The Audience Growth Strategy you want if you ain’t messin around

 

 

This is strategy four of our Holistic Growth Formula – the go getter!

This is for you if you are short on time, want to get fast results, and don’t mind paying for it.

In this episode we cover how to use paid ads to your advantage, and what you should consider as you use this strategy. Tune in to find out more!

 

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Episode Transcript

I ain’t messing around. I got to grow this audience and you really set an intention, a goal to get to a certain number of growth. For whatever reason, maybe you have a launch coming up. Maybe you have set a new revenue target for yourself. Bottom line is you ain’t messing around and you want to grow this audience quickly strategically, and you actually have the means to do it.

So this is for you. If you’re short on time, if you want to get fast results and you don’t mind paying for it, you’re listening to marketing chaos episode 128. Welcome to marketing chaos. We are in the middle of winter here in Australia, which my kids are very confused because, because it’s, it’s warm and it’s sunny and it’s we call it cold.

It gets, it gets cold at night, but the kids want to know when it’s going to snow. I’m like, oh, we live in the tropics. It’s if it’s nose here, we’re in trouble, but it’s it’s June. And their birthday is one month from now. So guess what we’re doing counting down the days since I have twins, it’s,

it’s a whole event because it’s the one, you know, it’s the one big day of the year for both of them. So we ended up having usually like a whole week long of celebration for them. And they are, of course, they’re ready a month in advance as they are. And now that they know Siri and they asked Siri, they asked Siri everything,

but they want to know, Hey mom asked Siri how many days it is until Christmas ask Siri, how did ALA told me my daughter last night, she’s in bed. And she’s like, mom, ask Siri what the biggest number in the whole entire world is. And I was like, no, go to bed, go to sleep. We’re not going to talk to Siri right now,

go to bed. But yes, it is a sunny Chile, Australian winter day here. And we are in the middle of a holistic audience growth series here on the podcast. I call it holistic audience growth because we’re considering the whole of you, the whole of your business, who you are, your personality, your lifestyle. When we choose a strategy for you,

that’s going to help you grow your audience. If you’re hopping in midstream, you might want to go back to episode 1 24, which is where we started holistic audience growth. And then we’ve already covered three of the six strategies. So number one is becoming a content creation machine and strategy. Two is all about collaboration. Strategy three is growing with affiliates, referrals,

and JVs. And today is strategy for which I say is for you, if you ain’t messing around. And what that means is sometimes we can sort of have a relaxed approach to audience growth. And it’s just like taking your daily vitamin, you know, what are, what are you doing for your growing your audience today? Like, it’s something that we do every day,

but it’s kind of a relaxed way of doing it. Maybe they’re trickling in one or two a week. New leads, people that happen across stumble across your website and see your opt in there, or somebody forwards one of your emails or they see something you posted on social. You’ve put a lead magnet out there and they thought, oh, that looks interesting.

And so you kind of have a, you have like a lazy river approach. Then sometimes you’re like, I ain’t messing around. I got to grow this audience. And you really set an intention, a goal to get to a certain number of, of leads of, of growth. For whatever reason, maybe you have a launch coming up. Maybe you have set a new revenue target for yourself.

Bottom line is you ain’t messing around or you want to grow this audience quickly sureties quickly, and you actually have the means to do it. So this is for you. If you are a go getter, this is for you. If you’re short on time, if you want to get fast results and you don’t mind paying for it. So you’ll hear people say this it’s either time or money and you’re going to have to spend one or the other.

So some of the other strategies that we cover take more time, or they take more energy posting more on social media, for instance, takes more of your time and energy. Whereas this strategy is for you. If you don’t mind paying for it and you want to get results faster. So obviously we’re going to be talking about paid traffic today, running ads in conjunction with an organic strategy.

And I do think you need to have both and you need to have at least a minimal presence on the platform that you’re running ads on, because what happens is somebody will see your ad click on it, and then they go, huh? Haven’t seen that person before. So they’ll click to your profile and they’ll do a quick scan. And if you don’t have anything up there,

or you only have a few posts, they read warning bells, go off in people’s head. They’re like, oh, this doesn’t look legitimate. This doesn’t look like I a trustworthy brand. And so they may click off, even if the offer was a really good fit for them, because if you don’t have anything on your actual organic platform, it doesn’t feel like you are a legitimate business.

So this is combined with organic strategy, but it’s not reliant heavily on it. So if you want to go back to episode 1 25, where I talk about becoming content creation machine, we’re going to do a similar approach there with the content. Like you do need to actually create, create the content to run the ads to, but you don’t have to put as much effort into posting and spreading the,

the, the content that you’re creating around organically, because that is what we’re paying for. So the purpose of ads is really to put fuel into a strategy that we know is going to work, or at least we’re testing out. If it’s going to work in a strategic way in front of a new audience. So this can help you to expand to a different audience.

There are ways of targeting lookalike audiences, which basically Facebook or Metta uses really creepy statistics and algorithms to stalk people. And as you know, they know a lot about us. So you use that to your advantage and tell the algorithm to find people like the people that you already have that are connected to you. So there’s, that’s what lookalike audiences are.

And we don’t have to know how that works, but we just tell it, okay, I want people like this. And the source audiences that we’re targeting can come from your existing email list, your existing social following, or they could come from interests or other influencers. So if you know, a lot of people would really love your stuff who also follow insert someone else.

That’s a big name. You say, okay, I want to target people that follow this influencer or this brand. And that way you get in front of people, that likely would be a good match for your stuff. So I’m not going to get into how to run paid ads in this podcast. There’s, you know, obviously a lot of tech that goes into a lot of,

it’s a steep learning curve, there’s whole courses and programs. And it’s something that I’ve been studying myself really intensively for the past two, three years. And it changes all the time. And so it’s, it’s a lot to learn, and that is why it’s a good thing to consider outsourcing to someone who has already done the work and can just run ads for you.

But what I am going to talk to you about is like, when would you choose this strategy? What are the different types of paid traffic to choose from? And which one, how do you know which one to choose and sort of just how the strategy works? So you can put a goal there if you’re not there yet to find a person or to learn and set aside some money,

some ad budget and, and set that as your goal. So you’re gonna, you know, start running, paid traffic on a certain date and then have that be part of your strategy. So in order to do this strategy, going to need content, you’re going to need tech and you’re going to need money. And the tech can be something that you learn,

or you outsource. Obviously the content is it’s at least partially going to have to come from you. A lot of what’s working right now is video. Doesn’t have to be your face on the video, talking to the camera, although those do work pretty well for most audiences, you want to consider doing them if you haven’t already, but it doesn’t have to.

There’s a lot of other types of videos and reels that you can create. We can do animated graphics, memes, that sort of thing, but absolutely video right now is doing the best in most cases. So you’re going to need some content. You’re going to need the tech, and you’re going to need some money in terms of budget for if you’re looking at Facebook and Instagram ads,

and you’re building a running list, building ads. So you’re asking someone to give you their email address in exchange for something free. That’s typically how you would run a lead gen ad. It’s going to be a minimum budget of $25 a day to get the exposure that you need in order to really see a payoff. Of course, you’re not going to see a return on your investment directly because what you’re selling is free.

So it’s a free offer. What we’re doing is list-building, whether it’s running ads to a webinar or a PDF download or any thing else that you would tell people to opt in for, you’re not selling them something that costs money, but you are making an offer and you are getting them onto your list. So that’s really the value there. So this will cost you money in the short-term,

but pay off in the long-term and the way that you make sure it pays off in the long-term is in tracking these people and seeing if they end up buying and making sure that the money does come back later on down the track. So make sure that you are tracking the people that come in once they come in through your ads so that, you know,

if they buy, when they buy, how long it takes them to buy, how much they end up buying and that you are actually attracting the right people, because it’s not just about numbers, it’s about quality of these leads. So the people themselves need to be a good fit. And also the email address they give you needs to be one that they use.

And of course, we all probably have emails that we, well, I don’t know. Do you, do you have an email that you use to just opt in for stuff, but you don’t really check it or use it? I know that I do. I do check it, but it’s not my primary email. I’m very protective of my, you know,

my actual personal email. Most of the time, people, if they don’t know your brand, they don’t use that personal email. Not everyone has multiple emails, but especially on Facebook, if they’re opting in the Facebook email that they used, when they were 13 years old to set up their Facebook account, unless you’re old, like me and Facebook wasn’t around when you’re 13,

but usually people have different quality emails sometimes. And so the quality of the person, meaning they’re a good fit for what you have to offer. That’s really important as well as the quality of the email address. So we do want to track, not just to see, you know, using our ad budget and see numbers come in. It’s like, okay,

I put $50 down. How many leads did I get? Well, that’s one thing to track, but also what happens after that? And so you do have to, this is a trial and error to some extent, to see like three months down the line, are they opening emails? Are they active on your list? Or was it just basically a waste of money?

Because yeah, they opted in for something, but then they disappeared and that happens, you know, people will opt in for something and they just forget about it. They don’t even open it. They don’t download it. They’d never use it. It, they forget about it. And so it’s basically a dead lead. So we need to track the quality of the leads that are coming in.

Now there’s different platforms that you can run, paid traffic to, obviously Facebook and Instagram. We’ve all seen sponsored posts, the experience, all the platform, Facebook and Instagram. One of the perks, one of the benefits of having ads on Facebook and Instagram is that it’s integrated into the user experience. So as they’re scrolling and they’re seeing posts from their friends and people that they’re connected to your ad pops up and it should not disrupt the experience,

but it enhanced the experience, meaning they actually are pleased to see your ad because it should be in line with the things that they want to see. And maybe it’s funny, or maybe it’s insightful or inspiring, or maybe it’s informative and it adds to their experience. So they’re actually going to consume the ad, watch the video, read the copy in the ad rather than just try and skip it like with YouTube.

If you go on YouTube and you don’t have a pro account or a premiere, whatever, they call that extra account and you have ads on there, you tend to, well, I tend to just wait till that little button that pops up and says skip ads. And he clicked that to get past the ads because they’re disruptive to the experience because you’ve gone to try and watch a video.

And rather than be able to watch the video, it’s interrupting you to play you an ad similar to the way commercials used to play on a regular TV. And now we have, we have commercial free TV experiences because people didn’t enjoy that. So the experience is different on Facebook and Instagram than YouTube. Although yes, you can run YouTube ads and you can check that out and they do work.

You just, you have to consider that as a different user experience. You can also have Google ads back in the day when I started my acupuncture clinic practice and I opened my wellness center, I ran Google ads was right when they first started, I learned SEO search engine optimization. And it was, that was just beginning to be a thing, you know,

and, and I learned how to run Google ads for my acupuncture practice and was in Deborah, Colorado. So I named my website, something like acupuncture, Denver. And then I code my website for acupuncture in Denver. So I got to the top of the rankings for anyone looking for acupuncture and Denver. And then I also ran paid ads for the keywords,

acupuncture, fertility, acupuncture, sleep, disturbance, acupuncture. I don’t know all the keywords of, of people that I thought this is what they’re going to be searching for. I want them to find me if they’re searching for this. And it worked really well. And that’s how I built my business back in Denver. And whenever that was the two thousands,

2010, so that we could grow our audience for our local business. Now it works also for non-local businesses, but it has to be something that people are searching for. So you need to consider that the experience there is they go on Google, they type in keywords, they’re searching for nowadays. It’s, you know, how do I do this? Or where do I find this?

Or people are typing in like questions into Google, much like Siri, my children asking Siri everything. So we ask Mr. Google, and it comes up with the organic posts, but also at the top sponsored posts. So ads that are targeting those keywords. So if that’s something that you are able to optimize for, meaning, you know, that people are searching for what it is that you do,

and you can target people that are searching for that, and you can afford the competition. So certain industries are very competitive. I know when I was running acupuncture ads and I started doing fertility acupuncture, oh, now I’m competing against fertility clinics and doctors that have giant ad spend budgets because they’re doing IVF treatments and their, you know, their, their clinics were raking in a whole lot more money than my little acupuncture practice was.

And so I usually lost the bid on those ads. And so the way it works is you’re essentially you’re, you’re bidding against other people and what they’re spending. So depending on how competitive your keywords are and the leash, the industry that you’re in Google ads might be a good thing for you to consider. There’s also LinkedIn. I know nothing about that,

but it’s something you could consider. Take talk. You could run ads. I don’t know anyone who’s doing it successfully yet, but it is definitely something that I think as Facebook becomes more and more problematic in various ways, which is a topic for a whole nother podcast. I probably won’t ever do, but it’s not getting any easier or more warm and fuzzy to be on Facebook.

Let’s put it that way. So other avenues to consider, and just to keep in mind, to keep your eye out, see what you find like where you go for information and where you would go. If you were your target customer, where are they? Like, they’re not going to see an ad on LinkedIn. If they don’t ever go on LinkedIn,

they’re not going to see an ad on YouTube. If they don’t use YouTube. Also, you could consider paid traffic being on podcasts, sponsoring a month, or some number of downloads on someone’s podcast, where you think you have a crossover audience or a couple of mentoree audience, it could be really affordable for you to run ads on someone else’s podcast, especially while that’s not massive,

a huge reach, but it would be a complimentary reach to yours. And it doesn’t have to be so formal. It could just be that you record, you know, a 32nd or however long spot that you could get, and that they run that in a sequence or a certain number of episodes that they run your little audio clip at the beginning, or the end of their podcasts could be really nice.

So back to what you need to have ready in order to do this, in addition to the money for the ad spend, you do need to have the content for the ads. So whatever the platform is, if it’s going to be audio video or a written ad, you need to be able to create that content. In the case of Facebook and Instagram ads,

what we usually do is we prepare a video version, a image version, maybe an animated image graphic. So it’s like, it’s just a graphic, but the words move, you can do that in canvas very easily. And then we prepare like a short version of copy, meaning the text. And then we do a long version of copy and the way the Facebook and Instagram ads work.

Now, you can just put all the different variations and, and essentially let a dynamic creative meaning that Facebook decides which ones are working best based on who’s engaging and clicking with what? So you don’t have to figure that out. You just give them all the options they mix and match and then choose the winners and they do the work. So that’s essentially how we do it for this podcast is we will upload like maybe six different versions of videos and copy.

And then we send the traffic to the podcast and then we have a lead magnet or download on the episode page so that when people land there, they listened to the podcast. There’s usually something that kind of goes along with what we’re talking about for them to download. And then we get a lead that way. So you require the content, you require the tech knowledge or experience,

and you require the money. We’ve talked about how the strategy works. Basically you are putting fuel on the fire. So you are just getting more bang for your buck. Like you could try lots of different things, but let’s say first you create a lead magnet and you send it out to your existing list and you posted on your existing, just organic social media and people gobble it up.

Well, that’s a great clue that this is a winner. So you might want to put some ad spend behind it. So that means you’ve already kind of tested it for free. It seems like something people want, and it’s going to work better when you drive extra traffic to that thing than if you’re just shooting in the dark. And you’re like, okay,

I was going to put a bunch of money or even worse. Let’s say you tried it. You tried setting. So they out to your, you put it on your organic social media and no one really went for it. And you thought, oh, I need to put some ad money here. And then you spend a bunch of money to get it in front of the audience.

And then it still doesn’t work better to try it out for free. Make sure people are actually going to want what you are putting out there and then put some extra oomph behind it, which means you’re driving traffic to that same lead magnet, that same freebie, that same webinar or whatever it is. It’s going to work a lot better that way, because you’re just,

you’re amplifying your efforts with the ad spend. If you’d like some examples on great ads, you could go to facebook.com forward slash ads forward slash library. And this is the entire ads library, all the ads that are running right now on Facebook or Instagram, and just type in any influencer or brand that you follow. And you will see all the ads that they’re running currently.

And it will go back in time and show you also some past ads that they’ve run. I go there all the time to get and to see what people are doing. You’ll, you’ll see what’s trending because you’ll see like, oh, everyone’s just kind of doing this style thing. Like, you know, the dancing thing was for awhile pointing at bubbles that you’ll see like the trends.

Cause everyone will be doing something. Those product image suites, where you see like all the like apple products. And it’s like a mock-up that was really popular for a while. Like it depends on the industry obviously, but type in whoever you follow, see what ads they’re running, get inspiration. And, and you can play off of, off of those ideas and maybe just dip your toe in the water,

get an ads account set up on whatever platform that you are thinking about using watch some trainings like Google around and see like who’s got what type of trainings and see if it’s something that you want to learn, or you decide this I’m tapping out, I’m going to hire someone and you want to go that route, but at least you start to put a plan together for the future where you will be actually putting some money behind your efforts.

So once again, this was the strategy. Number four for you go getters out there, who ain’t messing around and want to really amplify your audience growth because you don’t have a lot of time. You want to get faster results and you don’t mind paying for it. We’ve got two more strategies to go. And if you would like my help walking you through all of these audience growth strategies,

brainstorming, and actually working through it together, we’re doing a live workshop. The holistic audience growth formula on June 21st at 5:00 PM Pacific. And we’re going to supercharge the growth of your online business together on a open zoom. So you can ask me questions and this’ll be only delivered one time live. So if you want to check that out, it’s Lauren and Marie courses.com

forward slash grow. Laurie Marie courses.com/grow. And I’d love to have you there and work with you on growing your audience. Stay tuned up next strategy. Number five, see you there. Thanks for listening. Bye for now.