How your funnel should guide your ad strategy

We are back with another episode of No Fluff - Small Business, Simplified, and today I want to talk through your funnels and how your funnels and your digital ads should really hook up to each other. A lot of people are wondering, should I run ads right now? What would that ad strategy look like? And so many people are wasting money because they're starting to run ads before they're really thinking through and getting clear on how they are setting up their funnel overall. Ads are just a piece of the puzzle when it comes to your funnel, and you're really going to not see the ROI that you're wanting and hoping to see from doing paid ads, if you are not thinking through the entire journey of your customers, that purchasing journey which we've talked about in some other episodes. So, when you are looking at starting to run ads, you're probably going to first ask yourself, well where do I run these ads? Should I run them on Facebook and Instagram? Should I run them on Google? Should I run them on YouTube or Tik Tok? The first thing question you want to ask yourself is, what am I selling these people and are they looking for this thing specifically? Do they know they want this thing, or is this something that I know will be valuable for them, but they might not actively be searching for it? That's a big question because if you think about Google, when you're searching something, you're already thinking about it, you're looking for that thing, and that's why you're typing it into Google. Whereas, with Facebook and Instagram, you're going to those platforms to consume other content, and you're seeing ads that are relevant to you, things that you're interested in, and things that people like you are interested in, but you're not actively searching for that thing, and that's really similar to ads on a lot of other social platforms like Tiktok like Snapchat. But ads on Pinterest and even YouTube to a certain extent, have more of that search intent, because people are using those platforms to search for specific content. So that's really something to ask yourself there - is my product or service or program, something that someone is actively searching for actively looking for?

Is there search intent happening here for my product or service or program. If yes, that can help guide you in certain instances, to decide which platform you should be running ads on. The next thing you want to think about is, when someone sees my ad and then clicks on my ad, what's happening next? Are they being taken to a free training on a different page? Are they being taken to a form to fill out their email or their information in order to get a freebie? In order to add them on to my email list and remarket to them later, both through retargeting ads but also through my email list or are they clicking on my ad to go directly to a purchase page? Some of these questions you can answer yourself when you're thinking about what's the price point of my product or service or program? And what's the curing period, is this something that can be a little bit more of a short decision timeline on when someone discovers it versus when they want to purchase it or are they going to need more nurturing around that? If you are selling a $17 ebook, people aren't going to need to think about that and consider that purchase for as long as a $3,000 program. The same thing goes for products. If you're selling a really cute lipstick, that's more of an impulse purchase compared to if you are selling a laser hair removal package. That is also something to think about when someone clicks on my ad, what's happening next?

And is that thing, a good fit for the price point and the decision making process around the purchase. Then think through what happens after that. Let's just take this example of someone clicks on the ad, and they get brought to a page with a free mini webinar training video. Then they watch that video on that page and from there, what happens next, how are you hanging on to that person? Are you then asking them to book a call with you now that you've delivered some value and started growing that trust factor? Are you asking them to fill out a form with their email address in order to get some other free thing, or are you pitching them on a low ticket $7 item? Then if they purchase that $7 item, are you going to be sending them emails after that to pitch them on the higher ticket program? If they're clicking on the ad to get to a coupon for your product or service. What happens after that? Are you then going to serve them ads reminding them that they have X amount off of this product or service, or are you going to be sending them an email with their coupon code and here's another great bonus that you can have. Thinking through this entire process and mapping it out is so important. I really encourage you to draw this out as a workflow in a notebook. What we don't want is to just start running ads on Facebook and Instagram because that's seems the least intimidating to get started on, and running ads for your $1,000 membership or program to people who have never heard of you before and if they happen to click on that ad, you're just driving them to a signup page where they would sign up for your program or service, and pay you $1,000 right there. That is not the way to go, that is not going to be an effective use of your ad budget. At that point you're pretty much going to be throwing money away. But if you're saying, I'm only going to serve this ad to purchase my high ticket program to people who have been on my website in the last 12 days or have already seen my other ad, and watched at least 75% of that free webinar training, and they also signed up for my email list to get that other freebie. That's going to be a much warmer audience because you've built that know / like / trust factor with them. They're going to be much more likely to actually make that purchase from you at that price point. This is something that we help our ads clients and our full service clients at the digital marketing agency. We really help them to understand what is the flow and what does your funnel look like when you're reaching that new person, whether that's through organic social media, whether that's through ads, whether that's through cross-promotion to other people's audiences. And what are we asking for at each step of the process? Is what we're asking for reasonable right with how familiar they are with us or the brand and how do we continue to serve them, then ask for more, or come back and ask for something different? Taking the time to map that out and get super clear on that is going to help you to figure out not only how much do you need to spend on ads, but what ROI are you going to see from your ads. And also, am I stretching my budget too thin? How long is this going to take to bring them from a cold audience when they first see my ad and they've never heard of me before, to the purchase point of the high ticket program or product or service? How long is that going to take and what steps do they have to go through before they can get to that purchase point? Looking at your strategy in this way is something that is so important and you don't want to skip because it's going to be what sets you up with realistic expectations for the performance of your ad strategy, and is going to set apart a good ad manager from a crappy one. If your ad manager isn't talking about any of this, asking you about any of this, that's a red flag. They just want to take your money and run ads and they're not going to be effective for you. If you are struggling to map this process out, if you're wondering when's the right time to run ads, what should I be doing with my ads, etc. Look into our digital ad management service that we help you with answering all these questions, and even creating some of the collateral around each of these pieces of your puzzle in your funnel. We also have a Digital Ad Strategy Audit, so if you have some of these things in place, even if you're already running ads but you're not getting the return you want, we can sit down and look at this with you and show you where the gaps are and show you how to make the ads that you're already running a lot more effective for you and for your business.