Is Your Online Course Business Actually Ready for Facebook & Instagram Ads?

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Jesus saves.
Facebook and Instagram ads donot.
And just because you can runFacebook and Instagram ads
doesn't mean you should.
Ads amplify what's alreadyworking.
And in this episode, I'm goingto break down signs for you,
dear course creator, so that youcan understand if your business
is actually ready for paidtraffic and how to avoid wasting

(00:22):
money on your first 5k of adspend in meta ads.
So I was just a guest on apodcast, and we were discussing
well, this lady had hired an adsmanager for her launch, spent
quite a bit of money, and shemade money on her launch, but at
the end, it was very littlemoney on her launch made.

(00:45):
And then she had to look andsay, well, the leads at least
came in to the list.
And although some saleshappened, we, you know, barely
broke even.
But those leads would be worthmoney to the business further
down the line.
And indeed, months later, aftergoing through her funnel, more
of those leads ended upconverting.
But you don't want to run adsprematurely, or especially go

(01:07):
out there and just find a randomads manager and run ads to a
launch or something that is notproven, or even to an offer that
is not proven, or even to a leadmagnet funnel that has not been
proven yet.
We don't want more eyeballs onsomething that's not working,
okay?
It needs to be a validatedoffer.
Hmm.

(01:27):
Way back when I first startedads, a good number of people
would reach out to me.
Folks still do, but I now kindlyexplain to them where the phase
that they're at in theirbusiness and then decide and let
them know we're not going towork together.
I took on a lot more of thesekind of clients way back in the
beginning.
And when you are in the phases,the beginning phases of

(01:48):
validating your offer in yourbusiness for your online course,
understand that proving thatmessaging is like the hardest
phase of business.
That's not the time to spend adsmoney because you will spend a
lot of ads money on messagingthat may or may not convert.

And here's what I mean (02:06):
you have a problem that you're good at
solving, that you're passionateabout solving, right?
And I believe you want tocontinue going through the
process of growing your businessbecause you are meant to serve
these folks that have thatproblem and effect that
transformation in their lives.
But testing out your messagingmeans figuring out from that

(02:26):
problem that you solve, what arethe frustrations that actually
convert leads into sales, right?
There might be five differentkinds of frustrations stemming
from that one problem, and notall of those resonate equally.
And as you're doing that messagetesting, if you will, this is
not the time for you to run ads.
So how can you tell if you areready to run ads?

(02:48):
Well, let's look at a couple ofvery typical scenarios.
When it comes down to it, you'reselling.
Your offer is selling, yourgroup coaching program is
selling, and there is profitassociated with how you're
launching it or how you'reselling it.
So you could be postingInstagram stories and people
could be, you know, followingthe call to action to DM you and

(03:09):
you're selling in the DMs.
Or let's say you have areliable, repeatable launch
mechanism that could be awebinar, a workshop, a boot
camp, a challenge, but you runthat, leads come in, and you
make sales profitably into youroffer.
You need a good amount of profitthere.

(03:30):
And here's how you calculatethat.
So I'm gonna take out mycalculator and we're just going
to run some basic numbers, okay?
Because ultimately when you runads, you have to pay for those
leads, and then you want to makeor you have an earnings per
lead.
So I'm holding one hand downhere at my chest height, and
that's what your cost per leadis.

(03:52):
And the hand up here by myforehead is the earnings per
lead, and that difference isyour profit per lead.
So we can calculate this out,but we can also go
feelings-wise.
So feelings-wise, a little morevague, but this is easy to
understand.
If your launch is profitable andyou're like 100%, I could show
up better to the launch andserve the people who are there

(04:15):
if I didn't have to worry aboutmanaging like$15,000 of ad spend
during my launch registrationperiod for like two weeks.
Well, then it probably means youcould hire, you know, you could
hire an ads manager.
But you need to look at yourprofit per lead and decide if
there's room in there to handlean ads management fee.
Okay.
So I'm gonna run you through thenumbers.

(04:36):
Let's go ahead and say that, andthis is not gospel, but let's
just say your leads are costingfive dollars per lead.
If you're under that, wonderful.
If you're not there, I'm notsaying they should be costing
that.
Cost per lead differs frombusiness to business, you know,
depending on what kind of onlinecourse you teach, and also how
good your messaging is and whatniche you're in, all right?

(04:57):
But so let's say that you bringin 500 leads to your launch in
order to make this six figure,you know, exactly six figures
from the launch, right?
Okay, so if you're bringing in500 leads, my calculator right
here on screen says multiplythat by$5 per lead, and you're
spending$2,500 on ads.

(05:18):
Okay, cool.
So you have to pay five dollarsper lead.
You need as much profit per leadas possible, and specifically
for your business, you need toknow if you can afford ads
management and still beprofitable with the launch.
Okay, cool.
So your leads cost five dollarsper lead.
Now let's say that you madeexactly, you know, on the past

(05:41):
two launches, each launch$100,000, exactly six figures
per launch, right?
Well, then I would take that ahundred thousand dollars and I
would divide that across the 500leads that I brought into my
launch, and that would tell methat each lead is worth 200.
This is an extremely rosyscenario.
However, follow the math.

(06:01):
So I only had to pay$5 per leadwith ads, and those leads are
worth$200.
That means I had a profit of$195per lead.
Okay, cool.
Now, does it make sense to hirean ads manager?
Just looking at the numbers,okay.
Let's take a typical adsmanagement fee.
It's not my ads management fee,but we'll just take a very easy

(06:24):
to understand number:$2,000 permonth ads management.
Okay, so if your cost per leadwas$5 per lead and you had 500
leads, well, adding in the adsmanagement fee on top of that,
I'm just gonna take$2,000 amonth, ads management retainer
fee, and divide that by 500leads.
And now I know that each leadcost$4 as far as the ads

(06:48):
management fee, right?
And then I add$4 plus$5 becauseI already had to pay five
dollars per lead of ad spend,and I get now nine dollars per
lead.
Now I know how much a lead costswith the ads management fee
broken down per lead, baked in.
Okay, so the question becomesfor your business then, if

(07:08):
you're paying$9 a lead, and thisis just a theoretical,
hypothetical scenario, you haveto run the numbers for yourself.
But is there still on top ofthat cost per lead enough profit
per lead?
And is it a lot of profit or isit only a little profit?
And you get there by figuringout what your earnings per lead
is.
Now, in our scenario, with ahundred thousand dollar launch,

(07:31):
we were making$200 per lead.
So there's still tons of profit,even with ads management baked
in, because nine dollars perlead, you know, I'm still making
$191 per lead of profit.
Great.
So if you have a ton of profit,then it definitely makes sense.
Hire an ads manager becauseprofessionally, an ads manager,

(07:54):
hopefully it's me, but any adsmanager should be able to manage
a higher budget and bring inmore leads efficiently without
the cost per lead going too farhigh.
An ads manager can go throughall the testing that's required.
And most importantly, an adsmanager can report to you
results and you don't have toworry about, you know, you don't

(08:17):
have to check in two hours a dayand worry about this big launch
budget and have that detractfrom, you know, how you show up
to your launch.
You could be taking that savedbrain power and applying it to
leading your team, making sureall the things for launch are
prepared quality to serve thefolks who show up for the
launch, making sure that yourlaunch runway of content is on

(08:40):
point and lined up and posted onthe social medias that matter
for your business.
And of course, showing up tothat launch and serving folks in
a very quality way and guidingthem into your paid offer.
So, yeah, that's theconversation that needs to
happen internally.
Is there profit to an afford anads manager?

(09:02):
And what would you do with thatfreed up brain space to make
your business grow?
Conceptually, there are onlythings that not even
conceptually, as you grew yourbusiness and I grew mine.
In the beginning, we started offdoing all the things in our
business, and that worked.
But as our businesses grew, itbecame evident and clear that

(09:23):
there were certain things thatwe could do that would grow our
business way faster than thoseother things, right?
Those would be high return oninvestment activities, okay?
And there's certain things thatonly we can do that are really
high return on investment.
Things like planning out ourbusiness strategy, creating a
new strategically placed offer,working on developing those

(09:47):
strategic partnerships, workingon refining our webinars or our
launches, you know, working onnew email sequences.
We can't or probably should nothire those out.
But we spend too much time ifeven if we, you know, if we're a
solopreneur or if you have asmall team, for example, you

(10:08):
might be spending too much timedoing things that just don't
really move the needle in yourbusiness.
We should be selling, butinstead we are making 20 replies
to folks inside of our Facebookcommunity.
While it's good to respond tothem, do we need to be making
those replies?
Do we need to be engagingdirectly 20 times a day?

(10:31):
Or could we be placing our timeelsewhere?
That's the mindset to focus onhere because as we're growing,
let's just say we hit thatsix-figure annual revenue
milestone that everyone talksabout.
As we're growing, we become thebottleneck.
You do, I have, I still am thebottleneck of growth in my
business, and I bet you are too.

(10:53):
And so focus on removingyourself from the bottleneck and
placing yourself into the areaof business that will grow your
business the fastest withinFacebook and Instagram ads, this
context that we're discussingfor this episode, that is how
you can decide one, is yourbusiness ready for ads?
And also, should you be hiringan ads manager versus running

(11:19):
those ads yourself?
If you want me to look at yourads that are already running and
point out one or two things thatyou can improve to increase that
ads performance, click on thelink below.
There is a very quick, simplepaid audit that you can sign up
for, and I will do exactly that.

(11:40):
You'll give me all the thingsthat I request, and I'll look
and crunch numbers on your adsand actually look at your ads
and tell you what you could donext.
Until the next time we meet, beblessed, take care, and we'll
see you in the next one.
Goodbye.