In this episode of the Doing It Online podcast, Kate McKibbin walks listeners through a 90‑day side‑by‑side test of two Facebook‑ad funnel strategies for the same low‑ticket product (Cash Money Content). The first strategy used a lead‑magnet entry point, spending A$6,311 to acquire ~1,200 leads at roughly A$3‑4 per lead, achieving a ROAS of ~0.6 and an upfront loss of about A$3,000. The second strategy sent ads directly to the sales page, spending A$76,000, generating 1,100 sales and a ROAS of ~2, resulting in roughly A$75,000 profit. Kate then tracks downstream conversions to mid‑ and high‑ticket offers across 30‑, 60‑, and 90‑day cohorts. The direct‑sales funnel consistently outperformed the lead‑magnet funnel (30‑day: 15 vs 3 sales; 60‑day: 37 vs 9; 90‑day: 50 vs 15), a ratio of about 3.3:1, with similar conversion timing. She interprets the data, noting that while direct sales yields higher immediate and downstream profit for businesses with sufficient ad budget, skill, and risk tolerance, lead‑magnet funnels still provide value for early‑stage businesses by building an email list and delivering modest downstream revenue with lower upfront cost. Kate concludes with strategic guidance on choosing a funnel based on budget, expertise, and risk appetite, and offers her agency’s services via Instagram @HelloFunnels.
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I've been running an experiment in our business over the last 90 days, and I wanted to share the findings with you because I think a lot of people are wondering right now, should you run a funnel? What type of funnel? Should it be a lead magnet funnel? Should you run ads direct to a low-ticket offer or something else? And my answer is always, it depends, but I wanted to give you some real data to help you make that decision for yourself. Hey, hey everybody. I'm Kate McKibbin from hellofunnels.co and welcome to the Doing It Online podcast. Today, I'm pulling back the curtain and showing you exactly what happened when I ran two funnels side by side over 90 days, same time period, similar number of people, same offers at the end. One started with a lead magnet funnel as the entry point. The other started as a direct sales entry point. And I wanted to see which one works best, the leads versus the customers, and not just initially, but also in the long run as people move through our funnel and ascend to our other offers. Which one is the most profitable upfront and which one is the most profitable later. So let me walk you through what we did, what we found, and what I think it means for your business. Alrighty, let's dive on in. All right. I hope you're ready to get a bit nerdy. So here is what we tested. Campaign number 1, lead magnet funnel entry point. So what that means is we ran Facebook ads with the objectives of getting leads. People opted in for a lead magnet. They then went through our Double Payday email sequence. And at the end of that sequence, we sold them our Cash Money Content product. This is our low ticket offer. Then after that, we put them into a further funnel for our mid ticket and then high ticket offers. Now over the last 90 days, we spent $6,311 Australian dollars on this campaign and it brought in just over 1,200 leads. Into the funnel. Now Facebook was saying it was about $3 Australian per lead. I know it's over-reporting on the number of leads that the 1,200 is the exact number going through the funnel. We can see Facebook said it was more. So I think it's probably more like $4-ish Australian per lead, which is pretty decent, particularly for an expensive time of year. Our ROAS on this campaign, however, was only about 0.6. So it wasn't breaking even upfront, but the lead cost was still good. So it was really, it was offsetting more than half of the ad spend. And to be fair, once I set this up, I kind of just let it run. I didn't spend any time optimizing it. So I'm sure if a bit more optimization, a bit more love and care, we could probably got that initial ROAS up to a 0.7 or even a 0.8, but I really just wanted to run it as is to see what happened as people went through the rest of our funnel. So that was campaign number 1. Campaign number 2 was a direct sales entry point into the funnel. So what that means is we ran Facebook ads direct to that very same cash money content, low ticket offer, but direct to it. They weren't opting in first. They were hitting a sales page. So same upfront offer, same price point. And then if they purchased, the purchases then went through the mid-ticket offer funnel and the high ticket offer funnel. And so over the last 90 days for this particular funnel path, we spent about $76,000 Australian, which is probably just a bit under $45,000 US, I think, if my, uh, current currency conversion is correct. And we made over, um, $160,000 Australian in sales from this offer only, just from that initial offer, from people clicking on ad, landing on the page, purchasing right away. So the ROAS for this was very close to 2, and it fluctuated a little bit over time, but it sort of hung around that number. In that time we made 1,100 sales. So a really similar number of sales as came through this funnel as the leads came from the other funnel. And so this is why I was really excited. It was a really good comparison. So even though we obviously spent a lot more money here and made a lot more money initially here as well, we had a really similar number of people going through each funnel. So it was this really great side-by-side comparison, which is pretty rare. And right off the bat, obviously their immediate profit, the lead magnet funnel made a $3,000 loss. The direct sales funnel made a $75,000 roughly profit, like right out of the gate. So obviously that initially is a big win for the direct sales campaign, but I was most interested in what happens next because I'm all about the funnel stacks. Okay. All right. So here's what I wanted to know. Will someone who purchased a low ticket offer convert to the next level offer? And at what rate are they going to convert compared to someone who came through as a lead instead? Because sometimes we just don't have that comparison. We might have a bit of a gut feel, but we don't have the exact numbers. And I think it's very rare to have that comparison where we've got same product, same timeframe, same number of people. Like often we'll run one campaign. Stop it, then run another one. So it's not a true apples for apples comparison. So at the end of last year, we actually built out a really cool dashboard in Airtable and it's been really, really helpful to let me track, you know, go a bit deeper into tracking this. So basically what I was able to do was look at 3 different timeframes over the last 90 days. So I've got the last 30 days, the last 60 days, and the total time, the last 90 days. And we're going to look at how many sales happened in each of these time periods from people coming through these different funnels. All right. So here's what we found. The 30-day cohort. So for our lead magnet funnel, which had about 350-ish leads go through in the last 30 days, we made an additional 3 sales of our other offers. So not the cash money content product that's made its own number of sales. These are sales of, of our other programs, our mid-ticket, high-ticket products. Our direct sales funnel, these are people who purchase, so not just leads, made 15 sales of our other programs in that same time period with a similar number of people. So that's a 3 versus 15 just in the first 30 days. Now the 60-day cohort, our lead magnet funnel made 9 sales of our other programs. Our direct sales funnel made 37 sales in that same timeframe. So that's now 9 versus 37. Already we're seeing a bit of a trend here. Then there was the 90-day cohort. So now looking at all the sales that have come through in the last 90 days, and obviously there are still people moving through different parts of our funnel. Our funnel is roughly 20 to 30 days long, depending on, you know, people's activities in the funnel, different things that we're tracking, but the longest is about 30 days. So there's still people in there who haven't completed it yet, but in the last 90 days, our lead magnet campaign made 15 sales, which is still great, right? Like considering that's 15 sales and it costs me $3,000 to get those 15 sales and they're across different price points, different products. Some, as I said, a couple of low ticket, some mid and some high. There's a real variation there, but our direct sales funnel made 50 sales. So it's 15 to 50. So it's basically a 3 and a bit to 1 ratio of people going on to purchase based on whether it was a lead magnet or direct. And one thing I actually thought was really interesting was one of my initial hunches was that it might take the leads longer to convert. And they actually didn't, they didn't convert at as high a rate, but the timeframes that they took were very, very similar. So I thought that was quite interesting. Okay. So coming out of this, I think some people would look at this and go, well, the direct sales campaign entry point is obviously the clear winner. Everyone should do that. And if you have the budget for it, and to be frank, the stomach for it, then absolutely it is. Like to be able to spend $76,000 on ads, get back roughly $80,000 immediately on top of that as profit, and then get a further 50 sales of your various offers over the next 3 months is amazing, but not everybody is ready to do that. and that's why I think it's really important to encourage people to start with the funnel that best matches their current skill level and their current appetite for risk. So starting with a lead magnet funnel, yes, the rewards are much smaller. However, for someone just getting started, you've still added 1,200 people to your email list. You've still converted 15 of those people into buyers of your other programs and offers. And you know what? You wouldn't actually be out of pocket at all because those other sales mean you'd actually be in profit, but your upfront out of pocket was only $3,000. So roughly $1,000 a month, and that would have given you 5 additional sales a month of your other programs and offers. So I think, you know, I can see where my preference lies, and that's definitely the direct sales route for someone with my level of experience and expertise. That makes the most sense. but I think this experiment just shows you that you can have success either way. And if you are in that stage of business where you're still doing the baby steps, you're still figuring stuff out, there is nothing wrong with going the lead magnet route as long as your expectations are set correctly. And if you are someone who's got a really strong offer, you've tested it, you've probably— like, this is not the first time you've ever run ads, you've probably dabbled in running ads already, and you've got a bit of skill there, a bit of confidence. then you can see some really big rewards if you're ready to take that next step up, put on your big girl pants and start running direct sales. But you've got to make sure you've got the skills to match. You've got the budget to match and you've got the appetite for risk to match, but either way, these both come out as a win. All right. So that's the experiment, lead magnet versus direct sales, real numbers, 90 days side by side. And I hope that helps you make a decision about which route is right for you and your business right now. and of course, if you want our help setting up either of these funnels, this is literally what we do with our clients every day. Or if you wanna chat about which one of these makes the most sense for you, you can come and DM us over at Instagram @HelloFunnels. We'd love to help. Alrighty. That's it for today, guys. I'll see you next week.
