![[QUĀY.jo]](https://theartofonlinebusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/AOOB-Logo-White-150x118.png){kind=logo}
When launching programs, course creators often wonder whether to target warm or cold audiences for optimal results. We’re currently in a ‘trust recession’ and understanding which audience to focus on is crucial for profitability. We’ll talk about how to identify and leverage warm and cold audiences effectively, offering clear strategies for your next launch.
Please click here to give an honest Rating/Review for the show on iTunes! Thanks for your support!
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Get the ‘Welcome Email Sequence’ by Nomad Copy Agency
Kwadwo [QUĀY.jo] Sampany-Kessie’s Links:
- Get 1:1 Meta Ads Coaching from Kwadwo!
- Say hi to Kwadwo on Instagram
- Subscribe to The Art of Online Business’s YouTube Channel
Jamie Sampany-Kessie’s Links:
- Say hi to Jamie on Instagram
Speaker 1:
When it comes to launching our programs, a lot of course creators ask should I target warm audiences or cold audiences? Which one will give me the best results? Right and well. This year, in 2024, this question has taken on just a brand new importance, as buyer behavior has shifted and we’re now in something that’s called not by me but others to a trust recession, and that has implications for how we target and which targeting is actually making us money.
Speaker 2:
So by the end of this episode you will leave with clear steps on audience targeting for your next launch. Why the warm versus cold audience debate might be a little bit more nuanced than you thought.
Speaker 1:
And if you like this episode, please do us a big favor and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, because it helps more online course creators like yourself discover the podcast, because Apple gives us some organic love. So let’s jump into the episode and, by the way, welcome back to the Art of Online Business Podcast, where we give you tips, tricks and strategies and, behind the scenes, facebook ads peek to help you scale up from mid four-figure months to high six-figure years.
Speaker 2:
So let’s go ahead and define what are our warm and cold audiences. So warm audiences are going to be the people who have come into your business ecosphere. They’ve had past engagement, past interaction with you. They’re your Instagram and Facebook followers. They’re familiar with your brand. Perhaps they’ve bought from you before. They’re your previous customers. So all those people who have just had some kind of engagement with you.
Speaker 1:
They’re familiar with you and then- what about websites visitors, the other warm audiences? Yeah, website visitors, people who have watched any of your videos, maybe people who have become a lead and hopped onto your email list. That’s warm audiences too.
Speaker 2:
Exactly your email list, absolutely so cold audiences though Jamie. Cold audiences are gonna be anybody who’s not familiar with you, right? They’re just a cold person. So you’re targeting maybe those lookalike audiences of all of the previous mentioned in your warm audience. So lookalikes of your customer list, of your email list, of your website visitors, your your Instagram and Facebook followers, all of those people and also interest based audiences. So you might find people that are in some kind of craft or hobbies, people who, like you, had clients.
Speaker 1:
You have clients who, for their launches, you targeted, interest-based and it worked profitably, right, right, okay, we’re going to talk about that.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, we’ll talk about that in a moment. So those are your cold audiences. So, quajo, what does it look like for your different phases of your launch and targeting?
Speaker 1:
Well, because when we say launch ads and what is working warm versus cold audiences sometimes people ask me well, what ads? So when I say launch ads, I’m referring specifically to the registration ads that turn on two weeks give or take, a couple of days it could be 14 to 18 days before a launch. So people see that ad and they sign up for whatever kind of launch. You have a challenge, a webinar, a bootcamp and then. But there’s a second phase of targeting which some folks do and others don’t. You’ve got to test this and see if it works for you.
Speaker 1:
But many people do do this and that is when your cart opens, like when somebody during the launch has said now, when somebody during the launch has said, now you can buy, they’ve sent out that first sales email to their email list saying the course or the program is officially open. And sometimes this also coincides with the final webinar or whatever training inside of a challenge that has like four trainings. Maybe cart opens on the third training. Have these ads and your cart open ads target usually your warmest audiences and your email list, because they’re the ones most likely to buy from you so, during that registration period of two weeks or so before your launch, which audiences should you be targeting?
Speaker 2:
cold or warm?
Speaker 1:
huh, cold or warm cold it depends typical marketer just like response and we’re going to get into that, so you will have a definitive answer. Should you target cold and warm and before like I start to break that down, if you need facebook ads management from either me or jamie, or if you’re not to the point where you need facebook ad management but you want some coaching, you want to be able to run ads like us, so that your cost per lead comes down, could be cut in half even, or that you can just have a much more successful launch. Head down to the show notes below and in the descriptions you’ll find a link to our website and you can fill out a form there. We can hop on a call and have a discussion and see which is the best way forward for your business so it can be the most profitable.
Speaker 2:
So what has this year been like, 2024? What is the problem with cold audiences?
Speaker 1:
It used to be that you can or could just target cold audiences for a launch and those folks would come in reliably, sign up for your launch and buy.
Speaker 1:
But what I’ve been seeing with clients and had to analyze and troubleshoot with clients this year is Like why ourselves going down?
Speaker 1:
And it turns out that because of many of the factors of 2024, we’re talking about, like higher inflation it’s been a lot harder to get a house this year lower inventory in the housing market you know people have had concerns about the economy and then obviously, like the elections and all the drama around that, like just uncertainty there there, no matter who you’re voting for, we’ve seen what we’ve called a trust recession, where the buyer now is a little more savvy, a little less quick to give trust to an online marketer selling whatever that buyer needs.
Speaker 1:
You know, also, we’re in the aftermath of the 2020 most recent not even that recent now, but online boom where, because of the pandemic, lots of people kind of went home and started their own businesses Some great, some not so great many based on folks’ expertise and their willingness to help serve people. But there’s just been a lot of marketing out there from a lot of folks and so now we’re in this thing called the trust recession and what certain clients have seen not everyone, but a good number is that in their launches, cold audiences aren’t converting like they used to. Folks are coming in and maybe sitting through one launch, sitting through a couple launches before they buy.
Speaker 2:
So what does that mean exactly for launches and your revenue?
Speaker 1:
It just means for people who didn’t change like their revenue went down right. They didn’t dive into the numbers. They saw the revenue declining and if they didn’t change strategy, well, not good. For many of my clients we had to change strategy to bring revenue back up. So we had to dive in to see what kind of traffic was converting and we’re going to talk about analysis in a moment. But basically we had to change course and target more warm audiences to get the same kind of results that we were used to. And it’s been a difficult year across the board, not just with me and clients, but even in like the mastermind I’m in the mixer mind, if you will, where lots of guests on this podcast this year have been there. Like I keep hearing the same thing from them. But it’s not everybody who targeting cold audiences doesn’t work. So for some of your clients you have targeted cold audiences for their launches this year, this fall even, and it went well right. You want to share a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I mean definitely I’ve had clients that were targeting their warm audiences for like a $1,500 offer. Warm audiences worked better, but for a lower ticket membership that was like $29 a month. I was targeting cold audiences, interest-based audiences actually, so not even lookalikes or anything like that, just interest-based audiences, and we were seeing sales, which was kind of exciting, and so it was again one of those craft niches and some of those like targeting people who are interested in Hobby Lobby or a specific sewing machine and different things like that, and we were actually seeing results with it, which was pretty cool.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it’s pretty cool.
Speaker 2:
So, kwejo, how do you make the right choice in analyzing your audience data?
Speaker 1:
Well, success leaves clues right, and the data usually tells a story. So, whether or not you need to target warm or cold audiences, you have to look back at your previous launches and if you haven’t launched yet, don’t worry. I have a solution for you, too, in a moment. But look at your previous launches and here’s how you check. Please I’m gonna hop into the pulpit here. Get behind the podium. Please be tagging your traffic. You need to know where your traffic is coming from. Were you running lead magnet ads? People who came in from a Facebook or Instagram ad and opted in for your lead magnet need to be tagged inside of your email system as having gotten that lead magnet and having come from a Facebook ad. Okay. And then when you go back to analyze, it’s pretty easy. You look at a past launch. If somebody registered for that launch, they need to also have been tagged as having registered for that launch, and then you can answer questions like did when you’re looking at, when you’re doing your launch debrief?
Speaker 1:
and you’re looking at all the people that paid you money, then you can also look up their tags and say did they come from a lead magnet? Did they come from a facebook ad? Did they come from a past launch? And so if you see somebody, for example, that bought from a current launch and they didn’t have a lead magnet tag or a facebook ad tag, then that tells you that if you’re running ads to cold traffic and they only have a launch registration tag and a Facebook ad tag, then you know that they came in from cold traffic and they bought Hooray.
Speaker 1:
If they don’t you know and if they have a previous lead magnet ad tag and a previous Facebook ad tag, then they maybe have come from a previous launch. But you can begin to see where they’re coming from if you’re tagging correctly, and then that gives you insight into what’s actually working for you. And then you just double down on what’s working for you, you know Like literally what happened this year is clients realized oh, it’s the warm audiences converting. So for some clients we actually quit targeting cold audiences completely for a long time.
Speaker 1:
All together and then we took the budget that we were targeting cold audiences for launches with and we put that budget back into lead magnets between launches and then relied on the tried and true email nurturing system to warm folks up. Right and then target those warm folks for the launch. So got to tag your traffic to be able to see what’s happening.
Speaker 1:
Good tip Growing your lead magnet. That works, provided that your business has been doing a good job of that. If not, we got plenty of other episodes right here on this podcast with other copywriters, launch strategists. You know people who can help you with your messaging and even help you with a like a lead magnet email sequence so that you can nurture people in the right way. Actually, I have a link below on the one that I use. I purchased it from a copywriter that’s down in the show notes below.
Speaker 2:
So how do you make the right choice, then, for your targeting strategy, for your next?
Speaker 1:
launch. Okay. So I kind of gave a hint about this targeting strategy for your next launch, okay. So I kinda gave a hint about this, like if you haven’t launched before, like the listener hasn’t launched before, don’t worry, I got a solution for you. But it’s like I was saying, if you have launched before, double down on the audiences that converted for you before. Hopefully, when you’re running a lead magnet in between launches, you’re testing different audiences to figure out which one worked. Usually it’s that same audience that gives you the best results for your launch too. And then if cold audiences haven’t been working, then when you launch, focus on the warm audiences. Okay, focus on the audiences that have been working and test audiences. Ideally, you could test in like a low stakes environment with a lead magnet between launches.
Speaker 2:
Right.
Speaker 1:
Bonus tip if you’re building up retargeting audiences by taking aligned content organic content that’s aligned with your program that you’re going to sell or your launch that you’re going to have and you’ve been showing those ads between launches then also look at the audiences, because you’re testing, hopefully, that have been giving you the lowest cost per through play 15 second view and that can also give you some hints as to what audiences are responding better to content that is related to the problem that you solve and the kind of person or the kind of issues that you serve people by helping them with. So, if you like, have not run ads before and you’re like Quajo, my offer does well and it’s kind of profitable. So I’m going to wade into the Facebook and Instagram ad waters. Let’s just be conservative here. Like, if you’ve done a good job of building up your warm audiences, spend like 70% of your ad budget targeting the warm audiences and then the other 30% can go to cold audiences.
Speaker 1:
Okay, and this kind of helps you hedge your bets, because the listener will know that the warm audience the Instagram followers, facebook followers, folks who have visited the website, people who have become your leads previously, past customers those warm audiences are more likely to convert. And then you can build a cold audience on top of that warm audience, based on which warm audience those warm audiences are more likely to convert. And then you can build a cold audience on top of that warm audience, based on which warm audience can be more valuable to you. Like, customers are more valuable than just email list subscribers, and email list subscribers in general are more valuable than just social media followers. Of course, the disclaimer here is it’s different for everyone. You must test these different audiences. But this ratio of 70% warm, 30% cold will help you kind of explore audiences but still put most of your money with a warm audience that’s more likely to convert. Jeez, jamie, what are some takeaways you have from?
Speaker 2:
this episode All right. So number one, tag your leads I think that was the most important one, so that you know exactly where each lead came from and how to reach them more effectively. And then, number two, analyzing your past launch data. So look back, evaluate which audiences led to actual conversions, not just clicks. And then, number three, grow your email list between launches. So kind of use that safe environment, that low stakes environment to build your list with lead magnets.
Speaker 2:
This is crucial for keeping your warm audience engaged and a place where you can just nurture them. And then, number four, tailor your upcoming registration ads so target the audiences who have converted best in the past. And if you’re new, then stick to that 70-30 warm-cold strategy.
Speaker 1:
All right. So in your mind, if you’re still like debating, is it warm, is it cold? Let the data tell you. That’s my big takeaway.
Speaker 2:
The answer is yes, the answer is yes.
Speaker 1:
Let the data tell you. That’s my big takeaway. The answer is yes. The answer is yes, let the data, tell you.
Speaker 1:
It’s different from one business to the next. If you go and do your research, then you will be rewarded by getting informed by what’s working, and then you do more of what’s working. And if you need help looking at the data or setting up a launch plan that you’re going to run yourself, that’s where we come in. You can book a strategy call or coaching with me. I do it by the month. You get unlimited access to me while we’re coaching and you’ll have a strategy and you’ll also know how to run your ads, just like I would, which means, humbly speaking, you get some good results until the next time you see us or hear from us, leave a review on apple podcasts and take care and go to theartofonlinebusinesscom we’ll see you in the next one.
Speaker 1:
Bye.
