How to Decide If Ads Are the Right Move for Your Membership

Alice: my question is quick, I do not have time to go into groups and try to convince those people to come into mind. So is ads a reasonable alternative or is that just a completely different beast that you're probably better off to stay away from?

Paul: So ads will always amplify. They won't fix.

Okay, so when you have the trifecta, which is your audience, your messaging and your offer, everything in business is traffic and conversion and how you impact traffic. The right traffic or the wrong traffic, as well as getting people to convert or not, is the quality of the trifecta, which is your audience.

Like having the right people in front of you. You don't need as many people, you know. So what you have to understand is when it comes to audience messaging and offer, how you can fine tune that a lot quicker than just organic is by putting money behind, properly placed ads. 'cause you can accelerate the feedback loop a lot quicker, so you're able to see a lot faster instead of organic.

Like, oh, I can control these elements where organic, especially these days with the algorithms just showing you stuff, the random people that like you consume content, it's not really just your audience anymore, is that, it's hard to know like, did that piece of organic traffic get in front of the right eyeballs or not?

You know, they might just thought it was cute 'cause you had a dog in the, in the, the video, you know, it's like crap. It lifted for the wrong reason now. so it's one of those things with ads, but you have to keep in mind that ads will only amplify. So if things are outta whack with the audience messaging and offer, you're just putting a lot of bad money behind.

You won't get the result that you want, but it will, if you're paying attention, you'll be able to get the data. Quicker to make an educated decisions faster on if there is a misalignment those things. all of us are trading resources, so those of us have sweat equity. That means we have time and energy and we don't have the financial side.

So we are going in and going into communities or showing up on podcasts or doing all the organic things to like get, we're speaking on stages and all the things that's gonna take our time and energy. Some of us have, not that, but we have financial resources. So we trade off and we get the exposure by, in the past we used to be called earned media and paid media.

Now as you mature as a business, you wanna do a combination of both. And again, that comes back to what we said earlier on capacity and capability. is like some of us have money that we can invest, but all of us will burn out on financial or energy if audience offer and messaging are not aligned.

Yeah. Because. We will deplete our energy and our emotional resources and burnout and say, this business isn't worth it, or we'll deplete our bank accounts and, and charge up our credit cards if the money's not coming back in. So, like, these are not unlimited resources. They have to have a return. So it's just that, that's why within adaptive marketing, as, you know, as like we focus on that trifecta, it's all about audience messaging and the offers.

Mm-hmm. So we're helping people constantly, you know, fine, fine tune those elements. That's why the entire team helps with but ads will just amplify, allow you to get that feedback loop a lot quicker. and once you get that tuned in, then how you scale and amplify is through ads as well as affiliate relationships.

the whole idea is you're getting in front of more people, you're amplifying it, but you don't want to put either those two things out when you don't have everything fine tuned. Because then you're just wasting money on ads and your affiliates won't ever affiliate you for you again.

If they went to their audience and then you didn't have a good converting offer, it makes them look bad as well. So it's like you have to have your system really tuned in before it makes sense going to those two resources, that that's what amps you up very quickly.

Guest 9: I don't mind spending the money, but I don't like wasting the money.

Yeah. Yeah. Just start where I'm and, okay. Perfect. Thank you. Yeah,

Melissa: you're welcome. You're welcome. Okay, and Dan, I think you had a, a follow up question.

Guest 9': Yeah. Just quick question. Going back to what you said, Paul, about going into those paid communities versus free groups. So I'm curious what you think about Someone like me creating a free Facebook group to get people in, getting on your email address. 'cause I don't know, what you said was kind of a light bulb moment and now I'm overthinking 'cause I do have a free Facebook group where I've gotten a lot of people on my email list and the first people to join my membership are from my group and my email list.

So I'm just curious your take on that.

Melissa: Yeah. Yeah.

Paul: So no matter what, when I say like, go into other paid spaces, it's just like, again, have social cues, like respect somebody else's sandbox. I'm not saying do it for anybody to do anything unethical. I just wanna make sure that's clear. if you see me in a, in a, a paid group, I pour value, I make deposits in the community.

I'm not there being shady and trying to pull people out and do different things. I just wanna, 'cause there's a clear distinction. There's a lot of people that are like short-term thinkers and they go in and they try to clearly poach people and do very negative things. And it ruins the experience for everybody, in the community.

Now, when it comes to a free group, there's nothing wrong with lead magnets and free groups and things like that, and doing all the organic stuff that we do. Just keep in mind for all of us, that when, when you're bringing people in any type of funnel element that you're bringing people in to free opportunities, your numbers are gonna be like direct response numbers, which means that out of all the work that you do, somewhere between half a percent to 3% of the people.

Might buy something from you at some point in time and it's no different than you randomly cold calling a neighborhood or going and, and doing a mailer into a community. You know, you put a postcard into a community, you hit a a hundred houses, probably between one and three people. It doesn't matter what business you are, just the ran it just how random numbers work.

so when you bring people into a free Facebook group or, or you're getting random lead magnets, just know you're playing the direct response game and you're gonna get somewhere at some point in time, between half a percent to 3% of the people will most likely say yes to, to your offer. so you're just playing a numbers game at that point.

So if you only have 20 people in there, it's gonna be hard, you know, you might get a higher percentage ratio 'cause you have a little bit better closer relationship 'cause there's only a few people than if you had thousands and thousands, you might not be having as intimate conversations. but there's nothing wrong with doing that, cultivating, but also think like.

How are you sourcing and getting the people in, depending on the topic that you're talking about in social or, or the angle of the group could bring a more qualified person and there might be fewer people. The topic is like people that are closer to the pain point that they want solved, or, and all of us have been there.

There's big, huge groups, but there are a bunch of complainers. Like, they don't wanna fix their problems, they just wanna show up and complain all day long. Well, it's great that it's a big, huge group, but nobody wants to fix their problem in the group because they're all stuck in their pain and they don't want solutions.

They just wanna come in and moan and complain all, all day long. So, just know like there's give and take as you go wider and you go earlier stages in the buyer's journey. People aren't as problem aware or as solution aware. they're just talking about their symptoms all the time, and they're, but they're not to the point of being a buyer and they might not ever be a buyer.

many people live in their pain, and don't care. It's just part of their narrative and who they are as a person. not everybody's a buyer. So I would still do, any mechanism that you do at all will allow you to become relevant. To the, the people, but just think more like, why, how's that person coming in?

Like, are you being more specific as far as who you're attracting into the group? You know, or you just, like if you have a pulse and if I hold a mirror up and it gets cloudy and you're breathing, you're, you're okay to come in my group? Or is there any type of qualifier that makes them a little bit more closer to an actual lead?

and keep in mind in the online world, everybody that has a pulse is a lead in the real world. We only consider lead somebody that shows buyer intent. So when you have a real world business, a lead is somebody that shows like they called your office, they emailed your company, like there's an intent to purchase and that's why we call them a lead.

But in this online marketing space, they make everybody get excited, oh, I got 50 leads, I got 50 lead people that are on my email list, 50 follow. It's like, okay, well that is, that is like nothing like did any of them, they just got a free download or took a fun quiz? Did they socially signal at all that they have buyer intent?

And 99% of the time they probably didn't.

You know, so we, we get caught up in the vanity metrics, you know?

Melissa: Right.

Paul: And I just come back and go, guys to hear me say it all the time. But, you know, when I built my real estate company, eight offices, over 200 agents, making millions and millions and millions of dollars a year.

I did it by the number of contacts in a Rolodex, you know, like less than 250 people. I didn't need hundreds of thousands of people on a list to make millions of dollars. You know, and we all get in this internet marketing space and get caught up in, we have to have this big, huge vanity metric.

And really, most of us just need to have a better quality conversation with somebody that's closer to a buying decision. But most of us don't wanna do that. 'cause it, it's not scalable. So then we struggle all year long or indefinitely because we're not willing to have the conversations. A lot of times, so hopefully, sorry to be too preachy.

Hopefully you guys.

Guest 9': No, that was really good. I

Paul: appreciate that. I done, we had to unwind people from a lot of this internet marketing garbage. that people get caught in 'cause it's shiny object stuff and it sounds really cool. And then it's like, but if you really actually wanna make money, and we have to unwind, you know, some of these things sometimes.

Guest 9': I appreciate it. Very good reminders. Thank you.

Paul: You're welcome. You're welcome.