Do You Need a Webinar In Order to Launch?

by Emma Watt | Sep 14, 2022 | Facebook™ Ads, Strategy

When you’re researching all things Facebook ads and launches, you’ll pretty much alllllways see a recommendation for what we call a webinar launch: AKA, a launch headed by a webinar that helps you generate leads and get people in the door for your offer.

And, you might be wondering: do I neeeeed a webinar for my launch?

Short answer: no, not necessarily. However, webinar launches are tried and true — and they work. We’ve been rockin’ and rollin’ with webinar launches for close to 12 years now, because we see a really big return on them. People like them, they show up for them, and they tend to perform well.

Here’s what you need to know:

First, webinar or not, it’s about a HOLISTIC APPROACH.

We really are fans of webinars, but also I cannot underscore this enough: it’s not about your webinar, and it’s not even about your ads. It’s about creating a scalable, saleable offer, it’s about creating content, and it’s about consistently nurturing and serving an engaged audience… regardless of your launch status. Pouring time and energy into each aspect of your marketing and your launch is key, from your messaging and your creative to your landing pages, your price, and your offer itself. Before you ever even talk about hosting a webinar, make sure you focus on that.

Next up, here’s why we love webinars.

See, engagement helps bring lasting connection… and lasting connection is what brings sales. Webinars allow you to build this connection-focused engagement, and people get to see YOU, get to know YOU, and learn from YOU. It’s a powerful, strategic method for introducing yourself, your offer, and your possible outcomes, and it can also scale your launches and help you reach a wider audience.

Wanna shake up a webinar launch?

If you’re hesitant about the webinar style, don’t be — it can be super effective, and there are other ways to frame it! Keep it straightforward and make sure people know what they’re signing up for (we love using mini-sessions, live trainings, and masterclasses messaging), and keep the value first. You can create a challenge, a video series, or a more traditional lunch & learn style webinar, but make sure you don’t middle the message too much.

(Psst… remember — testing is always effective. If you’re trying out different messaging for your webinar-style launch, make sure you’re warming up your audience to your messaging and testing different variations.)

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Remember: you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do in a launch, and there are no real rules! However, webinar launches are proven strategies… so keep that in mind, too.

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Can You Scale During a Launch?

by Emma Watt | Aug 31, 2022 | Facebook™ Ads, Strategy

When you’re launching something new (first off, congratu-freaking-lations!), Facebook ads can be your biggest weapon. However, they can also feel like a big investment, which is why you might be asking:

“Can I start small and scale my ad campaigns during a launch?”

This is a question we’ve heard tons over here, and it’s also something that we strategize pretty heavily with our clients themselves. And, here’s your answer: in short, yes — but it’s a heck of a lot more difficult to scale as you go than to start with your max budget and scale down if you need to.

Let’s talk:

First up — Facebook ads take some time.

All of the tracking and the behind-the-scenes work that goes into Facebook ad campaigns also go hand-in-hand with the algorithm’s learning phase. The algorithm needs some time to get out of that learning phase, and if you’re pouring more money into an ad over a very short period of time, it’s a lot more difficult to see what’s actually working and what’s not.

Since launches are so time-sensitive — and since you usually don’t have months, but just a couple of weeks — this can be extra tricky. While it may feel riskier, it’s almost always a better idea to go all-in at the beginning of an ad campaign and then turn them off or lower the budget later. By doing it the opposite way, you’ll often increase your cost per lead anyways (which isn’t what you want).

Next up? Budget, budget, budget.

Before you ever even design and start your launch, figure out your goals, your conversion rates, and your average cost per lead. Once you do that, you can give yourself a few budget options and decide what feels best. In fact, this is actually what we do for our clients!

Once you have a budget range, you can think of a few best- and worst-case scenarios based on your cost per lead. This is how you can find out what feels most comfortable, and it’s also how you can set realistic goals and expectations for your ad money itself.

And, remember — there’s more to it than just sales.

Launches are also about building your list and developing as many leads as you can — so no matter the number of leads and purchases you make, you’re still making some big-time moves in your business. Don’t discount the value of a great lead, and don’t get so caught up in numbers that you miss other benefits of your launch.

Plus, be willing to take a slight risk! If you do it right, it almost always pays off.

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You’ve got this, friends — don’t sell yourself short (literally). Instead, focus on the strategy and challenge yourself. We know you can do it.

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Is Your Cost-Per-Lead Good?

by Emma Watt | Aug 17, 2022 | Facebook™ Ads, How To, Strategy

Facebook advertising can be THE most cost-effective way to scale your business… or it can be a waste of time and money. You know that we’re big on Facebook ads to scale cost-effectively (obviously!), which is why we constantly come back to one question:

Is your cost-per-lead good?

Because, here’s the thing: if it’s not, you’re doing yourself and your business a big disservice. Luckily, though, there are some key indicators you can look for to check on your cost-per-lead, and there are some ways to optimize that cost-per-lead well.

First things first… what makes sense for YOU and your business?

Cost-per-lead is not going to be the same across the board (not even close). CPL varies drastically depending on tons of things, like the platform you’re advertising on, your industry, your audience engagement, and your offer itself. Over here, we serve digital course creators and we’ll see a CPL lead from $0.30, all the way to $30.00 (depending on all of those factors). We estimate our typical CPL to be around $4-$8.

But, no matter what the cost-per-lead IS, we ask ourselves one simple question:

Does it make sense?! AKA, are people actually buying the offer, OR are they being set up to buy an offer in the future?

See, not every lead is going to be a purchaser. So, if you usually see that you need 10 leads for one purchase, that makes a difference — AKA, say your CPL is $10. If your CPL is $10, your cost-per-sale is going to be $100. While that might be a great margin for a really high-ticket course, it’s not going to be a great margin for a $10 guide.

This is also where you have to start thinking about where your leads are going to — are they instantly making a purchase, or are they signing up for your email list in hopes that they’ll make a later purchase? These things matter when it comes to building engaged customers *and* making smart business decisions, too.

So, here’s how to keep an eye on your cost-per-lead:

This is why we’re so big on tracking over here at System Envy — because great tracking is what helps you stay on top of whether or not people are converting from your funnel (and where, exactly, they are converting from).

Having your pixel set up with the lead and purchase tag is key. You want the lead event on your opt-in confirmation pages, and your purchase event on your sale confirmation page. The best way to do this for tracking is to have this confirmation be a separate page/URL. That way you can test the confirmation of lead or sale by tracking the URL in Events Manager. People wouldn’t be able to navigate to this URL from any other path, so it’s a safe and effective way to get reliable data.

Then, you have to test. And test again. And, you guessed it… TEST SOME MORE. 🙂 By running different campaigns at different price points and CPLs, you can start to see which ones are working better — and you can also see very quickly (hellooo, ads manager) what your benchmarks should be.

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Over here, we know that Facebook ads can seem confusing — but we’re all about demystifying them to help you rock your business *and* your ad strategy.

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The ONE strategy you need for the most effective advertising

by Emma Watt | Jan 19, 2022 | Facebook™ Ads, Strategy

I get asked alllll the time for my best ad tips and tricks, and honestly, it’s one of my favorite parts of my j.o.b! There’s so much goodness to share about the magic that are Facebook and Instagram ads. From pinpointing the right target audience to writing ad copy that converts to picking the best assets that draw people in—there are ample opportunities to streamline your ad efforts in your business. But today, I want to talk about just ONE strategy that is often forgotten about, but that can make for some of the most effective advertising…

And that’s nurture campaigns.

What are nurture campaigns & why are they one of most effective advertising formats?

My favorite type of nurture campaign is to publish a video ad that displays on your target audience’s feeds. From there, you can create custom Facebook audiences based on the viewers who watched the video.

You can then retarget those custom audiences with another ad, so that they continue becoming familiar with you and your brand.

Essentially, nurture campaigns are a mega-effective way to take a cold audience to warm, and to gauge exactly who is interested in your offers. It’s a quick way to introduce people to who you are, what you’re about, and how you can help them.

And it’s the lowest barrier to entry for THEM, which is important. They don’t have to read a bunch of copy or click through to anything else. All they do is watch the video right in front of their eyeballs, and then they’re in your court! Score! (Okay, that’s enough sports lingo for me, y’all.)

Why do people forget about nurture campaigns?

As effective as nurture campaigns may be, they can also be scary because these ads are more of an investment. Although video ads are typically cheap to run, there’s no immediate return with nurture campaigns. Think of it as playing the long game, though. (Never mind, I guess we’re not done with sports analogies.) You won’t see an immediate return, but as long as you have an offer coming up in the next month or two, these ads will pay off.

While nurture campaigns don’t HAVE to be video ads, these are my favorite kind of nurture campaign. They’re inexpensive to create—just hit record on your phone or computer camera and share something your target audience will find valuable. And they build engagement audiences quickly because they can get to know you and your business from one quick video.

Plus, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel here. If you’re selling a digital course or you have video of a speaking engagement you did, you could simply pull a small portion from there… something you are teaching or something inspiring! No need to go out and hire a full camera crew, hair, and makeup, or video editors. Take what you have, or create something simple from scratch using what you have, and go from there.

What to remember about nurture campaigns

Think of it like this: The video is simply a way to warm people up to YOU! And as much as this gal loves an image ad or long-form copy… nothing can replace your bright, shining face on screen, sharing a piece of your heart and business. People connect with people, and as much as an image or great copy can endear some folks, a video goes so much farther.

Now, more than ever, in this post-iOS-update world, video is KEY! Video engagement on Facebook is an easy way to gather data directly ON Facebook, which, not only is a perfect way to gain audiences insights and warm them up at the tippy-top of the funnel, things you do ON Facebook are more likely to be able to be seen (by Facebook) whereas when you’re directing traffic OFF of Facebook, and given the iOS update, it’s more difficult for Facebook to keep track of.

After you’ve got your video ready to go, you would run these ads using the objective “engagement” or “video views” for them to be the most effective.

And be sure to set up a custom audience for the video you’re using AND answer any comments and questions on the ads. This is important! If you are showing up on video to humanize your brand, then it needs to expand to the comment section. If people are sharing their excitement or asking for clarity, you or someone on your team needs to be showing up for them to feel seen and heard (marketing 101, anyone?).

That’s it, sweet friends! You’ll be all set to rock nurture campaigns and take a cold target audience to a warm audience, ready to buy what you’re selling, in no time.

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3 Easy Ways to Retain Clients

by Tara DuBois | Oct 6, 2021 | Entrepreneurship, Sales Funnels, Strategy

When you’re in a service-based business, one of your biggest goals should be to retain clients — and that’s a huge goal and huge deal to us at System Envy. The longer you can retain clients, the stronger your relationship can grow and the deeper your roots can, too.

Plus, what’s more, exciting as a business owner than to know that people want to work — and KEEP working — with you?

I have a Business Management degree that has helped me a ton along the way, and one of the biggest takeaways I learned is that it is not difficult to keep people happy. Even when you don’t produce a desired result or mess something up (which happens! That’s life), you can still always manage and maintain a solid relationship with your clients.

Promise.

Here are our go-to methods for retaining clients within our agency.

3 Easy Ways to Retain Clients

I can assure you that retaining clients is really and truly not as hard as it might sound. While there are always things you can’t control, there ARE things that you can control — and these are 3 of your biggest.

1. Keep regular communication at the forefront of EVERYTHING.

Strong communication is the bedrock of everything you do as a service-based business, and it is the absolute best way to cultivate and keep a beautiful working relationship. By keeping your clients plugged in and letting them know what to expect, you’ll cut down on questions AND increase client trust — two very, very important things. Our rule at System Envy is to always respond to clients within 24 business hours, and to check in with our clients on Slack every 2-3 days (if not every day).

The goal? To never, ever have your clients reach out to find out where you are on a project.

I cannot tell you how many phone calls I’ve had with new clients who have told me their previous ad manager left them hanging or would take days and weeks to respond — and this blows my mind. It’s just so easy to send a quick email or Slack message, even if it says “I received this and want to give it some thought, I’ll respond soon.”

2. Set (flexible) expectations.

Everyone likes structure and knowing what to expect, which is where setting expectations comes into play. By setting expectations, having everyone crystal clear on what each person’s responsibilities are, and sharing detailed schedules and FAQ’s, it’s so much easier to stay on track and to keep your clients happy.

When it comes to setting client expectations — and team member expectations, but that’s a whole other post — let your clients know what’s included, let them know what’s not, and then go above and beyond where you can. Also, flexibility is part of life as a small business owner — so always leave room for that, too!

3. Professionalism is key.

When all else fails, professionalism should never. Ever. By creating a professional, personable, and empathetic persona and client experience, you can promise that you’ll always behave the right way and feel good about any response you’ll need to make. It’s also just a good reminder that you and your clients are HUMAN. People get moody, they go through things, and they have bad days — which is where professionalism has to continually show up.

I’ve had two clients in 11 years that went south… and fast — and it was a really important lesson for me, personally, of how important it is to stay professional. It’s not fun to feel particularly vulnerable as a business owner, and staying professional is how you can cover your arse (we don’t want nasty remarks floating around the interwebs, right?!) and know that you reacted in a way you can be proud of.

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It’s not as hard as you might have thought to create really great working relationships, huh? If you’re intentional about how you run your business and treat your clients, you WILL keep and retain clients for a long time — and I already know you can do it!

What you’ll find behind the curtain of my Facebook™ Ads business, is someone who loves systems, strategy, family, fishing, flipping houses, interior design, everything Southern, animals, a hefty dose of sarcasm, Instagram stories and some of the most amazing clients on the planet.

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3 Ways to Supercharge Your Ad Strategy

by Tara DuBois | Sep 22, 2021 | Facebook™ Ads, How To, Strategy

When it comes to your Facebook ad strategy, your mission should be this: to constantly, constantly level it up. We live in a preeeeeetty much ever-changing world, and Facebook is an ever-changing social platform — so learning to supercharge, level up, and mix up your Facebook ad strategy is KEY to growth.

Luckily, though, leveling up doesn’t mean reinventing the wheel. Instead, you just need some go-to methods for switching it up and expanding your Facebook ad techniques (think: engagement ads, optimizing your ad audiences, and being you).

Luckily, that’s what I’m here for! You ready?! Here are the processes and techniques I implement with my clients.

3 Ways to Supercharge Your Ad Strategy

Before anything else, remind yourself that the key to Facebook ad strategy is to learn how to pivot and grow, no matter what. When you can remember that you’ll always want to switch it up with your Facebook ad strategy, it’s way easier to get yourself in the mindset.

1. Run engagement ads.

When you want to constantly grow your audience and excite the people scrolling your ads, you have to hook ‘em in — and that’s where engagement ads come in. Not sure what engagement ads are? They’re just what they sound like! Engagement ads are specifically built to draw people in and encourage them to click, usually through methods like video, polls, or imagery.

My fave way to run engagement ads is video… allllll the way. Video ads are super engaging, they’re cheap to run on Facebook, and they’re instant — i.e., they don’t require people to drop an email or take a click. All they have to do is watch, making it the best way to introduce people to your brand or re-engage custom prospects.

Pro tip: don’t forget to create a custom audience based on the viewers who watched your video so that you can re-target them with a new ad. That way, they keep learning from you + engaging with your content. It’s like magic.

2. Combine your Facebook ad audiences.

Based on the current state of the Facebook algorithm, the more people the better. Enter: combining your audiences to maximize your conversions and your reach. This is the best way to reach a bigger audience and optimize your results, and it doesn’t require as detailed of targeting or segmenting as the past.

Wondering how to do it? It’s easy! If you have several different client or email lists of warm audiences, try combining ‘em all and using them in one ad set. If you have a bunch of Lookalike audiences, combine those together and use them in one ad set. It’s simple, really: the wider the target, the more room the algorithm has to find your people. Give it the room to find your people!

3. Be. Yourself.

Here’s the thing: people want to do business with PEOPLE. They don’t want to do business with faceless brands and engage with super dry ads, especially on Facebook. Your job? To remember this, because the more personality you can infuse in your ads, the better! Regardless of whether or not you’re trying to be the face of your biz doesn’t matter — just work to add in voice and joy and fun wherever you can.

The goal? Humanize, humanize, humanize. Unless you’re a massive business with tons and tons of recognition (like Gap or Coca Cola), odds are that not everyone is going to know who you are! Find ways to bring your (or your business’s) humanity into your ad sets, whether it’s by using a signature character a la Flo from Progressive or simply by intermingling in a non-corporate sounding voice.

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No matter who you are or what kind of business you’re in, you know that trying new things and new methods is part of life — and that goes for your Facebook ad strategy, too. Instead of being worried about constantly needing to do something new, just try out different things and see what works. It’s that simple!

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