“I’m Not Launching Soon . . . Should I Be Running Facebook Ads Anyway?”

Lots of people who hire me for Facebook ad consulting are thinking ahead: they’ve got a launch coming up and want to grow their list so they can reach even more people with their offering. These are some smart entrepreneurs: often times their launch is still a few months away, but they want to nail down the right strategy and prepare for it with plenty of time.

But what about after the cart closes on your launch? What about all that “down” time between major marketing pushes? Should you be running Facebook ads then?

Absolutely you should.*

*Just make sure you’re doing it strategically.

Why you need to be running #Facebook ads when you’re NOT in #launch mode:

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I’m a firm believer in investing money not only in growing your list at crucial money-making moments a.k.a. pre-launch times , but also when you aren’t in launch mode. If you wait until you want to make a big splash and turn on your ads just a week before your webinar, you may run into some crazy expensive results with no time to figure out how to improve them.

Or maybe you spend a ton of time creating a new opt-in, like a PDF or a video course. You hope to use it in conjunction with Facebook ads to kick start your coaching business, only to learn that your opt-in page converts at a really low rate.

Or maybe the audience of people who respond best to your ads isn’t who you thought they’d be. (It happens more often than you’d think.)

Either way, you’ve spent the money but still missed out on a bigger opportunity: a group of perfect prospects on your subscriber list when you open the cart on your next product.

So what are some smart ways to spend money on ads in between launches?

Here are 3 ways:

1. Run ads to your most popular blog posts.
2. Test out new audiences with your evergreen list building opt-in.
3. Discover which topics your prospects respond to most by running ads to new blog posts.

Let’s take a look at each one individually:

1. Run ads to your most popular blog posts.

A short check-in with Google Analytics can tell you a TON: which blog posts people are finding on Google, which posts have the best “engagement” and which sources get you the best quality traffic. (If you’re not sure how to find that data inside GA, I made this for you.)

So once you know which posts are your best performers, I highly recommend you get them in front of brand new audiences! Some of those people will end up becoming subscribers, and even if they don’t sign up for something today, you’ve taken real steps to put your hard work in front of more of your target audience. If you can make an impact on just a handful of people, they just might turn into super fans and tell everyone they know about you. (This may seem long a long shot, but don’t discount word-of-mouth marketing as a HUGE money-maker!)

This article has detailed instructions on how to “boost” those blog posts the right way, plus recommendations for how much to spend on that kind of ad.

2. Test out new audiences with your evergreen list building opt-in.

Let’s say you’ve got a great opt-in that you know converts. (You know because you’ve sent cold AND warm traffic to it in the past, and your opt-in conversion rate has been 25% or higher.) Why not take time between launches to hunt down new audiences that respond really well to it?

There’s ALWAYS going to be an element of testing whenever you run Facebook ads; sometimes the exact audience + image + copy that got you crazy awesome results 2 months ago straight up tanks when you turn those ads back on. But I don’t want you to be 2 days away from your webinar where you’re announcing a brand new offering, desperate to find new audiences that get sign-ups for a reasonable price!

So use your down time wisely: get familiar with Audience Insights, spend some time researching, and test out some new interests with your existing opt-in.

My suggestion? Spend $5 a day for 5-10 days running ads that have performed well in the past, this time to a new audience. Don’t despair if you don’t hit it out of the park in terms of sign-ups – move on to your next audience instead (and be happy you have some data about the interests you tried)!

3. Discover which topics your prospects respond to most by running ads to new blog posts.

Thinking about creating a new opt-in or offering? Instead of asking people in Facebook groups or forums for their opinions, test out your ideas with your actual target audience!

I was working with a client recently whose lead magnet was a free guide, but we couldn’t get it to convert above 15%, no matter who the ads targeted.

In between one of our calls, she decided to boost one of her own posts to one of the same audiences we were testing.

THE RESULTS WERE INSANE! (Read more about them here.) It turns out that the combo of her text,  headline and an image of a really boring-looking graph really touched a nerve with this audience! Her cost-per-click was insanely low, and we took a major cue from those results.

Now we’re testing a hybrid blog-post-opt-in-page with the same headline and boring-looking graph, and so far the results are definitely improving.

Using these instructions about promoting blog posts with Facebook ads, try putting some money behind a new piece of content without making people opt-in to get it. When you find that something really resonates with the cold traffic you’re getting from your ads, then you can think about how you can use that topic to bring in more revenue.

Can you afford to put aside $20-$40 per month just for Facebook ads?

I hope the answer is yes. If not, that doesn’t make you a bad business owner or anything. It just means you need to focus your efforts more on getting paid than on creating content. I’m a big fan of one-on-one work for getting you to a minimum viable income, but that’s a whole different conversation.

If you are in a position where you can devote a small chunk of money to reaching new eyeballs every week, I highly recommend you do so. Future You will be so grateful next time you’re in the middle of a launch!