062: Facebook Ads Won't Grow Your Subscription Box For You

Facebook ads won't grow your subscription box for you. Yes, I said it. It might be unpopular opinion, but let's talk about it. Welcome to the Launch Your Box podcast with weekly tips, tricks, and strategies to start, launch, and grow your subscription box. Now here's your host, Sarah Williams. So I've got a heated topic for you this morning. There's this belief that some people think that all you have to do is throw money at a problem, AKA growing my subscription, and there's an instant solution. And there's not. And I call these conversations when I get my ranty pants on because I just get frustrated. I get frustrated at people that say, I'm going to spend $5,000 on Facebook ads. I'm going to spend $10,000 on Facebook ads. It's going to grow my subscription. That's going to be the answer. That's what I need to figure out. I need to figure out how to run Facebook ads because that's the only way that I'm going to grow. And it's just not true. And people that are selling that false belief that all you have to do is run Facebook ads to have a successful subscription box, they're not telling you the complete story. And there's just, there's so many things that you have to have dialed in with your business and your ideal customer, before you even start Facebook ads. And the reality is that most people that start running Facebook ads don't have those things dialed in, and that's why they get frustrated. Facebook ads are one tool in a multi-channel marketing plan. They aren't even the main tool, and they shouldn't be weighted heavier than the rest of the tools in your marketing plan. If you solely rely on the ads, to grow your box, your retention rate's going to drop. It's going to drop. You can bring people in all day long with a Facebook ad. If you have a really good dialed-in ad, you could bring people in with the Facebook ad, but they're not going to stay. They're not invested in you. You're going to have a high churn and you're going to see a lot of the businesses. If you pull back the curtain behind some of these big businesses, that their sole traffic driver is Facebook ads, I guarantee you they have a low retention rate. And by low, I mean less than 80%, less than 75%. On average, the industry average for big subscription box businesses, their retention rate is about 60%. We don't have retention rates like that. We're small business. We have 90% retention rates because we've built the know, like, and trust factor in And so when they see an ad, they buy it like, oh, that looks interesting, let me try that. They try it for a month and they bounce. They aren't invested in you. They're not invested in your business. They don't know you. And so while throwing money seems like a good idea, it seems like a quick fix. It's not the answer. It's not the answer at all. 62% of small business owners complain that Facebook ads don't work. And I believe that it's not that they don't work, but it's because business owners are putting all their eggs into one basket and they're not getting the results they want. Facebook ads can be incredibly effective, but they work as part of an overall marketing strategy and not a standalone strategy. So before you start throwing stacks of cash into Facebook ads hoping it's going to pay off, Let's talk about the things that will make the biggest difference in growing your subscriber base over Facebook ads. So let's talk about number 1. So number 1, clearly define your niche. If you've been around the podcast for any amount of time, you know, we talk about this all the time. The riches are in the niches. Stop going too broad. It's a myth that if you go too broad, you have a larger pool of people to buy your subscription box. But the problem is when you go too broad, you're not known for anything. People don't find you because you're for everyone instead of being for someone. And maybe you've niched down already. Maybe you have a niche already, but maybe you still need to niche down a little bit more. So I want you to think about your subscription box and who it's for. Are you for more than one person? That's what I want you to ask yourself. And do you have room to niche down? Because there's a lot of things that happen when we niche down, but most importantly, we can talk to our ideal customer in a much better way. We become more searchable. We'll be able to have more keywords and we can get really specific with our messaging. When you start to run Facebook ads, you'll be able to target your ideal customer so much better if you have niched down. So, so number 1, I want you to clearly define your niche. And if you have an area to be able to niche down even further, I want you to do that. Number 2. So this is the other thing that I think is really important when we're talking about really growing and scaling our subscription box, but is your copy clear and conversational? And I'm talking about all the copy. I'm talking about your website, your emails, your social media, every written copy that you have. Is it clear or is it confusing? And sometimes we're so close to it that we can't see it. Is it conversational or is it too professional? So I want you to take a look at that. Does the copy that you have on social media, does it match what they see when they get to your website? So if someone's following you on social media or sees one of your posts on social media, when they click on a link and they go to your website, are they going to see the same things? Are they going to get a completely different feel? So we want to make sure that your website is conversational, just like your social media is. I really want you to work on making all of your copy engaging, fun, and I want you to speak to the pain point that your subscription box solves. So what are those pain points? Why would somebody subscribe to your subscription box. I want you to really speak to those because those are going to be the reasons that people click and buy. 9 times out of 10, when I am reviewing one of our Launch Your Box members' websites, I find that they try to be a little too professional and it comes off stuffy, or they overword things. And so it's, it's becoming confusing and there's just too many words. And let's be honest, people aren't going to read all of that. So we have to be clear and concise. We have to bullet point. We have to make sure it's fun and engaging to read. We don't want to be too wordy, but we're also making people be private investigators. So I was on one of our members' sites just the other day, yesterday or the day before, and I was reviewing— she had a question about something. And so I was going to go take a look at her page just to see if I could answer her question. And I got to her homepage and she had great images. She had some great copy. It was a little wordy, but the problem was when I was looking at her sales page, I didn't know what was in her subscription box. And I think that we're all guilty of that. Like I went there, it all seems great. It all looks great, but I had no idea what exactly was in her subscription box. And it took me being like this private investigator, digging around on her site, going deep into different links. Weeks before I actually saw pictures of some of her past boxes. And I don't know why we hide stuff. I don't know why we make people search for stuff. And so when we do that, it keeps people from buying, it keeps people from clicking, it keeps people from going further. And so we want to make sure that any organic traffic that we're sending to our site, we're removing these barriers. To being a subscriber for us. And sometimes we don't even know that they're there. And so we need to really take a good look at our website copy, our email copy, and our social media copy, making sure it's not confusing. You as the business owner all day long know exactly what you're doing and selling and who it's for, but the person that's landing on your website for the very first time Do they know what your subscription is about? And if you're not sure, I would, I would enlist somebody that, you know, hey, can you just go over to my website and walk through it with me and just be there with them and let them tell you what they're thinking and what they're feeling? And do you understand what this is and can I make it more clear or how do I make it more clear? And don't go into that conversation being defensive, but really being open to, I want to make sure if somebody landed on this site for the very first time, they knew exactly what I did and exactly who it's for. This will not only get your organic traffic up with keywords and SEO, but it's going to help your conversion rates. So when you get them to their site and your copy is clear and concise and conversational and fun, it's going to help your conversion numbers and your conversion rates are going to go through the roof, which are also going to help you grow your subscription box. So number 1, clearly define your niche. Are you clearly defined or are you too broad? That's the first thing I want you to ask yourself, and only you can answer that. Number 2, take a good look at your copy on your website, in your emails, on your social media. Make sure it's clear, conversational, and fun. And number 3, This is what I want you to do before we ever think about spending our hard-earned money on Facebook ads. How are you capturing people once they get to your site? Do you have a high-converting pop-up or an opt-in on your site? Are you going to be able to capture them once they come there? It does no good to send people to your website if you don't have a way to get them on a list. And I'm talking like an email list or a text list. If we don't have something set up to capture them. And it can't just be something that is there but nobody's interested in. It needs to be something that will convert them. We need a juicy offer right there on that homepage, right there in our pop-up. Remember that somebody has to see something 7 times before they buy. 7 times. So how do we make sure that we serve it right back up to them? We got to get them on a list so we can text them, we can email them, we can invite them to come to a live, we can put short video in front of them. We have to make sure that we're capturing them. Why would you spend money to send people to your website if you don't have any high-converting offer to get them on a list? It makes zero sense. So these are the 3 things that I want you to consider. I want you to work on before we ever think about Facebook ads. Defining your niche, making sure your copy is clear and concise, and capturing them on a list. Once you focus on these things, then you can add in Facebook ads to your marketing plan. But there are so many organic ways to drive traffic and get subscribers. And so what I see is that people, they'll start their social media and, you know, I know it's really hard to start from scratch. I 100% get that. We have a lot of training inside Launch Your Box about building your audience. It is so important and Facebook ads can help that, but it can't help that if you haven't done the work beforehand. And there's so many organic ways that I would want you to work on building traffic before taking your hard-earned money and putting that into Facebook ads. And so let's just talk about a couple of those things, things that you can do for free. Pinterest. Pinterest is my number 2 traffic source, second to Facebook only. And for a long time it was number 1. And it's free. It's free. It's a search engine and a social media platform. Have you given Pinterest any amount of time for your business? If you haven't, you're leaving money on the table. Writing a blog. Writing a blog on a regular basis, whether that's weekly, biweekly, monthly, go back and listen to podcast episode number 58. And I want you to really listen to what a blog can do for your subscription box business. Again, it is free. It is free traffic. It is free SEO. It is free keywords. It is free content that you can use on social media. You can use on Pinterest. You can use on short video. It is so much content. Content that will drive organic traffic back to your website, episode 58. Go listen to that. And it doesn't have to be hard. I don't, I don't want to ever teach you anything complicated. These are very simple things that you can add into your business without thinking you have to, you know, take a second mortgage out on your house to grow your business. YouTube. Do you do something very visual? A lot of members inside Launch Your Box have like crafting or art boxes or lettering or something that they're teaching with their subscription box. And these are prime examples of things that you could be doing on YouTube, which has millions of users. So is there traffic on YouTube that you're not getting because you're not there yet? TikTok is the same way. Little bite-sized short videos. You do them for free. Getting on another platform will really diversify your efforts and potentially your audience. So before you go throw money at Facebook ads, I want you to consider some different avenues, some different options. We talked about Pinterest, we talked about YouTube, we talked about TikTok, we talked about starting a blog. All of those are free. So spend some time on that. Don't put all your eggs and your money into the Facebook ads basket. You're just going to be on a constant treadmill of churn. And what I mean is that you're going to be paying for people to come in and they're going to be leaving as quickly as they come in because they're not invested in you. You haven't served them before you started to sell to them. If we don't have the rest of our marketing plan locked down, I don't want Facebook ads to be the thing that you start next. So maybe that's a sigh of relief to some of you, like, okay, I don't have to do Facebook ads to grow my business. There are so many other things that I can do to grow my audience and to grow my subscriber base than Facebook ads. They're not a quick fix. They're a tool to help you continue what you've already started. It's like building a fire. You gotta start the fire. Okay. And you're adding these logs on, right? The logs out in the forest are free. Just go grab another log and continue your fire. Those are the free organic traffic, but gasoline comes in handy. Gasoline comes in handy and gasoline could be your Facebook ads. And that can really put the fuel on the fire. But if you haven't started the fire and you don't have any logs there, the gasoline is going to do nothing. To help your fire burn. It's going to light it and it's going to fizz away. So I want you to remember that when you're thinking about starting Facebook ads, it's a great tool to something that you're already doing. So let's start with the organic items. Let's start with the logs. Let's get our fire burning, and then we can put some gasoline on it. I just don't want you putting all of your time, effort, energy, and most importantly, our cash flow into something that you're not prepared for, because it takes more than just setting up an audience, collecting some interest, and running an ad with a good image. It's more than that. It's building a business that's sustainable long-term by doing a lot of these different organic marketing efforts and using all of them as a whole to build your marketing plan for your subscription box business. If the idea of creating a subscription box is swirling around in your head, I encourage you to head over to launchyourboxwithsarah.com, get on our waitlist, and grab some of our free downloads to help you get started. That's launchyourboxwithsarah.com.