- You are listening to the Femtrepreneur Show
and this is episode 34.
In this episode, we're talking about whether or not
you should use paid Facebook ads when
launching your first course the first time.
(determined music)
Hey, guys, I'm Mariah.
- And I'm Megan, and today we are answering a question
we get asked a lot, and I think a lot of business owners
feel like everyone's using Facebook ads.
So the question is do I need to spend thousands
of dollars on ads to make money with courses.
I don't know about you, but anytime I'm on
Facebook I am just smothered with ads.
And that's not bad, but it makes you
feel like everyone's using ads.
So I'm really glad that we get to address this topic.
- We get the question of, sometimes when we're like,
so we'll explain, no, we teach all free and organic methods.
We actually don't teach Facebook ads in our programs,
Your First 1K and Launch Your Signature Course,
we don't teach Facebook ads and people are like,
but then what do you do?
What is the alternative?
There are so many ways to build your list and launch your
course using organic and free marketing methods.
A lot of people are surprised and think it's really cool
that we only teach free and organic marketing methods
mostly because that's been our experience.
We built our business into a multimillion dollar
business before we ever spent money on ads,
which is pretty much unheard of.
I don't know anyone else that's done that.
But we basically just figured out how to
do it without relying on Facebook ads.
Part of that is because I have a little
philosophy that you can read about.
I have this whole blog post called How to Build Your
Empire Without Ads and What to do Instead
and in it I lay out the philosophy behind it.
I actually don't have anything against ads.
We started experimenting with ads just a couple months ago.
We've spent very little so far, but just trying
to experiment with working with them and everything
and we're much more open to it now.
But when I first started out, I felt like the way
I wanted to be introduced to new people
that would become part of my audience
wasn't just to shove myself into their social feed
and instead was this very much trust and permission-based
marketing and relationship-based marketing
where someone that they already know and trusted
introduced me to them as a friend.
This would happen with guest posting or with joint venture
webinars where it would be someone that they already know,
like and trust saying, hey, this is my friend Mariah.
I want to introduce her to you.
She's gonna come and do a workshop for us.
There's a sort of transfer of trust there
and it felt like we were becoming friends
instead of just like, hey, look at me, I'm in your feed.
Boo, I'm interrupting something that you want to be doing.
It's not that I feel like that about all ads,
but I do feel like there's a difference between
the people who find you through organic marketing.
There are stats about this that you're gonna have
a much higher conversion rate and just a different buyer
from someone who finds you through a Facebook ad verses
someone who just met you through someone else or found you
through a post on someone else's blog or something.
- I also think, too, something we never had
to worry about is a lot of people are.
Sorry, I can't explain this very well.
A lot of people rely on ads so heavily.
Like we talked about at the beginning,
so many people only use Facebook ads that the idea that you
have organic methods is hard for them to comprehend.
And I think those people run the risk
of running into a bad ad season.
For example, last November during the election,
Facebook ads basically disappeared.
Like all of the ad space was
bought up because of the election.
It's something you don't think about very often,
but there are seasons in our year where ads
are more expensive, or ad space becomes rare,
or there's big marketing pushes so the cost goes up.
When you have unexpected things like that
and you're relying exclusively on advertising
and all of the sudden, it's way more expensive,
you now have to make so many more
sales to make up that difference.
It can totally throw a launch down the drain
and it can really mess you up if that's
what you're relying on exclusively.
So even though we do have Facebook ads that
we have been experimenting with now and implementing
as part of our launches, it's never our focus.
It's never the only method.
We still put so much energy into
the organic methods that we teach.
- We have resilience built into every piece of our launch,
and part of that is not being reliant on only ads
or saying, well, if you think that you're gonna get
a thousand email subscribers and they're all gonna come
from Facebook ads, if that doesn't work out,
what else did you have in place to get email subscribers?
Yeah, you need a backup plan.
It's like you said, a lot of people are like,
wow, how do you even run a business without Facebook ads.
Well, there's tons of other stuff you can do.
So there's a couple reasons why the basis
of this being you don't need to spend any money
on ads to have a super successful launch.
Like I said, we built our business into the millions
of dollars before ever spending money on ads
and our students have had multiple five figure launches.
That's anywhere from 20 to %50,000 in
a single launch without any money on ads.
- And none of the people.
I just want to touch on this, too.
You might be thinking if you're listening,
oh, well, that's because you have this huge email list.
So maybe you didn't have ads because you had
100,000 people on your email list.
I just want to stop you right there that that is not true,
it's still not true, and it's not
been true for any of our students.
So we have proven from varying levels of an email list
that as long as you're executing the strategies we teach
on how to build a strategic following organically,
then you don't need 100,000 people on your email list
and you don't need Facebook ads, too.
So I just wanted to touch on that in case anyone
listening was a skeptic, because I get you,
and was wondering if the reason it worked out for us
is because we had such a big audience.
- The answer is no.
There's just other ways to hustle.
And I think, no, that's a really good point.
So one of the reasons that I recommend using free
and organic marketing methods that first time you launch,
and we're kind of talking about marketing in
the way of getting people on your email list,
but also when you're actually launching your course
and promoting it to that email list
and to your social media audience.
The reason why we want you to use free and organic
methods that first time is because you
don't actually have a proven product yet.
So sadly, what we see happen is people spend
3,000, $5,000 on Facebook ads and they
haven't tested their launch sequence yet,
they haven't tested their webinars yet,
they haven't even tested their product and their
messaging yet and they haven't done any presales,
and they lose all that money because
it's not a proven thing yet.
If you can't make sales using organic methods
and without spending all that money on Facebook ads,
why would you think that you're gonna
magically make money because you put in
the investment and you deserve to make it back.
I feel like I see people selling that messaging a lot.
It's the same reason people are like,
if you don't invest $100,000 into your personal development,
then you don't deserve to make it.
You're telling the universe you don't want it.
It's like, no, we just don't all have that much
money to spend on personal development.
I feel like if people are trying to tell you,
well, if you don't invest in ads on your launch,
then you're basically saying that you
don't think it's gonna be successful.
No, you can still be successful.
You just need to be smart about the strategies
that you're using and be a little bit crafty.
Get a little bit resourceful.
- What I love that you just said, too,
was the reminder that if your warm audience
doesn't want to buy what you're offering,
then someone who has never met you before and just saw your,
it was cold, never heard of your name or your product,
sees your ad, they're not gonna want it either most likely
because your warm audience should be the people who
are ready and your cold audience is gonna be so much harder.
So you really want to perfect the messaging
to your warm audience before you spend any money trying
to send that messaging to cold audience.
- Exactly, don't use Facebook ads until.
Facebook ads are when you already have your funnel
and your conversions nailed down, they can help you
amplify what you've already proven is successful.
If you have two launches in a row
and they both have a five percent conversion rate
and you're like, OK, my webinars are good,
my emails are good, my sales page converts,
you've tested it from your organic audience,
then you could be like, well, now I know if I got double
the amount of people in, I would have double the amount
of sales and that is warranting spending money on ads.
But the first time you come out with
a new product, you don't know.
- It's just a risk.
If you have the money and you want
to do it, we can't stop you.
That's totally up to you.
It's your business, you can totally try ads the first
time around if you're willing to spend the money.
I just think we've seen too often people who don't
have the funds, who don't have the time try to DIY
Facebook ads and spend a lot of money and don't see
the results that they want or expected.
- When they could be doing super powerful strategies
like guest posting or joint venture webinars
or swapping podcasts or being active in Facebook groups.
They could be doing all these organic things
that would really grow their audience so exponentially
and grow their trust and their authority.
But instead they're trying to figure out Facebook ads.
It just doesn't have a guaranteed return
and costs a lot of money to experiment.
A lot of people go to Facebook ads when they're like,
well, I'm gonna put in this $2,000.
I really need to make it back,
and it's like, there's just no guarantee.
So for us, we didn't start using Facebook ads
until we literally felt like we could,
not dump $10,000 down the drain,
but we were like, if this $10,000
doesn't do anything, it's not gonna make or break us.
So you basically have to be in that position.
- Yeah, and what I want to do now
is transition a little bit.
We've addressed why we don't think you have to use ads
and spend thousands of dollars on ads when you're launching,
so what are some of the organic marketing
methods that we suggest doing instead?
I know you touched on it a little bit.
- Yeah, so these are all the free and organic methods
that we teach in Launch Your Signature Course.
We really focus on relationship-based marketing,
which I talk about a lot because I think it can just--
- I love that phrase.
- Yeah, I just think it can blow up what you're
doing in such a exponential way because
you're using audiences that already exist
and relationships that already exist.
You're putting yourself in front of an audience with.
Like I said, that personal introduction is worth more
than any amount of money you could spend on Facebook ads
by being like, hey, look at me over here.
So it's like I said, it's just much more powerful.
So things that we focus on are things like guest posting,
which is super, super effective still.
There's definitely the sort of like
what is guest posting in 2017?
Well, it means a lot of different
things in this day and age.
That traditional guest posting is still alive and well
and our students are getting crazy,
especially our Launch Your Signature
Course students are like, holy crap.
If I just guest post every single week,
they're growing their list by thousands.
It's crazy.
And then we also see people swapping pod casts
or swapping Instagram accounts, doing Instagram takeovers
or trading Facebook group Facebook Live.
So it's like, oh, come in to my Facebook group
and do a Facebook Live and you can pitch your freebie
or you can talk about your lead magnet.
- I feel like podcast interviewing
is a form of a guest post in my mind.
Being interviewed on someone else's podcast
is doing the same exact thing as a guest post would be
because you should, hopefully, be leveraging it
and have a freebie that you're offering their audience.
So they'll join your email list if they're interested.
You've gained exposure.
You've been recommended.
So I definitely love the idea of talking
about what this looks like in 2017.
The same thing with cross promoting on Instagram.
I have a thousand followers, you have a thousand followers,
but we both don't have any email subscribers.
How can we promote our lead magnets to our followers?
I'll post a link to your lead magnet in my profile for
a day and you do it for a day and we'll see what happens.
- Even Instagram stories.
What's the Snapchat--
- Takeover. - Takeovers, all that stuff.
There's so many different options now
that it's a better tool than ever before.
- Yeah, collaboration is the key to all of this.
That is how you build your business.
I know people say business is all
about relationships, but it's so true.
It's just about collaboration and coming together.
- People ask us this a lot, too, in mastermind situations
that we've been in where people want to know the fastest
way or the highest ROI, or what's the one thing I could
do that would really take this to the next--
- Without experimenting.
- Yeah, without experimenting.
To me, it's anything with collaboration
whether it's a joint venture webinar
or a swap or anything like that.
A podcast interview.
That type of collaboration where you're being exposed
to another audience is just the best thing you could do.
- So high ROA.
Anyway, so we talk a lot about that.
We teach you how to do all that stuff.
We also talk about giveaways,
like doing a viral type giveaway.
We're doing one right now as we record this.
- While we're recording.
- Our giveaway is going viral.
I keep refreshing it as we're talking.
- Glad to know you're focused on the podcast.
- I have to multitask.
No, I'm just kidding.
No one can multitask.
But doing viral giveaways is a really great way to build
your list and also just expose a whole new group of people
to your course and your name who don't know who you are yet.
We also talk about joint venture
webinars and using social media.
So a lot of people have some sort of following on social
media, but they haven't translated it into a list yet.
You might not be sure how to do that,
but there are so many ways that you can create really
valuable lead magnets, which are like freebie opt-ins
that people can trade their email addresses for
promoting those on social media in the correct way
so that people are coming over from
social media onto your email list.
And then in terms of the actual promotion
of getting people to buy, we, of course, rely on things
like webinars, email sequence, doing social media series,
which is how we do 10 course tips,
something like live streaming,
giving a lot of value, urgency, all that stuff.
We talk about all that stuff in the free video
workshop, too. - When this podcast episode
airs, we will also be in the middle
of our 10 course tips, I think, won't we?
- I think so, yeah.
Or it'll be in some of those ways.
We talk about all this stuff in the free video workshop,
too, that you can also watch right now
at launchyoursignaturecourse.com.
We talk about those actual conversion vehicles
for how do you actually get people to buy.
The basis of all this is just that ads are not a necessary
part of this ecosystem unless you want them to be.
There's definitely people out there who are like,
if you don't spend money on ads, you'll never make a dollar,
or if you don't spend money on ads,
then you're sending the message to the universe
that you don't deserve to earn anything.
It's like, no, you can just use other methods,
and we're proof and all of our students are proof
because we don't teach Facebook ads.
So all of our students are having these amazing launches
and you can see all their case studies on
launchyoursignaturecourse.com, they're not using ads either.
So you see all these organic launches
and I guess I just feel like it's important
to spread the word that there's another way to do it
where you're not risking a lot of cash
on something that's not gonna work.
I try to be so strategic.
I don't want to say I'm risk-averse because
I do like taking risks in business,
but I don't want to take unnecessary risks.
So that's why we do things like pre-selling.
That's why we build resilience into our launches where
it's like, well, there's 10 different levels of redundancy
so if the webinar fails, there's always the Facebook group,
or if the emails don't send, we can still contact
people in the Facebook group, or whatever.
There's all these levels of repetition and redundancy.
In case something fails, there isn't
gonna be this critical failure.
I feel like I just want people to know that
they don't need to rely on Facebook ads.
You can totally have a wildly successful launch without them
and without that scary outlay of,
OK, I'm spending $2,000, I hope I make it back.
- Yeah, well, you mentioned the free
video workshop a second ago.
For those of you who don't know,
when this goes live, will all of the videos have been out?
I think two of them will have been out.
But we have a three video series,
three part video series workshop, mouth full,
that we do once a year and it's amazing.
How many people watched it when we released it in the fall?
- Oh my gosh, thousands of people.
At least 5,000 people, yeah.
- We got amazing feedback and you can only watch
these once a year when we have them live.
Mariah, do you want to share a little bit more
about what they can expect to learn in
the workshop and why they should register.
It's free, by the way, if I didn't say that.
- It's free, launchyoursignaturecourse.com.
The first video is all about the concept
that I created called copy stocking.
I show you an actual spreadsheet of how to do research about
your course topic and how to validate it that way.
So if you're sitting there thinking how am I gonna find
my students, how am I gonna know if this is a good idea,
how am I gonna validate that people actually would
want this, I show you how to find your course topic
through copy stocking and I walk you through all
the spreadsheets that you need in order to do this.
In the second video, we talk about
the five big tips of creating big tips.
Why do they have to be big?
I don't know.
(laughing)
- They are big. - Go through
the five tips of how to create your course content.
So there's a lot of things about course content.
People assume more is better,
people assume it has to be super fancy,
people assume people want hour long videos,
and none of that is true.
So I go through how to actually create course
content that people will love and get
really good results for your students.
And then the third video is all
about how we actually launch.
So everything we're talking about with the urgency,
the webinars, the emails actually go through how
you're gonna use all those in your launch
and how you can layer those things together
to create a really successful launch your first time.
And really as a takeaway for today,
I just want you guys to remember to focus
on building those real relationships with partners
and collaborators in your space.
I just feel like it's more fun.
I do feel like as an overall thing,
we see a lot of people relying on Facebook ads
because it means they never have to talk to anyone.
It means they never have to get out of their.
Honestly, it means they never have
to get out of their comfort zone.
They're like, oh, I'd rather just
spend money on Facebook ads.
Then they don't have to pitch a joint
venture co-host for a webinar.
Then they don't have to face the fear of being rejected.
Then they don't have to feel awkward
emailing this person that I admire.
But guess what, that's where the best stuff happens,
so don't hide behind a Facebook ad.
Just be yourself and go out there and talk to
the people in your industry that you think you could
provide value to and focus on those relationships
moreso than hiding behind the Facebook ads.
- I love that.
That's such a good note to end on.
So definitely go to the thefemshow.com/34
to the show notes to this episode
and find links to all of the resources we mentioned,
including how you can sign up for the free video workshop.
I actually misspoke earlier.
When this episode goes live, all three videos will be out
so you'll be able to watch all three and catch up.
You'll definitely want to do that.
So you can get the link for all
of that at thefemshow.com/34.
If you want to discuss this episode with us in our community
of awesome entrepreneurs, make sure you join our free
Facebook group at thefemshow.com/community.
- If you liked this episode, subscribe to the Femtrepreneur
Show on iTunes and leave a rating and a review.
We really, really appreciate it when you guys do that.
If you're watching this on YouTube, leave a comment below.
We love to hear from you.
Tell us your thoughts and remember
to hit the like button and subscribe.
If you guys have questions for us,
we're always happy to answer them.
We'll give you a shout out on the show.
Just go to thefemshow.com and submit
your question so we can answer it live.
- Are you recording? - I'm recording.
I don't know why I just put my hands up.
Like I'm communicating with an alien or something.
What was that?
It's like, I'm ready. (laughs)
- I liked it. - I don't know.
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét