Middle of Funnel Marketing Tactics: Using Facebook Ads to Gain Email List Subscribers | 29
Step three of customer journey is “subscribed” and it is by far one of the most important steps. Getting your audience over the “subscribed” hump is essential to long-term business growth and success. Your email list is a great tool for nurturing relationship and making sales!
In this episode, we discuss three different types of list-building funnels and my top 5 tips for successful list-building campaigns.
Funnel Types
1. Free Lead Magnet Opt-In - this funnel type uses a free PDF, set of templates or slide deck that your audience gets after giving you their email. They often have the lowest cost/lead, but are the most likely to attract freebie seekers.
2. Launch Events (i.e., webinar, challenge, video series, etc.) - this type of funnel is most often used as part of a course or membership launch.
3. Self-Liquidating Offers - this is an advanced strategy that I recommend you wait to implement in your business until after your course/membership is up and running smoothly. While SLO funnels can be a great way to recoup some of your ad spend, they take time to get right and almost always need a bigger offering that the buyers are filtered into to be profitable.
My Top Tips
Know your goals — different ad types will have different Returns On Investment (ROI). Not all ROIs are monetary… some, like getting email subscribers, may even be more valuable
Set up automations — subscribers should get the freebie immediately and automatically be placed into a welcome sequence where they get to know you better.
Nurture your subscribers — if you are paying to get subscribers on your list then you NEED to be emailing them regularly.
Let the social proof build-up — likes, comments and shares are powerful social proof, so let the campaign run as long as it is working and getting you the results you’re happy with (less than $2/lead is great for a free PDF)
Test more audiences — free lead magnet campaigns are a great way to test new audiences and too often we get comfortable in the audience we use regularly. So don’t be afraid to test a new audience or two…
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Episode Transcript:
Hey there, I'm Jenzaia and this is Market, Scale, Grow. A podcast created for ambitious teacherpreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more money with weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers just like you, my goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dreams. Okay, so before we jump into the episode, I am super excited to share a brand new freebie with you. It's my targeting ideas for Facebook ads. If you've dabbled in Facebook ads or you've done them and you've tried them, and you're just looking for some fresh inspiration for your audiences, this freebie is for you. I share my top Facebook ad targeting groups for you so that you can have inspiration and find those people that are perfect for what you have to offer. From warm audiences to cool lookalike audiences, to cold interest-based audiences. I cover all three in this freebie. Head to marketscalegrow.com/audiences to grab your copy today.
Hello, and welcome to Market Scale Grow. As you know, I'm delighted that you've joined me for this third part of our four-part series on customer journeys. Just to recap a little bit, we started the first episode talking about the steps of the customer journey. There are five of them: aware, interested, subscribed, engaged, invested. If you want more information about those, I suggest that you go back to Episode 26 and you can learn a little bit more about the details of each of those steps. Then last week in Episode 28, we talked about top of funnel ads, so how we can use Facebook ads to increase awareness of our business and interest in our business.
Today, we're going to talk about what I personally consider the most important step in the customer journey. It's the middle of the funnel and it is the subscribe level. This is getting people to take their first real step to commit an interest in your business. It's taking them from just being aware of or interested in your business, to taking action and doing something to show you that they're interested. So that step they're taking is exchanging their email address for something. We're going to talk about what that something is in a minute, but the really important thing for you as the business owner is that they are giving you their email address. They are subscribing to your newsletter, your email, and this is a big step for a lot of people.
I don't give my email address out super freely. I give my phone number out even less freely. I've actually stopped following businesses that have started requiring phone numbers to opt in. It wasn't a conscious choice. I was specifically thinking of one business that recently implemented a new method of opting-in where you have to apply and provide your phone number. I don't have a problem with the application. I understand that they want to make sure people who are engaging in their free content are a specific type of people who are more likely to go on and purchase their courses, or their services, or their higher-level offerings. But I'm not interested in giving out my phone number, 0% interested. So I just decided, okay, I'm not going to re-opt into their new thing and that's fine. I'll keep listening to the podcast. I'll continue engaging on Instagram, but slowly over the last month, since they made this change, I've actually stopped engaging with them on Instagram. I've stopped listening to their podcast, which is so fascinating for me. I used to listen, they have a podcast that comes out an episode every Tuesday and every Thursday. Before lunch, I would have listened to the episode, but it is Friday afternoon right now and I still haven't listened to the Thursday episode. I couldn't even tell you what the title of it is. Like I said, that wasn't a conscious choice, but the opt-in requirement that they're making was just too high for me and it's caused me to disengage from their business. So just be aware of that, that that's actually a thing that can really happen if you're asking too much. Generally speaking, if you provide high value in your freebie, then it's not too much of an ask for an email address, but just keep that in mind.
Okay. So why subscribe as the verb that I picked for this level or this step in the customer journey. It really is to drive home that importance of taking people to the next level and getting them on your email list so that you can continue to build a relationship with them through your email marketing and probably more important is sell to them. As a course creator or a membership owner, your email list is so valuable. Before you start running Facebook ads for your course launch or membership launch, I highly recommend that you do at least one, if not multiple email list launches. Get it out there to your email list and see if they're interested in what you're offering. They will be one of your greatest assets to just validate your idea, validate your offering. That's why it's really important to start growing your email list.
So today we're going to talk about the three different types of funnels that you can build at this level and some pros and cons about each one of them. Then, I have a few tips for you. if you are choosing to run these ads to get additional subscribers onto your email list.
So, first of all, all of these ads I'm going to talk about are conversion ads. The difference between a conversion ad and a traffic ad is, a traffic ad, you're asking someone to click on the link and leave Facebook. A conversion ad, you're asking the person to click on the link, leave Facebook, and do a particular action. So a conversion ad is a higher ask of people, but remember that the objective you pick for your Facebook campaign tells Facebook who to look for. If you pick a traffic campaign that requires people to click on a link and go to a landing page, Facebook is going to find people who click on links and go to landing pages. If you set it up as a conversion ad, that requires people to click on link, go to the landing page, and then do something. Facebook is going to look for people who click on links, go to landing pages, and do that required action.
So generally speaking, you will get better results if there's an action required of people on that landing page, like subscribing to an email list or opting into a webinar. So I just gave away the first two. So I'll just recap quickly. So the first type of ad that you can run to get people onto your email list is the free lead magnet. Now this is a PDF or workbook or a slide deck or something to that effect that is giving a ton of value and people will exchange it for their email list. A couple other good ones are templates and swipe files. Those are on fire right now, but the point of this is that they're getting the free thing and giving you their email address. It's possible that in that freebie, you have a page that showcases or highlights products or ways to work with you. In your nurture sequence, that I highly recommend you have set up, you can have a bit of a sales pitch in there at some point, but there isn't really a hard sale as part of this strategy. It really is, "Here's my free thing. Thank you for your email address."
Way number two, that you can add subscribers to your list is through a launch event. Launch events are webinars, video series, challenges, other such things where you provide a high value content, and then at the end of the event, you pitch your course or program. So there's a high ticket something that comes at the end and the same thing. So people need to give the email address, then they participate in your 60 minute webinar, and at the end you spend 15 minutes saying, "Hey, if you love that information, come join my program. It's great because..." So that's way number two.
The last one is more of an advanced technique. When we get into the pros and cons, I'll get into this a little bit more, but the last one is tiny offers or slow funnels. So these are self-liquidating offers where the person will pay $7, $27, $47 for a smaller offering. You know those things that are floating around all the time like, only $27 but it's $360 worth of content, or $47, but $5,000 worth of value. Those are these slow funnels. So somebody is making you an irresistible low cost offer. In that process, you will get onto their email list. Generally, these types of funnels will have that amazing irresistible offer and then they also have an order bump, and then they also have a one-time offer that's more expensive. So that's the third way.
So pros and cons. For the free opt-in PDF, the biggest pro for that is it is likely going to be the lowest cost per lead. So if you have a hundred dollars to spend, you might be able to get a hundred people onto your list. Whereas for a webinar and a slow funnel, it's going to be more expensive per lead. There's a couple of downsides. Number one is that there's no direct ROI because there's no sales involved. So it's really hard to calculate financially what the benefits of spending this money on the ads are. But I would argue that with, if you are regularly nurturing your email list and pitching to them when it's appropriate, when you have a launch or when you have a new offer, the long-term benefits of getting people onto your list is worth spending that money. Then the second possible downside is you might have freebie seekers who are just looking for that free thing and don't have any interest in paying any money for anything. But I think that that's a bit of a problem, pretty much in all scenarios, that you have people who just aren't interested in spending money and they feel like they'll be able to just freebie it their whole way and piece things together. You just have to let that go.
For the launch event, so the webinars, video series, challenges, one benefit is that you are pitching a larger offer at the end. So while the actual ads themselves don't have a financial ROI, because you're getting people into a webinar and that's how you know if they're effective or not, is, did you get, did you fill up your webinar? Did you get enough people into that event? So the return on ad spend isn't direct there, but you do get a chance at the end to pitch your larger offer and to welcome new people into your program, or your course. One downside is that it can take people two or more times of participating in these launch events, being on your email list for 6 to 12 months before they're interested in buying. So it is a long game, but just remember that it's like a snowball. You get these people and then it builds and builds and builds and your nurturing builds. Those brand touch points build. So it is a long game. Don't expect everyone who signs up for your webinar to purchase your course.
Then the third one, the slow funnel. So this is that low ticket offer that is the more advanced strategy. The big benefit to this and why they're so popular is because you're actually selling something, it does help recuperate some of the ad spend. So the cost per lead is usually significantly more expensive than if you are running a free lead magnet where it becomes more tricky and more advanced of a strategy is that there's lots of different moving pieces that you need to have in the business. So you need that main purchase, the $27, and you need an order bump and then the one-time offer. You really should be filtering these people beyond that into a bigger course or membership, or have something that you launch regularly. So these people might sit on your list for a couple of months and then you pitch it to them, but you really need to have all of those pieces in place before you set this slow funnel up. It really is one of the last pieces of the business that I generally recommend people set up.
Okay. So those are the three types of campaigns or funnels, the three types of funnels. Here are my tips for you. Number one, know your goals. We talked about this last week, but just have your expectations in the right place. For the list building, as I already said, there is no direct ROI. So even if you do have a sales pitch somewhere in your email sequence, the goal of those ads is to get people on your list. So remembering that your expectation is to get people on your list and then any sales on top of that will be cherries on top. With the webinar ads, the goal of them is to get people into your webinar. Any sales that you make after that are cherries on top and part of the sales pitch and how effective was your webinar. So just having that perspective in place will help you to feel more successful in the long run.
Number two, you need to have your automations in place already. So if you're doing the free lead magnet, as soon as someone opts in, the email should be sent out for them to get their freebie right away. Then you should also have a welcome sequence in place, ready to go, three to five emails over the next week or so. So that people start to get to know you, learn about how to connect with you on social media, and like I've said a couple of times, if you have something to pitch to them or offer, do that during the welcome sequence.
Tip number three, before you start spending on money on ads, make sure that you are regularly nurturing your email list. There is no point in spending money to build your email list if you're not emailing them at least twice a month. I really, really strongly recommend that it's weekly. You don't want to be paying to get people on your email list and then ghosting them. It takes nurturing. It takes touch points. It takes interactions to build those relationships so that people will move into the bottom of your funnel and become engaged and invested in your business.
Number five, be ready to let the social proof build up on these ads. So especially with those free list building opt-in ads, you can let those run for a bit longer than other types of ads. I'm not really sure why, but it doesn't seem like the images and the copy goes stale quite as quickly as they do in evergreen funnels and blog posts ads. Building up that social proof means the likes, shares, comments on the ad. So let them run for as long as the ad is still getting you a reasonable cost per lead. What I mean by reasonable is for those free opt-ins, the lead magnet ads, generally, I like to see the cost per lead be somewhere between $1 to $2. So if your cost per lead starts to creep up above $2, $2.50, $3, you really want to think about it being time to refresh the ad images and the copy.
For a webinar, usually, this is a more concentrated event. You'll be running ads for 10 days, then you do the live launch. So you have time to figure out what worked and what didn't work. Then for the next one, you can often run very similar images and ad copy, just updating and picking the most successful ones so that each time it becomes a more and more successful campaign. But also know that over time, they'll still become stale and you need to freshen those up too.
Then last but not least, number six is to test more audiences, especially with those free lead magnet ads. When you're building your email list, it's a perfect time to test cold interest-based audiences. I do have a link or an episode about how to create audiences, so will link it in the show notes so that you can go and listen to exactly how I build out my audiences. At the beginning of the episode, I talked about my freebie, which is all about Facebook ad audiences for teacherpreneurs. So that link is in the show notes as well. If it's something you're interested in, it goes through the three different types of audiences with checklists, for all of the warm audiences, the lookalike audiences, and then there are some worksheets on how to find the best cold audiences you can.
So that's all I have for you. Just as a quick recap, we talked about why it's important to get people over the hump of subscribing to your business. We talked about the three different types of funnels that you can use to grow your email list, and then my five tips for running ads to build your email list.
If you have any questions about this, I'd love to help. Send me a DM on Instagram. I'm @heyitsjenzaia, and if you found this episode helpful and you think that others might too, take a screenshot and share it out. Anytime I see someone share, I always share it back. So thank you. Thank you for choosing to spend some time with me this weekend, and I hope you have a great week. I will be back in your ear next Saturday.
Thank you for listening to today's episode. Today was brought to you by Dubsado, my absolute favourite customer management tool. If you're looking to streamline and systematize your service-based business, I highly recommend Dubsado. For 20% off of your first month. Head to marketscalegrow.com/dubsado that's D U B S A D O and use the code Jenzaia at checkout. And don't forget to head to our community at marketscalegrow.com/community where you'll find inspiring, ambitious teacherpreneurs who are looking to grow and scale their businesses just like you... See you soon.