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If you missed part 1 you really do need to listen to it. Context is vital for this mini series. So please pause this, go listen to part 1, and then meet us back here for part 2.

Let’s jump right in to the continuation of my many, many lessons gleaned from my willing, but disappointing $80k loss.

As stated in part 1, we started ads to the free on demand workshop, which upsold with a 24 hour buying cycle to my FitsPRO foundations course priced at $1,894.00

• It became clear after four months that people needed a longer buying cycle before they were going to go from cold audience to paying me nearly $2,000.00.

It sounded very obvious to me when a mentor said this to me after I shared my data and experience up to this point. Like duh, why would someone who’s never heard of me before, watch a free workshop, and trust me enough in that 45 minutes to fork over 2k? They wouldn’t.

This made me question the agency as well. Like shouldn’t they have known or seen that? No? I don’t know.

There is so much context here. I am one of MANY. I have friends who this works for but they are LITERALLY the only person who offers what they offer. They fill a serious gaping hole in an industry. FB is riddled with business coaches who coach coaches. To a cold audience, why am I any different? You know? So, perspective and context matters there. Saturation of an industry does really play a part.

If you’re like, well Annie maybe it was your funnel, trust me, we thought of that, but…

• Just because funnel performs well with a warm audience, does NOT mean it will perform well with a cold audience. Cold audiences are a completely different ball game than warm audiences.

Because they were making me no money – the two total sales that came in that first 4 months would remain the only 2 of 3 sales that every came from a FB person. I downgraded to driving ads to my ideal client avatar download.

Looking back, I should have just cut the cord then. Not because the ads weren’t working but because there was a clear disconnect with this agency and my approach to business. 

With that, I was committed for a year. If I quit then, I’d still be left with the “what if I would have tried driving traffic to a freebie instead of the workshop?” So, we pressed on with our new approach and updated funnel.

I went on to update and lengthen the funnel two more times as no one was converting. Including a complete overhaul, new bonuses, a brand new low level offer, and rebuild of the funnel itself. When I say I exhausted my options and committed to the process, I am for real.

The list WAS growing. That’s where my next mistake came into play.

• Testing or gathering more information from the leads being brought in should have happened WAY SOONER. 

I didn’t know this was needed but boy did I find out that the leads they were bringing in through their targeting just weren’t even qualified leads. Not from the research I gathered in my last week of working with the agency.

In the last week of working with them, I dropped a new super low end offer and compared purchases from my warm audience and the list I’d built from FB ads. Of course I’d expect my warm audience to buy at a higher rate, but not a SINGLE, I repeat not a single prospect from that FB list purchased.

On top of that, I dropped another exclusive opportunity to buy fitsPRO. If it performed well, even a 1% conversion, that would have been solid data and an indication of what might need to happen with my longer funnel down the road. No bites. Not a single FB ads prospect purchased. 

This data made my decision to quit very black and white. It was clear to me what needed to happen. It would have been a different story if the leads being brought in were buying even six months down the road, but fact remained, they weren’t. So I gathered more data after the promo drops because I had a list of over 6,000 leads and knew near to nothing about them. What a waste on my end.

I should have gathered information via an intake of some kind IMMEDIATELY. Which has lead to me gathering said information when people purchase from me. You heard about those intake questions in a recent episode. They’re a game changer. And something I am very grateful to have implemented due to this experience.

And in addition to that, I should have been WAYYYYYY more curious and in the process about who exactly they were targeting with ads. My ads might have been their best performing – meaning highest opt in rates, but if the people weren’t real potential buyers, the leads are of no value, right? My bad there. Again I pretty much had this back and forth in my mind through the entire experience – I am paying for THEM TO DO EVERYTHING. So, shouldn’t I just trust them to do their job, they know more than me. And then this ever-constant questioning in the back of my mind about the approach and how I would do things differently.

That leads me to how I would actually use ads in the future if I were to entertain this venture again:

• Ads are for list building (for me, if I ever do them again) or hitting your warm audience during a push / launch

I found through the list survey that I sent out that 50% people had actually downloaded my ideal client avatar from an ad, but they had already been organically following me on instagram for at least 3 months before that.

Thus – the most sensible use of ads would be to target my WARM audience (people who already follow me or are on my ConvertKit mailing list) during a push or launch period. Essentially a retargeting approach vs a cold audience approach. Something you’d think the agency would have suggested at some point, but never did.

There is a legit use there on a much smaller budget and demand. I think this could be a far more beneficial approach and something I am very willing try in the future. More of a sprint, limited time promo approach to warm audience vs a constant marketing to cold audiences.

Other honorable mentions are:

• The IOS update was real and definitely effected my ads and the ads of colleagues I spoke to. Less tracking ability makes targeting the right people harder.
• I knew what ads I’d seen and purchased from as a consumer and should have been far more voicetrious about trying those vs letting the experts do their thing (which goes back to my very first point in part 1).

The list truly goes on. There are endless lessons in this experience for me that I will 100% take into the future.

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