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I walk through the difference between a course creator who is ready for ads and one who isn’t, based on real examples from calls and clients. You’ll hear why tracking your numbers and thinking long term matters more than changing your ads every few days.
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Kwadwo [QUĀY.jo] Sampany-Kessie’s Links:
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SPEAKER_00
Facebook and Instagram ads, they work incredibly well for a certain type of business owner. But they’re not for everyone. And I want to be honest about that up front because I think a lot of course creators spend months trying to figure out why their ads aren’t working. Testing new ad creative, adjusting audience targeting, testing new ad copy. Maybe I make this new graphic or change this headline. And the actual problem has nothing to do with any of those things. It’s like a problem that has to do with preparedness or mentality. Or really, they aren’t the kind of online course creator that adds reward. I had a discovery call with a lady several weeks back. And the first call we had told me everything. She came in ready. She knew her cost per lead. She knew her earnings per lead for her launches that she had. She was tracking her numbers. She had a good sense of how well her funnel was converting and how profitably. And she wanted an ads partner to help her scale what was already working. Contrast that with somebody I know. Contrast that with somebody who I used to work with back inside of the mastermind. They had a quite a successful business, actually. Just that when it came to ads, if the lead cost was up one week, they wanted to pull the plug. Every time performance slowed down in their webinar ads or conversions dropped off of their Evergreen webinar, all of a sudden they’re all of a sudden having their ad manager like give them all the stats, and they were very concerned and pouring over what could be different. It must be that, it must be that. Well, what is it? What about this? Like, well, why did this change? And this time, you know, at the beginning of three years ago in quarter one, it was like this, and so maybe it’s like this, or maybe I should re-record my Evergreen webinar. Like the energy was just kind of worrywort. Energy. I don’t have another way to say it. This episode is about understanding which of those two people you are, because that answer matters a lot more than your budget, your ad visuals, and even your targeting. Let me describe the online course creator who gets good results from Facebook and Instagram ads. They want predictability, not overnight wins, and not a lucky launch spike. They want to understand that if they put a dollar in and they have like a reasonable expectation of what is going to come out, they track that and they’re willing to do the testing to get to the result that they want. Not only do they track numbers somewhat obsessively, okay, not obsessively, but they they know they know their metrics. They they know in their funnel that cost per lead is not the only metric, the only number that matters. Maybe they’re looking at lead to sales ratio. They they are thinking though, let’s say downstream in their funnel, like what’s the cost per enrollment enrollment? If this is a webinar that’s being launched regularly, what is the show-up rate? What could they do to improve that? How well are they converting on their webinar? How many people are ordering from their webinar versus in the webinar follow-up sequence? They’re not just focused on the top of the funnel and what’s converting there. They see the whole picture. They think long term. Paid ads are not a sprint, they’re not a quick fix. Like I always say, Jesus saves. Facebook and Instagram ads do not. They they know that there’s a testing period with ads, they know that there’s a learning phase. There are days that look rough and weeks that look great. They understand that ad performance, if you change nothing, could swing from going well to just going poorly, but they’re not going to change their ads or react because one or even two days’ worth of data doesn’t look good. The course creator who sees ads as a long-term source of leads that understands that their funnel is converting leads into sales well, if not immediately, but it is doing so well. Actually, they’re the one who not just sticks around long enough for ads to work, but they actually see the compound returns from running ads. And maybe probably most importantly, they do not panic when results fluctuate. This is where I see folks fall apart, honestly. Like cost per lead goes up for two weeks. And I’m not saying jumps really high, but you know, just goes up. And they want to tear down the whole lead magnet funnel and go back to the drawing board. Or a launch doesn’t perform as well as they had hoped. So they want to hop on a call, they want to go over everything in their launch, they want to see why didn’t the ads work quite right? And what they’re missing is that fluctuation is built into the platform. Honestly, it’s part of the business for course creators who are in the education niche. Oh, you know, I was doing research for this episode and I was online. And did you know that for course creators in the education niche, cost per lead swung about 46% increase in a single year? And no, that’s not going to be your excuse to say, ah, my cost per lead is up. It’s because, you know, Quaju shared this stat with me. That was part of like a research-based article. But still, in the middle of that, if that has been your experience, you feel like I’ll pick a random month, October, you know, is a disaster. And you shut down if you’re reactive. But if you’re I’m thinking of a song, I’ll sing it for you in a moment. But if you if you know things like that, or if you understand that your funnel is robust and it can handle fluctuation and lead cost, you know, that your business is sound and it’s not built on one webinar doing everything and being super successful, but it also is not going to, let’s say, flounder if one webinar doesn’t come in um and perform as well as you had hoped. If you’re not staking all your hopes on just one event in your business, then you hold steady and you keep on going. And uh, oh, here it comes. They can call you a smooth operator. All right, tell me, please tell me if you know that song. But that that is like the simplest way to say it. Quick pause. If you’re listening to this episode and you are definitely recognizing yourself as the person who I’m talking about who tracks their numbers not over obsessively, but knows them, thinks long term, has a predictable business that’s growing on like a steady growth trajectory, and wants regular leads and sales to come in because of Facebook ads. Well, you’re like exactly who my done for you ad service is for. I’m not talking about it much here. Fill out the application, it’s in the show notes of this episode, but you’re who I work with. Course creators with businesses that are already working. Typically, you already have a lead magnet that is building your list regularly, either because you’re running ads yourself or you’re marketing that lead magnet organically and you launch regularly, and those launches are profitable. The energy isn’t how can I tweak this thing and that thing and this thing and that thing to get my launch successful? It’s like I routinely maybe I even plateaued and you are running a launch that has brought in$30,000 the last three times you ran it this year. Maybe it’s brought in$70,000 the last two times you ran it the last year, the previous year. If that’s you, head to my website, theartofonline business.com forward slash Facebook dash ads dash management, and apply to work with me, and then we can have a talk. All right, back to the episode. Smooth operator, the course creator who wins. You are gonna be the course, you are the course creator who wins, right? Um, they’re not chasing hacks, and they’re not looking for the quick fix trick. They’re not looking for that one to drop cost per lead overnight or miracle ad that I put together, and I do put together good ad graphics. I like my team, you know? They they work well, but they’re not hoping to go viral, they’re not expecting instant wins. What they care about is actual profit, not like vanity metrics. They care about margin, not just revenue. They want to know because they care whether the ads are generating real returns relative to what they cost. They care about clarity, what’s working, what’s not, and why. And they want to understand their ad account well enough to make informed decisions, not because they want to micromanage, just because they want to understand their business, even if somebody else is handling the day-to-day ad management. And they care about sustainability, uh online course business that works in six months and twelve months over the next three years, but smoothly, consistently, not just during a launch spike, as in all bets are placed on this next launch, or we’re going broke and we won’t be able to make it to the upcoming launch after that if this launch doesn’t go well. You know, they they care about serving their audience, they care about figuring out and learning what works to serve their specific uh audience. They get that they are unique, they’ve been uniquely skilled and gifted to serve the folks who they are meant to serve. They get that sure there might be other people in their niche, but they’re not a copy and paste like version of somebody else’s business. And I believe that’s what separates people who build real momentum from ads. It’s what separates them from the folks who spend four thousand dollars on ads over four months and walk away saying ads don’t work. I’m thinking about this lady who I had the discovery call with several weeks back, the energy she brought to that call. Energy is such a woo term. I don’t really like that woo term, honestly. But here we go. The energy that she brought to the call. Like she showed up not trying to get me to save her struggling business with ads. She came with data, she came with questions, she came with a clear picture of what she wanted in the like what she wanted the upcoming months to look like. That’s the version of a discovery call, honestly, that I look forward to. A call with somebody that knows where they’re going, that knows their metrics, and that can fairly confidently say that they’re ready to work with an ad strategy partner because they’re confident their business can support it and grow. There’s a reason, yes, I’m a Christian, but there is a reason why I say so often, Jesus saves, Facebook and Instagram ads do not. Did you know that when I first started running Facebook and Instagram ads for myself as a business, that I would help a certain kind of newer online course creator? But this person, because I helped many of them or I worked with many of them, spoiler, it didn’t work out often, but they had actually a quite a very successful service-based business, and they were maxed out but making boatloads of money, and they wanted to launch the education side of their business. So they contacted me because naturally, if they’re doing the service really well, then of course, thinking of a couple of courses and offers along that line would also do really well because they know their stuff. People are continually seeking them out for their area of expertise. That’s why they’re booked, you know, months into the future. But the thing is, is the offer wasn’t proven, although it was related to their area of expertise. And so ads didn’t save or help that part of the business launch. No matter how good I did, most of the time it just didn’t work out. And that person, although already successful, is also kind of like somebody who’s just earlier stage in their business and they’re too early for ads because their offer has not been proven out yet. It’s not making routine sales, and thus they still need to work on their messaging. It’s the process that we all go through, but at that point, Facebook ads can’t save the offer because getting more eyeballs on an offer that doesn’t work doesn’t work. Both of those people could have good mental like the right mentality, and ads wouldn’t work for them, right? But I still will compare that to an online course creator who sees every every bit of ad data, especially the bad ad data, like a judgment, right? Like a good week, ads are working, woo-hoo, I’m successful, a bad week, it’s time to quit. That’s just an exhausting way to run a business, and it is it is almost a guaranteed path to inconsistent results with paid advertising. Example I’m thinking of, it takes a moment when you’re testing ads to a low-ticket offer. Even if that low-ticket offer has been selling well organically, you know, the algorithm could take two weeks. Sorry, not two weeks, two days. Whoo, you got scared for a moment, didn’t you? It could take two days to optimize. And then we as the ad manager start stepping in and doing our testing and going through our testing process. So you’re at two days and then another five, six days of that it takes just to test through the initial five ad creative and three versions of ad copy and five different headlines and combine those to see if they’re working. You know, but the wrong kind of mindset is like Quayo, you didn’t email me on day three to tell me how it’s going. Nothing’s going, there’s no dependable data on day three. This is a seven-day process. Quayo, the low-ticket offer funnel was working well, but it didn’t do well this past week. We lost we lost money. Guess what? You measure low-ticket offer funnel performance over two weeks minimum, if not a month. It can happen that everything is perfectly normal, but no sales come in for four days. Stay the course, there’s fluctuation in the process of ads management. That’s how it works. I mean, the whole platform, this business in general, it demands and rewards patience and consistency. It reward it rewards people who treat data like information instead of judgment. If you can look at a tough week’s worth of data and ask, what does this tell me? instead of I knew this wasn’t going to work. You’re already ahead of most online course creators running Facebook and Instagram ads right now. The question isn’t, do Facebook and Instagram ads work? They do. And the data backs that up even as lead costs and costs per sale have increased over the years. The question is whether you’re the type of online course creator built to let them work. If you are, and you want someone who you can trust to run the ads for you so you can stay in your zone of genius and keep growing your business, then that link is in the show notes below. Until the next time you hear from me or see from me, take care, be blessed, and uh we’ll see you in the next one. Bye.
