If your list is growing but your course still isn’t selling, you’re not crazy—something’s off in your funnel.
- Find Out Which Gap You Have
- See Which Lead Magnet Your Offer Needs
- Visit The Art of Online Business Website for Facebook Ads help
I sit down with Danielle and we break down her quiz funnel, the ads behind it, and what the data is really telling us when performance starts slipping. You’ll hear how we think through testing, targeting, and what to change (and what not to touch) when things aren’t converting.
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- Check out Danielle’s Website
Chaos, Context, And Guest Setup
SPEAKER_01
So you have been enjoying these series where I interview another online course creator who’s running Facebook and Instagram ads, and you can peer behind the scenes at their ads funnel, what’s been working for them, what hasn’t been working for them, all the decisions they made in running ads and see also the kind of thing they’re running ads too. And this episode will not disappoint. I have, as you can see, if you’re watching us on YouTube, and if you’re not watching us on YouTube, come on over to the YouTube channel. But I have with me Danielle Clem. Hi, Danielle.
SPEAKER_00
Hey, how’s it going?
SPEAKER_01
It’s going good. It’s going so good. Dear listener, we’re laughing because actually all hell has been breaking loose outside my door, my office, my guest bedroom where I am recording. But all is better now. My son is no longer screaming and he’s done getting his hair combed, which apparently, though I can’t remember, is a traumatic, painful experience. All right, let’s jump into the episode. Daniel Klim, you are a conversion optimization specialist who analyzes buyer behavior data to help course creators understand why their funnels aren’t converting. And after running a six-figure ads and funnel agency, you now focus on exclusively identifying the psychological and messaging barriers that prevent sales, helping clients add six figures to launches by examining what people actually do on sales pages, not just what they say in surveys. Welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_00
Thank you for having me. Happy to be here.
SPEAKER_01
It’s a pleasure to have you. We’re here to talk about your ads. And for the listener, I want to share that if you are in a situation where you have a course that sells and you are thinking about linking up ads to it, or you already have ads running, let’s say to a funnel or a lead magnet, if you will, or a quiz. In Danielle’s case, she’s running ads to a quiz. And that quiz off the back end of the quiz has a series of emails that sells into the course, right, Danielle?
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
SPEAKER_01
So cool. I want to share with you, listener, that that is a tried and true way to sell a course. And along the way with running ads, the journey is hardly ever smooth. And normally on the way to success, because I’ve seen a lot of successful models, hello, I’m an ad manager. But when you start to ask, it turns out that there were plenty of actually, no, I read this book called The Slight Edge a long time ago. I forget the author of it, but there was this concept called a fail forward. Have you heard of this, Daniel?
SPEAKER_00
I I think I’ve heard of fail forward before. It’s kind of like you try and fail fast up front, try and learn as much as you can. Is that the kind of the concept?
SPEAKER_01
So the story that this author presented it in was I’ll skip the story. In this book, and it’s probably a concept that many books have presented, but the idea was you’re gonna fail anyway. So when we do fail, there’s a lesson to be learned. Figure out the lesson. Don’t spend too much time whining about the failure, but figure out the lesson so that you can improve or learn from the failure, hence this concept of failing forward so that we can eventually get to where we want to go.
SPEAKER_00
I mean, that’s a solid, I think that’s the biggest thing that I’ve learned personally with my own life, but especially in business too. You can’t take what the data shows you personally. You have to think about it as what’s the next thing we can kind of learn from it. Even though I know it’s hard to like separate that for a lot of people, especially in business when there’s a lot of money being involved in ads or launches or something like that, but it’s it’s so important to do.
SPEAKER_01
Exactly, exactly. So can you let me and the listener know about your ads funnel as it is, and then we’ll jump into we’ll jump into it in detail and troubleshoot it and ask some questions.
SPEAKER_00
Sounds good. Yeah. So this funnel is like you already mentioned, it is a quiz funnel. So they start with the traditional like quiz landing page. I have them do their name and email and thank you page go to the quiz itself, mainly because I find that works better in terms of getting people just to opt in immediately and also just for automation’s sake, it’s just a lot easier to move them over. And so they go there. Once they finish the quiz, then they get the a result page, one of the four results from those results. They also get a like 18-minute video that I had from a previous, a previous lesson that I did, and basically tell them like timestamps what to look for based on your result in the timestamp, like in the video. So that way they know what’s going to be aligned for them in the result. And at the bottom of that, on the result page, they get sent to a like two-day evergreen, I think it’s like a like$47 instead of$97 type discount that also gets put on the email side. So then there is an email sequence after they get that, even if they don’t actually do the quiz, that gets them to still do the quiz and get the email sequence as well. So I kind of do it from both angles of either you can go in immediately and buy like after you finish the quiz, or I’ll still, you know, follow up with you on the email sequence as well.
SPEAKER_01
Nice. Okay. So tell us. So the quiz, you’re running ads to the quiz. The four results from the quiz go to a video where somebody based on their quiz result can kind of scrub to a certain timestamp in the video. And then off the back of that, there is a two-day discount funnel. I’m guessing you use a software deadline funnel.
SPEAKER_00
Funny enough, I don’t. I’m actually trying out, I’m using system.io currently, and they have an embedded, they have an embedded deadline funnel alternative. But the only thing with that, and this is why I don’t think I could ever fully fully let go of deadline funnel for most people, but this one with system IO only gets triggered if you get their name and email. So I have to kind of have the quiz opt-in page be on system IO so then it can trigger it because it’s that’s how it’s, I guess, pinged versus the IP address of deadline funnel. So I’m currently testing out because I’m normally like a deadline funnel always person. And so I’m testing this out as a potential if it’s actually gonna work. It seems to be okay for the moment, but it does have limitations because, like you said, you can’t do a lot of the features that deadline funnels will will have you do.
A Course That Fixes Lead Magnets
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, deadline funnel is like sometimes it seems like overkill, but I guess it’s deadline funnels just really good at what they do, which is and there’s not a lot of alternatives for it, uh, truly. Yeah, it’s so either way, you have a two-day discount off the back end of the quiz communicating via email and on that quiz result page that somebody has two days to get the discount on your main course. Tell us about your main course.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so my main course is called opt-ins that pays off. And so it this feels very meta. We talked about this pre-podcast because whenever I try and explain that I have a lead magnet quiz going to a lead magnet selection course, it feels very heady. But essentially, what this came off of is it’s a course built from so many people telling me they needed it. And I for the longest time was like, no, I don’t want to create a course. It’s so hard to create a course with nuance. But basically, a lot of people create lead magnets that just set up the signups, like the opt-in, like growing the list, but not set up the sale and priming people to purchase. And so what I do is actually this course is focused on helping you be able to select or revamp the current lead magnet you have to actually prime people to purchase for your offer based on the like mind map that I’ve created after reviewing like 200 plus lead magnets on what I see based on your offer price, based on if people how many solutions they’ve tried before they get to you. Are you doing warm or cold traffic? You’ll be able to figure out which path is right for you for like the type and then also the topic to decide as well. So you can revamp it pretty fast and be able to better have it link without it cannibalizing your paid offer. Because let me tell you, so many people have that issue.
SPEAKER_01
This is very worth it. I used to, it’s like, dear, let me, I’m just want to tell you, listener, as you’re listening to Danielle talk, like this thing is super important. I used to coach, I don’t know if I told you that, Danielle. I used to coach inside of like a mastermind back in the day, circa 2000 for several years. And having an aligned lead magnet that leads into that’s aligned with the course that you’re trying to sell later on, but that doesn’t solve all the problems that your course is meant to solve. It’s it’s a thing. It really matters to sell the course. So this is ultra important.
SPEAKER_00
It is, and it’s also something that’s so hard to explain until you’ve kind of been in it. And so that’s been what you’ll see when we talk about the ad side is because the person who needs this, you can still do it if you’ve never had a lead magnet before, but there’s a particular type of pain that happens when you’ve created one or multiple lead magnets that kind of just bring people in but haven’t converted your people. And so that’s kind of who I tend to bring in for this. And I really enjoy people who seem to really love the course as well. And so I’ve made that kind of like my first and kind of main course for the moment that I’ll probably build other ones later, but I just try and at the moment, like I just built three tools to help out with it as well. So I try and make my my course as kind of like holistic and as nuanced as I can before I move on to the next thing. So that’s that’s my main course for this one.
When Cost Per Lead Starts Climbing
SPEAKER_01
Okay, all right. And so what you told me before we hit record was that you had turned on ads to the funnel, and initially the ads were doing well, but then performance started to trickle off or taper off.
unknown
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
And so you went and reworked some things. You want to walk me through that?
SPEAKER_00
Yes. So I’ve I’ve run ads twice for this specific course, but the first one was purely lead gen. I did not have the funnel set up, so I was just trying to gain some more leads before the launch started, along with testing out some various different angles of creative, because that was my first time. I’d I think that was my first time running the ads for this course or topic in general was mid-February. And so I mainly just wanted to see what would work for reels or for static images. And then I kind of took part of what worked from that first test and put it into this recent one. And so this recent one had the full funnel. And basically what happened was I chose specifically to do lead gen ads versus sales ads, because even though it’s$47 in the current funnel, most people would do straight to sales ads. But I chose not to because we just talked about this type of topic is kind of for more either advanced or experienced business owners. And so just trying to start off with that and trying to catch everybody, I need more time to educate them and like prime them, ironically, to be ready for this. And so the the ads that I ran for the quiz, I did a mixture of the ones that I had as best performing ones and also a couple of new ones that were static images focused on their problem. And I really wanted to see what would help with both cost per lead, but also with the sale. And so what was interesting, the first day, I think within three hours, I got a sale, which was awesome. Like that’s it’s cool to have it happen. And then I was getting leads, but the cost per lead was high. And like, as you know, with quizzes normally they’re between like four and five dollars cost per lead. And this one was getting to the point where it was like nine, ten dollars. But then when people would join, it would be like a three-dollar lead, but then the entire rest of the day would go by and it would take you know 12 hours to get another lead. So the cost per lead itself was getting really high compared to what I was hoping for. And so that’s when I started to realize after I ran it for a couple of days, tested a couple other creative that because of this topic itself is again more nuanced for people who are more experienced. I need to find better angles on the creative side to both prime them better, but also kind of get them at a wider point, like when they’re more interested and kind of get the the nurture process kind of started further. Because people who joined the, you know, from the the opt-in, they’re they’re good, but I’m not willing to also pay for that high of a cost per lead for a quiz. And so that’s kind of where I’m shifting to right now for the creative.
SPEAKER_01
Okay. So you touched on something, which was that you wanted to run lead ads to the quiz instead of direct to sales ads. Can you remind me how much what’s the price, what price point is your course at?
SPEAKER_00
So this would be the one that I’d probably have as a deadline with it. So the deadline price is the like 47. Currently, like if it’s not deadline, it’s 97.
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
SPEAKER_00
Which is again, not bad. It’s just the topic itself is very specific and kind of like nuanced. And so I I knew that because the people who come into my awareness about this are more problem aware, I needed more time to kind of get them to be ready to buy versus sales ads. You kind of have to have people already more in the solution aware stage to kind of be ready to go.
SPEAKER_01
And I would say too that in general, when running ads direct to sale, you would want the course to be under$47 for that first purchase. Yep. Otherwise, the ads don’t work. Like I think in all my years of running ads, I’ve only ever once had a successful direct-to-sale ad, cold audience, warm audience doesn’t matter. That was over$100, but most of them are$47 or less.
SPEAKER_00
Yep. And that’s kind of why I thought about that because I’m like right on the edge with the deadline part where it’s 47 technically, but it just I knew from the awareness of the people, I it would have cost me a lot more. And I that’s why I love the quiz ads because they’re a great indicator of like if you’re not able to get a good cost per lead for a free thing, then it needs to be reworked better, the creative to get people to be ready to go.
SPEAKER_01
Yep. Yep. So then obviously you’ve tested a lot of different creative or a number of different ad creatives and ad copies. Can you tell me in general for the listener too, how many different versions of ad copy and how many different visuals have you tested through like so far?
SPEAKER_00
So let me think. I want to say so. I split between, I think I did two-thirds were reels, and one third was static images, just because I felt like they’re easier for me to create both like B reel type or sorry, B-roll type reels, and then also talking head. And so I think I tested about four or five talking head, about four or five of the B B roll reels, and then three or four of the static images.
SPEAKER_01
Nice. So four to five talking head, fortify b-roll, which and the static images. What have you seen? That’s I guess everybody wants to know what has been. What’s converted right now?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so it’s interesting because I find that the uh the reels probably performed, they did perform better than the static images, which surprised me because I feel like static images are having a resurgence again for for at least better cost per lead. But so the ones that did best for me, I think the angle number one, one of them was about like a kind of a testimonial for myself saying that I had a new lead magnet, that I got a new console call within 24 hours once it was up. So I started with that kind of like hook and then showed them, I think I was like a one-minute reel about how I set up the app or the lead magnet and how I got there, and then to join the free quiz to learn your gap if you’re not getting that. The other one for the reel was more educational. So this is probably my best hook so far that I that seems to work really well, which is your lead magnet is psychologically training people not to buy from you, and then going into I know. So then I go into a little bit of like my framework that I talk about kind of priming them better for the course, because that’s the framework that I mentioned in there. But if you want to know your gap, then go into the quiz. And so those two probably have performed the best for the the talking head for the B-roll reel, they were kind of okay. I don’t feel like I’ve spent a lot of time on the B-roll ones just because they can kind of either really perform or do nothing. And so those ones, I think I had one or two that were like a shot of me on the beach talking about, you know, day one, you had someone join your list, day 30, they’re still not doing anything. Day 90, so I’ve done anything. Find your gap, that kind of piece. And then for the static images, I had one that did okay, that was an image of a crumpled up paper that was your lead magnet is acting like a digital paperweight, figure out why, or like figure out the gap. And I think I had one other about launch. Like you had a recent launch, but you weren’t able to see the results from it. Your lead magnet was probably part of the reason why. Like something like that. So those are kind of the main ones I remember bringing in some sort some sort of a result. Primarily the reels though did perform the best.
SPEAKER_01
Okay. I like that you’ve tested so many different visuals and that you’ve tested different kinds of hooks because I usually say that if a lead magnet, which they do, solves a pain point, there might be five different ways you could communicate about that pain point or different frustrations you could communicate around that pain point. Not all of those angles, those hooks will convert equally. And so you’ve done the work and seen that the lead magnet is keeping people from buying you. That one’s converted really well. All right, all right. So then walk us through your. Here’s the first stat we’re gonna jump into cost per lead. And then later I want to know your targeting, like what you’ve started off kind of targeting and what you’re targeting now.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so the cost per lead at that time, again, it kind of varied because I think I had tested the first round that was straight to just the the quiz itself, and then one that was this recent one for when I had the full funnel up. And so the cost per lead when I did just the first iteration that was the initial quiz just from the realm did pretty well. It was, I that seems like the digital paperweight one got around like three dollars and 45 cents, and the the crumpled up one, the crumpled up one was crazy. It was like$10. I’m like, that’s nuts. And then another variation of the paperweight did around like$3. And so it’s interesting because even though these numbers are good, when I looked at again the overall spend of it, it was a lot higher. Like another one got four dollars, but then another one got$13. And so it there wasn’t one that was consistently performing, you know, each each time enough for me to keep it on or keep it running without kind of going back to the drawing board. It helped me at least clarify that I’m on the right track, but these the leads weren’t consistently lower or like in that range that I would prefer.
SPEAKER_01
So when you say they weren’t consistently performing, am I understanding correctly that let’s say this one that got as low as$3.45, which congratulations, that’s actually a pretty good cost per lead. Yeah. Disclaimer, dear listener, cost per lead varies in every different niche. And even if you have a business in the same niche as somebody else’s running ads, or you have a business in the same niche as Danielle, your cost per lead may not be what hers is. Because cost per lead also comes down to messaging and creative and ad copy and targeting and all these sorts of things. And I always say what matters more than cost per lead is the profit per lead that we’re making on the back end of the funnel, whatever ads are running to. But that’s a disclaimer. This is not gospel, this is just two strangers online, strangers to you, though we know each other, having a conversation about Facebook and Instagram ads, and by no means is a guarantee that you will run ads and do well. We’ll get back to the episode in a moment, but by now you’re probably have been wondering like, what is this quiz exactly? Because I want to take the quiz. And if you want to know why your email list is growing, but your sales aren’t, head down to the show notes below and click on the link, and that quiz will tell you exactly why. All right. Now we can we can continue. So am I understanding that correctly? That for all of the ads, they started off performing at various levels, uh, but then performance deteriorated over time. How long about how long about how long did each ad, roughly on average, hold like that lower lead cost before the lead cost started to flow up, flow upward?
SPEAKER_00
I would say the first day, the the CPL was pretty solid. By day two, it was the morning of day two, like they would be okay. But then after remaining day two and day three, it would just be a slog to get it to back to the same numbers. And so it was kind of like an initial, like in the testing phase, especially, it did okay. But then yeah, once it was running longer, it and by longer, it’s not that long, like day two or three. But in general, it was the longer it was on, the cost really just kept going up and up. And so that’s when I realized it’s usually supposed to go the other way around. Like the more you test, it should be able to dial in. And that’s when I started to realize, okay, I might need to rework the creative and like potentially targeting too. But I know for and we can talk about this as well. Like right now, you have more control over the creative than the targeting on the ad side.
Targeting Decisions And Budget Reality
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but that is okay. So we’re trending in the wrong direction. Let’s go a little further. Can you tell me about the targeting?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, the targeting I kept pretty like broad as much as I could for for this because I wasn’t quite sure who would, you know, what audience would work for this. So I the main ones I did was kind of like I targeted creative entrepreneur, female entrepreneur, male chimp, because like email marketing is kind of like related to this as well. And so those were the the main ones that I played with. I didn’t try and do too much around interest based of like we don’t really have a lot of big names we can target in our industry on ads. And so I tried to get as close to what I think would be related to this work without getting hyper specific just because you really can’t anymore. And so I I had mostly those be the the main audiences I would kind of target.
SPEAKER_01
Okay. Did you were you using the advantage plus option that Meta has I don’t think so.
SPEAKER_00
I think I turned it off.
SPEAKER_01
Okay. Cool. So advantage plus off dear listener advantage plus that just means that you’re letting Meta’s algorithm stray outside of your defined targeting parameters.
SPEAKER_00
And I’ll double check too actually while I say that because I’m like near sure I I said no but I feel like life’s a blur. Oh no I had it on. Sorry. Okay. Yeah advantage was almost on.
SPEAKER_01
Okay so you had advantage plus on so that the algorithm could go outside of your initial targeting audience as it saw fit. You were tar you were doing interest based targeting and you were targeting creative entrepreneurs, female entrepreneurs, maleChimp, uh those interests did you limit age or did you have age completely open like ages 18 to 65 plus?
SPEAKER_00
I did try and limit the age a little bit not by a ton but I think the age was like 20 like 21 to 65 or something like I I kept it pretty broad. I just didn’t want like 18 or under. So it was just a slightly less people.
SPEAKER_01
All right. Any other targeting that was going in going on or that about it?
SPEAKER_00
That was really it I tried to keep it as again with a little bit of parameters but mostly tried to let it do its thing.
SPEAKER_01
Okay. How big is your email list?
SPEAKER_00
Not large. I have I think it’s about like a thousand and just because I I spent a lot of last year the issue as you know as a being a service provider you spent a lot of time working on other people’s businesses but not on your own. And so I’ve done bundles and summits throughout the last year but I didn’t make a concerted effort which is actually why I initially ran the the ads in February before my launch to just kind of get a little bit of a boost for the email list before I opened up the launch.
SPEAKER_01
Hey you know what I understand completely my email list is not large either and that’s okay. I think my email list might be smaller than your email list actually. Right. So targeting wise I wonder why do you have your ad manager up in front I wonder why costs would be going higher especially if advantage plus was on and you had initial lead cost but one thing I usually do in the beginning when I set up ad accounts is I upload their email list especially if it’s like 800 people or more and then I build a lookalike. I did not try lookalike this time around so it’s just testing right yeah although there are targeting there is targeting that tends to perform better you just have to test but almost always I start with a lookalike of a client’s entire email list because over time I’ve just that look alike tends to perform and you know when a client’s paying you a monthly return retainer fee you want to get as good results and when I say good results I don’t just mean low cost per lead I mean highest quality lead at the lowest quality at the lowest cost possible so yeah I usually start with targeting a look alike of the entire email list which that usually gets me an audience of like 1.2 million minimum like anywhere up from there up to like two million.
SPEAKER_00
Do you try and keep it close? Are you like 1% look alike or do you try and do two or three percent like what’s your kind of range for it?
SPEAKER_01
I do 1% look alike just because Meta’s limiting that look alike to people that the 1% of people that share the most in common with the custom audience or core audience i.e the email list that you uploaded. So I I keep it 1% and then I only start to test higher percentages i.e allowing more people into that look alike who don’t share as many similarities with like the custom or core audience if the first one percent doesn’t work but usually unless we’re trying a newer offer like usually the one percent works just fine.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah that makes sense and I I think I I don’t think I chose intentionally to not do a lookalike this time personally I was just more curious to see how the interest would work because like you said I think the lookalikes are closest but my brain was like you know what I kind of just want to see what Facebook would do if I just like blank slated it. Yeah okay well definitely try the lookalike and also how many times have you run ads before or like yeah for this or just in general in general well the thing is for me I’m kind of for my personal business I’m more of like a launch based ads person. So I don’t usually run things evergreen and so I probably do ads a couple times a year right before I do a launch or some type of like promotion for something. Like for example in the next month or two I’ll be publishing a private podcast called Funnel Field Notes which came from the experiment of like talking with 10 established entrepreneurs who are like over six or seven figures who had kind of a med launch and funnel and what I saw as a pattern based on the customer data that would be helpful for people to know. And so I was actually probably next month I’ll be testing out that as well as kind of either I still haven’t decided it’s going to be a probably a coin flip coin flip decision of like do I keep it free or paid? But whatever I do decide, I’ll probably be running ads for that. So I find that I naturally try and run ads what once I have something either new or usually tested. I don’t prefer to run things just straight but if it’s my own business I’m willing to kind of play and be the guinea pig a little bit more. And so I’m more of a launch based person.
SPEAKER_01
Okay. Cool. But how much have you spent on ads total like total total I don’t know over the years. Probably a couple thousand okay so one thing I will say is that the broad open targeting like meta is moving towards that they want to because the Pixel has been hooked up with a business and collecting data on who follows you on social media versus who’s visiting your website like Meta is trying to make it easier to run ads in general broad targeting works when there have already been a lot more signals or Meta has more data about your business with the Pixel. That being said in the beginning yeah target a lookalike audience of your entire email list especially as your email list approaches a thousand people and more but and here’s the big but is when you were running the ads in the beginning there’s usually two ways to approach it either we’re running the same visual and testing different ad copy hooked up to that same visual. So like visuals A, B, and C, and just maybe we’re running the first visual A and then there’s three versions of ad copy. So your ads would like one ad would be like visual A with ad copy one, visual A with ad copy two for the second ad, and so on and so forth. And there’s the other way around where you’re taking one piece of ad copy and matching it up with different visuals. Which way did you start off? Say the second part again sorry the first part was like an advanced visual matched up with different ad copy or one ad copy version that’s paired with different visuals?
SPEAKER_00
One ad copy with different visuals just because with the real a lot of them were videos I didn’t feel the need to try and do too much around the ad copy itself.
SPEAKER_01
Okay cool. And what was your daily ad spend in the beginning?
SPEAKER_00
I think I kept it simpler for the testing phase. I think it was either like 25 to 35 a day so I kept it smaller because I wanted to see what it would do before scaling up further. Probably at the highest probably like 50 a day.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah that sounds good starting off at 25 35 a day is fine.
SPEAKER_00
And how many ads did you have in the ad set originally like it’s hard because I’m trying to I’m trying to separate the recent test versus the one I did in in February and so for the recent one I did about five creative just because I didn’t want to try and do too much variation with a lower budget.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah that also sounds good you are saying all the right things I don’t see any big red flags in the way that this campaign was set up.
SPEAKER_00
That’s kind of why it’s funny you mentioned that that’s the reason why I think I am pretty sure I’m down I will definitely try to look alike and let you know how that goes because I for some reason did not think about that. So I’m I’ll try it but I really do think the creative itself because this topic is so niche and nuanced what I’m gonna try this next round is potentially try and actually start with a video views type ad and then that’s more nurture based, similar to how what the why the real did so well and then come with the quiz ad and see how that might better perform just because I’m thinking that I need to give more time for my the people who are who are seeing this, they kind of need more education or like more get them at kind of a a more I don’t have the word correctly but like wider point, you know, versus always going straight into the narrowest the angle of the launch or the quiz, potentially going up higher. I think one of the creative I’m going to be testing out soon is kind of like a a test like a video will be something like if you have this cost per lead versus this lead, what do you think? And then kind of go from there to kind of make it actually a little bit easier to get the curiosity peaked and then run for the ad and just see how that might do instead of going straight for the like the main angle that I I think works, but I think it’s also just too nuanced at this stage.
SPEAKER_01
Okay. When you say video view ad first do you mean like run around or set up a campaign that is a video views campaign and then you’ll retarget those video viewers with a lead magnet ad?
SPEAKER_00
Yes. Even though it’s a little bit of like a workaround because normally you shouldn’t need that. Usually I would do a video views ad for like a retarget them for a higher thing like a webinar or sales ad. But I’m wondering if maybe that might be I mean I’m still I still might try it as a lead magnet at first with the new creative and see if that just gets people in the door. But if not I’m wondering if I just need to have more touch points before they see the the quiz itself.
SPEAKER_01
Okay. I have a very strong opinion on that.
unknown
Okay.
SPEAKER_01
Before I share it before I share the opinion though I have a question on two metrics. It’s gonna be and this should give you some clarity about what you could test next. It’s gonna be the link click through rate and the CTR all or the the total click through rate on your ads.
SPEAKER_00
Yes let me pull it up okay so you asked about link click through rate okay so for the ones that did perform the the reels one of them had a 6.4% link click through rate one of them had a 1.34% and then another one had 0.6 and then the average or total for the ad set 1.61% okay cool and then CTR all right yeah 3.13% for like the average or the all hey good news so the reason I ask that and I need to clarify you have the link to your quiz in the copy of the ad in the ad copy right yeah wonderful so of all the metrics cost per lead is or cost per sale is like the most important but then to troubleshoot ads that aren’t working like I want them to work I jump straight to after cost per lead.
SPEAKER_01
In this case cost per lead is high or good starts off good reasonable but then it drifts higher and all of your ads are doing that. So I went to targeting because if we and you did the diligent the due diligence if you will you tested different ad copy different videos different hooks different graphics right so if we find ourselves testing at least when I’m in an account managing for clients and I’m testing all the basics all the right things and I can’t get cost per lead to go downward or it just drifts higher then I’m going to look and make sure that there’s not something wrong with my ad copy and I can tell there’s something wrong with ad copy when the link click through rate is below 1% and yours is not or yours was not. But what that means is basically of all the people who view an ad, the people that are clicking on the link should be more than one percent if you get like 0.75% that’s like a red flag that your ad copy is not converting to the click. And this does include the link that’s in that learn more button if you have learn more is a call to action. But and then also a healthy visual of an ad usually means that the CTR all is about three times greater or more but at least a three to one ratio is in CTR all is three times greater than the CTR link. And you basically had numbers that match those stats exactly right unfortunately yes so in this case you did all the work testing your ads your ad copy was converting like it should and so were your visuals in that case it’s like you don’t have to go and wonder is there something we should change up about the visuals or the ad copy most likely and it’s just a most likely you want to just stop targeting whatever you’re targeting now and switch your targeting and okay yeah because I think that’s such an easier fix. Right right and that but that’s how it works though it’s like the data’s there it tells us a story we just have to know how to interpret the numbers and so most likely can’t guarantee it but switch your targeting since your CTR link and your click through rate all are standard and you’ve done your due diligence testing switch the targeting see what happens with your cost per lead it’s either going to be higher or it’s going to be lower because we’re switching up targeting right and when I say switch targeting keep advantage plus on but try that entire email list look a look alike based off the entire email list.
SPEAKER_00
I’m curious in this case because like I I will definitely try to look alike because you know what I targeted already if the look like doesn’t work what is your recommendation there for most people who because I feel like what I have is a very niche profile in terms of who to target. So if the look like doesn’t work do you normally then kind of go back to making even more broad of the targeting what’s kind of your process for that how many followers do you have on Instagram? Like 1900 but they are it is not a profile that I feel like I have nurtured well over the last six months.
SPEAKER_01
Okay and it started out as a personal profile?
SPEAKER_00
No I think it was always a business one.
Quiz Opt-In Placement And Other Options
SPEAKER_01
Oh that’s good. Okay yeah so then I actually when we have us and Instagram following has nothing to do with the performance of ads only that in my mind I was thinking of a different option like if you were telling me your email list was you know 800 to a thousand people strong but then you had an Instagram profile that was a business only profile and it had like 8000 followers then I would say well build a lookalike off of the Instagram profile or people who follow you on Instagram the concept here that I was just my brain was going to is what other large and quality audience could we build the lookalike off of for different targeting but in this case without having seen how targeting a lookalike of your entire email list could perform my gut says you’re probably at the stage where you might just want to try a different lead magnet if targeting that other lookalike doesn’t work. Because it goes back to same pain point sometimes a different lead magnet just works a lot better. Like I have had clients super established and what does established business mean just business that’s already working well and making boatloads of money you know a lead magnet just doesn’t hit as well as we would like as in it’s not working well and we can test out all the angles and everything but then I’ve seen it multiple times where they just switch up the lead magnet and it converts better.
SPEAKER_00
It’s interesting you mentioned that because this quiz because I have it on the thank you page but I have the the results in the back end. And so this this the the lead magnet quiz for what it is when people are in it the completion rate’s like 60% plus and so people are actually liking it. And so I think actually in this case what I might try and do if the look like doesn’t work it’s gonna I’ll probably have to get deadline funnel then if I do this but I’d have to basically try to put the quiz in the opt-in page versus having on the thank you page I wonder how that might perform in terms of getting people immediately into the quiz versus right now it’s like a name and email that pushes them to the thank you page. And so I wonder if I flipped it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
Oh I maybe should have asked you that question first. Of the quiz ads I’ve run, which I don’t normally run ads to quizzes, but all of them have the quiz the opt-in for the quiz is at the end of the quiz yeah to get a result. But to start the quiz there’s no name and email.
SPEAKER_00
Which is the only reason why I didn’t do it that this way was just because I was testing systemio’s internal like deadline feature but I think that’s biting me in the in the butt more than it’s helping me at this point.
SPEAKER_01
Okay. Try it and see because here’s what could be happening Meta is always working on your behalf even though it seems like meta is trying to just take our money meta makes their money from advertisers like us right so they want us to get leads and leads that convert to sales. However if meta does not get enough signals or clear enough signal as in number of people opting in then it’s hard for its algorithm to optimize on our behalf. And so it could be but you’ve already I’m guessing you’ve already compared like the number of leads that show up on the back end of your system.io the email CRM that you’re using the CRM that you’re using to what meta is showing right and there’s no big discrepancy yeah yeah no big discrepancy. Okay. But you were collecting name and email up front so people were all the people were hitting that thank you page right away and becoming a lead and the sending that lead event to meta so it’s not like meta doesn’t know who’s becoming a lead. In that case there’s no issue with tracking even if you set up the quiz like I’ve seen most of them set up with ads that doesn’t necessarily fix the cost per lead issue.
SPEAKER_00
Because my mind is thinking okay if it’s not ad creative or visuals it could be the targeting was there just not enough leads coming in or meta to figure out who is your best lead that could be also the thing too I mean even though I was spending a certain amount like because the cost per lead was getting high at the end there wasn’t like a lot compared to what normally they’d have to get out of the testing phase.
SPEAKER_01
You know I would look quiz ads are some of the hardest to make work because in general somebody doesn’t actually opt in as then give you their name and email and become a quote unquote lead as far as meta is concerned with the pixel in the lead event until at the end of the quiz. Thus because of the quiz completion rate which is never 100% fewer of the people that click on your ad actually become a lead. You can make them work like I’m running for an author right now like a successful quiz quiz is a lead magnet kind of ads it’s just a little more difficult. I’ll still go back to if you try different targeting and the cost per lead is still much higher than you want it to be you might just want to go for a different kind of lead magnet and you would be surprised how changing up the lead magnet all of a sudden can completely flip the equation and you’re getting like great leads at maybe even a lower cost per lead and things are going good. But before we end this episode I want to say two things can we talk about those sure okay one I wouldn’t start off running ads to a like a video views campaign and then trying to retarget let’s say people who viewed 15 seconds of an ad or video with a lead magnet ad. Specifically I haven’t seen good results with that approach because the video views if you try to run ads cheaply to get video views that can be good to attract people to your Instagram account to follow you. Sometimes it can be good if you have say mini chat hooked up to a reel that’s just already taken off organically and you want to take that reel and target it towards a specific audience of people knowing that if they engage with the post and comment they can get a DM you know for the lead magnet or whatever the call to action on that reel is but the objective that you use for those like a video views objective or an engagement or an awareness objective those by default are not necessarily targeting people who will become a lead. They’re targeting people who will watch a video and so you end up spending money for not a lower quality of person but just a person that tends to do different things online like watch videos that’s and not necessarily become a lead. And so in my experience I’ve seen I haven’t seen that strategy work as well as just figuring out what good lead magnet is and good is relative for anybody’s business though good equals cost per lead that works for the business to make money further down the funnel i i would say spend your time and ad spend there yeah i think the reason why i think the only reason why i did quiz or i was thinking of the video views was because i had pointed and done all the targeting to where i was running out of ideas of like what else to try and so i have no problem not doing the quiz ads but it makes a lot of sense for like the way that they show up and like how a video views person would be different in terms of a behavior than uh than a lead lead one would be and the second thing was I was going to say how much are the leads worth we know they started off costing around three and a half dollars and that cost probably would drift higher but did you ever have enough leads and then sales to determine like how much the leads were worth as they you know were traveling to the end of your funnel?
SPEAKER_00
Unfortunately not at this time I think again like the first few hours I had the lead magnet quiz funnel open last week I got a sale from it and then I I want to say a few from the earlier iteration that was purely just the quiz a couple of those joined the the live launch and so I didn’t set up tracking enough because I was more focused on kind of like testing the messaging angles and other things. I just hadn’t made it a priority to to track too much the the better tracking on the back end. Okay.
SPEAKER_01
Then yes test new audience try a different lead magnet if a different audience targeting doesn’t quite work and on that other lead magnet I actually would try a instead of a quiz I would try something like more simpler to make where on that thank you page is what I’m gonna call the tripwire offer into your course because you have a limited time two like a two day limited time discount where basically it’s like a 50% discount right to four from down from 97 to 47 for the course. Yeah I would try that and see how that works with the different lead magnet.
SPEAKER_00
So I think what I’m gonna probably do is I’ll test targeting I’ll see about flipping the quiz to be on the front page instead of the thank you page. The only thing about the lead magnet trying a new one I’m a little bit hesitant only because this quiz really helps get people primed and the awareness level I need them to be for that part at least from what I’ve seen for the the warm part and it’s the hard part with like just transitioning to cold. And so I’m having a little hard time on wanting to move it to a purely different lead magnet but maybe a different delivery format I might try.
SPEAKER_01
Huh well then I have another question for you and then we’ll finish which is do you can you tell me what your frequency was and your cost per mil your CPM because sometimes when those go high it means that the audience we’re targeting is too small or if we’re targeting a big audience somehow the frequency is high because the algorithm is like somehow stuck targeting a very small percentage of that audience. So frequency was 1.12 that’s right on and then what was the other one you mentioned CPM cost per mil this is the cost to show your ad to a thousand people this one was$27.52 also not high high would be like approaching a hundred dollars cpm so neither of those indicate that the audience that you were targeting was too small or that the algorithm was stuck targeting just a small portion of people in that audience. So again I’m not seeing any red flags as far as ad performance yet the cost per lead goes higher which to me points to targeting or time to switch up the lead magnet or you can keep testing through different hooks. But if you have hooks that have been working in reels really well and your link your CTR all is at a decent spot you could try combining you could try different combinations of ad copy like with the winning hook since you’re doing reels the visuals would be more important here. Otherwise you might have to switch you might have to switch lead magnets you don’t necessarily have to put the opt-in for the quiz at the end of the quiz result or in order to get the quiz result because your tracking is clearly set up right and that means the lead event is being sent to Meta. It’s we’re just gonna have to keep testing.
SPEAKER_00
I’m definitely willing to try the lookalike targeting because I haven’t tested that out yet and then from there kind of see what might be the next step. Because I’m I’m hopeful based on the results that I gotten that I have gotten from different cold audiences through bundles and summits that I’ve tested this lead magnet with, it has seemed to perform well. It’s just as you know with cold audience it’s a whole different ballgame and so I personally I find it’s the hardest is a test for your own business than it is for for other people because you’re too close to it. And so I appreciate the the reminder for like look like and that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah no absolutely it look like when we have something that’s working as soon as we test like you said to cold audience sometimes it works out initially but other times we just have to do more testing to get it to work. And this is like a very real ads situation. Like completely we’re all completely normal we just keep testing until we find the right setup and sometimes we have to turn left turn right so to speak yeah yeah it sounds like you’re still on the journey and I want you to keep me posted like what you end up testing next.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah I definitely will especially once I try the lookal like targeting because to me it’s such an easy thing to I could I mean I can literally do later today even though currently it’s spring break so I’m probably gonna delay it but I I’m I’m excited to try it out.
Final Testing Plan And Next Steps
SPEAKER_01
Right on I I always remember there’s a quote by Thomas Edison I believe and it’s that we tend to miss out on opportunity because it’s dressed in overalls and it looks like work. And ads can sometimes usually be work but as long as we’re faithful to like do the work you know we can usually see the fruit from that another guy said that the thing about work is it’s either working for us or it’s working on us. So we can change and improve and learn but either way is good work. And so with that I will say goodbye for now. Thank you for being on this episode Danielle.
SPEAKER_00
Thank you so much for having me.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah absolutely and dear listener if you’re listening all the way up until this point then it’s absolutely clear that you’re getting value from this and I would love if you could just make sure to follow or send me a message on Instagram and tell me what kind of episodes you would love to hear that would help you run ads for your online course business. Until the next time that you hear from me take care be blessed and we’ll see you in the next one. Goodbye
