Facebook Ads for Lead Generation - 2024 Guide to FB Ads Series | 150
Welcome to part one of the three-part series, 2024 Guide to Facebook Ads! Learn the importance of consistent lead generation and why growing an email list is a valuable asset for any online business owner. Get a breakdown of the two main options for running Facebook ads: driving traffic to a landing page or using instant forms on the platform. Compare the pros and cons of each method, highlighting the differences in cost, conversion rates, and lead quality. Also learn alternative methods for growing an email list without ads, such as collaborations and social media. If you’re looking to grow your email list and boost your online business in 2024, don’t miss out on these strategies!
In this episode, we chat about…
Importance of consistent lead generation and growing your email list {01:00}
Two parts of building an email list {03:05}
The need for a freebie and collecting email addresses {07:00}
Creating a landing page, thank you page, and welcome sequence {08:50}
Two ways to grow your email list using ads {17:00}
Consistent email communication is key {24:40}
Growing your email list without ads {29:43}
Organically growing email list through social media {32:21}
Episode Transcript:
Welcome to part one of my three part series. These are my 2024 guides to Facebook ads. Yay! Today, in part one, we are talking about Facebook ads for lead generation and kind of your email marketing as a little bit of a backup. And then in part two next week, we're going to talk about Facebook ads for repurposing content.
And then in part three, we're going to talk about Facebook ads for launches and more specifically for summits because they're my new favorite thing. Let's dive into part one.
Facebook ads for lead generation. Today we're going to talk about why these are so important. We're going to talk about what you need to make them happen, and we're going to talk about some other options if you're not ready for ads. We'll also talk about why you should be ready for ads. They are so important because consistent lead generation is so important.
It has been important for a while now. Growing your email list is only getting more and more and more important. And I think that it is one of the greatest assets that online business owners can have. Whether you have a service based business or you're a course creator or you have a membership. Or your coach and with a group program of some sort, I will 100 percent agree with people who say that it is less important for service providers or coaches that are working one on one, and it is more important for One to many programs, so if you have a course or a membership or group program where you are the one person delivering it to many people at the same time, an email list is going to be a non negotiable for you and specifically consistently growing that email list every single day.
Because of the way the market is right now, trust has been eroded. The economy is in question marks, if you will. And growing that email list brings people onto your email list, into your world, consuming your content, building relationships, because we buy from people. People that we know, people that we have relationships with, people that we believe can help us and your email list and the emails that you send out on that consistent basis are going to show the world, show your world, your audience, your community, how you can help them and serve them.
And provide just an amazing experience for them. And so, I think that it is very, very important to be consciously building an email list, curating an email list full of people who are interested in what you have to do, and want to build a relationship with you. And there's kind of two parts to that. The first one, like I already said, is consistently growing that email list every single day.
The second piece is scrubbing the email list, which it feels counterintuitive to put those two together, build your list. And then because scrubbing it means deleting people, well, not deleting, but unsubscribing them from your list. But what that does, if you are scrubbing your list on a regular basis, I recommend once a quarter. If you're scrubbing your list regularly, then you're removing people who are no longer interested in what you have to offer. And you really don't want people on your list who aren't engaged and you aren't consuming your content because they're not building a relationship with you. They're not fostering that connection and They're not your people.
And that's okay. There's billions of people in the world. They're not all going to be for you. And so, the quality of your list is going to be so much more important than the quantity. You want engaged subscribers, not ghost subscribers, because those ghosts are never going to buy from you. I also want to just put the idea of micro touch-points back in your mind, because I know I've talked about it before.
Your name popping up in their inbox is registering in their subconscious mind, if not actively in their conscious mind, it's definitely registering in the back there. And that's part of the reason why consistently showing up and actually emailing, which we're going to talk more about later in the episode, is very, very important.
And that goes with. The consistent growth, and you can't really scrub your email list if you are only emailing once a quarter because you have no idea if they're engaged or not to be scrubbing your list once a quarter, you really need to be emailing them at least twice a month, ideally once a week, every single week, putting out an email, high value, high quality, and I personally Don't really think about, like, a paywall in my emails.
If I want to email out about it and talk about it, amazing, I'm gonna do it. To the point of, I've never wanted to do it, and I don't foresee this coming, but if for one day, for some reason, I wanted to email out step by step with images of how to set up a Facebook ad, Like, I would have no problem doing that.
Now, the reason that I'm not going to do that is it's, A, gonna be a long email with lots of images, and it's gonna generate so many questions from people. Two, I have no idea if that's what people actually want. No idea. I don't think that that would be helpful. How many people in that moment, like on a random Tuesday, are gonna be like, I wish I had instructions to set up a Facebook ad. For something like that, you're just going to Google it. If on a random Tuesday, you want instructions on how to set up a Facebook ad, you're going to Google it. Even if I sent that email out, three months down the road, you're going to Google it. Even if you saved it, you put a star on it because you're like, this is a great email.
You're going to Google it. So that's probably why I would never do it. But if one day I was like, I think that this is what I'm going to email this week, I would just do it. And maybe this is a problem of mine, but for me, consistently emailing my list is a priority and I really want you to consider making it a priority for your business as well in 2024. Growing your list every single day using something like paid ads. Consistently growing your list every single month with something like collaborations. And those are my two tips for consistently growing your list in different ways.
Let's talk about what you need. Number one, you need a freebie. You need, and you need something that people want. It could be a coupon. Old Navy does this all the time. Join our email list, save 15%. It can be something free, like, Oh, I can't remember what company it is. It was a candle company, but I got a free candle if I gave them my email address at checkout. And I was like, no thanks, I'm good, I don't need your candle. The woman was actually shocked. The look on her face was like, what? Nobody says no to a free candle. I have like 12 candles in a box because we just have too many candles. So I did not need a free candle. I did not want their email, even though I have an email address that is my, I know this is junk mail, email address.
I still didn't want it. I was like, I don't want you to junk up my junk email address even more with something I don't want. I was just like, but she was like, what? So you need something that people do want. And clearly that woman was shocked because everybody wants the free candle. In online businesses, that free thing is probably going to be an ebook, checklist, workbook, or guide of some sort, swipe files, templates, calendars, calculators.
I'm going through in my head all the different free things. Those are more like free downloads. You can also do free trainings, workshops, challenges, video series, and a summit. I love summits. Booking a call could be a way to get somebody onto your email list. Price guides, case studies, those are two that I use in my business. all different types of ways that if it's something that someone wants and they're willing to give you their email address for, typically it is going to be free. You need that thing. You also need a way to collect their email addresses.
So this is going to be a landing page. You can either make your landing page in your email service provider, like Flowdesk or ConvertKit, or you can make the landing page in your website builder on WordPress or Squarespace or Wix, whatever you use, and embed the form in. And that's my preference. I prefer to build my landing pages on Squarespace, on my website, and embed it with my Flowdesk form. The reason for that is Flodesk does not have the capabilities of integrating the Facebook pixel with its forms. And so I embed my form onto my own landing page on my website so that I can have the pixel there. That's pretty important.
I personally like landing pages where you can't scroll at all. It's just an image of some sort, whether it's an image of me or the resource or just like a lovely stock image and the form. With very little writing, a headline, maybe a subheading, maybe one or two other lines of text explaining what it is, and then the form and that's it with a button that's really clear and obvious to see. I liked it. It is simple and clear. And there's nothing else anyone can do on that page. There's no menu at the top. There's no sidebar. There's no pop up. There is nothing else that happens on that page. I just said no pop ups and realized That on my website, I recently installed a pop up. Can't remember if I talked about this on the podcast or not, but I recently did that.
And I'm not sure if on my landing pages, pop ups are disabled. So that is a to do of mine after I'm done recording this episode. First of all, it's just weird when you're like, Hey, here's my freebie, opt in! And then, while they're opting in, a pop up for either the same or a different freebie gets thrown in their face. And more often than not, I mean, if I really, really want the thing, I'm like, okay, I'll still do it. But sometimes I get so annoyed by it that I just exit out of the entire thing and they lose me completely. And I don't opt in. So you really don't want to pop up. So no menu, no pop up, no sidebar, nothing. I mean, at the bottom, you might have links to if you want to have your privacy policy, terms of use, contact me, those like really boring things at the bottom.
Most people don't want to read your privacy policy, right? If you feel the need to have those kinds of things at the bottom, that's okay. But you don't want anything, quote unquote, interesting or engaging, like a link to your podcast. No. People are going to get distracted. You don't want them to get distracted.
And you want to make sure that the button is really, really easy and clear and obvious. I do know that some people like to include about me sections and testimonials and information about the download. That's fine. Just put it below the form. And depending on how long the page is, consider one of two things. Either embed the form a second time, so when they get to the bottom of the page, the form is right there for them again. Or at least having a button that takes them back to the top and takes them to the form right away so that they are not scrolling and searching and trying to figure things out.
Individual people. are typically not lazy, they're typically not careless, they're typically not lacking intelligence. But when you lump everybody together, and you consider how we use landing pages, myself, absolutely 1000 percent included in this, we can be lazy and we can be lacking in intelligence. It can be hard to find the form. We can forget to opt in right away, and then we have 25 tabs open, and when we come back to it, we forget what that tab was even for, and we just close it, so you want to make things as easy and obvious and simple as absolutely possible so that the collective does what you want them to, and that is opt in.
The next thing that you need, so you need your freebie, you need your landing page, and then you need a thank you page. Your thank you page. Yes, it absolutely should be. Thank you for opting in. Go check your inbox for the freebie. But it also needs to have a next step. I don't know how long I've been saying this for a long time, it feels. This is another one of my broken record statements, is that your thank you page needs a next step. It cannot be, with one exception, it cannot be, thank you, go check your inbox. It needs to be, thank you, go check your inbox. If you want more, listen to this podcast episode. Not go listen to the podcast in general, go listen to episode 46 of the podcast. It relates back to the freebie that the person just downloaded and opted into.
The next step could be book a call. It could be a tripwire. This is my personal favorite. I kind of was like on the fence about them for a really long time. I have one in my business. I do like them because especially if you're using ads as part of your consistent lead generation, tripwires can help offset your ad costs. And if you're not using ads, but you are consistently growing your list, then tripwires can just be a source of fun.
Semi quasi passive income because typically a tripwire is a low cost item that is delivered automatically and requires nothing of you except for hopefully very tiny, minor, infrequent tech support potentially, but hopefully not even that. So I do like tripwires because for very little work after they've been set up, now they can be labor intensive, a labor of love to get set up.
After they're set up, they are just helping to increase your cash flow. The next step on your thank you page could be to purchase this small ticket offer that is related to the freebie. Highly recommend that it's related to the freebie, but it doesn't have to be. For a very, very, very long time, and for some of my freebies still, Facebook group. You just want something because the person is in motion, they've already said yes to you once, you want to keep them saying yes and bring them more and more and more into your community, into your world. Okay, we have the freebie, we have the landing page, we have the thank you page, we need a welcome sequence.
I'm not going to dive deep into this because I recently just did a deep dive into my own welcome sequence, I revamped it. So I walked step by step by step through each email, what I included, what the call to action was, all of that. So you can listen to episode 147, maybe that's where 47 came from, I don't know.
Anyway, you can listen to episode 146 to learn more about my welcome sequence and how I revamped it. Two things that I will say. Number one is your welcome sequence will deliver the freebie so that it is in their inbox. And then number two. It needs to introduce you and your business and make sure that the person knows that you sell something. That this is not a hobby business, this is not an endless stream of freebies, that you sell things. It does not need to be in the very first email, but through your email sequence, you need to introduce your signature offer. And tell people how they can work with you.
Okay, those are basically all the things you need if you are consistently growing your email list. There are two different ways to run ads to grow your email list. The first one is you drive traffic to your landing page. This is the one that I typically recommend. But the other way is using instant forms on the platform where people aren't leaving the Facebook or Instagram platform. There's just a form that pops up. There are pros and cons to each one. I'm going to go a little bit about them right now.
You're going to need to make the decision for yourself which one makes more sense for you. So let's start with driving traffic to a landing page. This is the more traditional way, the old fashioned, if you will, way. Because you're sending traffic off of Facebook off of a meta platform onto your own website, they are going to cost a little bit more per 1000 impressions.
Facebook is going to charge you more because they want people to stay on their platform. I guess I should say meta is going to charge you more because they want people to stay on their platforms. But those traditional ads where you're driving traffic to a landing page are probably going to cost a More per thousand impressions than the instant form where people stay on the platform.
They will likely have a lower CPM because people are not leaving the platform with the instant forms. So that's the first difference. The second difference is you're probably going to have a lower conversion rate. A lower percent of people who go to your landing page are going to give you their email address, fill it in.
It's probably going to be a higher percentage of people who complete the on Facebook form, the instant form, a higher percentage. I've heard it is as high as 80 or 90 percent of people who see the form actually fill it out, which is crazy because on a landing page. I say you should aim for about 30 percent conversion. And so we're talking about triple the percentage in some cases. So that is a big difference. So to recap for now, there's more coming. There's more coming.
But to recap, your traditional landing page ads are going to be probably more expensive and have lower conversion rates. The instant forms that stay on Facebook or Instagram are going to be less expensive and have higher conversion rates. And the main reason is the quality of the person who's filling out their form and giving you their email address. Typically, the quality is going to be higher the traditional way. You're going to get better quality leads using a landing page.
And having people go to your website to fill it out, whereas with the instant forms that stay on Facebook, you're going to have a higher volume. More people are going to give you their email address, but the quality of those people is going to be lower. And so more people are going to immediately unsubscribe or not even open your freebie email or not open a single email of yours or anything. Some of these people are going to give you their Facebook email addresses from, uh, 2006. I don't know about you, but I don't check that email address anymore. I do not. It's a hotmail email address. It does forward to a Gmail, but I also no longer check the Gmail that it forwards to.
So if I were to sign up with that email address. I'm hopeless right so the quality you are going to get more people for less money but they're going to be lower quality whereas the traditional way where you're driving traffic from Facebook to your own landing page is going to be more expensive and less people. But those people are going to be higher quality. The other piece of information that's really, really important to remember or to know is if you're going with the instant forms on Facebook, you need some way of connecting those leads to your email service provider. So to Flowdesk or to ConvertKit or to MailChimp.
And if I'm not mistaken, all of the ways to do it are paid so you can use a Zapier, but it's a premium app and so it's a paid app. You have to have a paid account. You can't do it with a free account. There's a couple of other programs that I'm less familiar with that you can do, but to my knowledge, there's no free way unless you want to do it manually. And I don't recommend that at all. There's no free way to connect those leads that you're getting on an instant form on Facebook to your email list, and that's having it automated is really, really important because you want that freebie delivered as fast as possible. You don't want people having to wait until whenever you get to it. You also don't want to be sitting there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, which would be just impossible. And if you're getting the quality leads and like the number of leads, it can be worth it, but that's just something else to factor in.
Most of my clients, not all, but most of my clients do still prefer the landing page, the more traditional way of going about it. I would say with end result costs, it often comes out of the wash because you're getting fewer, but higher quality leads with a traditional landing page. And More cheaper, but less quality leads with the instant forms, the ones that do end up being quality leads on the instant forms.
They end up costing about the same amount as the high quality landing page leads. In my experience, it doesn't hurt to potentially run a test and to see what happens for your business and which way works better for you. And Where you're getting more leads and is there a difference in quality for you and your business is is there a difference in cost for you and your business definitely worth it for you to check out.
So those are your two different options and I like to look at marketing as a game and running those tests I think is important because just like with your images you never know what image is going to do the best. There's times where we look at images and we're like, I love this image. It's so great.
Everyone's going to love it. And it absolutely tanks in, in the testing and then there's other times where like, Oh, well, I don't know how I feel about it. It's just like, whatever. It's good enough. We'll try it and it gets comments and likes and shares and people are like, love this. So great. Like, it's so confusing, right?
And so. There's no way to know for sure, for 100 percent certain, whether the traditional landing page route or the instant form, which one really is going to be better for your business. So you can always look at it as a game and test it out, see, and be willing to put, I don't know, like 25 a day for a week into one and then 25 a day for a week into the other and just see, see what your results are.
Okay, that is kind of wrapping up. Everything with lead generation, I just want to quickly, quickly touch on the importance of being consistent with your emails and then if you're not interested or ready to run ads, how you can go about growing your list consistently without ads. So I think that I don't want to talk about this in the exact same way. I've always talked about it, but sending out consistent emails is really important to grow those relationships. And one of the, the first reason why I prefer emails to growing relationships over social media is you're not fighting an algorithm. Most emails, and I know.
It's not all, and there's different ways to set up your inbox, but for the most part, inboxes are set up in chronological order. So the most recent email is at the top. So if you get one at one o'clock, and then two o'clock, one will be on top, and then three o'clock, one will be at the top, and then four o'clock, one will be five o'clock, and so that one o'clock one is now five emails down. But it's still there in the exact order it came in. Whereas social media, especially Instagram and Facebook, there's zero chronological order happening anymore, it feels like. And sometimes I'll see a post that's like five days old underneath one that's 30 minutes old underneath one that is two days old, right?
Like there's no rhyme or reason from a chronological standpoint of the order, right? The algorithm is now designed to show you ads, or not ads, but images or social posts in the order that you're most likely to actually consume them based on whatever information it has. So emails are great because you're not fighting that.
They're just going into someone's inbox. In the order that they are sent. The other piece is that the open rate of emails is so much higher than the percentage of people who see your social posts. So if we go with that, like, quote unquote standard number of 4%, I'm going to round up to 5 percent because it's easier for mathing.
If 5 percent of people see your social post. But 25 percent of people open your email, that's five times more, let's just say that you have a following of 1000 and you have 1000 people on your email list, right? So if 5 percent of those people. Open or like 5 percent of your thousand followers, see your social posts, that's 50 people.
If 25 percent of them open your email, that's 250, 200 more people open the email than saw the social post. It's crazy. And I don't even think for the most part, there's Like, um, engagement factor necessarily. Yes. Of course, the people whose posts you're most likely to like and to actually engage with will probably show up more, but what if somebody who you want to engage with their stuff just like, isn't showing up at your feed anymore?
I'm actually thinking of like three different people right now that I haven't seen a post of theirs in a while and I hadn't really realized it. I used to engage with their posts all the time and I just haven't seen anything from them in a while. So I'm gonna go search them out after this. I have such a long to do list now.
I have to fix that pop up. I need to check on these people, that's two things, I don't normally walk away from recording a podcast episode with a to do list. So that's why two things feel like a really long list. But yeah, so that's it. It's such a huge difference. 50 people see the post versus 250 people reading the email.
So different. It's so different. And that's if you have a 25 percent open rate. Open rates can go, like, as high as 60, 70%, right? 70 percent of a thousand people opening your emails is 700! 700 people opening that email! Now, I don't remember the last time an email of mine hit 70%. Probably a Dreamlist Essentials course email that I only sent out to, like, 10 people who were registered for the course, right?
And 7 of them opened. But still, my point stands. So... Those are two reasons why sending out emails consistently is a much better use of your time beyond the building relationships, nurturing, and providing high value quality content. It's just you're not fighting the algorithm and your open rates are better. And the more consistently you put out content, like if you are consistent about sending your email every single week, like mine go out Mondays at somewhere around two ish. We use the flow desk best for afternoon time. So it does change from week to week, but they go out on Mondays in the afternoon, every single week.
So I know people are waiting for it. But they're expecting an email from me in that time frame. And so that's, that's kind of important is that people are ready for it, waiting for it, interested in it. Now, I have said a couple times that I will finish this episode with ways that you can grow your email list consistently.
Without paid ads, so the first one is my absolute favorite in and that is collaborations by collaborating with other people who are in similar niches, sister niches or even the same niche, but provide a different service or offering you can take advantage of an audience that someone else has built so some really great ways to collaborate are to go on someone else's podcast.
To go live on social media with that person, whether it's a Facebook live, Instagram live, TikTok live, just to, I don't know if you can go live with someone else on TikTok. I'm not on the TikTok bang wagon. I'm on the, I watch TikToks two weeks later when they become Instagram reels, like a grown up. That's, that's the team I'm on.
But anyway, going live with somebody else is a really, really great way to collaborate. You can also participate in other people's events. So whether it's a summit or a conference. A freebie giveaway type event or a bundle is what I was actually talking about like when you bundle a bunch of smaller resources together and it's only 47 but you get 25 different resources, right?
Participating in those, collaborating with other people. You can present into other people's groups if they have a mem a membership or a group program. Being a guest expert is another really great way to collaborate. Make sure at the end of your collaborations that you're sharing a way for somebody to get on your email list.
If you've listened to me as a guest on podcasts or summits, collaborations, I actually personally favor sharing my long form content and sharing about my podcast. I always say go find me on MarketScaleGrove. That's my personal call to action. But if your goal is to grow your email list, your call to action needs to be download my freebie.
Here's how you can access a free training of mine, whatever it might be. But here's how you can get on my email list. Don't say it. Here's how you can get on my email list. Say, here's how I can provide you value. I have a training that you can do and where you can learn about these things and give them the email or the URL to access it. And make sure you're asking for an email address before they access that training. But if that's your priority is getting people on your email list, make sure your call to action everywhere that you are is, here's how to get on my email list. You can also organically grow your email list. This takes a lot more time and energy, especially now.
It was easier five, ten years ago, but still a viable method. You can do that through social media, despite the fact I just said that social media is an uphill battle with only 5%, 4 percent of people actually seeing your content still an option. I especially like stories. That's a really, really great way because there's the clickable links and then long form content like a podcast or a blog or YouTube where you have a call to action within the piece of content too.
Grab something as a companion if you will to get them on your email list. And then my last Suggestion for you is to become a Pinterest expert. I have a love-hate relationship with Pinterest where I love to use it as a consumer and I hate using it as a business owner. I don't know what it's like. I have not looked into Pinterest in over a year But I remember when I first, first got started, like back in 2019, 20, early 2020, with my, when I was still really focused on my TPT business, you needed to put like 30 pins out every single day.
And I just did not, I did not have the creativity. Like graphic design creativity piece to putting, being able to put out that much fresh content every single day. It just made me nauseous. So I have no idea what it's like anymore. Maybe it's still 30 fresh pins. Maybe it's less. Maybe it's more. I would love to be better about Pinterest because it is a really, really, really great way to grow your business and to drive traffic to your freebies, your lead magnets, your trainings, whatever it might be.
So if you have the time and or energy and especially the interest in it, highly recommend Pinterest. Okay, I feel like I can't actually see the timer right now of how long this episode's been, but I feel like it's been a long episode because we talked about the importance of consistently growing your email list.
We talked about what you need to grow your email list. We talked about the difference between traditional landing page ads versus the newer on Facebook instant form ads. And then we talked about... I had a little bit of a rant about why you need to actually consistently email out, not just grow your list, but also email them.
And then a couple of different ways that you can grow your list. If you're not ready for ads, remember though, like, especially if budget is a big piece of it, you don't need to send a ton of money. You can absolutely get away with growing your email list for as little as 10 a day. And you don't even need those ads running every single day, you could run them for two weeks or like half the month.
I guess two weeks is half the month. Oh boy. So it isn't necessarily like a 10, 000 investment commitment that you need to be making. It could be as little as a couple hundred dollars a month to be growing your email list. And the benefits and rewards of having that bigger email list are just tenfold. So definitely consider it into 2024.
And if you have any questions, reach out. I'm at @heyitsjenzaia on Instagram. I'd love to hear your questions, your feedback for this episode. And yeah, I'll be back in your ear next week with another Saturday strategy session. Part 2 to this 2024 Guides series.
And then in part three, we're going to talk about Facebook ads for launches and more specifically for summits because they're my new favorite thing. Let's dive into part one.
Facebook ads for lead generation. Today we're going to talk about why these are so important. We're going to talk about what you need to make them happen, and we're going to talk about some other options if you're not ready for ads. We'll also talk about why you should be ready for ads. They are so important because consistent lead generation is so important.
It has been important for a while now. Growing your email list is only getting more and more and more important. And I think that it is one of the greatest assets that online business owners can have. Whether you have a service based business or you're a course creator or you have a membership. Or your coach and with a group program of some sort, I will 100 percent agree with people who say that it is less important for service providers or coaches that are working one on one, and it is more important for One to many programs, so if you have a course or a membership or group program where you are the one person delivering it to many people at the same time, an email list is going to be a non negotiable for you and specifically consistently growing that email list every single day.
Because of the way the market is right now, trust has been eroded. The economy is in question marks, if you will. And growing that email list brings people onto your email list, into your world, consuming your content, building relationships, because we buy from people. People that we know, people that we have relationships with, people that we believe can help us and your email list and the emails that you send out on that consistent basis are going to show the world, show your world, your audience, your community, how you can help them and serve them.
And provide just an amazing experience for them. And so, I think that it is very, very important to be consciously building an email list, curating an email list full of people who are interested in what you have to do, and want to build a relationship with you. And there's kind of two parts to that. The first one, like I already said, is consistently growing that email list every single day.
The second piece is scrubbing the email list, which it feels counterintuitive to put those two together, build your list. And then because scrubbing it means deleting people, well, not deleting, but unsubscribing them from your list. But what that does, if you are scrubbing your list on a regular basis, I recommend once a quarter. If you're scrubbing your list regularly, then you're removing people who are no longer interested in what you have to offer. And you really don't want people on your list who aren't engaged and you aren't consuming your content because they're not building a relationship with you. They're not fostering that connection and They're not your people.
And that's okay. There's billions of people in the world. They're not all going to be for you. And so, the quality of your list is going to be so much more important than the quantity. You want engaged subscribers, not ghost subscribers, because those ghosts are never going to buy from you. I also want to just put the idea of micro touch-points back in your mind, because I know I've talked about it before.
Your name popping up in their inbox is registering in their subconscious mind, if not actively in their conscious mind, it's definitely registering in the back there. And that's part of the reason why consistently showing up and actually emailing, which we're going to talk more about later in the episode, is very, very important.
And that goes with. The consistent growth, and you can't really scrub your email list if you are only emailing once a quarter because you have no idea if they're engaged or not to be scrubbing your list once a quarter, you really need to be emailing them at least twice a month, ideally once a week, every single week, putting out an email, high value, high quality, and I personally Don't really think about, like, a paywall in my emails.
If I want to email out about it and talk about it, amazing, I'm gonna do it. To the point of, I've never wanted to do it, and I don't foresee this coming, but if for one day, for some reason, I wanted to email out step by step with images of how to set up a Facebook ad, Like, I would have no problem doing that.
Now, the reason that I'm not going to do that is it's, A, gonna be a long email with lots of images, and it's gonna generate so many questions from people. Two, I have no idea if that's what people actually want. No idea. I don't think that that would be helpful. How many people in that moment, like on a random Tuesday, are gonna be like, I wish I had instructions to set up a Facebook ad. For something like that, you're just going to Google it. If on a random Tuesday, you want instructions on how to set up a Facebook ad, you're going to Google it. Even if I sent that email out, three months down the road, you're going to Google it. Even if you saved it, you put a star on it because you're like, this is a great email.
You're going to Google it. So that's probably why I would never do it. But if one day I was like, I think that this is what I'm going to email this week, I would just do it. And maybe this is a problem of mine, but for me, consistently emailing my list is a priority and I really want you to consider making it a priority for your business as well in 2024. Growing your list every single day using something like paid ads. Consistently growing your list every single month with something like collaborations. And those are my two tips for consistently growing your list in different ways.
Let's talk about what you need. Number one, you need a freebie. You need, and you need something that people want. It could be a coupon. Old Navy does this all the time. Join our email list, save 15%. It can be something free, like, Oh, I can't remember what company it is. It was a candle company, but I got a free candle if I gave them my email address at checkout. And I was like, no thanks, I'm good, I don't need your candle. The woman was actually shocked. The look on her face was like, what? Nobody says no to a free candle. I have like 12 candles in a box because we just have too many candles. So I did not need a free candle. I did not want their email, even though I have an email address that is my, I know this is junk mail, email address.
I still didn't want it. I was like, I don't want you to junk up my junk email address even more with something I don't want. I was just like, but she was like, what? So you need something that people do want. And clearly that woman was shocked because everybody wants the free candle. In online businesses, that free thing is probably going to be an ebook, checklist, workbook, or guide of some sort, swipe files, templates, calendars, calculators.
I'm going through in my head all the different free things. Those are more like free downloads. You can also do free trainings, workshops, challenges, video series, and a summit. I love summits. Booking a call could be a way to get somebody onto your email list. Price guides, case studies, those are two that I use in my business. all different types of ways that if it's something that someone wants and they're willing to give you their email address for, typically it is going to be free. You need that thing. You also need a way to collect their email addresses.
So this is going to be a landing page. You can either make your landing page in your email service provider, like Flowdesk or ConvertKit, or you can make the landing page in your website builder on WordPress or Squarespace or Wix, whatever you use, and embed the form in. And that's my preference. I prefer to build my landing pages on Squarespace, on my website, and embed it with my Flowdesk form. The reason for that is Flodesk does not have the capabilities of integrating the Facebook pixel with its forms. And so I embed my form onto my own landing page on my website so that I can have the pixel there. That's pretty important.
I personally like landing pages where you can't scroll at all. It's just an image of some sort, whether it's an image of me or the resource or just like a lovely stock image and the form. With very little writing, a headline, maybe a subheading, maybe one or two other lines of text explaining what it is, and then the form and that's it with a button that's really clear and obvious to see. I liked it. It is simple and clear. And there's nothing else anyone can do on that page. There's no menu at the top. There's no sidebar. There's no pop up. There is nothing else that happens on that page. I just said no pop ups and realized That on my website, I recently installed a pop up. Can't remember if I talked about this on the podcast or not, but I recently did that.
And I'm not sure if on my landing pages, pop ups are disabled. So that is a to do of mine after I'm done recording this episode. First of all, it's just weird when you're like, Hey, here's my freebie, opt in! And then, while they're opting in, a pop up for either the same or a different freebie gets thrown in their face. And more often than not, I mean, if I really, really want the thing, I'm like, okay, I'll still do it. But sometimes I get so annoyed by it that I just exit out of the entire thing and they lose me completely. And I don't opt in. So you really don't want to pop up. So no menu, no pop up, no sidebar, nothing. I mean, at the bottom, you might have links to if you want to have your privacy policy, terms of use, contact me, those like really boring things at the bottom.
Most people don't want to read your privacy policy, right? If you feel the need to have those kinds of things at the bottom, that's okay. But you don't want anything, quote unquote, interesting or engaging, like a link to your podcast. No. People are going to get distracted. You don't want them to get distracted.
And you want to make sure that the button is really, really easy and clear and obvious. I do know that some people like to include about me sections and testimonials and information about the download. That's fine. Just put it below the form. And depending on how long the page is, consider one of two things. Either embed the form a second time, so when they get to the bottom of the page, the form is right there for them again. Or at least having a button that takes them back to the top and takes them to the form right away so that they are not scrolling and searching and trying to figure things out.
Individual people. are typically not lazy, they're typically not careless, they're typically not lacking intelligence. But when you lump everybody together, and you consider how we use landing pages, myself, absolutely 1000 percent included in this, we can be lazy and we can be lacking in intelligence. It can be hard to find the form. We can forget to opt in right away, and then we have 25 tabs open, and when we come back to it, we forget what that tab was even for, and we just close it, so you want to make things as easy and obvious and simple as absolutely possible so that the collective does what you want them to, and that is opt in.
The next thing that you need, so you need your freebie, you need your landing page, and then you need a thank you page. Your thank you page. Yes, it absolutely should be. Thank you for opting in. Go check your inbox for the freebie. But it also needs to have a next step. I don't know how long I've been saying this for a long time, it feels. This is another one of my broken record statements, is that your thank you page needs a next step. It cannot be, with one exception, it cannot be, thank you, go check your inbox. It needs to be, thank you, go check your inbox. If you want more, listen to this podcast episode. Not go listen to the podcast in general, go listen to episode 46 of the podcast. It relates back to the freebie that the person just downloaded and opted into.
The next step could be book a call. It could be a tripwire. This is my personal favorite. I kind of was like on the fence about them for a really long time. I have one in my business. I do like them because especially if you're using ads as part of your consistent lead generation, tripwires can help offset your ad costs. And if you're not using ads, but you are consistently growing your list, then tripwires can just be a source of fun.
Semi quasi passive income because typically a tripwire is a low cost item that is delivered automatically and requires nothing of you except for hopefully very tiny, minor, infrequent tech support potentially, but hopefully not even that. So I do like tripwires because for very little work after they've been set up, now they can be labor intensive, a labor of love to get set up.
After they're set up, they are just helping to increase your cash flow. The next step on your thank you page could be to purchase this small ticket offer that is related to the freebie. Highly recommend that it's related to the freebie, but it doesn't have to be. For a very, very, very long time, and for some of my freebies still, Facebook group. You just want something because the person is in motion, they've already said yes to you once, you want to keep them saying yes and bring them more and more and more into your community, into your world. Okay, we have the freebie, we have the landing page, we have the thank you page, we need a welcome sequence.
I'm not going to dive deep into this because I recently just did a deep dive into my own welcome sequence, I revamped it. So I walked step by step by step through each email, what I included, what the call to action was, all of that. So you can listen to episode 147, maybe that's where 47 came from, I don't know.
Anyway, you can listen to episode 146 to learn more about my welcome sequence and how I revamped it. Two things that I will say. Number one is your welcome sequence will deliver the freebie so that it is in their inbox. And then number two. It needs to introduce you and your business and make sure that the person knows that you sell something. That this is not a hobby business, this is not an endless stream of freebies, that you sell things. It does not need to be in the very first email, but through your email sequence, you need to introduce your signature offer. And tell people how they can work with you.
Okay, those are basically all the things you need if you are consistently growing your email list. There are two different ways to run ads to grow your email list. The first one is you drive traffic to your landing page. This is the one that I typically recommend. But the other way is using instant forms on the platform where people aren't leaving the Facebook or Instagram platform. There's just a form that pops up. There are pros and cons to each one. I'm going to go a little bit about them right now.
You're going to need to make the decision for yourself which one makes more sense for you. So let's start with driving traffic to a landing page. This is the more traditional way, the old fashioned, if you will, way. Because you're sending traffic off of Facebook off of a meta platform onto your own website, they are going to cost a little bit more per 1000 impressions.
Facebook is going to charge you more because they want people to stay on their platform. I guess I should say meta is going to charge you more because they want people to stay on their platforms. But those traditional ads where you're driving traffic to a landing page are probably going to cost a More per thousand impressions than the instant form where people stay on the platform.
They will likely have a lower CPM because people are not leaving the platform with the instant forms. So that's the first difference. The second difference is you're probably going to have a lower conversion rate. A lower percent of people who go to your landing page are going to give you their email address, fill it in.
It's probably going to be a higher percentage of people who complete the on Facebook form, the instant form, a higher percentage. I've heard it is as high as 80 or 90 percent of people who see the form actually fill it out, which is crazy because on a landing page. I say you should aim for about 30 percent conversion. And so we're talking about triple the percentage in some cases. So that is a big difference. So to recap for now, there's more coming. There's more coming.
But to recap, your traditional landing page ads are going to be probably more expensive and have lower conversion rates. The instant forms that stay on Facebook or Instagram are going to be less expensive and have higher conversion rates. And the main reason is the quality of the person who's filling out their form and giving you their email address. Typically, the quality is going to be higher the traditional way. You're going to get better quality leads using a landing page.
And having people go to your website to fill it out, whereas with the instant forms that stay on Facebook, you're going to have a higher volume. More people are going to give you their email address, but the quality of those people is going to be lower. And so more people are going to immediately unsubscribe or not even open your freebie email or not open a single email of yours or anything. Some of these people are going to give you their Facebook email addresses from, uh, 2006. I don't know about you, but I don't check that email address anymore. I do not. It's a hotmail email address. It does forward to a Gmail, but I also no longer check the Gmail that it forwards to.
So if I were to sign up with that email address. I'm hopeless right so the quality you are going to get more people for less money but they're going to be lower quality whereas the traditional way where you're driving traffic from Facebook to your own landing page is going to be more expensive and less people. But those people are going to be higher quality. The other piece of information that's really, really important to remember or to know is if you're going with the instant forms on Facebook, you need some way of connecting those leads to your email service provider. So to Flowdesk or to ConvertKit or to MailChimp.
And if I'm not mistaken, all of the ways to do it are paid so you can use a Zapier, but it's a premium app and so it's a paid app. You have to have a paid account. You can't do it with a free account. There's a couple of other programs that I'm less familiar with that you can do, but to my knowledge, there's no free way unless you want to do it manually. And I don't recommend that at all. There's no free way to connect those leads that you're getting on an instant form on Facebook to your email list, and that's having it automated is really, really important because you want that freebie delivered as fast as possible. You don't want people having to wait until whenever you get to it. You also don't want to be sitting there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, which would be just impossible. And if you're getting the quality leads and like the number of leads, it can be worth it, but that's just something else to factor in.
Most of my clients, not all, but most of my clients do still prefer the landing page, the more traditional way of going about it. I would say with end result costs, it often comes out of the wash because you're getting fewer, but higher quality leads with a traditional landing page. And More cheaper, but less quality leads with the instant forms, the ones that do end up being quality leads on the instant forms.
They end up costing about the same amount as the high quality landing page leads. In my experience, it doesn't hurt to potentially run a test and to see what happens for your business and which way works better for you. And Where you're getting more leads and is there a difference in quality for you and your business is is there a difference in cost for you and your business definitely worth it for you to check out.
So those are your two different options and I like to look at marketing as a game and running those tests I think is important because just like with your images you never know what image is going to do the best. There's times where we look at images and we're like, I love this image. It's so great.
Everyone's going to love it. And it absolutely tanks in, in the testing and then there's other times where like, Oh, well, I don't know how I feel about it. It's just like, whatever. It's good enough. We'll try it and it gets comments and likes and shares and people are like, love this. So great. Like, it's so confusing, right?
And so. There's no way to know for sure, for 100 percent certain, whether the traditional landing page route or the instant form, which one really is going to be better for your business. So you can always look at it as a game and test it out, see, and be willing to put, I don't know, like 25 a day for a week into one and then 25 a day for a week into the other and just see, see what your results are.
Okay, that is kind of wrapping up. Everything with lead generation, I just want to quickly, quickly touch on the importance of being consistent with your emails and then if you're not interested or ready to run ads, how you can go about growing your list consistently without ads. So I think that I don't want to talk about this in the exact same way. I've always talked about it, but sending out consistent emails is really important to grow those relationships. And one of the, the first reason why I prefer emails to growing relationships over social media is you're not fighting an algorithm. Most emails, and I know.
It's not all, and there's different ways to set up your inbox, but for the most part, inboxes are set up in chronological order. So the most recent email is at the top. So if you get one at one o'clock, and then two o'clock, one will be on top, and then three o'clock, one will be at the top, and then four o'clock, one will be five o'clock, and so that one o'clock one is now five emails down. But it's still there in the exact order it came in. Whereas social media, especially Instagram and Facebook, there's zero chronological order happening anymore, it feels like. And sometimes I'll see a post that's like five days old underneath one that's 30 minutes old underneath one that is two days old, right?
Like there's no rhyme or reason from a chronological standpoint of the order, right? The algorithm is now designed to show you ads, or not ads, but images or social posts in the order that you're most likely to actually consume them based on whatever information it has. So emails are great because you're not fighting that.
They're just going into someone's inbox. In the order that they are sent. The other piece is that the open rate of emails is so much higher than the percentage of people who see your social posts. So if we go with that, like, quote unquote standard number of 4%, I'm going to round up to 5 percent because it's easier for mathing.
If 5 percent of people see your social post. But 25 percent of people open your email, that's five times more, let's just say that you have a following of 1000 and you have 1000 people on your email list, right? So if 5 percent of those people. Open or like 5 percent of your thousand followers, see your social posts, that's 50 people.
If 25 percent of them open your email, that's 250, 200 more people open the email than saw the social post. It's crazy. And I don't even think for the most part, there's Like, um, engagement factor necessarily. Yes. Of course, the people whose posts you're most likely to like and to actually engage with will probably show up more, but what if somebody who you want to engage with their stuff just like, isn't showing up at your feed anymore?
I'm actually thinking of like three different people right now that I haven't seen a post of theirs in a while and I hadn't really realized it. I used to engage with their posts all the time and I just haven't seen anything from them in a while. So I'm gonna go search them out after this. I have such a long to do list now.
I have to fix that pop up. I need to check on these people, that's two things, I don't normally walk away from recording a podcast episode with a to do list. So that's why two things feel like a really long list. But yeah, so that's it. It's such a huge difference. 50 people see the post versus 250 people reading the email.
So different. It's so different. And that's if you have a 25 percent open rate. Open rates can go, like, as high as 60, 70%, right? 70 percent of a thousand people opening your emails is 700! 700 people opening that email! Now, I don't remember the last time an email of mine hit 70%. Probably a Dreamlist Essentials course email that I only sent out to, like, 10 people who were registered for the course, right?
And 7 of them opened. But still, my point stands. So... Those are two reasons why sending out emails consistently is a much better use of your time beyond the building relationships, nurturing, and providing high value quality content. It's just you're not fighting the algorithm and your open rates are better. And the more consistently you put out content, like if you are consistent about sending your email every single week, like mine go out Mondays at somewhere around two ish. We use the flow desk best for afternoon time. So it does change from week to week, but they go out on Mondays in the afternoon, every single week.
So I know people are waiting for it. But they're expecting an email from me in that time frame. And so that's, that's kind of important is that people are ready for it, waiting for it, interested in it. Now, I have said a couple times that I will finish this episode with ways that you can grow your email list consistently.
Without paid ads, so the first one is my absolute favorite in and that is collaborations by collaborating with other people who are in similar niches, sister niches or even the same niche, but provide a different service or offering you can take advantage of an audience that someone else has built so some really great ways to collaborate are to go on someone else's podcast.
To go live on social media with that person, whether it's a Facebook live, Instagram live, TikTok live, just to, I don't know if you can go live with someone else on TikTok. I'm not on the TikTok bang wagon. I'm on the, I watch TikToks two weeks later when they become Instagram reels, like a grown up. That's, that's the team I'm on.
But anyway, going live with somebody else is a really, really great way to collaborate. You can also participate in other people's events. So whether it's a summit or a conference. A freebie giveaway type event or a bundle is what I was actually talking about like when you bundle a bunch of smaller resources together and it's only 47 but you get 25 different resources, right?
Participating in those, collaborating with other people. You can present into other people's groups if they have a mem a membership or a group program. Being a guest expert is another really great way to collaborate. Make sure at the end of your collaborations that you're sharing a way for somebody to get on your email list.
If you've listened to me as a guest on podcasts or summits, collaborations, I actually personally favor sharing my long form content and sharing about my podcast. I always say go find me on MarketScaleGrove. That's my personal call to action. But if your goal is to grow your email list, your call to action needs to be download my freebie.
Here's how you can access a free training of mine, whatever it might be. But here's how you can get on my email list. Don't say it. Here's how you can get on my email list. Say, here's how I can provide you value. I have a training that you can do and where you can learn about these things and give them the email or the URL to access it. And make sure you're asking for an email address before they access that training. But if that's your priority is getting people on your email list, make sure your call to action everywhere that you are is, here's how to get on my email list. You can also organically grow your email list. This takes a lot more time and energy, especially now.
It was easier five, ten years ago, but still a viable method. You can do that through social media, despite the fact I just said that social media is an uphill battle with only 5%, 4 percent of people actually seeing your content still an option. I especially like stories. That's a really, really great way because there's the clickable links and then long form content like a podcast or a blog or YouTube where you have a call to action within the piece of content too.
Grab something as a companion if you will to get them on your email list. And then my last Suggestion for you is to become a Pinterest expert. I have a love-hate relationship with Pinterest where I love to use it as a consumer and I hate using it as a business owner. I don't know what it's like. I have not looked into Pinterest in over a year But I remember when I first, first got started, like back in 2019, 20, early 2020, with my, when I was still really focused on my TPT business, you needed to put like 30 pins out every single day.
And I just did not, I did not have the creativity. Like graphic design creativity piece to putting, being able to put out that much fresh content every single day. It just made me nauseous. So I have no idea what it's like anymore. Maybe it's still 30 fresh pins. Maybe it's less. Maybe it's more. I would love to be better about Pinterest because it is a really, really, really great way to grow your business and to drive traffic to your freebies, your lead magnets, your trainings, whatever it might be.
So if you have the time and or energy and especially the interest in it, highly recommend Pinterest. Okay, I feel like I can't actually see the timer right now of how long this episode's been, but I feel like it's been a long episode because we talked about the importance of consistently growing your email list.
We talked about what you need to grow your email list. We talked about the difference between traditional landing page ads versus the newer on Facebook instant form ads. And then we talked about... I had a little bit of a rant about why you need to actually consistently email out, not just grow your list, but also email them.
And then a couple of different ways that you can grow your list. If you're not ready for ads, remember though, like, especially if budget is a big piece of it, you don't need to send a ton of money. You can absolutely get away with growing your email list for as little as 10 a day. And you don't even need those ads running every single day, you could run them for two weeks or like half the month.
I guess two weeks is half the month. Oh boy. So it isn't necessarily like a 10, 000 investment commitment that you need to be making. It could be as little as a couple hundred dollars a month to be growing your email list. And the benefits and rewards of having that bigger email list are just tenfold. So definitely consider it into 2024.
And if you have any questions, reach out. I'm at @heyitsjenzaia on Instagram. I'd love to hear your questions, your feedback for this episode. And yeah, I'll be back in your ear next week with another Saturday strategy session. Part 2 to this 2024 Guides series.
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