I know you’re super excited about the following report :)

It's coming soon.

Stay tuned.

And secure your access now at a special price.

Don’t miss out on this…

Because the opportunity cost can be huge for you.

Q1 of 2023 will be a great opportunity to “make a fortune” by selling information products.

Low CPMs, new customer acquisition channels, recession,…

There are so many things going on right now in the world and you need to play it smart.

So hurry up and share this information only with your close friends.

Don’t share it with your competitors.

Be smart and take on advantage of this opportunity before it’s too late.

This is your chance for the great start of 2023.

So don't let it pass by…

I see you inside!

- Dom

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The days of getting $4 OUT for every $1 you put IN your automated webinar funnel using paid ads are probably gone.

I’m not saying you can’t generate high returns anymore, but let’s be realistic...

It became a lot harder than it used to be. 

It takes more time and energy to build a mid-7-figure or 8-figure company. 

In this post, I’ll explain to you the behind-the-scenes high-level advertising and business strategies that use 7-figure information / education to become 8-figure businesses selling online courses & high-ticket offers.

( If you can’t spend 20 minutes straight reading this case study without interruptions so you really understand the lessons, click here and I’ll send you a copy to your email) 

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It’s been six years since I wrote my very first blog post  “11 Lessons I Have Learned Managing Webinar Funnel That Generated Over $200,000 In Revenue”  

That was the first webinar campaign I ever did that generated over a million dollars in revenue when you sum up all the back-end sales ( monthly DFY service + high-ticket offers). 

Since I gained a lot of knowledge (and weight) over the last 6 years…

This summer I decided to write PART 2. 

THE Webinar funnel. 

“Are they still “cool” and effective? “

“Is it still possible to build a 7-figure or 8-figure information business using webinar funnels? ” 

“Can you still profitably convert cold traffic into sales? ” 

Well, there are a lot of unanswered questions floating around in the room.  

So let’s try to answer some of them.

A few years ago, I met Matthias & Dan who had an online course publishing company generating approx. $1M/year in revenue working with some of the world’s leading fitness influencers.

Today, they own an 8-figure education & software company generating close to $10,000,000 per year. 

And the company valuation is probably close to $100,000,000 now. But that’s just my guess. 

If they didn’t use webinar funnels (both LIVE & automated) they would NEVER make it.

This story goes back to November 2018. 

That afternoon we landed in Berlin.

It was just a few hours before their initial launch that everyone was waiting for. 

The first time they launched ads for a brand new webinar, they were getting registrations at $30/lead.

Guess what?

Their show-up rate wasn’t good either ~ 15% and they made NO sales on the first webinar. 

As soon as the webinar ended, we sat down, created a script for a new video ad, and reduced the CPL to $9/lead. 

They also generated the first customers for their online course which was a moment everyone in the room had been waiting for. 

Just a few years later, the company is generating close to $10,000,000 in revenue selling its education programs & software.

Another great example of a client who built his 8-figure online empire using webinar funnels and paid ads ( with a focus on Facebook) is #1 Clickbank Affiliate, Robby Blanchard.

Robby was generating registrations at $30/lead at the moment we met him.

He was stuck at $2000/day and wanted to scale it back to $5000+/day quickly.

Just a week later, we reduced his CPL back to $8/registration. 

(Both of them received their Two Comma X Awards.)

Do you know what they had in common?

They both focused on WEBINAR FUNNELS…

PAID ADS… 

And they’ve done it RIGHT. 

In the next few paragraphs, I’ll break down the entire process of what needs to be done in order to generate $100,000 - $300,000/mo each month using a webinar funnel and paid ads. 

And how you can actually build an 8-figure education / information empire by using the same. 

I’ll try to summarize some of the key stories and lessons I’ve learned over the last 6 years of working with some of the world’s leading experts and companies so that you get the most valuable insights based on real examples and case studies. 

At the same time, I’ll try to keep this as simple as possible so that everyone can understand it.

Let’s dive in.

1. Your Market & Product (Offer) Fit

Does your market have a painful problem and is actively searching for a solution?

(Ex. People who can’t make money online at all.)

Can your OFFER relieve the pain caused by the problem? 

( Ex. The product offers them a beginner-friendly step-by-step system almost anyone can follow and make their first sales online.) 

Are there enough people who need a solution and are willing to pay for it? 

(Eg. There are millions of people who want to make extra money from a laptop but don’t know how to get started.)

You want to have at least 5,000 potential customers for a $997-$1297 offer which is usually an online course + hands-on support inside the Facebook group. 

If you have at least 5,000 potential customers, you have a good potential to build an 8-figure business.

Here are real examples:

• Commission Hero By Robby Blanchard - CH teaches people how to generate income (~$1000/day) online with affiliate marketing using Clickbank & Facebook.
  

• Passion.io by Daniel Harvey - Passion.io teaches experts how to share their knowledge more efficiently online by creating a mobile app inside their drag-n-drop builder.

  
  

  

• Foundr Magazine by Nathan Chan - Foundr Magazine is one of the fastest growing magazines in the world with a large audience of motivated entrepreneurs interested in different topics. The company built its initial audience more than five years ago by leveraging Instagram's organic strategies, so its main offering was an online course about the same.

  
  

  

• Real Estate High Rollers by Tatiana Londono - REHR educates and helps real estate agents to position themselves in the local market and get more buyer & seller leads. 

  
  

  

Do you see the same pattern in the examples above? 

All of these businesses are solving ONE BIG problem and have a huge market willing to pay for a solution. 

But different markets and offers require different webinar approaches… 

Let me explain in the next lesson. 

2. Crafting The Right Presentation (MQL or SQL) 

Let’s talk about the webinar presentation.

There are several ways you can craft your presentation: 

1. Education-based webinar presentation for marketing qualified leads (̌~90 mins)

2. Direct offer-based webinar presentation for sales qualified leads ~(<30 mins)

What type of presentation is the best for you? 

It depends on your current marketing (and business) goals. 

If you’re selling a $997 online course to a cold audience, in that case, you want to use the 1) education-based webinar which sometimes lasts as long as 2 hours. 

You need to “educate” them about the current problems they’re already aware they have… and present new solutions to solve those problems in a unique way. 

Remember, sometimes you don’t need to educate them. 

You just need to break the false beliefs. 

Once the old beliefs are broken, you created a perfect environment to sell your new solution. 

Another example would be when you want to sell a high-ticket coaching / consulting offer to your existing or even cold audience. 

In this case, you want to talk to people who are aware of the solution and are ready to buy it immediately! 

For these people, you should craft a direct offer-based presentation that takes 10-30 minutes and only speak to qualified sales prospects. 

I’ll assume that you have already done all of this so won’t get into further detail about what your webinar funnel should look like. 

However, the fact is, no matter how well your funnel works you can always improve performance if you know what numbers you’re aiming for. 

That’s why you need to set up baseline benchmarks first and foremost. 

3. Set Up Realistic Target KPIs 

Setting up realistic KPIs is the next thing that needs to be done right in order to build a 7-figure or 8-figure business using webinars and paid ads. 

If you still want to get 3X-4X ROAS on Facebook for a $997 - $1297 online course that you sell using an automated webinar funnel AND you don’t want to run the ads if your ROAS is not 3X, then you have a problem. 

Target KPIs for an automated webinar funnel: 

• Webinar registration rate: 25-35%

• Webinar attendance rate: 50-70%

• Webinar close rate: 2-3%

That means that your show-up rate from FB ads can be 70%… while the show-up rate from YT ads can be up to 50% at the same time. 

On average, your show-up rate is obviously 60%.

But you also need to consider other more important KPIs like ROAS to decide which platform you will prioritize. 

Here’s an example. 

Let’s say that your current ROAS from Facebook ads is 1.6 on the front end.

And your current ROAS from Youtube ads is 2.5 on the front end. 

I know it seems so obvious that you’ll invest much more money in YT ads than on Facebook, even though your show-up rate is lower on that platform. 

But you’ll be surprised how many people make wrong decisions based on less important KPIs. 

4. Paid Ads Are Lifeblood Of Your Business 

Now we’re getting to the most important part of growing your information / education company by using webinar funnels and it is called “paid advertising”.

If you don’t have the ability to consistently get # the number of new leads who are pre-interested, pre-qualified, or pre-motivated to watch your webinar presentation - you’ll never be able to scale it with predictability. 

The more predictability & reliability you have - the more stable your business will be. 

This paid advertising game will most likely determine how much revenue (and profits) you will make each month. 

For example, if your average ROAS for selling a $997 online course is 1.8. 

Then you need to spend $100,000 per month to generate $180,000 in revenue and make $80,000 in profits. 

Here's one of our examples.

The more money you invest into the ads, the more revenue your business will make.

It is a smart calculated investment once you tune everything up. 

At some point, you’ll want to sacrifice the ROAS on DAY 1 to take a bigger % of the market and make more revenue in the future selling back-end offers. 

That’s how you ultimately win in this game, but we’ll get back to it later in this post. 

And one important thing…

If you’re like many other education companies, you cracked the code for 1 or, in the best case, 2 channels like Facebook & Youtube. 

You should also test other paid advertising channels like Pinterest, TikTok, Google Ads, Whatsapp, etc. 

Sometimes, companies miss huge opportunities because they rely on proven channels and they hesitate to test something new. 

Don’t be one of them.

Test new channels. 

Test new ads. 

This brings us to the next point…. 

5. Always Be Testing 

Have you ever heard the famous saying between sales guys “Always Be Closing “? 

In the advertising game, we say “Always Be Testing”. 

No matter how good you think you are. 

Or how good you think you understand your audience’s pain points, desires, … 

You should ALWAYS test new ideas. 

New marketing hooks for new avatars can “easily” turn your $1,000/day ad campaign into $10,000+/day. 

A single video ad can bring you 50,000+ webinar registrations.

And millions of dollars in sales.

It is all about the testing at the end of the day. 

Let me show you some real examples. 

Let’s get back to the story about Dan & Matthias from Passion.io

The first time they ran the ads for the webinar they were paying ~ $30/lead using these videos below. 

Just a week later, we came up with a new video script that lowered the price by 70%. 

The new cost per lead was $9/lead. 

And that’s how scaled from there.

Another great example is Commission Hero By Robby Blanchard. 

He was paying almost $30/lead for months because he wasn’t able to find a reliable team to take care of his ad accounts. 

We tested new:

• Audiences 

• Ad copies

• Ad creatives

• Headlines 

Within a week, we reduced his CPL back to <$15/lead. 

There are so many examples here that we could break down

But I want to keep it simple as promised.

Testing is an important factor when you’re growing your company. 

It takes knowledge, time, and energy. 

But it also saves you time & money. 

Unfortunately, testing is not possible if you don’t have the ability to read the results and make new decisions based on those results… 

That’s why you need to make sure that your tracking is on point. 

6. Make Sure Your Tracking Is Accurate 

After the recent iOS updates, many businesses started having problems making new decisions because? they missed the data from Facebook ads. 

If you’ve been advertising on Facebook for more than a year, then you probably know:

“The more data your pixel receives - the better ad optimization will be”. 

The future is cookieless and we are forced to embrace the change. 

All smart companies and marketers already started using server-to-server tracking because of that. 

On Facebook, It’s called Facebook Conversion API.

And it provides even more accurate data when it is set up correctly.

However, the real problem appears when you start advertising on multiple channels.

In that case, each platform will show you its own numbers and in many cases, each platform will attribute more sales to its channel ( unintentionally of course) because they don’t track the entire customer journey.

That’s why it is crucial for you to have the ability to make the right decisions based on what’s really going on. 

That’s why we use Google Analytics, and heat maps combined with some of the most powerful tracking tools.

If you need any help to find the best tracking tool for your specific needs - feel free to reach out to me directly and I’ll do my best to find you the solution.

7. Optimization Is The Key

That’s why we make sure that you have the ability to collect all available data so we can optimize all main variables of the customer acquisition process. 

As soon as you have the data about your main customer acquisition funnel & channel, we start an endless optimization process. 

New week = new test!

We do optimize the front end of your main acquisition funnel (both tech side and content) to maximize results (CPA & ROAS)

At the same time, you need to continue optimizing the following: 

1. Ad creatives

2. Ad copies

3. Headlines

4. Descriptions

5. Audiences 

6. Placements

It is important to understand (and remember) that optimization is an endless process.

As long as you have new ideas for testing and the ability to measure and learn from the results of your tests, you are able to optimize both your funnel and the ads. 

First, optimize for minimum INPUT = maximum OUTPUT. 

Then maximize the INPUT.

Once you have fixed all the leaks in your funnel and optimized the ads for maximum performance is time to scale your paid advertising. 

8. “Scale” Only When You’re Ready 

Now we’re getting to the most interesting part of this case study - scaling. 

Over the past few years, you probably read so many success stories about how other entrepreneurs and companies have grown their businesses to 8-figure plus per year. 

But just a few of them shared the real struggle they needed to go through to get there. 

I’m going to try to explain what it really takes to scale paid ads to 7-figures in this lesson. 

And no… there’s no secret sauce or silver bullet that will turn your losing into winning ads and you’ll make thousands of sales in just a few weeks. 

Actually, it is the complete opposite. 

Scaling is the outcome of the systematic optimization process.

Once you collect enough data to maximize the output while keeping your input within desired KPIs, you are ready to scale your campaigns.

Most people confuse the terms “scaling” and “growth”. 

While scaling is fast and exponential, growth is in many cases slow and linear. 

You’re growing your team. You’re growing your business. 

You can scale your customer acquisition campaigns only if it doesn’t require adding people to your team.

In that case, you’re growing, not scaling. 

Here’s an example of Robby Blanchard’s campaigns that we scaled to $5000+/day in just a few weeks. 

We also spend 20% of the monthly budget retargeting those leads with monthly special promos. 

As you can see, once you tune everything up you can easily scale your campaigns to $5000+ per day in ad spend. 

But growing your company to 8-figure requires building a team, systems, new offers, etc. 

9. Personalized Ads For Each Funnel Step

Now let’s talk about retargeting campaigns for different stages of the funnel. 

First off, you need to build as many as possible custom audiences on Facebook and other channels to segment your audience based on their previous activity in the funnel. 

If you present your $997 offer at the 72nd minute of the webinar, then you want to have the ability to retarget attendees based on what they’ve seen so far.

If they didn’t see the offer, then retarget those people back to the replay so they can continue watching the presentation at the moment they bounced. 

If they watched the offer, then retarget people to the sales page.

I think this sounds super simple and logical but even established 7-figure information companies with internal marketing teams don’t do this correctly. 

The problem is, you have to deal with:

1. Custom audiences on advertising platforms

2. Email lists (CRM + webinar platform) 

3. Use third-party tools like Zapier to connect all of them in real time.

It is so important to retarget people with relevant messages and offers. 

That’s why we will write an entire blog post just about this topic in the future.

Stay tuned!

10. Maximize Your CLTV With Automation & High-Ticket Offers 

Alright. You’ve done everything right so far.  

You have a winning offer, and a broad audience and your paid advertising campaigns work well. 

You’re generating $200,000+ in revenue, meaning you get 150-200 new customers each month.

But guess what?

If your AOV = LTV, then you have a huge problem. 

To build an 8-figure company, you need to increase your CLTV. 

That’s why all successful information / education companies spend a lot of time working on their marketing automation behind the scenes. 

They also offer to their customers DWY and/or DFY for $3,000 - $15,000+. 

Many successful 8-figure companies host a LIVE event at least once a year. 

If you want to win this game, first generate as many customers as possible. 

Then maximize the revenue per each customer.

You can’t run a profitable company sitting just on a $997 online course.

You need to build more offers and make more revenue. 

11. Building A Lasting Business Is The Ultimate Goal 

Real winners are great at winning. They know how to get to the top. 

But more importantly, they know how to stay on top. 

Here are some of the things we noticed 8-figure education do once they get there. 

First off, they reinvest all the revenue back into their company to build more content, hire more people, and build more offers. 

The ultimate goal is to provide great value to the marketplace so you can monetize later when the time is right.

Secondly, they focus a massive amount of time and energy on serving their existing customers.

Customers become advocates who promote them simply because they’re happy.

The most successful companies in the world understand the power of branding. 

Is all about building a brand that lasts. 

IN SUMMARY…

Growing your online education / information business using webinars and paid ads can still work extremely well.  

You just need to invest 10X more time and energy before you crack the code.

Don’t try to reinvent the wheel or figure it out all by yourself. 

It is much easier (and faster) to ask someone for help who has done it multiple times.

Want to discover how you can generate 2-3X revenue using paid ads? 

Schedule a free strategy session with us to discover how we can help. 

On this call, we’ll go through your webinar funnel and paid ads to identify the main problems and come up with a solution.

By the end of 45-min together, you’ll have clarity on what needs to be done to improve your current performance and you can choose whether you want to do it alone or work with us.

The call is 100% free and has no strings attached.

However, we don’t have the capacity to talk to anyone. 

Usually, we charge $500/hour for a call.

For a limited time, we have a few open spots for this free consultation only IF you qualify. 

Here’s the link again. 

Are you ready to take your business to the next level? 

Book a call with us and let’s talk!

- Dom

This campaign lasted for about 6 months and brought in about $1,000,000 in revenue with less than $100,000 in ad spend.

For the 6-7 months that this campaign lasted, we were generating about 500 new subscriptions (paying users) a month.

Monthly recurring revenue was going up by $20k-$25k in MRR consistently each month.

The customer lifetime value for the product was around $350 ($25 for the first month +$50/100 month after that) and the cost per new user acquisition was under $30.

The product was a monthly Instagram growth service. (Example: graminator, simplygram). The overhead was pretty low as the client relied mostly on bots (as the other similar services do); this product can be categorized both as SaaS and a service, depending on how you look at it.

After 6-7 months of advertising, Facebook cracked down on Instagram growth services(mostly bots), and a lot of accounts got shut down, including our clients. The client also started experiencing problems with delivering the service due to Instagram’s crackdown on bots, the business is now defunct. (You can see the website in Wayback machine, igwildfire.com)

Before the campaign, although the client had a product/service that the market wanted, the exposure that he was getting organically was too slow and limited for any significant growth so he reached out to us (infoscaling.com) for help.

He tried to play with paid ads on FB & IG, but he couldn’t make them work within a target cost per acquisition.

The cost per acquisition goal that he had was $30 – which would allow him to almost break even on ad spend in the first month. In reality, he ended up paying up to $90-$100 to acquire a new customer — which meant it took him 3 months to just break even on his advertising costs.

Since it took him three months to break even on initial advertising costs, he couldn’t really grow his user base with paid advertising.

As opposed to organic, if you can make paid advertising work you can have:

1) HIGH-LEVEL CONTROL — With paid advertising, you have absolute control over the acquisition process. When you need more customers, you switch the ON button. When you decide that you have enough customers (if that scenario is possible :D), you simply switch your campaigns off. You’re able to control the level of spend and the speed at which you scale.

Of course, it’s more complicated than that, but it’s generally how it works.

2) ABILITY TO SCALE FAST — Instagram and Facebook are without a doubt the fastest channels for scale once when you figure out what works for your business. Compared to other ‘intent-based’ advertising platforms like Google Adwords, where your ad reach is limited by a number of searches for a specific keyword, on Facebook & Instagram, you can reach an unlimited (virtually) number of potential buyers daily. Unlike SEO and content marketing which takes a lot of time, the only thing that limits the speed of scale with paid acquisition is your ability to spend money.

3) LOW PEOPLE OVERHEAD — Unlike organic marketing methods, operations in paid advertising can be executed highly successfully with a small team of three or two media buyers that can manage hundreds of thousands of dollars per month in ad spend.

If you align the key elements of your marketing campaign and hit the sweet spot, you can grow the user base really fast&really profitably. (Facebook & Instagram have virtually unlimited high-quality traffic)

After a few weeks of adjusting IGWildfire’s funnel and testing new campaigns, we built a campaign that was able to acquire new customers at $25.08 per sale. (Which meant break-even in the first month and profit after that).

We generated the first 400 users and grew the MRR from $5,000 to $25,000 within the first 30 days.

In the end, the campaign generated more than $1,000,000.00 in lifetime revenue from only $92,707 in ad spend.

This is the step by step process that we used to scale IGWildfire from 100 users to 3200+ paying users in just 6 months.

Let’s dive in…

1) Clearly Define The Main Target Avatar And Best Segments Of The Market

One of the most important steps that define chances of success in paid advertising is defining who you’re speaking to (and who you’re going to target) in your creatives.

From analyzing his customer’s current user base, we found that the top-paying customers were fashion and beauty influencers (and wannabe influencers) and adjusted the copy&creatives to speak to them. We also adjusted the targeting accordingly (you’ll see it in #7).

Targeting the audience (both with actual ad targeting and adjusting the creative) that is most likely to pay the most has an effect on LTV and subsequently ROAS (return on ad spend).

2) Find the best converting offer/free trial model (Crucial)

Although this business was founded back in 2015, it took almost 3 years to get it to actually produce any substantial revenue. One of the major reasons why it took that long was having an offer that the market didn’t respond to.

The initial offer (free trial) was 25 free followers. The conversion rate (from visitor to claim offer) was high – but the conversion to paying customers from that offer was terrible.

We first needed to find an offer that was actually converting to paid users at a high enough rate.

We first switched to 2-day Free Trial . However, using an Instagram growth service for just 2 days was too little time for the vast majority of users to see any growth of their accounts so they didn’t see any value in keeping the service.

Next, we tried with a 50% OFF for the first month – with a promise to get 250 targeted followers and reach 15,000 Instagram accounts. The visitor to conversion rate was much lower than in the first 2 cases, but people who bought kept paying. This was exactly what we needed.

3) Invest In Ad Creatives Production

Three years ago, you could use stock photos on Facebook and your ads would still work. This is no longer the case. You have to invest time and money in quality creatives (especially video) if you want your ads to work.

Here are the main types of ads that we test when we start working on a new project:

a) Animated videos — they’re expensive but work really well for a lot of products (eg. SaaS). We tested a few of those but the results were not satisfying in this case.

b) Videos recorded by a client or his audience  – testimonials/presenting the product. These are easy and fast to create and work really well in a lot of industries.

c) Image ads – there’s an unlimited number of variations that you can try here (the more your budget allows you, the better. Split-testing is key)

We instructed the client to get 20 different testimonial videos from his customers and created 15 animated videos for testing.

The top-performing ad was a simple testimonial video recorded in a car. The testimonial was from a fashion influencer with a big following (implying that they can get a big following) so it perfectly hit the target avatar, built trust, and presented the offer.

Here’s the screenshot from the video:

4) Analyze data & Adjust accordingly

After the first 30 days of the campaign, we generated around 400 new paying users.

We found that Instagram Ads generated 95% of total sales in the first month. Although the CPA was slightly higher than on Facebook, we couldn’t have enough traffic volume on Facebook in order to scale like we wanted to.

Also, most of the buyers were women between 25–45 years old ( that also influenced our decision on what testimonials to use in ads).

You need to constantly be monitoring the data and adjust your campaigns accordingly & make decisions based on the data.

5) Optimize Ad Creatives

After testing the initial creatives and finding the best ones, you need to optimize those further (with the goal of reducing the CPA).

The hypothesis was, that if we took the best performing video ad and add subtitles and the right text on the top of the video (classic Gary V style) — we’ll increase our CTRs, decrease CPCs, and ultimately reduce our CPA which started going up a bit.

We came up with 10 different headlines for the video and tested them all. Few of them worked really well.

We continued testing different variations throughout the campaign, both to decrease the CPA and have fresh creatives to counter banner blindness.

Here are some of the different headlines we used:

6) Utilize conversion events, custom conversions, and the pixel

Setting up the Facebook pixel properly on the campaign start is crucial to every campaign’s success.

The funnel looked like this:
Ad -> Sales Page -> Checkout Page 1 -> Thank You Page 1
Ad -> Sales page -> Checkout Page 2 -> Thank You Page 2

In order to be able to segment the audiences for retargeting and to track the success of the ad, we set up the basic FB pixel (page view) on all pages, and set up the purchase pixel on the thank you page to track purchases.

All the campaigns on the account were optimized by using conversion events and custom conversions. Generally the event you want to optimize for is the event you want (eg. Purchase/Lead/Click).

The more data your pixel gathers, the better it can optimize in the future, which helps with long-term campaign success.

7) Scale with lookalike audiences

From a technical perspective, scaling your winning campaigns mostly depends on finding new audiences you can show your ads to.

When we start working on a new account, the first step that we take is creating custom audiences of people depending on what stage of the funnel they’re in (or visited; tracked by FB pixel). The more custom audiences you create — the more relevant you can be to different audience segments within a funnel(by showing different types of content/offers depending on what stage in the funnel they’re in).

From custom audiences, then, we create lookalike audiences. The best lookalike audience you can have is buyers (purchases) lookalike.

Here are some of the lookalikes we’ve used in this campaign.

• Purchases (7 days) -> Lookalike 1%, Lookalike 2%, Lookalike 5%, Lookalike 10%

• Purchases (30 Days) -> Lookalike 1%, Lookalike 2%, Lookalike 5%, Lookalike 10%

• Purchases (90 Days) -> Lookalike 1%, Lookalike 2%, Lookalike 5%, Lookalike 10%

• Purchases (180 Days) -> Lookalike 1%, Lookalike 2%, Lookalike 5%, Lookalike 10%

As you can see, just by having ONE custom audience broken down into smaller audiences based on a specific time frame (7–180 days) — you’re able to create 20–30 different lookalike audiences for the scaling stage.

Also, since we knew from the data that the best-paying customers were fashion influencers, we extracted the emails from those buyers, created a custom, and then lookalike audiences from that.

This was one of the best-performing cold audiences.

Later on, when you have a few thousand of actions (ideally purchases) recorded on your pixel — you can throw out the targeting and let the FB pixel do the heavy lifting for you. This works best when you’re scaling worldwide and have a potential market of 10–20MM customers.

8) Leverage Warm & Hot Retargeting Audiences (CPA Reduction)

I already mentioned how Instagram gave us a better CPA and volume than Facebook on cold traffic, but when it comes to retargeting, things were different.

In retargeting campaigns, we were getting better CPA on Facebook than on Instagram (because we could retarget them on the desktop for very little $) and our retargeting ads were super relevant to them.

When we started scaling the overall CPA on cold traffic went up to $30-$35 per sale, so having a good approach in the RTG campaigns became necessary.

The results for retargeting were 575 sales total at $17.51. This significantly impacted the overall CPA and kept it where it needed to be

We found that 2 out of 10 custom audiences we were using were most profitable & brought in the most sales so we focused on those. (Instagram page engagers (30 Days) and checkout abandoners (Last 7 Days & Last 15 Days).

9) Stay Compliant With FB TOS

And the last lesson from this campaign is… you should never build a business in a way that it’s totally dependent on other platforms. Although, having an extra $1,000,000 is not too shabby.

The entire business model was destined to be shut down sooner or later. We knew that one day Facebook / Instagram will crack down on Instagram growth services – which happened in the end and the business was prohibited from advertising.

Want results like these?

Schedule a free strategy session with us to find out how we can help you with your paid user acquisition.

Selling memberships and online courses in the information industry is getting harder and more competitive each year. This year won’t be different. 

The main reasons are: 

• The cost of advertising is higher than it’s ever been

• The market has become extremely saturated with so-called experts promising overnight results which negatively affects consumer trust.

• There’s no real differentiation between offered products and services (no real USP)

If you were selling $47, $497, or $997 info-products or monthly memberships to the cold audience a few years ago – you remember getting 2X, 3X, or even 5X returns on day 1, without too much work. 

That’s when CPC on Facebook was $0.20 or $0.40. 

With the average CPC approaching $2, that’s not the case anymore.

When you adopt and do things the right way - Facebook still works, big time. 

We know that because we are the guys behind Facebook & Instagram campaigns for some of the world’s leading fitness experts like Christmas Abbott, Barstazz, and Al Kavadlo.

The specific campaign for Christmas Abbott we managed brought in over $1,000,000+ in revenue in 12 months.

We generated 4154 sales for the course ($27-47) on the front end. With all the upsells and downsells, the AOV (average order value) was around $87 which amounted to about $360,000 in front-end revenue. 

The average lifetime value of the membership ($20/month) was $160, which amounted to an additional $664,640 in revenue over the course of 12 months.  

But before you can replicate the paid traffic strategies and tactics – you need to understand the fundamentals.

I’m not going to pretend that our Facebook campaigns are the main reason our clients have achieved the results I’m talking about.

They have a solid business foundation in place, and an audience to sell to (although 70% of sales came from new audiences.)

Here’s what our most successful clients’ businesses have in common, and what you need to have in order to win:

But before you can replicate the paid traffic strategies and tactics – you need to understand the fundamentals.

I’m not going to pretend that our Facebook campaigns are the main reason our clients have achieved the results I’m talking about.

They have a solid business foundation in place, and an audience to sell to (although 70% of sales came from new audiences.)

Here’s what our most successful clients’ businesses have in common, and what you need to have in order to win:

Their #1 Goal From Paid Advertising Is To Breakeven On The Front End

Dan Kennedy  once said: “The business that can spend the most to acquire a customer wins.”

The goal has changed and your main goal with paid advertising, especially in the subscription business, should be to acquire as many customers/subscribers as possible early, and profit later. 

Businesses that are charging high prices and trying to profit from day 1 will be left behind. 

Optimizing your cost to acquire a customer (CPA) and increasing the customer lifetime value (CLV) is how you’re going to win. 

When this is dialed in you can spend the most to acquire a customer, and get the money invested in the ad spend back – right away. 

How do we do that? By getting our cost per acquisition = average order value (AOV). (Or more, which was the case in this campaign).

Apart from that funnel, we used a lot of other funnels during testing, which accounted for the rest of the front-end revenue.

They have one core funnel that enables them to acquire new customers at a breakeven

In order to get your CPA to match your AOV you need to do two things:

1. Optimize your CPA by lowering your advertising cost, which I’m going to talk about later in the post.

2. Increase your average order value by optimizing your customer acquisition/buying experience

To successfully execute #2, you need a working funnel in place. A funnel that’s able to convert customers at a high enough AOV. Increasing AOV is achieved through consistent testing of your upsells/ downsells.

All our most successful clients have a funnel that enables them (after optimizing the ads) to break even on traffic costs. 

They take care of their community and are constantly working to increase their customer lifetime value

Now that you’ve acquired a customer, it’s time to actually make a profit. 

It’s not hard to notice that our most successful clients are the ones that have higher customer lifetime values and are constantly working to improve them. 

They work on their product, test new offers, and approach customer service professionally. 

They also work in managing their communities, which is (as is the case with this client) especially important if your subscription offer is information/expert-based. 

It’s easier to sell to your existing customers, and if you’re constantly finding new ways to provide value to your customers, you’re doing it right. 

Now that the foundations are out of the way, let’s get into the actual customer acquisition process. 

Let’s go behind the scenes of a campaign that generated $1,000,000 in revenue through Facebook and Instagram. 

Here’s what the actual numbers were: 

That’s pretty badass, right?

Here’s what we’ve done (in this campaign, and in countless others for the world’s leading fitness experts) and what you should do to achieve the same: 

1. Optimize the Funnel – #1 Goal On The Front End is To Build a Customer Base (Low Entry Point) And Breakeven 

Average order value (AOV) is the most important metric to track when driving paid traffic to your subscription offer. 

Optimizing your AOV in a way that it’s high enough to pay for your traffic costs, and acquire a recurring customer for $0 (breakeven) is crucial to this process.  (In this actual campaign, we were actually profitable on the front end – which is always nice).

And your AOV has a lot to do with how your funnel is set up. 

While this was not our task as we manage traffic campaigns, we’re highly involved in our clients’ funnel optimization processes as that directly affects the return on investment from paid advertising. 

Here’s how the optimized funnel looked like for this campaign :

This was not how it started – we tested a lot of different offers and combinations until we got the AOV where it is now. 

For example – we found that the best layout for the landing page (first page a person sees after clicking the ad) looks like this:

Here’s how the actual numbers for the funnel looked like: 

In conclusion – optimizing your funnel is crucial as it will determine your AOV, and AOV is directly tied to achieving break-even on advertising – and that is what the main goal is.  

Generally, this is an ongoing process and should continuously be worked on as there’s always room for improvement. Always try to improve the conversion rates for each step in the funnel.

2. Segment your audiences and adjust your approach to each segment 

There are a lot of different stages of the buying cycle – a person who sees your ads for the first time is not in the same stage as a person who’s already on your email list.

Depending on the stage they’re at, you want to serve them different types of content and different types of creatives.  

To do that – you first need to segment your audience based on their familiarity with you or your product. 

This is what the Facebook ads platform is really, really good at. 

You can micro-segment your audience using the Facebook pixel and Custom Audiences – and you should. 

Here’s what that looked like in this campaign: 

With audiences that were already familiar with the brand we were more direct and upfront with the actual offer. 

With cold audiences, we adjusted the copy and the creatives to get people familiar with the brand first (social proof and the brand story worked really well). 

Cold audiences are ALWAYS going to have a higher CPA, but they’re necessary to achieve scale (unless you have a huge brand/audience).

Combining both cold audiences and warm audiences with an optimized approach to each will allow you to achieve both scale and profitability (breakeven on the front end in this case). 

3. Optimize Your Creatives And Use Video Ads 

While creatives (copy/images/video) were always super important, with Facebook’s ad algorithm changes and improvements, other parts of the campaign such as targeting are becoming less important as the algorithm will do a lot of the work for you.

Facebook’s algorithm prefers video to image creatives.

That means that on the video ad campaigns, the CPM (and consequently CPC) will be much lower – you’ll pay less to acquire a customer.  

Here’s an example from this campaign:

Both ads ran to the same audience but the video ad was actually profitable (on the front end) which allowed us to scale the ad spend and actually reach 7 figures in revenue in the end. Cost per acquisition is one of the 2 important metrics and using video is a big part of why we managed to get the CPA where we needed it to be (and lower). 

Video quality and structure are definitely important and we did a lot of testing – but even with a lower quality video (because Facebook’s algorithm prefers video) you’ll get much better results than with static creatives. 

This is not an end-be-all solution – you have to split test relentlessly in order to find the best performing ads. In this campaign, the total number of variations was over 500.

4. Use Different Advertising Angles To Hit Different Pain Points 

The concept of angles in advertising is something that a lot of people either don’t understand or don’t understand the potential and how powerful it is. 

In order to convert the biggest percentage of your audience, you need to solve their problems. 

The product we were selling was a fitness product, and essentially it was the same product for everyone who bought – but not everybody is going to buy for the same reason. 

Not everybody in our target audience is experiencing problems in their fitness the same way, and not everybody wants the same outcome. Here are some examples:  

• Some people want to lose weight to look better

• Some people want to be healthier

• Some people want to have more energy to work more efficiently

There are a lot more examples but you get the point. 

The better you describe the problem your potential customer is having, and the better you describe how you’re going to solve that problem and get him/her the specific outcome he/she wants – the better your conversion rate will be. That’s what angles essentially are. 

In fitness campaigns like this one, there’s a high level of seasonality and you should definitely capitalize on that by creating angles specific to different seasons. 

5. Use The Right Ad Placements And Ad Objectives To Achieve The Highest ROAS

This is one part of the technical part of the campaign, which is crucial to success on Facebook. In order to achieve the best results, you need to understand the platform.

Facebook (and Instagram) is fairly complex compared to other advertising platforms and you need to know what you’re doing (or hire somebody who does). 

As far as the placement goes, the news feed is still the king. In this campaign, the mobile news feed was the best-performing placement. 

What’s generally happening with both ad placements and targeting is that the algorithm is getting smarter. Before you needed to micromanage both but as the algorithm improves it’s better to go wide and leave the optimization to Facebook. If you optimize for conversions (lowest cost) and select all the placements, the algorithm is going to actually determine which placement brings you the most conversions at the lowest cost. 

What’s really important here is that you adjust your creatives for different placements as they look really different and a format that works on one placement will not work on the other. 

With Ad objectives, you should generally use the objective that you’re aiming for and that’s what we’re almost always doing. If you’re looking for traffic – use website clicks, if you’re looking for conversions (which in this case you will) – use conversions objective. 

CONCLUSION

The Facebook advertising landscape is getting more complex every year, and you need to stay on top of your game to compete. You must stay up to date with all the changes to the platform and the actual ad algorithm in order to get the best results from your advertising efforts. 

You also have to know your numbers – not just Facebook ad stats but your full-funnel metrics, in order to advertise profitably. Without knowing your customer LTV, you can’t know how much you can pay to acquire a customer. 

On top of that, you have to understand that you’re marketing to people and that old-school marketing concepts and truths still apply – a lot of the time the changes that will bring you the best returns are changes in the way you speak about your products or services.

NEXT STEPS…

Growing your online course/membership business to 7-figures and beyond is possible. You just need to dive in the deep and find out your unique formula.

If you’re already advertising on Facebook/Instagram and want to scale your ads to $3k+/day, we can help. 

Schedule a call with InfoScaling Team to find out how we can help you. 

We’re going to talk about your business, what you’re currently experiencing with your ad campaigns and how to improve them. 

At the end of our 30 minutes together, if you meet the criteria we might offer you to work with us. 

The call is 100% free and has no strings attached.

Here’s the link again.

Dom