In this Episode of LMScast, we have our guest Natalie Anne Martin from (www.natalieanneads.com) who will be guiding us on how to run Facebook ads successfully. She is a Facebook and Instagram ad specialist who has been assisting course creators and coaches to run ads in the right way. Natalie Anne helped many course creators to expand their email lists and generate sales through ads.
Things course creators should ensure before launching ads
It is important for course creators to have consistent income without Facebook ads. For example, if you are a course creator and want to run a Facebook ad, you should ensure having sales beforehand. After that, set an appropriate offer to run your Fb ad successfully. Thinking about a converting Facebook advertising strategy is also essential before launching Fb ads.
How to pull off Facebook ads
Your audience won’t buy your course just after seeing your Facebook ads. Instead, they will convince to buy it when your ads succeed in providing value. Therefore, it is important to offer a free webinar or freebie by that they can be benefited. Besides, your webinar should have a sense of urgency like the offer will end soon.
While creating a well-crafted Facebook ad, you should figure out what can work better for your ads. Is it a video, gif, or image? Of course, video works far better than others as it can provide more knowledge to your target audience. Though others can also bring conversions if it is done in the right way. All you need to do is a test and find out what is best for you.
The first and foremost task is writing your ad copy. You must find the pain points of your targeted audience and then write a headline that has solutions for solving the problem of your targeted audience. This way you can pull off Facebook ads.
Mistakes that should be avoided
Most of the Course creators boost Fb posts treating those as ads that are actually not. Though it is a type of ad. But you can’t call it an actual Fb ad. Another great mistake is course creators give up easily when they don’t see results after running ads. You should have the patience to make your ads successful. Ensure not to make these mistakes while running your Fb ads. Avoiding these will help you to run a successful Fb ad.
You can also learn how to run Fb ads through a checklist prepared by Natalie Anne Martin that you can find at natalieanneads.com/free-ads-checklist.
Here’s Where To Go Next…
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Episode Transcript
Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to create, launch and scale a high-value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co-founder of LifterLMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. Stay till the end I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show.
Chris Badgett: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the LMScast. My name is Chris Badgett. I’m joined by a special guest. Her name is Natalie Anne. You can find her at natalieanneads.com. She’s also got a resource for you to get your Facebook ads set up. A checklist that says natalieanneads.com/free-ads-checklist. Welcome to the show Natalie.
Natalie Anne Martin: Hi, thanks for having me.
Chris Badgett: I’m really excited to interview you today and we’re also live streaming this because we get asked constantly for Facebook ads advice on I’m a software creator, I’m a community builder, but I’m not an ads expert. So, I’m excited to get into it with you today. Before somebody’s really a perfect fit for ads, whether they’re on Facebook or Instagram or whatever, what do they need to have in place to be ready for ads?
Natalie Anne Martin: So, I typically recommend for your business owners to have a few things in place. It’s good to be generating consistent income in your business already so that you’re not completely relying on ads like to make your money. You need a validated offer to run your ads too because you want to make sure that it actually sells and people want it before you start running money to it. And you also want a strategy in place that actually converts, which is typically a funnel that actually converts. So, to have that proven organically before you start amplifying it with ads.
Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. What are you seeing in course creators and coaches, the best conversion tools being like, webinars, and sales pages, like what should we be driving to with our ads?
Natalie Anne Martin: So with course creators, I typically do like I typically start with like a freebie of any kind, like a PDF freebie, just to warm up just to like warm up their audience and generate more traffic to their pixels. And if they like to sell their actual course, I would typically lead it either a free webinar or a free challenge so it could be like a five-day challenge or something. So, it just depends on what they are most comfortable with and what they have time for because obviously like a five-day challenge takes up a lot more time and it’s a lot more commitment to your audience than just a one hour webinar.
Chris Badgett: That’s awesome and you do both Facebook and Instagram. Owned by the same company now called Meta. What does it make sense for Facebook or Instagram or both? Like how are they different in terms of ads perspective?
Natalie Anne Martin: So, yeah, they’re actually not different at all. They actually all run on the same platform. And yeah, a lot of people think that they’re two different types of ads. But they’re actually the same thing. You can have the option to create your ad and only have it run on Facebook and only have it run on Instagram, but that’s not something that I typically do. Unless you have a business that, you know, your audience is only on Instagram and you only want to do that. But typically do run it on both platforms because when you set it up, it just automatically puts it on both platforms.
Chris Badgett: So, we’re targeting the person and it doesn’t so much matter on which platform there they find they discover the ad. It’s the right person.
Natalie Anne Martin: Mhmm.
Chris Badgett: What’s some person targeting advice you have? Like when we’re setting up our ads and we’re trying to, you mentioned the pixel, like are we trying to re-target? Are we trying to create look-alike audiences? Or if we’re going after like somebody cold that’s never heard or seen us before? How do we target effectively? Where’s our best use of time in terms of picking it? Who to market to with ads?
Natalie Anne Martin: So, something that’s really important with creating your audiences, especially with your cold audiences for Facebook ads is really understanding who your ideal client is. And there have been a lot of recent changes in Facebook advertising where they got rid of a lot of detailed targeting options. So, where like a year ago I would be pretty narrow with my targeting after the IOS 14 update, you do have to go more broad because Facebook seems to favor broad audiences. But it all comes back to who your ideal client is. So, I typically ask either my client or myself a lot of different questions. Like who is this person? What do they like? Where do they hang out online? What brands are they interested in? ETC. And just write down a whole bunch of interests and then kind of narrow it down from there so that you have this like huge list of interests that you can use. Plug it into your platform and see what you can actually use and just kind of like go through there and test and test and test. Because with Facebook ads, it’s really all about testing, especially when it comes to your audiences.
Chris Badgett: Do you have like a minimum budget recommendation? Like if you’re gonna do it like you need to spend at least this much a week or a month to for it to even be worth it.
Natalie Anne Martin: Yeah, I mean. It depends on a lot of things. It depends on what your overall goals are with your ads. So, like say your goal is to just grow your email list, you could do that for as little as five dollars a day depending on what your need basis is, right? But if your goal is to sell a five hundred dollar course, for instance, you would obviously need a much higher budget to do that. So, I do recommend like in general for ads to have a budget of at least ten, fifteen, or twenty dollars a day. But when it comes to like your overall goals and if you want to sell a course, I kind of work backward with the budget. So, if your course is five hundred dollars and you wanna make ten thousand dollars for your launch then you will need twenty core sales. And I work backward from that being like, okay, so twenty core sales mean that you have to have a certain number of people at your master class given your conversion rate on the class. And then also work backward again. You need so many leads to get that many people on the class and then your average cost per lead, multiply it by that number to understand what your budget is. I don’t know. Like, I hope that made sense.
Chris Badgett: No, it did. That was one of the best answers I’ve ever heard with like a lot of specificities. I really appreciate that.
Natalie Anne Martin: Yeah.
Chris Badgett: That does a lot of sense.
Natalie Anne Martin: So, it’s kind of like a reverse funnel.
Chris Badgett: That’s cool. And you mentioned that a lower amount for legion, like ten or fifteen dollars a day. How does? Tell us more about that style of just driving top of funnel.
Natalie Anne Martin: Yeah. So, when it comes to leads, you don’t need a massive budget. Again it also depends on your industry and your niche because I do find business to business is more expensive than like B2C. So, yeah, if you have a simple lead magnet that’s like, for instance, a checklist or a like a short video or something that doesn’t require a huge commitment, then you can get really cheap costs. Currently like really cheap leads but don’t cost too much because the cost per lead does associate with the commitment that they have to make. So, like downloading a PDF isn’t a huge commitment compared to spending an hour of their time with you or like five hours if it’s a five-day challenge, for example.
Chris Badgett: Another brilliant insight. I have not heard of that commitment cost. But it makes total sense when you say it that way. What about the ad itself, like video images, text, or mix? What should we do? Especially for course creators and coaches, who tend to have somewhat of a problem, they don’t have a problem mostly getting on camera or doing making stuff for being on stage. But what’s the best type of ad to make?
Natalie Anne Martin: So, I do like to test a mix of video, images, or jif/gif, whatever however you pronounce it. I feel like do a test of different things just to see what works for that specific business. Video does tend to perform better because it grabs people’s attention more or like gif that something is moving. But it all really depends on, a lot of things depend on what your ideal client likes. Then, if there is a type of person that would even watch even a little bit of a video. So, it, when it comes to understanding what type of ad would work best for your specific business you really just have to test and see what will work. So, try a little bit of everything and then that will give you a better understanding on what does convert the best.
Chris Badgett: And I’m assuming so, but I want to ask, should we avoid stock photography and stock video and stuff like that? Or is it okay to use those things?
Natalie Anne Martin: I have seen ads with stock photography perform well and it really just depends on the context as well. Like, you can take a stock image and like put it into a graphic, for instance. Where it has information on it about your webinar and like a benefit-driven headline as well and maybe just like the little things that says like a free and master class on there. So, that is kind of consistent with your landing page. Because that’s something that’s really important too. Like as long as. Like if you have an image that doesn’t relate to the page. They’re going to confuse them and they might click away. Being like, is this like a scam or something? I agree because you want to make sure that everything is congruent from the ads to the landing page to whatever the next step is and the next step is.
Chris Badgett: Wow. You mentioned a challenge funnel of some kind. Is that? In your experience, are those better to be free or kind of low-cost entry-level products? Do you have any opinion there or experience? Like a five-day challenge, should we be doing that?
Natalie Anne Martin: So, yeah, for my experience, I’ve only done three challenges where obviously on the last day at the end of the last day, they sell their course. When it comes to paid challenges, I do. I don’t have experience with them. But they are a lot more difficult because you’re asking. It’s a huge ask to not only be paid but to get the time commitment and then be selling something on the backend as well. So, I would typically do a free challenge rather than have it even a little bit paid.
Chris Badgett: That’s cool. That’s awesome. Any copywriting tips just in terms of title or headlines, to get attention, or to encourage clickthrough, what have you found?
Natalie Anne Martin: Yeah so, when it comes to copyright and I’m sure a lot of people already know your very first line is the most important line. So, you really wanna make sure that it resonates with your ideal client. This is where it’s also really important to understand exactly who your ideal client is., what their pain points are, or the pain points that you can solve are. So, a lot of times in the in the hook, in the first very first line I will dig into their pain points or do something that just grabs their attention. And then just get them to read more because the whole point of the very first line is you want them to click more or even just click on the ad itself because that is typically the only thing they will see and then they’ll have that see more button where they can read more of your text. You rarely want to entice them to read more by digging into their pain points or having a question that you asked where they say, “yeah, that’s me”.
Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. Is there a minimum price point for a course or coaching program where like ads can’t work? Like it’s too cheap for it to work or something like that? Or is that more of a ‘it just really depends’ kind of thing? Or is there? Or let’s say, we have some I don’t know, even the cheapest course I’ve seen is probably like ten or thirty dollars. Can we still use ads?
Natalie Anne Martin: So, for a ten thirty dollar course you can, that, still sell that with ads. But I would recommend selling it on like the middle of your funnel. So, I would recommend running ads to a freebie and then selling it on the thank you page and then selling it through an email sequence. So, that way you’re building your email list and you’re actually making your money back on your ads with the course that’s on the backend of the freebie.
Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. What are some do-it-yourself? People setting up their own ads. What kind of mistakes do you see that they make? Especially if you speak to specifically course creator coach-type people. Or more broadly, like what are the classic mistakes when somebody that doesn’t have a lot of experience with Facebook or Instagram ads? What do they do wrong?
Natalie Anne Martin: One of the biggest mistakes is people will boost their post and think that’s an ad. It is. I guess it’s a form of an ad, but it’s not. You don’t have as much control over the way Facebook spends like your money as you do it if you set up the ad within the Facebook platform. You don’t have as much control over who sees your ad and how Facebook spends your money. Typically, when you set up a boosted post, it’s for engagement. So, you have to really be clear on what your overall goal is with your ads. So, if your goal is to get conversions and people to sign up for your freebies and you’re boosting the post that is optimized for engagement, you’re not necessarily gonna achieve your goals with that. And another mistake that I see people make is they, I guess, are kind of sometimes, people are too impatient with ads because they might not always work right away. There is a process with them sometime. You have to test out different things. Give facebook enough time to accumulate data to understand who your audience is and what type of people resonate with this ad. And give it time to then understand like this is won’t work. I’ll turn this one off and try this and try that. And it’s a work in progress to get to your winning ads. So, sometimes people will just be like it doesn’t work on the first day and they turn it off and say, no Facebook ads don’t work.
Chris Badgett: Is it possible to find an ad that will like to continue to work for a long period of time? Or is it one of those things where it’ll only work for a certain amount of time, and then you gotta figure out a new thing? Is there such thing as an evergreen ad that can just last for months and years?
Natalie Anne Martin: So, it is possible. I have had ads for clients that have worked for months. Without even needing to do too much to them. So, it is possible. But you can’t like rely on that. Like it depends on so many things within, like your niche and your industry and like other people running ads, bringing the cost up, and like sometimes you get ads fatigue. So, it’s hard to say if it would happen or not when you do get a winning ad. But sometimes you do get an ad where it can run for months without you even having to touch it. And sometimes something happens and sometimes it doesn’t. And with all these updates Facebook runs sometimes back in effect as that are currently running. So, I hope that answers the question.
Chris Badgett: Yeah, that does. And another thing you mentioned was the ad objective, like conversions. I know when you’re setting one up, sometimes you can optimize for comments or engagement, conversions, video views, website visitors. There are these different options. What’s the most important in there for a course creator or should they have something on all those ads for all those different types of things?
Natalie Anne Martin: I would say the most important type of campaign for a course creator would be a conversion campaign. Because with a conversion campaign, you will get people to opt into your freebie, which is a conversion of itself, a lead conversion. You can also get people to purchase your course if you are running, like let’s say a retargeting campaign after your freebie so that you can remind people about your course. You can have it optimized for people who are most likely to purchase your course. So, I mostly run conversion campaigns. If I do a video view campaign it’s mostly to build a warm audience because you can run a video of your campaign to build your warm audience and then retarget those video views for a cheaper cost per lead. So yeah, I typically stick with conversion, and then I use the video view of the campaign to lower the cost really.
Chris Badgett: Wow, some pro stuff. For video views, like what kind of content is that? Like you’re attracting your tribe, right? And you’re seeing who’s interested, and what kind of content goes in a video of your campaign?
Natalie Anne Martin: So, it will all be value based, so you want to deliver value. I typically recommend my clients to do like a really tiny piece of what their actual course is about so that you’re attracting the right people who would be interested in your end result, right? Some kind of value that can give them a little bit of a win so that when they experience that win, they can associate that feeling back to your brand and when they see another ad for their freebies they’ll be like, oh yeah, that person like they help me with this. I’m gonna sign up for their freebie right now.
Chris Badgett: That’s awesome and then digging into the retargeting a little bit, if we have a conversion campaign focused on a webinar, or a top of funnel, or a lead magnet that kind of nurtures into the webinar, who are we retargeting and how do we, what’s the messaging around content in a retargeting ads?
Natalie Anne Martin: So, for okay. So the retargeting ad you’re talking about is for the free webinar to retarget the people who signed up for the free lead magnets. Is that what you’re saying?
Chris Badgett: I might have even gotten confused, I guess just how can we best retarget and like what does that kind of content look like? Who should we retarget? Is it what? Yeah, how they get on the pixel?
Natalie Anne Martin: So, the people that you can retarget your email list, you can retarget anyone who’s engaged on your actual website and you can also retarget anyone who is engaged with your Facebook page or your Instagram account. So, those are like the four categories of people that can be retargeted. And yeah, I typically kind of have an audience where I threw them in there with like any freebie as well because people, those are people who think they’ll give you some social proof and they would be interested in your freebies. Well, but let’s say you are running an error that’s just retargeting. You don’t want to do any cool audience. That would be when you’re running like a open clothes cart for your course after your webinar. So, you have like your open cart for like five days where there’s like that five big app where they can sign up for your course. And you want to talk to them like they already know who you are, right? Like hey, here’s a reminder, you have five days to sign up for this course. Close cart is on so and so day and just really kind of reminds them of things that they learned from the webinar and you know like there is a different way of talking to your warm audience than top of funel audience and you wanna keep that in mind when you’re writing like a copy. That like top of funnel is like grabbing their attention, enticing them just really attraction. That’s the attraction part of it and then near the bottom of the funnel you want to focus on the converting stage and leading to that. So.
Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. Tons of pro tips today. I was noticing on your website, natalieanneads.com. You have a couple of different services. One is Facebook and Instagram ads management and the other is Facebook and Instagram ad account set up. So, what goes on in the setup?
Natalie Anne Martin: So the account setup is. It’s for people who they want to run their own ads. But they don’t understand all of the technicalities with, when it comes to setting up the actual ad account because there is a lot that goes into it and I introduced this package when the IOS 14 update was released because you had to do so many extra things to make sure that your account was ready to go to start running your ads. So, you have to like set up your pixel, verify your domain, set up your event, prioritize your aggregated event, and yeah, there are a few other things that go into it. But it’s essentially me doing all the tech setup for anyone who doesn’t understand the tech.
Chris Badgett: And then how would you describe the ads management service?
Natalie Anne Martin: So, my ads management service is a completely done for you package. I do everything with regard to setting up your Facebook and Instagram ads. The most safe thing that I ask from you is like, I do an in-depth targeting questionnaire. So, I really get to understand who your ideal client is, and after some pictures and so that I can create some graphics So, I do everything. I create the copy graphics, set up the ad. And I run them and optimize them continuously and send weekly report with that.
Chris Badgett: Nice. And who is like your ideal customer? I know you like work with course creators and coaches. But what makes a really good fit for you?
Natalie Anne Martin: So, my ideal client is someone like who has a course. They have validated their course. They’ve sold it before and they have a webinar that they’ve tested organically and it has a good conversion rate that they say, okay, this is great. I can sell this organically, but I feel like I’m kind of running out of organic reach, right? So, they’re at a point where they’re kind of burning out with organic marketing and they want to amplify their course sales with Facebook ads and create more of a passive income with that.
Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. Any pro tips on what you’ve seen with the webinar that’s working? Like, you said, you mentioned like having an offer that works in a webinar that’s working. what do you see in the effective webinars out there?
Natalie Anne Martin: So, with effective webinars, I think it’s all about really connecting with your ideal client and like getting them to understand who you are as well because they could buy from so many other people. They really wanna like connect with you as a coach. So, like letting them know your story, have been reliable and also delivering enough value to them where they felt like they learned so much that like wow, there must be so much in this course that is like I will get like so many wins from. So, it’s all about really delivering good value in your webinar. And so that’s not just all bluff because a lot of webinars are just like bluff and it’s really just eating to the sale. But people, they know that there’s something to sell at the end, but they’re still there to learn something like they wanna be able to, like, get come out of the webinar, like they spend an hour with you. They want to be able to leave with something valuable. So, I think that’s a really important aspect and then also having like fast action bonuses so that people have more incentive to buy right then and there the maximum. Also, I find that webinars that have like a specific time where the cart is open and cart closed like tend to perform better than if the webinar is just or if the course is just evergreen where it’s always open. So, people have more, like there’s more urgency.
Chris Badgett: How about? What you’re seeing in effective lead magnets? Like what if an ad is working well and you know you’re getting leads through ads, what does that offer look like? What types of lead magnets tend to work these days?
Natalie Anne Martin: It’s hard to say because there’s so many different types of we made it and again, like I think like I mentioned before, it really just comes down to offering something that will resonate with your ideal clients is typically a small piece of what your end offer is. And I think one really important thing with a lead magnet is to have like understand that it’s the top of the funnel and to have that email sequence and that nurturing that comes afterwards because I’ve seen some people they have a lead magnet and they’re growing their email list but then that’s afterward they’re not doing anything with their email list. So, it’s important to, you know, nurture your email list. Because they’re there for a reason.
Chris Badgett: Do you have any best practices there? Like, in terms of like how long a nurture campaign should go on for? You know, how many emails is appropriate? I know these are there’s massive it depends on that question. But, if somebody’s gonna build out a nurture sequence, should they think about three emails, a month worth of emails, three months’ worth of emails a year? What do you recommend?
Natalie Anne Martin: So, when it comes to like the nurture sequence that’s attached to a freebie I technically do like five to seven emails that are like automated and then obviously you’ll have, like you know your other emails that you send out periodically. Like, I do a weekly e-mail. Because I don’t like too many emails in my inbox. So, that’s why I do weekly email rather than like a daily email. So yeah. I. When it comes to a nurture sequence attached to the freebie, I totally do about five to seven emails with the very last email being like a call to action to an offer.
Chris Badgett: That is awesome. What can people expect in your ads checklist? That’s it natalieanneads.com/free-ads-checklist. What’s inside the checklist?
Natalie Anne Martin: So, the checklist is kind of a rundown of everything that you need to do to get your ads set up in your business. So, it kind of goes over each step that you need to take up to setting up your ads and hitting publish.
Chris Badgett: Nice
Natalie Anne Martin: And yeah, if it goes with the setting up an ad that will build your email list specifically. So, I do go into, like a kind of like a lead magnet and like keep building your email list with that lead magnet.
Chris Badgett: And last question before we go here today, how did you get into all this and figure all this out? What’s your story?
Natalie Anne Martin: My story is, well, I used to I was a bartender for over ten years. And, you know, like running down my body, doing that, and then I always wanted to be an online entrepreneur and never really knew how to get into it, and then I got pregnant. And when I went on matternity leave and I actually started doing affiliate marketing like high ticket affiliate marketing. During my matternity leave and that’s when I started learning about Facebook ads and learning how to do that. And I found that I was spending more time learning about Facebook ads and buying courses, learning about this. Like, how to optimize my campaigns to get the best results, etc. That I was like, oh my god, like I’m more passionate about running ads than I am on any other aspect of my own business. So, I decided to pivot and create my own business where I run ads for coaches and course creators. I reached out to a mentor who is really good at running ads for coaches and course creators. And she mentored me one-to-one and I took a bunch of more like so many other courses. And that’s kind of how I got into it. I just, you know, I started doing it and realized like I really have a passion for this and I just want it and I understood that a lot of people don’t understand this because it is a huge learning curve. So, I wanted to be able to help people with these ads because it is a way that you can like really amplify sales in your business if you do them right.
Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. I love hearing the story of when somebody finds a passion, you know, to enter a new chapter. That’s awesome. How can the good people find you easily? You’re on Instagram, you’ve got your website, what can people do to connect?
Natalie Anne Martin: Yeah, I mean, you can connect with me on Instagram. My Instagram, as you said, is Natalie Anne Ads and then there’s also my website natalieanneads.com. You can follow me, send me a dm, or send me an email. I am always happy to connect with new people.
Chris Badgett: Awesome! Well, thank you for coming on the show and sharing so much of your Facebook and Instagram ads wisdom with us. You added a ton of value. We really appreciate it.
Natalie Anne Martin: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Chris Badgett: And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMScast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode and I’ve got a gift for you over at lifterlms.com/gift. Go to lifterlms.com/gift. Keep learning. Keep taking action and I’ll see you in the next episode.
