Are ads *really* necessary for consistent revenue in your online biz!? If you are an entrepreneur with digital products, then this post all about Facebook Ads will be right up your alley! 

I invited our  KS Agency Facebook Ad Director who is also a client of ours, Rebecca Rice, to help me share these tips for you… and I’ll be honest, you guys. We have a LOT of opinions about ads.

We’ll be sharing a little bit of our unique working relationship, what Rebecca’s experience is with ads in her own business (including what it was like to take a 6 month break from running Facebook ads!) and which ads YOU should run in your own business. 

If you’re curious if Facebook Ads are worth it, how to maximize your ROI on ads, and how the KS Agency can help you with all of that, then go ahead and press play to tune in. We can’t wait to hear what you think!!

HOW REBECCA USED ADS IN HER BUSINESS

Before we dive into Facebook ads and evergreen funnels, I thought it might be helpful to hear a real story of Rebecca’s experience with ads as a real business owner who has found success running ads in her own biz – for years! 

Rebecca started out as a family photographer, and now also teaches photographers how to grow their businesses. She has an associate team of photographers that shoot all over the nation and is the typical Visionary/serial entrepreneur…. Except she loves the numbers & data, too! (Because numbers help take the emotion out of decisions!)

As she says, her business works for her and not the other way around. That’s part of the beauty of being an entrepreneur and creating the life that you want to live.

Rebecca and I have been working together as the Visionary/Integrator duo since 2021. So it’s been a long time, and it’s been amazing. Rebecca is very analytical – she is incredibly numbers and data driven. So in stepping into her brand as the Integrator, she already had all the data and we were able to add gas to that and really figure out ways we could data track even better. 

The data and numbers are actually why she started to run her own ads!! So she ripped apart Facebook Ads Manager and figured out how to make it tick and how to make ads work for her brand. And it’s been a game changer. 

Rebecca is now the Facebook Ad Director on the KS Team where we offer ad management not only to our clients, but also to others who are looking for Facebook and Instagram Ad support. 

HOW OFFERING ADS BECAME PART OF THE KS AGENCY

Rebecca has been running her own ads in her own business for so long that she’s become an expert in them! After working with two ad agencies she decided to do it herself instead of outsourcing and began teaching her team members how to do ads. 

So when the KS Agency started to get more and more requests from our clients to offer ads, we knew we needed to have Rebecca in on it. 

We have a handful of ad clients right now and we’re continuing to grow that side of our agency. It’s been really fun to grow slowly there, as we’re building out our own systems and processes, and getting our really rock solid team in place.

When one of the KS Agency clients decides they want ad management, our project managers are looped in along with our ad specialists, copywriters, creative designers so that we can offer a full service experience for our clients.

USING ADS FOR EVERGREEN FUNNELS 

There are so many different ways and reasons that you can run ads. But something that we see so much of in the digital product space is an evergreen product. 

When we say evergreen, we mean a product that is “always green” – this product is always available for purchase. 

This is not an open/closed cart scenario. This is something where if somebody wants it, they can immediately checkout and purchase. 

There are lots of different strategies for having an evergreen product in your product suite and I’m a firm believer that if you don’t have an evergreen product in your product suite, you should probably think about what that offer could be, and how Facebook ads can jump into that. 

AN EXAMPLE OF USING ADS FOR EVERGREEN FUNNELS… AND WHAT WENT WRONG WHEN THEY STOPPED

In Rebecca’s business, almost all of her products are evergreen products. So for the last several years, she’s been running ads primarily to her evergreen products. This looks like advertising several webinars that point to signature courses or her membership. 

In the seasons that they run ads for those products, they always see incredible revenue growth and they even scale up their ads as they’re performing well. It has become a well-oiled machine! Of course, they do have organic strategy as well, but they learned the hard way that running ads was making a huge difference in her business.

Here’s what happened. They actually took a break on ads for a good 6 months. They were parting ways with an ad agency and decided to take a break before running them on their own. They wanted to see how things converted organically and look at the data to see what the impact would really be. It was telling.

While it was helpful to see what kind of reach they were getting organically, they quickly discovered it wasn’t enough for the type of revenue they needed. Rebecca has a high overhead with her team members so she needed ads as a part of her business strategy and growth to hit the profit they were used to.

They definitely took a dip in the time they didn’t run ads. Immediately after running them again they saw their revenue go right back to what they were used to. That realization made SUCH a difference in how they began to view ads from there on out.

So, why do YOU need to run ads for evergreen funnels specifically? 

REASON #1 – ADS CAN BE A VITAL PIECE OF YOUR MARKETING PUZZLE

Naturally, some business owners do amazing things with zero ads, but for a lot of digital businesses, running ads helps to scale as a vital piece of the puzzle.

Organic reach and ads work so well together – you don’t have to (or maybe shouldn’t even!) just pick one side or the other. 

Having a rock solid, organic strategy – whether that’s YouTube, a podcast, Instagram Reels, whatever it is – is key. When people are finding you from an ad, they’re seeing live accounts and like real things happening with community and education there. 

But then again, having those ads so you get other eyeballs on that organic content that you’re running is crucial for your overall content strategy. 

REASON #2 – YOU RETURN COULD BE 2X, 3X, 4X YOUR INVESTMENT

When you’re looking at what the ROI is for ads, you want a return on what you’ve spent on ads. In other words, when people are directed into your funnel, you get your money back, and then the money that is paying for your ad is doubled, tripled, even quadrupled or more!

So what’s the difference between running ads to an opt-in without a pitch attached to it and running ads to something that will directly increase your revenue?

In our opinion, for smaller businesses, ROI is so important. Getting that return on your ad spend and being cashflow positive with your ads is so important.

For Rebecca that looks like only running ads to a freebie IF that freebie has a funnel in the back end that is selling her signature product. Here’s how that works:

1. They opt-in from the freebie (maybe from an ad!)
2. They begin a 5-7 day email sequence that is already set up and automated.
3. Then they are nurtured and get to know me a little bit.
4. Then they are pitched my course.
5. Ideally within 5-7 days from them joining my email list, they’ve made ap purchase!

So, if you don’t have your funnel setup, they’re following their ads to their freebie and they’re added to your list. However, they’re not converting. That means that it could be 6 months until your next live launch when you see a purchase.

REASON #3 – YOU CAN GET FASTER PURCHASES

A fast purchase, using ads, is much more ideal and what makes them worth it. Your overall profitability becomes much bigger.

If you’re running ads to a freebie, to a webinar, or whatever, it absolutely needs a funnel that is created on the back end so that you can see a sale in 5-7 days. 

So what if you don’t have a funnel connected? Should you be running ads for an opt-in that doesn’t have a funnel on the back end? 

In our opinion… no!! You should not be running ads to something that doesn’t have a funnel connected to it because then you’re going to run into profit issues at that point. Now you’re spending money but may not see a return on that until.. 6 months from now? 

Can you afford to spend money on ads for 6 months without seeing a return on them? Most small businesses can’t. 

Our advice would be to not run ads to an opt-in without having the funnel set up first. We care about your business – whether you ever become a KS Agency client or not – and we care about what you’re spending. We want to see you hit the revenue that you want to hit. In order to do that, you need some strategy going into it.

It doesn’t have to be fancy – a couple of emails on the back end of an opt-in that are pitching a product, whether that’s a $20 or $300 profit. But that’s what’s going to help you long-term. 

Pro tip: Don’t run the ad directly to the sales page for the product offer! Be sure to run ads to the opt-in (freebie, webinar, free class, whatever!) so that they give you their email and then you can build up trust and pitch the product.

REASON #4 – YOU ALREADY HAVE A PROVEN PRODUCT + ADS CAN TAKE YOUR SALES TO THE NEXT LEVEL

In ad funnels to evergreen products, you’re going to be selling something that is proven to be something that your people have been asking for it. If nobody’s been asking for it, it’s going to be a lot harder to sell. 

If it doesn’t convert organically, it’s not going to convert with ads. Usually things convert better organically than they do with ads because there’s that like no trust factor built up yet. Your organic people are your followers, they’re people on your email list, things like that. 

So if you’ve never launched this product before and if it’s not proven, then you need to launch it first to your audience organically before running ads to it. That way you know what your numbers are and you know that it sells. 

The worst case scenario is spending money on ads (which is already scary!) and not even knowing if the product is proven to be something that people want to buy.

At that point, you know your organic conversion rates and you’re able to work backwards to decide how much you want to spend on ads to see the ROI.

Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t have great priming ahead of time. If you already have a YouTube channel, if you already have a ManyChat strategy, absolutely leverage those things. But that’s organic, that’s still working with what you already have. You’re not putting that extra money in the game, so to speak. 

For so many of our clients, it takes a little while to even settle on which freebie, or even which webinar is going to convert the best. And even once we get the ads running, there is still sometimes where we need to tweak it, and that’s okay! 

When you’re throwing money at something, you want to make sure that it’s the best of the best! You want a product that converts, a webinar or freebie that converts, anything like that.

And a quick note to all the perfectionists out there – get it out there and then you can perfect it. It doesn’t need to be perfect! You just want to be sure that you’re getting an ROI that you need to make it worth it.

Pro tip:  You’ll want a conversion rate of 3% on the low end up to 8%, 10% or 12% on the high end. If you’re in that range, it’s solid. If you’re under 1%, don’t run ads to that product. Organically, you want to see above a 3% conversion rate anyway. 

CONCLUSION

So if you’re a Visionary and you’re reading this, I want you to hear that we care so much about that overall funnel. Be strategic about it. Don’t just run ads to an opt-in that takes people nowhere! 

If you are excited to run ads, if you want to build ads into your overall content strategy, 100% do it. Grow your audience!! Just make sure that where you’re pointing people involves some strategy, too, in terms of a funnel. 

Remember why? 

1. Ads can be a vital piece of your marketing puzzle. 
2. You can get an ROI of up to 4X or more with ads. 
3. You can get faster purchases when your product is evergreen.
4. And with a proven evergreen product, you can take your sales to the next level!

So, if you want to run ads, this is what you need to do: Take some time and look at which opt-ins you want to use as a lead gen. Then, where are those people going on your email list after they opt in? 

Of course, the opt-in is super important, but that funnel right after is just as important and it is a forgotten piece in so many digital product strategies. So where are they going after they opt in? You want to be sure it’s to a funnel and a product that is built to convert.

There are so many other strategies and things that we want to talk to you about when it comes to Facebook Ads, so we will be back to talk more about this another time!

But for now, if you have any questions, be sure to reach out to us and ask and if you are ready to run ads, but you don’t really know where to start, click here and find out more!