency in your email marketing and sending out regular emails.

I highly recommend that you shoot for one email a week, but consistency and high quality is more important than that quantity piece. The second thing that you need to be doing is curating high quality content on a consistent basis. Again, I recommend that you put out one piece of long form content, so a blog, podcast or video content every single week.

Thank you. Consistency and high quality is more important than that quantity. And so if once a month is what makes sense for you right now, then that's what you're going to be doing. Working towards growing to that weekly goal. The last one I would say is having a social media presence and growing relationships and your community through your social media platform.

Is very important as well and that's just part of that ecosystem social media can be a really great visibility tool and way to get people in to your your world. Before you start running sales retargeting ads, I would recommend that you have lead generation ads going and nurture slash visibility ads where you're promoting your content.

Sales retargeting ads, in my opinion, would come in around the 1, 000 a month mark or about 30 per day at like 5 percent of that budget. So that's like 2 a day is what you would be spending on the sales retargeting. But you're also spending like twenty twenty five dollars a day on email list growth and five or six dollars a day on content repurposing or content promotion nurture ads where you're you're driving traffic to your content.

The reason for this is sales retargeting takes that warm audience and so by running those lead generation ads at a much higher budget, you're creating the audience, you're creating the warm leads that are going to be visiting the sales page. You also should be using sales retargeting ads in conjunction with other sales efforts.

And so, in your lead magnet, you can be selling whatever it is. You can have some sort of promotion within the lead magnet itself. You can also make the sale or make the offer on a thank you page as a tripwire. You can also be making that sale in your email welcome sequence. You can also be doing live launch efforts where you're doing a really focused week long promotion with an open cart period.

And so having those sales retargeting ads happening in conjunction with the other sales efforts means that people are actually going to be going to your sales page. If you're not making any other sales efforts, then the likelihood that there's a considerable amount of traffic on that sales page is pretty low.

And sales retargeting ads work best when someone does the trigger action. So they go to the sales page and then they see the sales, the sales ads, the sales retargeting ads for about 10 to 20 days afterwards. If it's been more than 20 days since they saw that sales page, since they did the action that said, yeah, I'm interested in the offer that you have.

They might have forgotten about it, or it's just not the right time or whatever within 10 to 20 days, they're going to make the purchase. If right now is the time for them to make the purchase. And so we need to have consistent traffic going to the sales page. And the way that we do that is consistently generation with consistent sales efforts on the back end of that lead generation.

What did we learn from this number one? Thank you. You can absolutely have successful retargeting ads, but they are the last type of ads that I recommend adding. The first type is lead generation, the second is nurture ads by promoting your content, and then third is the sales retargeting. Second thing we learned in this episode, I hope, is to create a bigger ecosystem that includes Consistent long form content marketing that includes consistent email marketing that includes consistent community building through your social media platforms.

And the final one is that if you're going to do sales retargeting to be having in place sales efforts simultaneously so that you're driving traffic to the sales page organically through collaboration. Well, maybe not through collaboration, but organically through your content, through your lead magnet, through your emails.

And then the ads are working with those other sales efforts. So I hope that you found this episode useful. Thank you so much for being here with me. And I will be back with another Saturday Strategy Session next week. Thank you for listening to this episode of Market to Market. scale grow. Every week on Saturdays, we release a new Saturday strategy session, sometimes with amazing guests.

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