184: Hit the Easy Button: 3 Low-Risk Ways to Grow Your Online Business

Foreign welcome to the Creators MBA Podcast, your go to resource for mastering the art and science of digital product entrepreneurship. My name is Dr. Destiny Kopp and I help business owners generate consistent revenue from their digital product business without the need to be glued to their desks constantly live launching or worrying about the social media algorithms. I hope you enjoy our episode today and today my special guest is Claire Pelz. Claire is a seasoned Facebook and Instagram ad strategist with over a decade of experience in the digital marketing place. She is founder of clairepells.com and is dedicated to helping small business owners and entrepreneurs maximize their ROI with data driven ad strategies. And Claire, I am super excited to chat with you today. I have been a student of your absolute Facebook ads since I, I think 2019. I might need to go look and see when I actually purchased it. But I have been a student of yours for a long time and we've known each other for some several years now. And I love your podcast. It's one of my favorite podcasts out there. It's called the Get Paid podcast. So if you guys are not familiar with it, go check it out and subscribe. It's one of the ones I try to listen to every single time you have a new episode that goes out. And we're going to be talking about three ads that you recommend that really any of us, even if we're a seasoned entrepreneur or if we're just getting started, you're recommending three ads or for us and we're going to get into all of those nitty gritty details. But before I do, can you tell the good audience just a little bit more about you and how you help people?

Absolutely. Well, first off, thanks so much for having me, Destiny, and for such a gracious intro. So, yeah, I mean, just like Destiny said, I've been doing this now since 20 full time running, you know, ads for clients and then teaching and consulting for people since 2014. It's been a wild 10 years of changes to Facebook, Instagram, all of those ads. But it's my favorite thing to talk about. I don't know why I don't get bored. I just always want to talk about ads, look at results, help people get better results all the time. And mostly I work with, you know, online entrepreneurs who have digital products or courses, memberships, coaching programs, things like that.

Well, you're definitely in the right place because everybody listening here, you know, there are digital product entrepreneurs. So they have memberships, they have course courses, they have group coaching programs that are bundled in with Courses or, you know, just low cost digital products for some of us. Now, I always preach about the importance of growing our audience, growing our email list. And that can be difficult in this day and age. Right. It's hard to get that visibility, if you would. But you have kind of put together a strategy for us and we're going to talk about the three ads that you recommend for people like us, these digital product entrepreneurs. So can you talk about the first one that you recommend?

Yeah, sure. I will say that there is no need to use all of these ads. One of them might change the trajectory of your business because suddenly audience growth or podcast growth or sales just jump because of it. But I just want to give you a couple different options depending on, you know, what you're working on. So the very first one is where I recommend almost everyone start, which is a classic list building ad. You are promoting some kind of freebie. You know, you are giving them a PDF, a report, a template, a live or not live class usually. But it could be, it could be for a live webinar, could be a replay of something and you're promoting that and they give you their name and email address in order to get it. Otherwise it's free. And that is the ad that I learned to run in 2011 and it is still the number one ad that I recommend. I do not go for the trendy, flashy, different types of campaigns because what ends up happening is Facebook makes changes. And so something that you worked really hard on just might not work again depending on what Facebook does. But the list building ads, because you are just giving away a tremendous amount of value for free, those have not stopped working.

So I, I love that. And just that classic list building ad, and I think all of us, we have a freebie or a free gift that we could put in an ad like that one that we've been using organically and we can just, you know, put some fuel or fire behind it, if you would.

Right. It's easy because of that. Most people already have it and so they just, you know, they just have to set up the ad essentially and hit go.

So what are you seeing there? Is it like a PDF is working the best? Is it, you know, tell us a little bit about what, what people are doing in the marketplace right now and what's working.

Yeah, so I still see a lot of different things working and I really think it just depends on the type of business that you have. I started my business promoting a PDF. It was a free guide to Facebook ads. And that thing was so meaty I could have charged money for it. And so in addition to growing my list, it also grew my authority. Right. It was not a dinky. This is how Facebook ads work, like very 10,000 foot overview. No, it was detailed. So if you're going to do some kind of freebie like that, which is, you know, literally somebody could open up a PDF, scroll, just not really get very much from it, but they feel like they've done something. If that's all you have, I would consider putting together or choosing something else. But if your free gift is really and truly valuable that you could charge for it, definitely run ads to it. Otherwise, like if you are just starting out, you maybe you know that your current freebie, it's not growing the right list for you, it's not attracting the right people. Then what I always recommend is any kind of video content because it does take more of a commitment from somebody. Even the idea of watching something so you're already getting a little bit more buy in from the subscribers. Now whether or not they, they actually watch, that's also kind of the same as whether or not they open your PDF. But I find that it does bring in a little bit of a higher quality subscriber. So it could be a 10 minute thing, it could be a full on webinar with a pitch at the end, but just anything that's class training workshop. I try not to say webinar, but you know, where it's not something that somebody's just going to be able to scroll through real quick.

I love that. And as you were thinking through or talking through that, I was thinking about, you know, I have a, like a short 15 minute workshop where I help people come up with their course idea with AI. So that would be perfect for something like that.

Perfect. Oh, and it's short and it gives them a, like a specific outcome. That's awesome.

Yeah. All right, so let's move on to the next ad you recommend.

Right. So this is for anyone who has a podcast or is regularly publishing on YouTube. I would say so you are. This is not a list building ad, although that happens on the back end. But you're really just promoting a specific episode, a specific video on YouTube and the settings are different. It actually makes the costs a lot lower and people aren't really doing this. But when somebody just discovers your podcast, discovers your YouTube channel, that really speeds up the know like and trust process. So a lot of us who have podcast destiny, maybe you can even confirm this is that they find that so many buyers come from their podcasts because that know like and trust process gets really sped up and you feel like, okay, great, this is the person I wanna, I wanna work with, the person I wanna learn from. So almost no one is running this type of ad but my clients and myself. Like if you went into the ads library right now, you would see my own podcast ads in addition to some others that I have running. It's literally promoting one episode. In my case it's an interview. But sometimes I out and I do more Facebook and Instagram ad focused episodes because that is my area of expertise. But when people listen to my interviews, they just get hooked and they binge and they binge and they binge.

So you're definitely motivating me to set something like this up. I was thinking about, yes, she's right. People who are listening to my podcast, they're most definitely buying or the ones that are buying my higher priced offers which would be my, you know, either my group coaching or my one on one coaching program program. So that is brilliant just to do ad just getting people to start listening to your podcast because it's hard to get discovered out there on those podcasts.

It really is. It really is. And so because it is so low spend like this could 100% be the only ad that you run and it could, the ROI could just be insane because you could absolutely spend $5 a day and get real traffic to your podcast or to your YouTube videos. It's, it's pretty remarkable. And we have that, I mean, destiny, you can go in there today. We have that in module 12, I think it is, you know, so it's already there for you, just waiting. It's waiting for your podcast to blow up because of a small spend.

Yeah, I'm definitely going to check that out. And for all of you who are listening here, Claire and I were talking before we started recording and I was telling her, I said, I'm at the point that I to hit the easy button in my business. And you know, that's one of the things that I'm going to be focusing on. It's already on my 20, 25 and fourth quarter for this year to really kind of, you know, drive that paid traffic, if you would, to, you know, automate more. So I'm not having to do everything, you know, manually that we're doing to grow our business organically.

All right, yeah, let's, let's talk about that real quick before we get into the third ad because I think it's really something that women especially can feel a lot of resistance to. Like, I just remember seeing somebody tagged me on an Instagram post where somebody, a creator was basically talking about how they were going to have to shut down their business because they weren't able to get the word out enough given like the prices of their, of their offers or I think the algorithm had just changed again so that we're suffering. And somebody said, hey, have you ever thought about ads? You know, and then tagged me in it. And the response from that creator was like, I would never run ads. Everything we've done has been completely organic. So she really viewed ads as like cheating somehow and, and basically telling herself that she needed to constantly be creating new content, like trying to please the algorithms, when maybe a really low cost list building ad or podcast ad or something like that could give her back so much time. Because I mean, I don't ever post. Destiny knows this. I haven't posted on Instagram since Q4 of 2022. Like, I can't even get into Instagram right now. I don't. They're not recognizing my password. So normally I would do like stories about my personal life and things like that, but just for fun, not for any engagement because it's just not there for me anymore. But you really can market your business without that content creation hamster wheel. And if you've been learning from Destiny and you are already creating great content that has brought in this organic audience for you, you are in the best position to run ads because you already have some data about like what people respond to. Some of my clients come in and they have to pay to get that data, right? They have to pay to say, okay, well is this topic of interest to people is something else. And, and they're really just testing that stuff out. But like to literally spend an hour, maybe two hours setting up an ad, not a podcast ad, you. Because there's no tracking involved. It's so simple. Same for the YouTube ads. It's. It's faster, but you could just do that and then literally not look at it again for two weeks. It's an amazing thing. So I just want to encourage anyone who feels like, no, you know, success has to be hard. Success has to be this slog. Like men don't think like that. There may be men listening, but I just want to recognize that nobody, if, in most cases, if you offer a man an easy button, he's got to push it because he's been told, you know, yeah, take every opportunity you have. But women have been socialized to believe that, no, this has to be hard. I couldn't possibly take any shortcuts. I really don't see ads as a shortcut at all. You're actually doing a service in helping get your great stuff and the way that you help people in front of more people who need you, does that make sense?

Well, I think you just hit the nail on the head. You're doing people a service and I can tell you that my reach, organic reach on social media, I've almost haven't completely stopped posting. I kind of did the summer and took a break and I've done a little bit more in August. But it is almost Neil out there, quite frankly. Claire. And I'm like, why am I doing this? Because that is just, you know, it's not working and it's a lot of work to do those posts and what have you. But I, you know, I think all of us who are listening here today, we're ready to, you know, get our content out in the world and let people know how we can help them. And I think, you know, paid ads is a great way to do that.

Yeah, I just, I just think about all the people who let me know how much like my podcast completely free content has seriously impacted their business. So. But the only way I don't literally don't post about my episodes anywhere. My guests occasionally do if you know, they're active on social platforms. But the only way new people are really discovering it, besides perhaps a trickle of word of mouth is with the ads. So I am happy to spend that. I mean I see the ROI over time for sure on the podcast ads. But also I just know like I'm getting this incredible conversation where like somebody shared tactic or a mindset shift or something that people turn around and, and they change something in their business as a result. Like yeah, I really just think of it as a service and with certain ads it's a real low cost service to do for people.

Well, let's move on to ad number three that you recommend. And I'm very interested in learning a little bit more about this one.

Yeah. So for anyone who is involved in like a time sensitive promotion. So it could be a launch, it could be a summit or a bundle, things like that. It has been pretty common for years for people to run ads that are get shown to people who already know about you, your existing audience. We call that a warm audience and that's typically like when doors are open, when cart is open. Right. But what I do because it is so cheap and it also gives me more time to Reach people is I will do a kind of coming soon ad right. Right now. For example, if you go into the ads library and this is something anyone can just. If you Google meta ads library, it will open up the link. Then you put my name in. You can see these ads I have running, the one that I am focused on now. My podcast ad is just always running, but the active one for this current launch is. Hey, we are offering a unheard of before bonus for people who join in the first 48 hours of enrollment. I started that ad last week, two weeks before the cart opened. Because what I was seeing was that like my email open rates were down. I don't know if I've ended up in spam or something. I notice fewer registrations for my webinar compared to the last one. I think that has to do with the topic. So as soon as I saw that I was like, okay, well Claire, you have this really great way of letting the same people, the people on your list, the people who follow you on Instagram, even though you don't post anything there, you can still get the word out. And they need to know about this ahead of time and not just when the door is open, because it is time. It's very time sensitive. So this is a very cheap campaign because I'm targeting this small audience in a very specific way. Not the classic retargeting ads way that might not mean anything to you, which is totally fine. It is definitely ad jargon, but it is a departure from what I used to do because those things just don't work the same way now as they used to. And a lot of people will hold on to the old ways when you have to, you have to change things up. So that's, that's the one I'll do that for before like the launch of my high ticket offer where it's an application based thing. So we say, hey, this is coming. Get on the waitlist or not. Like most people don't get on the waitlist, but they start to connect what my emails are about or the fact that they see emails coming in from me with what's happening, even if they don't open them, even if I'm in spam, even if I'm in promotions or whatever.

So I love this. And I was thinking about it as we were, we're about to go through a launch for in hobby school. And you might not be familiar with hobby school, but it's another brand that I own and we're doing the Art of Handmade Summit and our List there is pretty sizable. It's around 20,000. And I was thinking, you know what, as you were talking through that I need to do one of these reach campaigns or to, I guess to target that specific list to get them to sign up for that summit. Because I think our open rates there are around, like, 45%. So there's a lot of people who aren't probably seeing those emails, and I need to go back and retarget them. I think that would help with our open rates there too.

You know, Destiny. When is that happening? When is the summit?

October 1st through the 3rd is when we're doing that.

Okay, perfect. So what I would recommend for you specifically, because given your audience size, it's, like, a lot bigger than mine. I would actually do something just a little bit differently. So what I recommend is that you come to strategy Week. I. I don't think I've announced this publicly yet to our clients, but twice a year, we do a strategy week or we call it boot camp, and it's just five days in a row of calls. You can come with anything. But I would like you to come so we can talk specifically about setup, type, because I might actually recommend what we teach. And an additional thing for you want to talk about budget. Want to talk about a couple different things for that? Okay. So you could absolutely just take what we teach in the course and do it. But I think, like, this is why we offer the bootcamp week. We also have the Facebook group where people can come in and monthly calls, but you have. Your business is, you know, going to be a little bit different from everybody else's. And I want to give you personalized recommendations based on that.

I love that. And you do that for all of your students in absolute Facebook ads.

Oh, yeah. The boot. The bootcamp is twice a year, but then we have these monthly Q and A calls, and then we have the Facebook group where, if you wanted, you could say, this is what I'm doing. This is what I see you recommend in the course. Any other recommendations? People post like that all the time. Most people say, hey, here's what I'm seeing in the ads manager. Here are my numbers. What would you recommend to test next? But people are always welcome to come in and say, let's talk strategy. Can I get some ideas? Or, you know, we always like to hear people's ideas first and then so we can build on them.

I know so much support that you're given in that course.

Yeah. And it's lifetime access, so you pay once and you get all the updates, you get all the boot camps, you get all the Q and A calls. It's not just like a 12 month thing. And then good luck.

And what I loved about that course, because I went in there I think like two months ago. You've kept it updated over the years. Like I said, I've been a student since I think 2019, maybe it was 2018, but I'm gonna, I'm thinking it was 2019. But you've kept it updated over the years too.

Oh, yeah. I don't really recommend anybody sell something that's so platform specific unless you plan to keep it updated. There were, there's always talk about like, well, maybe you should make it one year access so that people are still paying. I just, I don't, I don't love that for ads. I like that the people who, you know, stuck with me from the beginning, first Launch was in 2014 in September and they paid like a lot less than the courses now. But they're still coming, they're still coming. They're still getting questions answered and I just, I'm always going to be okay with doing that.

And that's one of the reasons why I recommend is that you keep it updated. You have tons of support in there. Claire, before we wrap it up here today, any last minute tips or suggestions for the audience?

Well, I think a big, a big thing that kind of can stand in the way of doing ads for people is, well, a few things. One is just the idea of it is very overwhelming. There, there are belief that like the ads manager is very complicated. And I'm not gonna lie, there are a lot of options in there. And so it's normal to look at that and to start kind of freaking out a little, especially if you see a random error message, which actually right now I'm seeing this in so many client accounts there is an error message popping up that makes no sense at all. And it's just a bug. It's a bug in Facebook's interface. So I mean, that's super understandable. Which is why I would recommend if you're going to spend money on ads is to get support and to follow something step by step. To have a place where you can ask questions like, hey, my screen looks different. Because that's just what happens. I will update something and then I'll open up a client's account and their screen looks different. And it's very frustrating. But for the most part it's really easy to, you know, just help guide people to where they need to Go. But the other thing is really this belief that you have to spend 5, $10,000 a month to get results. And that's. It's simply not true. Will you get more leads faster if you spend more? Yes, but it doesn't mean that you have to, you don't have to go fast. You can start slow and then ramp up when you see things are working. You can ramp down when you're going to be on vacation or you need to focus on other things. And so maybe you don't want to handle the customer service of like new clients in a certain thing. But I am always, I told Destiny that I am a conservative advertiser. My own budgets are low and I'm always keeping risk in mind for my clients. Like there's, there's always some risk. Right. There's risk in, in even doing organic content. Right. Because it is your time. And if you try a specific strategy, let's say for three to six months and it doesn't work, that's three to six months of kind of time lost. Right. So the same is true for the money. Sometimes you're going to spend the money, but you're going to get the data. You're going to be able to see, why isn't this working? Oh, guess what? People aren't clicking. And so that tells me it's not resonating or people are clicking, they're signing up and then they're not opening a single email. Well, that means your subject lines need some work. There's always data that you can get. But so there's risk. Right? There's just always inherent risk in business. And I'm always kind of, what I teach and how I coach on these calls is from that perspective of like, not everybody can plunk down $10,000 a month just to test things. You know, I'm really looking at how can we, how can we make decisions or help you make decisions that are, that makes sense from, like if you're risk averse or, you know, need to keep an eye on the budget.

And I would put myself too in that category. Very risk averse and wanting to make sure that we're not, you know, I'm not wasting money on ads, so definitely want to get that return there. Now, Claire, you have a class that you are teaching in about a week. Can you tell the audience just a little bit more about that and what they would learn in that class?

Yeah. So it's called grow your list on autopilot, A complete intro to Facebook and Instagram ads. So there's a little bit of what we touched on today, like some of the. The better ads to run. But I'm also going to be teaching about how this algorithm works, which will help you see, especially if you've tried ads in the past, why they might not have worked. And then also just some best practices in the three most important areas. There are a number of things that you can do wrong in the setup, and it's barely going to impact your results right there. That's just the truth. My clients will be like, wait, but what about this and what about that? I says it doesn't. Doesn't really matter which I see clients get results with campaigns that are set up wrong, you know, but there were a few that they're just three, really, where I want people to, like, make sure that they understand this and that they get it right. And so that's what we're going to be doing. Yeah, It's Wednesday, the 21st, August 21st. And then that day we're also opening enrollment with, like I mentioned, I have this ad about this bonus. And the bonus, if it's okay to share Destiny, is.

Yeah, absolutely.

Anyone who joins the 21st, the 22nd or the 23rd, we're actually going to take one of those three pieces and do it for you. We are going to build audiences. We'll build each client their own audience for them to use. So that takes away the need to make all these decisions. It's one of the more overwhelming parts of the ads manager because you do have so many choices. Well, we're going to just build it ourselves and make a video of how you can just replicate it in your ad account. And then you just run ads to that. When the ads are running, you know that if there's anything that you want to improve that's not working, the issue is not the audience. And that's one of those three things that I said, like, this is how you can kind of mess things up totally accidentally. Well, we're going to be taking that off your plate and it's going to make your results a lot better.

And I love that. So they're going to. When. And I just want to clarify for everybody, the audiences, the people that are going to be seeing your ad from Facebook or Instagram. So that is such a great bonus. So, Claire, thank you. Thank you so much for being here today, sharing all of your wonderful knowledge with us. I'm going to make sure that all of your links are in the show notes to sign up for that class where you guys can get in touch with Claire and also subscribe to her Get Paid podcast. So Claire, thank you so much for everything.

Well, thank you Destiny. This has been so much fun. It's great to catch up with you. And yeah, I would love to see people live or maybe catching the replay on the 21st.

Thanks for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. If you love the show, I'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.