Bottom of Funnel Marketing Tactic: Nurturing & Selling to Your Warm Audience| 31
Hey teacherpreneur… so you wanna make some sales of your course or membership? Once people have made it through the customer journey steps all the way to the bottom of the funnel, it is essential to continue nurturing them to further build the connection and relationship. Having an audience that is invested emotionally in your brand will result in people investing in you financially AND will help to create raving loyal fans.
For your audience to make it all the way to the "invested" step of the customer journey, they need to be both emotionally and financially invested in your business.
At the bottom of the funnel, it is important to be continuing to nurture your warm audience so they become more emotionally invested in you and your brand. We also use sales ads to encourage them to become financially invested.
Here are the 5 types of ads I use at the bottom of the funnel:
very specifically chosen long-form content ads: these ads are similar to the one we talked about for the top of funnel ads, however, the content needs to be chosen very specifically. Over time and with intentional tagging in your email marketing platform (e.g., Flodesk, MailChip, ConvertKit, etc.), you should be able to determine which opt-ins best correlate to sales. With that information in hand, you can specifically select the content that will nurture people to download those opt-ins and therefore be more ready to buy.
very specifically chosen video content ads: similar to the first type of ad, we want to be creating video content that leads people towards the opt-ins and content that we know nurtures them to the sale. By strategically creating and promoting the right video content, your audience will be more primed to buy when the time is right.
testimonial ads (learn more from Episode 22): these ads straddle the fence between nurture ads and sales ads because they’re a great way to build up the social proof for your course or program.
sales ads: after a launch event, you can add some sales ads to help drive more traffic to your sales page. Using the formula “Problem - Agitate Problem - Solution” for your ad copy can be extremely powerful and persuasive
abandon cart ads: these are some of the most powerful ads because they remind people who looked at your sales page but didn’t buy to go back and make the purchase before it’s too late!
My top tips for BOF ads:
Be ready to play the long game
Nurturing your audience and building relationships is key to making sales and building a brand that lasts!
Know your expectations
Sales ads will have a tangible direct ROI, but should be some of the last ads you layer into your funnel. It is more important to build your audiences and nurture them in the beginning. This will help you to create a snowball effect in your business
Watch the frequency of the ads
Because these ads are only being shown to your warm audience, they will naturally be a smaller audience. This means the frequency often creeps up on us and we don’t want to annoy anyone. I recommend you refresh the ad copy and creative once the frequency hits about 2-4.
Test different campaign objectives
At the bottom of the funnel, I will often start with Traffic Ads (optimized for Landing Page Views), even if my goal is sales. This is because of the audience size. Conversion ads are much more likely to get stuck in “Learning Limited” and stall out which we really don’t want.
Layer these ads into your funnel last
As tempting as the high ROI can be, if you layer in sales ads too soon they won’t have that expected return. Massive, consistent ROI comes from relationship building and nurturing an audience to be invested in your brand.
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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. I'm your host Jenzaia and this is a Saturday strategy session. Thank you so much for choosing to spend some time with me this weekend. Today, we are going to be finishing off the fourth part of our little mini-series. I've been chatting about the five steps of the customer journey and how you can use ads to help nurture people from the top of your funnel through the middle and to the bottom of the funnel.
So just a bit of a recap. The five steps of the customer journey are: aware, interest, subscribed, engaged, invested. In the second episode of this little mini-series, we talked about the top of funnel ads and how you can use nurture ads to get more people aware of your business and interested in your content. In the third part of this series, we talked about how you can get people over a major hump of an online digital business and get them subscribed to your email list. In this final episode of the series, we are going to be talking of bottom-funnel ads. There are two parts to the bottom of the funnel- the engaged and invested steps.
So before I dive into how you can use ads to nurture people through those two steps, I do want to just differentiate between engaged and invested. Someone who's engaged in your business might be doing things like responding to your emails. They may be commenting, sharing, liking your Instagram or Facebook posts on a regular basis. They could be sending you DMs to start conversations about your content. They may be reading and commenting on your blog. They may be subscribed to your podcast, leaving ratings, or reviews. They could send you an email about your episodes. Any of those things. Engagement in my mind is also potentially somebody who's purchased from you. Invested, there are two different types of investments that somebody can make in your business. They can make a financial investment or an emotional investment. To get to the invested phase, I feel like people need to have done both. They need to be emotionally invested in your business. Are you growing? Are you succeeding? They want to have that relationship and connection with you, but they've also purchased from you and they've invested financially in your business. So somebody who is totally emotionally invested, but has not yet bought, I would put them at that engaged phase where they're engaging with you and they are building that relationship. Someone who's purchased from you, but is not yet emotionally invested, maybe they just stumbled across your product and were like, "yeah, this could work for me, but I don't know who this person..." and whatever else, but they have purchased, but they are not actually invested emotionally. I would also put them at the engaged phase because they've engaged with you by buying, but they're not truly invested in your business yet.
So that's kind of the difference between engaged, where they're doing things and interacting with your business versus invested where they are both financially and emotionally invested in your business. So how do we get people there? First, I'm going to talk about five different types of ads that you can run and how they will help to get people into the engaged and invested phases of the customer journey. Then I have a few tips for you at the end.
So there are two different types of ads that we're going to be running, and then I'm going to talk about in these five ads. The first type is nurture ads and then the second type is sales ads. Nurture ads, we've talked about before. We talked about them in the second episode of this content series, this mini-series, but there's a big difference here. At the top of the funnel, you're running nurture ads to show your content to a large group of people, usually cold audiences, to grow your brand awareness, get more visible, bring people into your brand. When you're running nurture ads at the bottom of your funnel, you're running them only to your warm audience. We're very, very, very specific about what content we're running, because we want it to be long-form content to your blog post or your podcast episode that are giving these people exactly what they need to get more invested into your business so that they will become raving, loyal fans, and they buy from you and that they are so invested.
So to do this, what you need to be doing when you're getting people subscribed and when people are buying from you is use tags in your email list and a tracking system of some sort so that you know what people are interacting with, what opt-ins they are downloading, or what lead magnets they like most. Then comparing it to who buys. So if you have 100 people who bought something and 70 of them, so 70% of people have the same opt-in that they downloaded before buying from you, that's huge. So at the bottom of the funnel, at these nurture ads, you want to be doing what you can to nurture people and get them to opt into that specific lead magnet. Even if they're already on your email list, which they should be by this point, you still might get that opt-in and that content in front of people, again, because if 70% of the people who bought from you had downloaded that opt-in, you know that there's some sort of connection. It might not be a direct link, but something about that content and something about your course or program are connected, and getting that content in front of more people is going to benefit you and it's going to help them get more engaged and more invested in your business. That's what you want. So you need to be very particular about the long-form content that you're putting in front of your warm audiences.
Similarly, the second type of nurture ad is video of you ads. At the bottom of the funnel, video content is super important because when you're on video, people can see your face and they can hear your voice and it helps to grow that connection, helps to nurture people even more, and develop that relationship. So it doesn't matter what kind of video you're doing. If it's live on Instagram, live on Facebook, prerecorded, on YouTube, you can be using snippets of these videos, posting them on your Facebook business page, and then running ads to them to get your warm audience to watch these videos. Because similar to that long-form content, if you're strategically selecting these videos and you know that their topics or content lead people to want to purchase your course or membership, then it's a really good way to build those relationships, build the connection, and when you do launch that program or course again, or if somebody ends up in your evergreen funnel and they've already interacted with that content, they're more likely to buy. That's why it's really important to be strategic at this stage.
At the top of the funnel, when we were talking about nurture ads and getting your content out, I do recommend that you're putting a bit of ad spend behind almost all of your long-form content. I mean, if I were to do a podcast episode about what's going on in our family and with my little ones, then it might not be relevant for me to put ad spend behind that. But anything that I do that has to do with Facebook ad strategy, I put some ad spend behind it and just get more eyes on it. It's a really good way to grow that audience and to build up. But at the bottom of my funnel, I don't want to be putting ad spend behind everything. I want to be very strategic about the content that I select for posts so that I know it's going to help lead to that sale.
The third type of ad that you could be running is testimonial ads. Now, these ones kind of straddle the line between a nurture ad and a sales ad because you would be driving traffic. If someone were to click on the ad, you're driving it to your sales page. But testimonials are not usually what pushes somebody to make the sale directly. It's more of an indirect push. It adds a little bit more pressure, helps them build that social proof, it makes them realize, "Hey, there’s other people who have benefited from this program. There's other people who've seen the results that I want to see."
So if you think about two jars of marbles and to get somebody to buy, you need to move all of the marbles from one jar to the other jar. These testimonial ads will be like moving one or two marbles over and just kind of tip the scale in your favor a little bit more. So if you want to learn more about testimonial ads, I do have an episode on testimonial ads that you can go and listen to and learn more about the three different ways to use testimonials in your business. If that's something you want to do, it's episode 22. And I highly recommend that after you're done you head over there and listen to the three ways to use testimonials in your Facebook ads.
Okay. Ad number four is the sales ad. So after you've done a launch event, so a webinar or a video series or challenge, you pitch your course and open your doors so that people can join your program. This is when you will be running sales ads. So anyone who participated in that launch event could begin to see the sales ads that are directing more traffic to your sales page. These are one of the best ways to remember mind the people who participated in the webinar like, "Hey, the doors are open." There are lots of really great techniques about how you can use urgency and doors closing those kinds of pieces to really get attention on your sales page and get more eyes onto it. In your ad copy for a sales ad, you really want to start with a problem or pain point that people are having, agitate that problem, and then present your course or program as a solution and give some ideas and show them in your ad copy how their lives will improve with the course. Kind of like a mini sales page in your ad copy.
The final and probably the most powerful, but one of the last ads you will introduce into your funnel is the abandoned cart or abandoned sales page ad. People will see this ad if they go to your sales page and then do not buy, they can be super creepy. As in, "Hey, I saw that you added leopard print yoga pants to your cart and that you never purchased. Come on back to the store and buy them now." Super creepy. They know exactly what you put in your cart and they know you didn't buy it. They can also be less creepy as in, "Hey, you might be interested in this course or program. Why don't you come and check it out?" The point of an abandoned cart or abandoned sales page ad is to bring people back to the sales page so that they have a second or third chance to buy.
Remember, people are so busy and they may have gone to your sales page, loved it, wanted to buy, put all their credit card information in, and then their daughter spilled milk all over the floor and they had to stop everything they were doing and they forgot all about it. Real story in my life. Definitely. So by having these abandoned sales page ads or abandoned cart ads, when there's a bit more time, or they're just scrolling Facebook and Instagram mindlessly, the ad will pop up and they'll be like, "Oh yeah, I wanted to do this. So now I'm going to go back and actually purchase the course."
So those are the five different types of ads you can be running. Just as a reminder, as a nurture ad, we have long-form content, driving traffic to your long-form content. We also have video of you ads and remember to be very specific and selective when choosing that content. Testimonial ads kind of straddle the line between sales ads and nurture ads. Then for the sales ads, we have the actual sales ad after a launch event, or when someone goes to your evergreen funnel, after they've participated in your masterclass, they start sealing them. Then the final type of ad at the bottom of the funnel is our abandoned cart or abandoned sales page ads that bring somebody back to the sales page if they don't purchase from you the first time.
Now time for my tips. Tip number one is to be ready to play the long game. It can really take some time and lots of brand touch points. I know I brought this up in I think all the episodes at this point. People need lots of brand touch points. They need to interact with you multiple times before they might feel comfortable buying from you. So by showing them your long-form content, showing them videos of you talking to the camera and providing high-value content, it's going to be an extra brand point. They're going to remember you just a little bit more each time they interact with your brand so that when you do pitch your big offer to them, they're ready to buy. So be ready to play the long game.
This kind of wraps into that other tip that I've given multiple times of know your expectations. Once you're at the bottom of the funnel, it's fair to expect people to buy from you at that point, especially if you're doing sales ads and those abandoned cart, abandoned sales page ads, that that's a reasonable expectation. But don't forget that they need to still get nurtured and you still need to provide high value content, even at the bottom of the funnel to continue to nurture them and to continue to build that relationship and to continue to push them towards becoming loyal raving fans who are super invested both financially and emotionally into your business. So that was kind of two tips in one. Be ready for the long game and know your expectations.
Tip number three is to watch the frequency of your ads. Because these are smaller audiences, you're only running these ads to your warm audiences, potentially only the people who watched your webinar. That might only be a couple of hundred people or a couple dozen people. Because the audiences are so small, you have to watch the frequency. The frequency just tells you the average number of times, the same person has seen the ad. So if the frequency is three, that means on average, everyone in your audience has seen that ad three times. I like to keep this frequency between two and four for the bottom of the funnel ads. We don't want somebody to see the ad too many times because then they might start to get annoyed. If the brand touch point is the same again, and again, and again, they're going to start to shut down, tune you out, and worst case scenario unsubscribe, and stop following you and want nothing to do with your brand. So if your frequency creeps up to three or four, then that's a really good sign that it's time to turn those ads off, get some fresh images, fresh videos, fresh ad copy, and to start pushing out potentially the same content, but just a different variation of those ad creative pieces.
Tip number four is to be careful about the ad objective. Even when you're running sales ads and the point of it is to get that conversion, somebody to buy from you, because these are the warm audiences, they can often be really small. Conversion ads require a larger audience, a really big pool of people, to get the number of conversions that Facebook wants to see to be able to optimize your ads and for the campaigns to run optimally. If there isn't a large enough audience, Facebook is going to stick the ads into the dreaded limited learning phase. Often it just won't spend the money and it'll get stuck and then the campaign kind of crashes, burns, and dies. So be very careful about the ad objective. I generally think the best place to start with bottom-of-the-funnel ads is a traffic ad even if you're trying to get a conversion. Traffic ads are a little bit easier to hit those numbers that Facebook wants to see for the conversions. If you're sending people to a landing page and you're optimizing for landing page views, then you'll get eyes on your page anyway. Because these are your warm audiences, you already know that they're interested in what you have to offer because they've participated in your webinar or your challenge. So they're more likely to be interested in that sales page to begin with. If the traffic ads aren't getting you the results you want to see, then you can always back it up to a reach ad, which doesn't optimize for people actually clicking on the ad. It just shows the ad to as many people as possible. Then you're still reminding people in their newsfeeds or their Instagram feed, "Hey, this program's open" and hopefully that'll be enough to get more people on the sales page. If your audience is really, really small, then I recommend you just spend this money on getting more people on your email list. Build your email list with your free opt-in or with your launch event, and then layer these ads in last.
This brings me to my final tip, and that is to layer these ads in last, even though the return on investment, the return on ad spend, is going to feel like it's the best. Because sales ads and abandoned cart ads have really high return on ad spend when they've done well, they can really pull people's attention easily, and it can also be like a false hope. If your audience isn't big enough, it's way more effective and better use of your money to build your audience with those middle-of-the-funnel ads than it is to do these final ads. Yes, it feels like you're getting your money back, there's a return on ad spend. But it can be really hard to get them successful if you don't have a large enough audience and if you haven't spent enough time nurturing those people. So just be careful that you don't get lured into the trap of high ROI that is very tangible. Remember that getting people onto your email list or getting more eyes on your long-form content is a less tangible ROI. There isn't money going right into your bank account, so it can be harder to really feel those benefits. But they are there and they are real and getting people onto your email list and nurturing them and using your email marketing and using your long-form content is so, so, so powerful.
So if you're not really sure where to start, I highly recommend those middle-of-the-funnel ads, trying to build your email list and consistently sending emails out to your list every week, and growing your audience. That way, building up a group of people who are invested in you emotionally so that when you do pitch something, they will also invest in you financially.
If you have any questions about this, feel free to send me an email or a DM on Instagram. I'm @heyitsjenzaia. I absolutely love chatting with you in the DMs, and I will be back in your ear next Saturday with an exciting new episode. Bye!
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.