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Brooklyn Grotte is a luxury photographer, business coach, and the founder of The 5X Photographer—a transformational program helping photographers grow to consistent $5K+ months with messaging, visibility, and simple, scalable systems.
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Brooklyn shares how she went from $200 photo sessions to building a low-ticket funnel that brings in consistent 3x ROAS using Facebook and Instagram ads. We talk about the exact offers she includes, how she set them up in ThriveCart, and why keeping each offer at $27 is actually working.
She also breaks down her monthly ad spend, how she tests creatives, and why she prefers a slower, sustainable growth approach.
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Speaker 1:
Okay, you requested that I bring on the podcast successful entrepreneurs online course creators who are running Facebook and Instagram ads for their business, so that you could be inspired by how they set theirs up, especially ones that have low ticket offer funnels that are profitable. Jamie is back with me after a bit of hiatus. Brooklyn Grotty, on the other side of us and or next to us, as it were, and in this episode you’re going to hear behind the scenes about her successful low ticket offer ads funnel. It’s right now, or over the past several months, been getting three X ROAS, as in she gives one dollar to Mark Zuckerberg and gets three dollars back, and it’s pretty cool. We’ve been chatting for the better part of 30 minutes now, but let me share with you a little bit about Brooklyn before we jump into her business and her ads and you get to learn about how she’s running them.
Speaker 2:
I’m pretty intrigued. Yeah, this is gonna be really good yeah.
Speaker 1:
So Brooklyn is a luxury photographer, business coach and the founder of the 5X Photographer that’s the name of her course, a transformational program helping photographers grow to consistent 5K plus months with messaging, visibility and simple and scalable systems. She’s also the creator of a course called Ads that Scale, which is a new course teaching photographers how to run low-ticket ads that convert without the tech overwhelm and complicated funnels, which makes sense because she’s running a successful funnel and she does a lot and she definitely does not need business overwhelm by a lot. Brooklyn and I met at a conference called the Creative Educators Conference recently and my wife here, jamie, was quite shocked that I could remember so much about Brooklyn.
Speaker 2:
That I couldn’t remember. He’s telling me all this stuff about her story and then I’m just looking at him like you don’t remember what time we get home from swim class every day, but you remember this whole story. But it’s pretty fascinating.
Speaker 1:
So we’ll dive into that in a moment, right? So basically, brooklyn, we were just chatting about how you grew up in a city that I thought was 2 000 people, but you have since corrected me and it’s 1300 people.
Speaker 1:
You have a farm sixth generation family farm that’s like a thousand acres, which to me, a city boy, is mind-blowingly large and you were in the middle of telling us about the cool story about how your, you and your husband met and now he farms with your dad. I’m gonna ask you a ton of questions about your ads, funnel, and even your business in a moment. But first, welcome to the show. Really good that we get to hang out again thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 3:
I’m so excited to finally be hitting record. It was great to meet you in dallas. It’s so fun to be here. It’s great to meet jb too yes, good to have you scooch. I don’t have anybody over here to tell the Scooch.
Speaker 2:
I know we’re always trying to fit on together.
Speaker 1:
So walk us through. I mean, I know the listener wants to hear your story too, but walk us through, please, a snapshot of your business as it stands now. What’s making up the most revenue, what other offers do you have? And, of course, give us the basics, basics of this low ticket offer funnel, and then we’ll come back and circle around later in the episode and jump into the juicy data on your funnel.
Speaker 3:
Sounds great, yeah, so kind of big picture in my business right now I am about I’m. It used to be 100% photography, so I was a photographer. I’ve been a photographer for 12 years, so I charged about $200 a session for seven of those years. I didn’t have much confidence behind my pricing around my structure of it, anything like that, and so I started. I truly started at the bottom. I started just first with free sessions and then $100 and then $200 sessions, and then I just stayed there for a long time until I finally hired a mentor, decided okay, I want to grow this, I want to, you know, make more money with this. I wasn’t hardly making any to start with, so then I slowly upped. I went, you know, to like 500, $800 sessions and then began offering prints and products and offering kind of full service studio. I built my studio that I’m sitting in If you’re watching on YouTube, I built this in 2020.
Speaker 3:
So that’s kind of when my business went from kind of piece piecing it together to all right, let’s build this into something profitable. So kind of getting on a tangent here, I guess. But that’s kind of backstory of where I came from and then. So now I have, I had a studio and that kind of is when my business took a bigger place in our life, even because my husband’s a farmer and at the time I was. We have three little kids and so I was home with the kids and so then I let’s see, we did so portrait photography. That’s when I transitioned to like a thousand two thousand dollar price range and offering more full service. So I bring in hair and makeup, I do. I have a client closet, I help style and then I help do wall art design. So I do. I have a client closet, I help style, and then I help do wall art design. So I do custom collages for families to display in their home. So that’s a big part of my portrait work. So that would be like was a hundred percent of my income.
Speaker 3:
Up until about two years ago, after I built my studio, I started getting more questions Probably like you guys get to sometimes like how are you doing this or how are you running your business? Kind of just off the cuff people asking to be mentored. I did a lot of that for about two years and then I was getting enough increases like, okay, let’s step into coaching more. I really love teaching, so I started coaching about two years ago and now that takes up over 50% of my business and the other 50% is photography. So my coaching seems to be growing and I’m really enjoying it and I, so I’ve cut back on sessions and I I mostly just take recurring clients. Now my summer is pretty much full. I have about two spots open in July right now, but June to August is full with recurring clients, and so then the rest of my income is coaching, and so to funnel coaching and even to get clients in the door for photography, I turned to ads, so we’ve got a story there too, but anyways.
Speaker 3:
I’ll stop talking for a minute.
Speaker 1:
So not only are you using ads to the low ticket offer funnel, but you’re also using ads to fuel. Then what discovery calls?
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
Or how do you get your clients in the photography business?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, great question. So I do lead gen ads to some sort of freebie or incentive, a discount, get them onto an email list and then I nurture them. I find most success when I’m reaching out individually to them or connecting with them. So I’ll ask for their Instagram handle and then go give them a follow or drop them a message. Within my area, of course, I’m rural, so a lot of my clients are about an hour and a half away.
Speaker 3:
I’ve chosen a target market to centralize my ads around, since it’s location based, and the cool thing with running ads is that even if you’re running like a lead gen ad, I still get messages from people who just see the ad and they’re not necessarily clicking through the funnel to go through my system. They’re just sending me a message I just got. I had a discovery call last week actually, of a med spa and they saw one of my ads and, instead of booking me for a session, they’re like could you help us with ad strategy? So now they’re wanting me to not only come to a brand session for them to take their photos, but they’re also because I run ads, and they see me talking about ads like could you help us with that? So I feel like there’s a lot of benefits from running ads just beyond the actual funnel of the ad, you know, whether it just dm conversations or people interested or just getting more like follows, more awareness kind of helps me build my, build, my business that way that is so cool.
Speaker 1:
You said you started out from like the bottom, as in doing 200 dollar sessions, photography sessions. Can you give us some context of like what a session involves and how many hours was that per session?
Speaker 3:
Oh, good question. So I average now per session. I’m spending about 15 hours per client. That’s all the client communication. It’s the one hour client consult calls. That’s all the editing time. It’s the actual shoot time. It’s the order appointment after it’s delivering the products.
Speaker 1:
So that is my time per client right now 13 15 oh yeah, 100 divided by 15 hours, so you’re making 13 an hour.
Speaker 2:
Initially, that would be that great god bless the person who told you to raise your prices.
Speaker 3:
Huh yes, yes, right, and the the inner work that happened to be able to finally feel okay with it. I feel like half of the battle is just your mindset of being willing to up prices. But yeah, I was literally making and that was before expenses, so you get 13 an hour. But then you’ve got gallery hosting fees. You’ve got like creative cloud, the Adobe software expenses, you’ve got prop expenses, you’ve got gas and mileage to drive to the sessions there’s.
Speaker 1:
so many expenses Hour and a half Shoot away yeah.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, right, like three hours round trip driving. Oh so the expenses? Yeah, so I wasn’t making anything and I didn’t know my numbers when I started. I was just very take whatever comes and I was just so excited to shoot. I love photography and I did take weddings which were more than 200. I had those.
Speaker 3:
About 1500 is what I was charging, but that was a 10-hour day and then you have all the editing after it and it was very intensive, and then you give up your nights and weekends, because engagements are usually in the evenings and then weekends in the summer for weddings. I tried it all and it learned the hard way because it burned me out. But that’s a lot where ads have come into play, that I’m getting inquiries when I’m not necessarily having to be chasing people or following up or doing all the things that they say you need to be doing to get new clients Right.
Speaker 1:
That’s so cool. I’m itching to ask about ads.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, me too. Do you want to go into the backstory a little bit first?
Speaker 1:
I love the backstory.
Speaker 2:
Whatever you want to know, tell us a little bit about the farm life and how you guys got there sure, yeah, the not that, the not ads part.
Speaker 3:
So, yeah, my husband and I, well, I left for college. I was telling you this a little bit before we hit record here, uh. But when I left for college, I said two things one, I’m not going to marry a farmer and two, I’m not moving back to my small hometown. And I’ve ended up doing both of those things. And funny way of that, happening.
Speaker 2:
I also said I would never move to China. And then I married this guy and we were there for almost 12 years. So I totally get that.
Speaker 3:
No way, it isn’t that funny how it works, like the things you say you’ll never do. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:
Somehow they happen, happen. I also said I would never have kids made in China. Ha ha ha, and then both of our kids ended up being born there as well. So I think, just for all the listeners out there, just don’t ever say you’re never going to do something, because we are living proof that that can happen bit us in the butt, so keep going oh for sure.
Speaker 3:
No, I love that. I can completely relate. Yeah, so both of those things happened. Went to college, went for photography and communication, met my husband up there. He was going to school for engineering. We both graduated. I tried working corporate with my communication degree while I was shooting my $200 sessions. Surprise, I needed a job on top of being a photographer Big shocker and we just neither of us really loved it and it opened up on the farm.
Speaker 3:
To come back, I have two older brothers and at the time neither of them it was a good time in their life to farm and so we moved back in my husband and my dad farm together now and we live on my. It used to be my grandparents’ home place where the main farm place is now. So we moved on there a couple of years ago and we renovated it. So us and our kiddos are there and we so far we don’t have any chickens. I’m working on my husband to let me get chickens, but we’ve got a lot of farm cats. One just had babies yesterday on Mother’s Day. So we’ve got a bunch of farm cats and, yeah, it’s just a great way of life. We love it. There’s so much space and freedom and quiet too.
Speaker 3:
You can’t hear any city noise. You don’t hear any traffic. It’s just very peaceful.
Speaker 1:
Wow, nice Wow.
Speaker 2:
Wow, that’s another world for us.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, you can come to Minnesota next.
Speaker 1:
For perspective, since we got I mean, I didn’t grow up in a small town, I thought where I grew up was small, but it was still like 173,000 people-ish, right. And then I went to Seattle, which is where we met, which is larger but I don’t think it’s quite over a million, but then for ever since we’ve been married, like we lived in the south of China and it was like what? Nine million.
Speaker 2:
No, like three, three to four my numbers are off then.
Speaker 1:
And then we moved to a bigger city, which was what?
Speaker 2:
13 or 14 million, 14 million Tianjin and like yeah, so that’s what we’re used to.
Speaker 3:
I cannot imagine Our ties to China. Actually, my husband’s sister is adopted from China and so they went over to visit a few times and he’s talked about wanting to take me sometime. I’ve never been, but the sheer amount of people to me is is mind-blowing, especially coming from a small town like this. And I even like when I went to college and you said like 173,000 people to me, like yeah, that was like a big city to me, that was you know just for context.
Speaker 3:
So I’m kind of on the other side of things, where I’m used to small town and that feels big and you’re over here with like nine million people and it’s very, very different yeah, yeah, just a little, but I did.
Speaker 2:
I did grow up in Michigan, in a smaller town, and the house that I grew up in, like most of my life, was on 10 acres, okay, um, and so that felt like a lot of space, um yeah, I mean it was a lot of space, you know. But yeah, like a thousand acre farm, that’s like a whole nother level stuff.
Speaker 3:
No, and that’s farm ground too. It’s not like just one big yard. But yeah, like yeah, it is different, for sure, it’s just, and I’m sure where you’re at now, can you see your neighbors? Yeah, okay, that’s normal, yeah.
Speaker 2:
You can see your neighbors Out our window. We can wave at Theo, the little girl that lives behind us Cute. We have to tell the kids okay, go to bed, Don’t open the window and wave at Theo.
Speaker 3:
It’s like this little community, this development, if you, if you will, yeah, so we can definitely see our neighbors yeah, I mean, our yard is small, like if you looked at it, you were like oh my gosh yeah, but there’s. There’s beauty in all of it, though because there’s, I bet even just like sometimes I look at our yard and stuff too in the upkeep that comes with it. It’s kind of a labor of love, because you’re the only ones that take care of it.
Speaker 3:
So I can see the the freedom that comes to with not having that stress yeah, it’s a lot of responsibility.
Speaker 1:
50 foot by 50 foot yard. It doesn’t even have grass. We put artificial.
Speaker 2:
We have artificial grass and we still have, like the gardener that comes and bloat. What do you call it? The leaf?
Speaker 1:
blower With the leaf blower, because there’s actually bamboo trees on one side of the yard and the leaves fall down, fall down.
Speaker 3:
Well, even better. Honestly, that sounds pretty great. We’re currently trying to replant a full row of trees and to keep all that watered. It’s two full rows. Yeah, it’s a full-time job.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, ain’t, nobody got time for that.
Speaker 3:
Right.
Speaker 1:
Nor do I know how. Nor do I know how we digress.
Speaker 2:
We want to go back to that.
Speaker 1:
Low-ticket offer funnel, because I just get lost in meeting cool, intriguing people. Low-ticket offer Can you run us through what three offers make up your little offer funnel and the prices of the of those offers? And and then I want to know, like, how did, how did you grow this thing? What are some mistakes that you hope to never make again? Or you know?
Speaker 3:
got a few of those that. Why is those?
Speaker 1:
the easiest things to think of the lessons I know like oh, ah, that one hurt yeah, yeah, they’re traumatizing you know, like when you’re seeing that recurring bill come from, like facebook ads, and you’re almost like scared to open up your account because you know it’s bad but you don’t want to like face reality. I don’t know if you’ve been there. I’ve been there before let it go.
Speaker 3:
Oh, I’ve got, I’ve totally been there, got a. This isn’t really. Oh, it has to do with ads. But so this last week during my, I had my ads at scale course launch and my husband was well, I guess he doesn’t. I was gonna say I wonder if this is okay to share. I guess you could edit it out if you need to. But he sent me a text. It’s totally safe. I think he sent me a text cause we’re we share bank account and stuff and we were just doing like end of month stuff and it was, you know, end of April coming into May. He’s like is this right? I’m seeing a Facebook charge here for $1,500. And it was for one week. And he’s like did we get hacked? Is this normal? I was like, oh no, those are my ads, that’s fine.
Speaker 3:
But to him who’s not in my business account anyways, for context, like even to hear $1,500 on ads would have had me shaking in my boots a year or two ago, but now because I’ve, I have them dialed in and I knew like this was launch week with my new course and stuff and so I wanted to amp them up. But it is scary to see that meta ads charge come through if you’re not seeing a return on it for sure.
Speaker 1:
Right, right, if you’re not seeing a return.
Speaker 2:
But can I ask what I’m sure all the listeners are wondering, though how much are you spending average a month in ads? You said you spent a little bit more because of your launch, but what is the average monthly ad spend?
Speaker 3:
Yes, an average month when I’m just like operating from cause I do very low ticket. So I usually am about like 500 to $700 a month on ad spend. That’s what I budget when I’m doing a launch or something. I three X that and I had already tested my ad so I knew which was going good. So last week was 1500, which was not usual not usual but I knew that it was going to help convert with sales and stuff and I knew that I needed to run that. So then this month will probably be well, I’m well over it already because we’re May 12th.
Speaker 3:
As I say, last I checked I know I was over $2,000 on ad spend and then by the end of the month I’ll probably run at least another $500 because we’ve got it. Yeah, so $ 2,500. So it’d be about double that, probably Right, 2,500 or three grand, probably by the end of May. But a typical month I’m about 500 to 700 a month. And that’s for all the types of ads I run, because I do lead gen ads, I do traffic ads to test, then to run into sales ads. The sales ads would be my low ticket offers and sales ads would be my low ticket offers. And then I also do awareness with.
Speaker 3:
You know, content is popping off or something just to grow my following that’s the nutshell, and you guys know ads, so I can just say that, and I know you guys get it.
Speaker 1:
But no, we do get it, it’s so. So to recap here when you first started out, you never would have seen yourself spending 1500 a week on it. You never would have seen yourself spending 1500 a week on it. But now that you do, profitably, it just makes sense because you’re making three X row ads on that ad spin which congratulations, by the way. Yeah.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, Congrats. It’s taken a lot of trial and error to get there, but yes thank you, I’m sure you’ll share a horror story or two.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, your main offer is called.
Speaker 3:
So I have email bundle. That’s 11 emails for portrait photographers, so that’s $27. I have a session guide which is a template I’ve created. So I have a graphic design background, so I created a template and it’s for portrait photographers to be able to like, send out to their clients. So you know, if they have a new inquiry come in, they can adjust it and it can be for portrait clients. Or, and then I have a Lightroom preset bundle, so it’s for all for photographers, so it’s presets that they can download and then use in their editing. So it looks like my editing. I have a couple other, so those would be like my three $27 offers and I run it, my main offer, 27. And I will switch those out on ads too, because they’re all the same price point. I’ll run different ads for different offers and then just switch, like flip-flop, which one is the order bump and which one’s the upsell and but those three together has been what’s been so successful for me.
Speaker 3:
Of course I’ve had. I was saying before we hit record again was how. How I started was a $147 low ticket offer $147. Yeah, and then I was trying to jump up to a $997 course was the add-on and I wasn’t getting any sales on that.
Speaker 1:
So and then I tried I. It is a big deal and 147 for context. Like in my five isish years of ad experience I’ve only successfully for a client run ads to an offer one time that was above a hundred dollars and it was like just a tad bit above a hundred dollars, but that sales page was killer and the offer was killer, but usually below 57 for that initial that initial offer is because there’s like there’s this buy, there’s this purchasing threshold, like I think the average online purchase right now online is around like 37.
Speaker 1:
It’s like once you get above like 47, it’s just difficult to sell something to somebody who doesn’t know your business. So wow, 147, that was your start.
Speaker 3:
And then an upsell to 997 I know it was people purchasing that initial offer, though it was hit and miss and I wasn’t running them successfully like I would spend I. I was losing money for sure on that one and that was what I started with. I was like two years ago I’d have to look at my numbers again, but I know it was enough to hurt and it wasn’t paying for itself.
Speaker 1:
So I turned them off. Where’d you go from there?
Speaker 3:
I turned them off and I decided I didn’t want to run ads ever again. And then I I got stubborn and I was like you know what, no, I do actually want to run ads because I know it can work. I just didn’t have the confidence to run them myself. So that offer was set up. I had hired it out, I had somebody come in and do all the paid $3,500 to do the whole setup, thinking this is my easy button. But I didn’t know how to manage them. I didn’t know what to look for, I didn’t know. You know, after it was set up I was like what am I supposed to monitor? And it just felt like I was bleeding out because there was so much money going out. And then I was told for $147 offer. You know it’s dollar for dollar on a sales ad, so you got to be willing to spend at least that every day in order to get a purchase. So I’m spending 150 bucks a day to keep that ad going in hopes that it will gain traction. It just was a hot mess.
Speaker 2:
So after that.
Speaker 3:
So I turned them off, I ran and hid from ads and then I was like you know what, let’s try it again. And then I switched it to a $47 offer Again. I should have just come and asked you guys. Really it would have been useful at that point in time.
Speaker 1:
We didn’t know each other back then.
Speaker 3:
I don’t know, I didn’t know, I wish I did and I, but I kept the order above the same Cause my, my, my mind was I really want to sell this course. I didn’t want to lower the price of the course and my brain it was worth like three or 4,000, but I was like, okay, how do I run ads? Well, it’s going to be cheaper if I lower my offer and just because of it’s dollar for dollar, that’s a $47 ad spend versus trying to run a sales ad to the $9.97. That’s not going to convert. That’s a lot of money out the gate. That was my mentality at the time. But like you said, I mean I can see it so clearly now that that’s a huge jump. This is cold leads like to convert them. You know, if they’re standing in the target checkout, that’s near impossible to get a $50 to $1,000 offer. So I scratched that when that wasn’t working. I did get a few more $47 offers, but not enough to keep it running.
Speaker 3:
Then I went back to the drawing board and I was like what kind of offer would just be fun to create and that it didn’t have much strategy behind it other than this is what some of the resources that some of my photographers were needing that I was coaching at the time, like session guide presets, email templates. It was things that I was already making for them to use. So I had that offer validation already because it was things that they were needing. So I said, why don’t I take this? I already know people need it. I know photographers need it and it’s useful because they you know these, these ones, these I can’t talk these photographers, I was coaching, we’re using them. So after I had more traction with that, I was like, okay, let’s turn this into a low ticket. So then I started and that’s when I started seeing great traction 27 offer, 27 upsell, 27 order bump nice, dear listener.
Speaker 1:
I hope you’re understanding. Most of us have lost a significant amount of money as we discovered and tested different you know setups for our funnel right and I’m super curious. You said you ran away from ads brooklyn. So where did you get this mindset to go back and try again? Because plenty of people run away from ads after starting to pay the cost of admissions, so to speak, the ignorance tax, and they never come back. But you did so. What was going on there?
Speaker 3:
I mean honestly it.
Speaker 3:
I don’t know what I could credit it to other than I really wanted to figure it out I I saw it working for so many people and I think even initially in my brain it was like to make that investment worth it of what I paid that first person to build my ads and it wasn’t converting. I was like, okay, well, I got to make this work somehow. It’s kind of like going until you get your money back type mentality and I think I, once I had the knowledge of what I was looking for, it was just, I think that was a barrier for me is I didn’t have the education or understanding of what I would Google, search stuff. And then I started small because I didn’t have a huge budget and I was like, okay, what if I just run? My lead gen ad started working very well and that one converts at 27 cents a lead.
Speaker 1:
So yeah, and that was yes. Okay, that makes more sense.
Speaker 3:
So it’s, yeah, small category category, and it was that was converting really well. So I’ve had that ad running and I think I have over 6 000 on my email list just from that ad and it continues to convert. The highest it’s been I just checked it yesterday was at 61 cents so, and that was a different graphic, but I had tested them. So anywhere from 30 cents, 27 cents to 60 cents. That gave me hope that one was working well. So I was like, okay, I can make this work. All right, lead gen is working. I was building my email list and then I wanted to go bigger because that was just a lead gen. I was like, well, that’s not always converting to sales. Yes, it did help drive my funnel a little bit there because I could. I applied it from coaching then to photography, because there are different niches, like offering a coaching offer versus a photography service. So, in a nutshell, so I’m really rambling here we’re gonna we’re gonna ask questions to dive into more of that.
Speaker 1:
Let’s go back to the low get offer funnel though 27 so each your order about your core offer and your order bump and your upsell were all the same prices. That is unique. I have not seen that before, but it’s working. I thought that’s a big.
Speaker 2:
It’s working really well, so I’m not touching it give us well, before you ask the next question, give the listener a quick dive into what is like normally. What do people normally do as far as like pricing for for your original low ticket offer and then the order bum?
Speaker 1:
ah, yeah, that’s a good thing you want me to say so or do you want me to norm?
Speaker 2:
but?
Speaker 1:
you could say it if you want. Normally, you want to say it.
Speaker 2:
You want me to say it yeah well, so normally I guess I’ll jump in okay so the, the, the original low ticket offer, whatever your price range is for that. We talked about generally being under 50 or so, and then you’re generally, the order bump is less than that. Right, it’s just a little like here’s a little something else right.
Speaker 2:
That will help you and that’s kind of just like that no brainer like, oh, of course I need that, I’ll just, and it’s less than the original offer and so, like, sure, I’ll add that on. And then after that the upsell is like it’s higher than the original low ticket offer, right, so that you’re kind of like, well, just in case you know you kind of need this other thing that can really help you fulfill you know what you are originally getting and while they kind of call it like the buying frenzy, right, while people are already in this, you know buying mode. But then after that you can also have the downsell, which is one more offer. That’s like, in case you didn’t want this other upsell higher, higher ticket thing, then you can get, you know, this other lower priced offer. So that’s generally generally how it works for anyone who is curious. But it’s interesting, like he said, it’s very unique that all of yours are exactly the same price.
Speaker 1:
so but then they all serve a very logical purpose. Not logical purpose, that’s not what I want to say. Somebody coming to you who’s a photographer for the email bundle also could very easily need the session guide and, of course, the Lightroom presets. So it makes sense.
Speaker 3:
And they’re all in that same category. Yeah, so then they fit. And I have a couple other guides that I’ve tried and tested. Like for lead gen, I have a guide that helps photographers walk through how to bring in more leads that one doesn’t convert, as well as an order bump or an upsell.
Speaker 3:
And I don’t know if it’s the, it could be the messaging around it or or. But the other offers are very clearly like an item or a downloadable thing versus a tangible or like intangible strategy kind of that you’d have to go through and read, to digest it and then implement it. So but it’s super useful to hear your context to Jamie of what you guys see normally and it makes total sense. You know, to have cause, I’ve ran low ticket with that, just that guide that walks through strategies to bring in leads, and I run that at $7. It’s an easy sell. But then my I don’t want to go lower for an order bump necessarily because it’s already pretty cheap. I’ve toyed with using that as the order bump, though at a $7 price range, but I haven’t seen much, seen much traction.
Speaker 3:
But it could be the offer. It could be, just because it’s maybe not clearly articulated or it doesn’t fit with those other three very well, but yeah and it’s been working. So I don’t know if it has anything to do with two. I mean you can assume all day probably. But if it, because a lot of my core offers, like my coaching and my is more high ticket, my, like I have one on one coaching I do to work with me in that type of capacity is like fifteen hundred a month right now, and so it could be because you know price anchors, a little bit like the value of coaching versus getting, I don’t know could be a lot of of things.
Speaker 1:
You guys probably have more answers than I do well, I mean, if we’re, do you have rough stats on of the people that get the 27 core offer, the email bundle, like rough percentages of how many are getting the order bump to and or the upsell?
Speaker 3:
I don’t have in front of me, but it’s. It’s enough that my ROI is $81, which is all three, so it’s very, very common, I would say. And I get Stripe notifications on my phone. This is not a great way to track, so this is going off of what’s happened in the last week it feels, good when you have to treat it does.
Speaker 3:
It’s great. It’s very common for me to see $27, $54 within and that is one and then the two added on. I would say one in three about from the past two weeks that have come through, so that’d be 30% of uh people that are buying the $27. I’ll also do both, so that would be getting the $27 and the $54 roughly do%, roughly All right.
Speaker 1:
So here’s some rough stats and of course, they’re just stats from me, and although we manage ads, we don’t manage your ads, dear listener. And also, like you know, if you turn on ads, despite us running ads and Brooklyn running ads, you most likely are guaranteed to lose money. It’s not going to make you money overnight.
Speaker 3:
With that disclaimer aside, it’s not an easy button.
Speaker 1:
Right, it’s not an easy button. It’s a good button though to figure out. You might want to at least from what I’ve done for clients open up a spreadsheet or if you have somebody on your team and track that Rough stats, like if you’re around 15% to 20%, is healthy, as in people taking your order bump too, and then this is cold traffic is the context, and then anywhere like from 5% to 10%, taking your upsell is pretty standard. I’m guessing what will happen when you track for, like you know, two weeks is you’ll see that your uptake percentage is actually quite a bit higher, and if it is, then that means you can test something that the term is called price elasticity. I’m sure you’re familiar with it, but that’s how you see about where your uptake percentages fall, and if they’re way above that, I would just start inching up the price. You know, like, let’s see on which yeah, on whatever has like the greatest delta.
Speaker 1:
If it’s your order bump, that’s just like 90 of the people are taking the 27 order bump well then, it’s time to maybe put it at 37 and see if that percentage of people who take it drops significantly, and if it doesn’t great, then up it a little more. And basically you just kind of keep increasing the prices by small increments until your numbers really start to fall. And of course you’re doing the math on the back end right To make sure that you’re still making more than you were with your average order value.
Speaker 1:
You know the average amount that somebody spends with you or your week over week row ads. But yeah, I would start testing that.
Speaker 3:
For sure there’s probably something that we could try now and after. I think my fear even of doing it the first way and then now it’s working and so I don’t want to adjust any of the pricing. I don’t’t, which is it’s more just my own mindset stuff. So I’ll have to play with that and I’m going to go back once we get off of this and I’m going to go look at my stats again. And I want to put and see. I’ll just play with it and see what, what percentage, that will be useful. Yeah, knowing your numbers.
Speaker 1:
It probably is going to be easier if you adjust the upsell price first, so you have a setup where the upsell is visible post-purchase, I mean technically, because you use Thrivecart right.
Speaker 1:
Yep, so it’s the next screen Okay gotcha, so it’s right there on the next screen. I would keep the order bump same first and test the upsell Test, increasing the upsell price and see what you can get out of that, but also at 3x. I have another question which is at 3x ROAS, like how come you haven’t increased ad spend yet, like past that, or have you? And then seeing like percentages conversions drop off.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I have. I think in Dallas we talked about this a little bit too. Like I cranked it up to $500 a day for a little bit and it was doing well it wasn’t 3x though, it was maybe one and a half and then I got some ad fatigue and so I dialed them back again and then, honestly, I think because it once I updated the ad graphics again, tested a few and up and they were working, I’m at a place now I know I’m gonna have to switch out again pretty soon because they just don’t. They don’t hold, you know, and especially because I have a couple audiences that convert really well. So if I want to keep using those audiences, I know I need to switch some things out.
Speaker 3:
But I, if I’m honest with you, it’s because I just don’t want to spend that much money and I, even though I know it can work, I think I’m worried that because they’ve fatigued in the past, like I don’t, it’s like I, I don’t want to burn myself and so I just play small and it’s manageable for me. Like I, I’m happy with running it at $27 a day and seeing 54 come in on one day and the next day seeing 81 come in and then the next day, oh, it’s another 81. Oh, it’s like that feels great for me and it feels like in my brain and for anyone listening to it, maybe like I’m thinking that’s grocery money Great, we’re set you. Or like that’s a kid hockey hockey. Admission for a camp great. Like that to me is like extra and so, yeah, maybe it’s just simply because I don’t.
Speaker 1:
I don’t want it to not work, and maybe that it sounds I.
Speaker 1:
When you’re saying this, what comes to mind is someone who has a lifestyle business that, like, meets their lifestyle choices and they’re not necessarily here to scale it to 5 million, you know but like it makes a couple hundred thousand and they’re like this is great, like it meets my lifestyle balance, and I think that’s what or at least that’s what I interpreted on this side of the screen is you’re like this is good at 3x ROAS, it’s not overly complicated to manage. You know the ad creative isn’t like fatiguing or burning out because it’s being shown too many times Like it does what I need it to do and like I could scale it. But then I know what comes with that, which is more hands on, like creating a new, creative and testing different things and keeping.
Speaker 1:
I mean, well, that’s what I do as a full-time ads manager, so I understand what you’re, what you’re saying.
Speaker 3:
Okay, you probably see that way more too, and as I mean the one solely managing all my ads, I’m also doing a lot of other things too. I’m scheduling sessions for clients and I you know, and then I’ve got little minions running around and I know and a mom of three, yeah.
Speaker 3:
That’s a lot and so and it feels like it’s something too that I can trust running now for a week or more without me having to be in there worry that I’m losing a lot of money, and so I think that’s another fear too, or just something that I’m cognizant of is like, if I start, if I crank this up even like last week and I was spending fifteen hundred in a week I was checking it every day because I was aware that this was a good amount of money coming out and you want to make it worth it. I did have some purchases come through and it did it paid off, but it’s also because I ran them long enough. I think if I were to do that with my low ticket, I would feel the pressure to be monitoring it, like what you guys are doing, and I just my capacity. It’s a really good interpretation of what you said. It. It feels good for where I’m at. I’m happy with how they’re converting. I’m even with my workload.
Speaker 3:
Like another thing with running. It is like I don’t even know if I have capacity for a lot more business right now, like I don’t have the time or manpower, so that would mean I’d need to hire more people and I don’t necessarily know if I want to. So it’s kind of the like, the sweet spot of like for our lifestyle right now with little kids. It feels really great. It’s doable. I can still go in and check when I need to. I can manage it, and that’s not to say good or bad. I mean, there are people that could I’m sure you guys could probably take it and run with it and scale it and grow it, or people that you know manage it, which is so great too, just maybe for where I’m at my business. I I like it kind of how it is and those are wonderful things.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, to be able to like.
Speaker 3:
I like it where it is, I like my business, you know I like having 3x road, as, like I mean, listen out to life I’m just like I’m holding my breath a bit, though, as you guys probably understand, is like ads can change quickly too, and so, like, even though it’s converting, I’m thinking what if this one starts to time out? But I’ve also have a process of the messaging with the visuals that seem to convert very consistently with this audience, and so I feel good about about when I need to tweak it or if I need to update a graphic or something to be able to do that. Okay, all right. Well, I do want to say sorry one more.
Speaker 2:
Thing because she has mentioned several times testing, and I do feel like this is a good place to insert that we do have the ad testing cheat code, which is our mini course. That will be really, really helpful, like everything that you have talked about, brooklyn, and we just show you exactly what we do as ads managers to just go through and systematically test, because so much of how you got to this point is testing. You’re testing the graphics, you’re testing the messaging, you’re testing the pricing, you know all of those things, and so we have a very simple mini course, really easy to follow. So you can grab the link in the description below and so we have a very simple mini course, really easy to follow.
Speaker 1:
So you can grab the link in the description below. What are we offering it at right now, dear listener?
Speaker 3:
it’s $37 normally and it’s $17 for you, Yay they’re an owner.
Speaker 1:
What a no brainer if you’re listening to this, dear listener, you deserve to be to have like a systematic framework of testing ads so that you know that, after you go through like the four steps, that you’re still getting your highest quality lead for the lowest cost possible. And yeah, we do that.
Speaker 2:
Right, I got a question.
Speaker 1:
Back to my question. For you, you were talking about the fear of ads burning out, which we all have, that. I mean, they’re kind of like a wave and we’re like surfers, right, and you find the optimal setup and you surf that wave until it dies down and then you have to paddle back out and find a new wave and that’s like refreshing ad copy or creative. Super curious, brooklyn, what’s your frequency at right now as far as your ads like?
Speaker 3:
how often return I, I think it was like. So I have it capped at two days every seven, or two times every seven days for what they’re being shown that’s intriguing but I don’t. I think it was like a 1.25 on my low ticket here. I’m gonna pull my answer for my low ticket. Is that what you’re wondering, or?
Speaker 3:
yeah, okay, because I I think my awareness ads I set the cap at yeah, it’s two times every seven days is the maximum that I want it shown to, and I think my let’s see what my low ticket one context, while you’re looking that number up yeah you’re running ads to your self liquidating offer you’re using.
Speaker 1:
I just heard you’re using the awareness objective for a campaign. What other objective, like what other campaigns, are you using too?
Speaker 3:
I play with all of them, so I do. I do awareness or engagement. I do awareness because it’s in my brain, it’s the cheapest and it’s kind of like that billboard that put up on the side of the road to get more people.
Speaker 3:
So I use that when I have content that performs really well, so that’s just organic content that’s already getting traffic. I usually have a call to action in the caption and then I use, like many, chat to automate messages and, you know, facilitate getting them onto my waitlist or whatever, so it’s the cheapest way for me. I feel like to grow from that. So awareness I use engagement. Similarly, I will use it if something is going going well in my organic content or if I want more comments, like I. Again, I use a trigger word, scale or ads, or you know, 5x or whatever my program offer is. I do lead gen ad, just like with forms, because those perform so well, for that’s how I get the 27 cent to 61 cent leads. That’s form ad, through lead gen. And then I do sales ads. So the only ones I don’t mess with are app the app ads, because I don’t have any reason to unless maybe you know something I don’t.
Speaker 1:
Unless you have an app I don’t know Right.
Speaker 3:
I don’t have one of those. I have a farm, but I don’t have an app.
Speaker 1:
Right, oh my gosh. So hold on, hold on. Let me give context for the listener. You just heard a very healthy ads ecosystem, right?
Speaker 2:
there.
Speaker 1:
Like it couldn’t get more textbook.
Speaker 2:
Right.
Speaker 1:
Awareness ads, optimizing for engagement, and this would be a great setup instead of, or the alternative to, what we always rail on hammer, on rail on, which is boosting your post instagram please do not boost your posts from inside of instagram.
Speaker 1:
just use the awareness objective. Yes, you know, optimize for engagement, great, and exactly what brooklyn said just scrub back and listen, because that’s like textbook when you see a, because that’s like textbook when you see a post that’s popping off or you have many chat hooked up to a post and it’s working well, organically. Awareness objective, cool Lead objective to grow your email list with your lead magnet, and then sales for the low ticket offer. Like this is textbook. But of course, of course it is Of course.
Speaker 1:
So what’s your frequency on your campaign right now? Or maybe for the past two weeks okay, 1.6, okay not too high for a cold audience. That audience size about what?
Speaker 3:
let’s see like well, this one, let’s see. So I have a couple off audiences. One, one I use pixel, so I use my pixel data and create like a lookalike or like traffic, so that one’s smaller. I have it about 3 million. Benchmark is where I start it. And then my other audiences are larger. Let’s see my, I think, my, so I run one consistently to it wouldn’t be much to you how I have it titled of like female 24 to 44 usa photographers. That one is like 69 million.
Speaker 1:
It’s a bigger audience oh nice, but it converts well but it converts well yeah and you know the audience size that you’re going after and clearly you have, like the age rate, the gender and age range dialed in to like who’s buying your stuff.
Speaker 3:
So I like that yeah, um, let’s see, I was gonna see what else my frequency, so that’s one. So I have a sales ad running also for that, the the guide. I was talking about the strategies of, like how to get more leads as a photographer. So that one’s a $7 one. Yeah, so that’s at 1.6 and let’s see what my. Okay, what did you want for the last 30 days, or just the last?
Speaker 1:
two weeks or last 30 days.
Speaker 3:
That’s fine, let’s see. 1.69 is frequency for my sales ads, for, yeah, nothing over. Is what’s you tell me? Is that good, bad, otherwise?
Speaker 1:
for a cold audience that’s, let’s say, two and a half million at its smallest. Like I, start to want to have more ad creative if, like, the frequency is going above two for the listener right now. When we say frequency, we’re talking about the average number of times that each unique ad viewer sees an ad, and so like 1. Like you can’t see it 1.6 times.
Speaker 1:
But, that’s what we’re talking about when we talk about frequency, and so yeah, Brooklyn, it sounds like your frequency is not too high. You had shared that you were a bit worried that you’re about ad fatigue. How many ad creatives, like videos versus graphics or just total, do you have running in those ads in the sales campaigns right now?
Speaker 3:
Let’s see. Okay, so in my sales I have a video ad and I have two graphics.
Speaker 1:
Okay.
Speaker 3:
There, you go yeah. So I have three.
Speaker 1:
Are those in the same ad set or are they in different ad sets?
Speaker 3:
Yes, the same ad set, and then I have another. I usually run two ad sets minimum at a time with different audiences.
Speaker 3:
My I tested these as traffic ads first and so this combination of three are three that have done well with this audience in the past as traffic ads. So then I turned it into a sales ad, and so that’s how I got to these three. Now, in another sale one that I have running, let’s see, these are two ad sets so I use, like Jasmine Star, these three. I have two static ads and a video ad in here, but it’s different. You guys will get this. It’s different static ads than the other audience static ads because they had different results from the traffic when I tested it. That’s what I’ve got like picture so far going right now, and this is at these frequencies are doing well too. This is 1.36, 1.51, 1.34. My, I was talking about that legion ad. This one’s getting higher 2.63. It’s been running for a while too, so I know I’m, but it’s converting well. It’s still at 30, 36 cents nice so honestly.
Speaker 1:
Well, everything’s been honest, but that’s how we lead our sentences, right?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I like what I hear.
Speaker 1:
If you have two different ad sets running in your sales campaign, both for the low ticket offer and each ad set has two graphics and a video, but you had said that the graphics in the second ad set are actually different from the ones in the first ad set, and what I’m hearing is that you have four graphics total.
Speaker 1:
They’re going to different audiences, but you have four graphics total. If, if at any point, the frequency goes higher and you’re worried about ad fatigue, just add in take your winning ad set, like the first thing I would do is just take my winning ad set and duplicate it and then schedule it to go live, you know, on a morning, early in the week and or early in the morning on a day, early in the week, and then just add in more ad creative variations that were similar to the winning ones and then just keep that ad set on and see if the performance matches your current ad sets or come close, like it’d take a moment, because your current ad sets probably have a good amount of social proof on those ads, you know likes and shares and comments which definitely help to increase for us because all the good comments and they want to buy, so right, I would just go like that.
Speaker 1:
that way you don’t have to tinker with what’s working, but at the same time you can test additional ad spend with the same audience and just similar creative and see if you hit a. It still allows you to test basically is what I’m getting at and see if there’s like another good mix of ads.
Speaker 3:
See if one of the other two, so just duplicate the ad set. So these sales ads, though that they’re running to different ones. I’ve tested them all with traffic ads to start. And so they didn’t convert as well with one of the audiences but it did better with like I use Jasmine Star or like ClickUp, the audience that’s built out for photographers in that demographic. You saying you would recommend duplicating the ad set.
Speaker 1:
that is getting a lot of frequency and then keep it no, change the audience settings.
Speaker 3:
I would relisten, I might have, I would keep the.
Speaker 1:
So the context here is how could we maybe kind of start to scale in an easily manageable way and at the same time, have different ad creative to combat this, this frequency ceiling? That usually happens where people have this. I’ve seen that before filter. Therefore I’m not going to respond to the ad, and so what I would do in that situation is take the winning audience ad set, audience are synonymous in this case duplicate that ad set and audience with the same exact ad spend, and then we could test very similar graphics.
Speaker 1:
Like we’re not well, okay, just a little bit okay, tweaking it a little bit okay, love that okay, measure it for a week yeah, and see and if, if, if the result is positive, then great, you’ve got another easy to manage ad set that’s performing well, you know, at around three X a row ads.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, cool, that’s helpful, thank you.
Speaker 1:
You’re very, very welcome your ad sets. What are you spending per ad set again $27?. Yep, yeah, ad sets. What?
Speaker 3:
are you?
Speaker 1:
spending per ad set. Again $27? Yep, yeah, that ad set. I usually budget of daily ad spend $10 per daily ad spend $10 in daily ad spend per ad in an ad set. So if you got $27 and you have three ads in there, that’s like again textbook.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
Sounds good to me. What about your link click-through rates? And I think this is one of the final stats I’ll answer before we hop off. For sure, let me check.
Speaker 1:
I’ve had fairly great click-through rates, I bet they must be phenomenal. You look at your cost per result, for that’s the first metric that I’ll look at. When we’ll look at when managing ads and then when we begin to troubleshoot, our cost per result, our cost per sale, our cost per lead isn’t quite what we want. We tend to look next at link click-through rate and the magic stat is if you’re at 1%, that’s textbook doing good. You know, think like hockey stick, okay.
Speaker 1:
Like 1.25% is amazing, phenomenal, but if you’re under 1%, like 0.75%, then that means you want to change up some things in your ad, which I’ll give you a couple.
Speaker 1:
One could be just to change the since this is link click-through rate, the percentage of people that look at your ad, that click through to your website or your sales page or your opt-in page. You could change, just like the top line or two in your ad copy, also known as the hook, like two or three lines of text, depending on where your ad is displaying, that show just above, like your graphic or video, just above like your graphic or video. You also, best practices, want to make sure that you do have your link in the ad copy, because when your ad shows on Facebook, people can click on that link in the ad copy. Of course, when it shows on Instagram, people cannot click on that link. But don’t overcomplicate it. Just put the link in the ad copy and just those two things can be good enough to kind of troubleshoot and maybe increase your click-through rate. Hopefully I’ve given you enough time to find yours, brooklyn I did.
Speaker 3:
3.74 is my is for one of my sales ads. That’s for my pixel audience. The other audience is at 3.99 percent.
Speaker 1:
Oh, my gosh, you’re crushing it. So yeah, don’t change anything there all died vibrate 0.2 slowly scale up a little more ad spin did I?
Speaker 3:
yeah, you’re like, what are you doing?
Speaker 1:
I want to send you a screenshot of this, because I was like you know what you’re doing, it fits your goals here I would like, if I was an ad spanger, I would just well, yeah, but if I was like say, send me over some more creative. We’re just going to duplicate an ad set, add a little more ad spend and see like because it’s a separate ad set, you can shut it off, right, if things? Go south yeah but as well I see, I only see upside for you okay manageable upside, not like oh my gosh, I’ve created this monster.
Speaker 3:
I gotta look at my ads I think this is validating for me to hear, even, and because I’ve been in my own bubble with my ads for so long too, and now with the, the little I’m starting, and I have a lot of photographers who are starting to implement this now that I’ve put it all together for them specifically. But it’s, I think, hearing other people’s perspective is helpful for me because I, you know, I’m tinkering. It’s like it’s great for me and I can look up like industry standards and I can see, but then it’s also like, well, it’s good enough, so we’ll just leave it for now, but thanks for your insight too, because it’s helpful to just hear from somebody that’s looking at ads all the time too. Yeah, Brooklyn.
Speaker 1:
It’s been cool. It’s been cool hanging out with you. I obviously knew that we should hang out when I met you in person so that’s been great.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I so appreciate you having me. Thank you.
Speaker 1:
For sure. If you want to find Brooklyn and chit chat with her more, we have put her links in the show notes below. For sure, go and say hi. And this is this is the third out of many more to come. So I appreciate you leaving a comment, if you’re watching this on YouTube, of the kind of things that you loved hearing about, because I’ll just have on more online course careers and coaches like Brooklyn to dive into their ads, and so this podcast episode I mean this content is for you, so let me know please what kind of content is working the best and that you love.
Speaker 2:
Until then, yeah, be blessed and we will see you next time, or hear you, you’ll hear us you’ll see us.
Speaker 1:
We can’t wait for it. Take care and again, thank you for being here brooklyn.
