In today’s episode, we are joined by Jordan Rothwell Perry. Jordan is a marketing expert and the founder of LAUNCH by JR, a paid advertising agency focused on lead generation through list building, resulting in more leads and increased sales.
She thrives in helping women scale their businesses through taking paid digital off of their plate. She founded her company in 2020, but has been in marketing for over a decade, working for Chick-fil-A, one of Johns Hopkins Medicine’s Children’s hospitals, and at a national nonprofit with over 1.7 million combined followers on all of their platforms.
Tune in as we dive into all things paid ads including how to prep your account for running ads, what retargeting is and how you can use it, and so much more.
In this episode, we discuss:
- [2:06] How Jordan started her business
- [5:05] How to prep your accounts for running ads
- [6:15] What a pixel is
- [7:32] What retargeting is and how you can use it in your business
- [8:27] How to make sure your social media is optimized for running ads
- [12:24] Questions to ask yourself before starting paid ads
- [14:04] What to aim for when it comes to ad conversions
- [16:53] The difference between leads and conversions
- [20:40] The benefits of paid ads as a part of your overall marketing strategy
- [23:42] One misconception people have about the investment behind running ads
- [26:45] The minimum budget you need to start investing in ads
- [29:59] How to actually start with ads
- [30:59] The two types of ads you can run and how to approach them
- [32:53] What A/B testing is and how it works
- [34:47] How to get around Facebook’s advertising rules in certain niches
- [42:39] One thing Jordan wishes everyone knew about paid ads
How Jordan started her business
Jordan has been a marketing consultant since she graduated from college in 2011. Sometime in 2015 or 2016, organic reach started to dip on most social media channels so Jordan decided to take a chance and dabble in paid ads. She worked with different clients who had ad budgets and she was able to test the waters and see what worked and what didn’t.
In 2020, Jordan met her now husband online and fell in love and made the move from Florida to Georgia. From there, she went all in on her business and built her digital ads agency.
How to prep your accounts for running ads
The first and most crucial step you should take is putting a pixel on your website. This will allow you to retarget people who have been on your website and get in front of them 180 days after you put the pixel on your website.
For example, it’s currently January – so if you’re looking to do ads in April, you can capitalize on the work you are doing now and get in front of those people a few months down the road.
If you are unsure of how to get a pixel on your website, just Google the meta pixel and you will find instructions on how to get that piece of code on your website.
What a pixel is
A pixel is a piece of code that you put on your website that tracks people who visit your website. Think about the times when you have been on a website shopping and later that night when you are scrolling through your Instagram or Facebook feed you see an ad for that specific website you were on earlier that day. The pixel is helping that website owner retarget you and show their ad to you at a later date.
How you can use retargeting in your business
When you put the pixel on your website, you can retarget potential customers on both Facebook and Instagram. For example, if your audience uses Instagram often, then you can take that traffic that’s been going to your website and start getting ads in front of them on Instagram. You can even use retargeting to increase your Instagram followers. You can also use retargeting to drive traffic back to your website to opt in or start shopping.
How to make sure your social media is optimized for running ads
Before diving into paid ads, make sure that your social media is optimized because you don’t want to send a bunch of traffic to subpar content or have them click on your ad and go to your social media accounts and see that you haven’t posted in three months.
When it comes to paid advertising, you need to have a solid foundation already set up when you’re sending people back to your website so that they’re landing in a place that is representative of your brand and has the same brand voice and aesthetic.
Before you even think about starting ads, make sure to spring clean both your website and social media channels. Jordan recommends testing all the links on your website and making sure that they work. She also recommends testing your opt-ins and making sure that those are working as well as updating welcome sequences for your freebies so that they are current and optimized. Updating all of these before you start putting money behind paid ads will help you get the most bang for your buck in the long run.
Jordan wants us to know that ads are a long game because you will constantly need to be testing and optimizing them so that they continue performing well.
Questions to ask yourself before starting paid ads
Before starting to run ads, you should ask yourself the following questions:
- How long do my clients stay with me and how much do they typically end up spending with me?
- How much money am I willing to spend to acquire a customer?
Earlier we talked about getting your affairs in order, and one thing Jordan forgot to mention is to make sure you have a way of tracking your ad conversions. If you are running an ad to a freebie, tag the leads from your ad differently in your email marketing platform than you would organic opt-ins so you have a way to track the conversions.
You will also want to think about how long it would take you to nurture that new lead. Maybe it will only take a month once they’ve gotten on your list or even six months.
Before utilizing paid ads, Jordan recommends that your freebie should have at least 50 to 100 downloads so that you know it’s something people are interested in.
What to aim for when it comes to ad conversions
Right now Jordan has seen ads converting around as little as 75 cents but generally around $3-5 per lead is a decent conversion rate. The conversion rate depends on a few different factors.
For example, Jordan has a client with a quiz funnel that is currently getting leads to their website for 86 cents. At the end of the day, it all depends on the business owner and their profit margin goals.
If you have a high end service that you’re wanting to run ads to then you may be fine paying $500-600 to acquire a lead. For freebies or low ticket offers, Jordan likes to see leads coming in for $5 or less unless it’s a really niche offering.
The difference between leads and conversions
Leads are when people opt in to your freebie and conversions are when they actually make the purchase. When it comes to leads, you want to convert people at the lowest cost per lead possible because not every lead will become a paying client.
When you hire a good ads manager, they will keep you updated on the progress and try new things to ensure that your ads are converting well. Jordan recommends that we dive into our numbers by taking a look at who on our email list is a client and how long it took them to convert to a paying client.
If you have clients who you are closer to, you can even ask them how long it took from the time they initially found you to when they decided to work with you. For example, if it takes 18 months for a potential lead to become a client then you can start running those ads in January knowing that a year from now they should have converted to a paying client.
It also depends on your potential client’s buying speed because some people are impulsive and ready to pull out their credit card immediately whereas others take their time researching and comparing before making a decision.
The benefits of paid ads as a part of your overall marketing strategy
With paid ads, you are able to break through the noise more than with organic social media. If you are launching something, you are likely emailing your list and posting organically on social media and paid ads allow you to target people even further.
If you already have people on your email list from a previous launch or organic growth, you can even upload your email list directly into the ads manager and target them that way.
One misconception people have about the investment behind running ads
A lot of people think that running ads is extremely expensive and out of their reach but Jordan is on a mission to make people aware that running ads doesn’t have to cost a fortune. You can even start as low as $10 a day so if you are able to optimize your ads and get the cost down to $2 per lead then that’s 5 people per day joining your email list. That means that you would have 150 leads joining your list each month which isn’t bad for a little over $300 per month.
A great way to ease into ads is by starting with $200 and splitting it 50/50. You can spend $100 running ads to a cold audience and the other $100 to your warm audience to get more eyes on your content.
While dabbling in ads doesn’t have to be costly, just because you are paying for ads doesn’t mean that you will see results so it is important to be strategic when investing in ads.
The minimum budget you need to start investing in ads
Jordan recommends spending $10 per day minimum which comes out to about $300 per month. If you want to go all in, you can increase your budget to $20 per day or $600 per month. She finds that she gets much better insight into what is and isn’t working when her clients have tried ads in the past versus those who are brand new.
The good thing about ads is that you can turn them off at any time so if something changes financially, then you can just shut them off but once you find what works then the sky really is the limit.
When you’re first starting ads, give it a few days to start running and collecting data. Once you hit day four of running ads, then it’s time to analyze what is going on and making any tweaks as needed.
How to actually start with ads
First, pick a good freebie, blog post, or even a landing page to a workshop you have coming up soon and figure out your goals. If you’re leading them to a freebie or landing page, obviously you will want sign ups whereas if you’re leading them to a blog post you’re likely just looking for a boost in traffic to your website. It is important to be really clear with those goals so that you can start seeing results.
The two types of ads you can run and how to approach them
There are two types of Facebook ads you can run. You can either boost a post you have already created or submit brand new creative for an ad.
If you just want eyes on your content, then a boosted post would be the way to go. However, if you are looking to have more control of the call to action and be able to tweak the creative and start testing things, then creating a standalone ad would be a better fit.
To compare the two, Jordan shares that with a regular ad, let’s say you are promoting an episode of your podcast. You will have one ad with your podcast mic in a studio, another ad with the same copy but a stock image, and a third image with the same copy but an image of you on a sidewalk holding your cell phone. You have the ability to test these three images and see what converts best. If you are looking for a quick hit of more traffic or engagement to a post, then that’s where the boosted post comes in.
What A/B testing is and how it works
A/B testing is when you put out two ads with the same copy but a different photo or different copy but the same photo and see which one converts better.
When Jordan first starts working with an account, she cares way more about the audiences that will be targeted than the creative because she needs to know who will find the ad valuable first before diving too deep into the creative. Once she figures out the audience, then she optimizes the creative.
How to get around Facebook’s advertising rules in certain niches
Jordan currently has a client who is a doula and both Facebook and Instagram don’t allow you to target based on pregnancy so they have to get creative with their ad. What Jordan recommends is focus on the first couple lines of copy to get them to click over to a blog post related to that forbidden topic and then retargeting them after the fact.
One thing Jordan wishes everyone knew about paid ads
One tangible thing you can implement with ads is that you can upload your email list and create a lookalike audience based off of your list. This works especially well if you have a bigger list of past purchasers. For example, say you have a $19 guide that you have sold 200 of. Once you upload that segment of people, Facebook will give you a couple million people who are similar to that audience so that you can start to get your content in front of those people.
Jordan also wants to remind us once more that ads really are a long game strategy and are well worth it once you have cracked the code and gotten your ads to convert. If you have dabbled in ads in the past and they didn’t work, give them another chance and see how it goes.
Resources mentioned:
Connect with Jordan:
3 Ways to Know You’re Ready for Ads
Connect with Ninety Five Media:
Be the first to comment