Caitlin Bacher:
Episode 75: 3 Paid Traffic Mistakes to Finally Quit Making This Year.
It’s time to dive into one of my favorite topics, paid traffic.
Now, if you’re a course creator, then it’s likely you’ve heard a lot of advice from well-meaning folks on what is and isn’t working when it comes to using paid traffic to fill your funnel, and it’s just as likely that much of that advice simply doesn’t work anymore.
Now, the good news is that paid traffic is still a great option when it comes to driving people to your Profitable Sales Engine™.
We are still using paid traffic and there’s no way I’d be investing resources into it if it didn’t work.
In fact, we just included a new juicy bonus inside of our Scale With Success® Accelerator offer that teaches people how to build a Profitable Sales Engine™ in just 30 days, and it is all about the paid traffic strategy that we are using now to fill our funnels.
➡️ Now, if you haven’t seen it, then go watch my free masterclass, “How To Generate Launch-Sized Revenue Without Launching” and you can learn more about it.
So 3 paid traffic mistakes to finally quit making this year, let’s get started.
My name is Caitlin Bacher, founder and CEO of Scale With Success®, and I’m on a mission to help course creators all over the world grow their business in a way that is profitable and scalable. We are sharing, revealing conversations about what it really takes to scale an online course business to millions of dollars per year. Join us here to discover the tough decisions we’ve had to make, the biggest failures we’ve had to bounce back from and the learnings that emerged every step of the way. We are so grateful that we have the chance to share it all with you right here on Scale With Success®, The Podcast Built for Course Creators™. Let’s get started.
Paid traffic and organic traffic are both viable options when it comes to filling your funnels.
Organic traffic can include traffic from referrals, social media, partnerships, SEO, or PR.
Now for the record, we have clients that are generating 6 figures in revenue per month only using organic traffic.
So for those of you that are consistently using referrals, social media, partnerships, SEO, or PR, it’s definitely possible to at least have a funnel that generates five figures per month.
Now, the reason we use a blend of organic and paid traffic is because I love the predictability and freedom that paid traffic provides.
So my team and I do spend a fair amount of time creating organic content.
Recording videos for social media, giving guest trainings to various masterminds, promoting my free masterclass to my email list, and releasing a brand new podcast every week.
Now, all of this works and is great, but paid traffic adds another layer of revenue that I wouldn’t have otherwise had with organic traffic alone.
Over the years, I’ve made a ton of mistakes with paid traffic and learned the hard way about what works and what doesn’t.
I created today’s episode because I don’t want you to make the same mistakes.
Three paid traffic mistakes to finally quit making this year.
Mistake #1: Linear Thinking vs. Systems Thinking.
Now, you’ve heard me talk about the power of Systems Thinking inside my free masterclass as it relates to funnels, but now I want to talk about it and how it relates to ads specifically.
So when most course creators think about ads.
They use Linear Thinking, just as they do in many other areas in their business.
This causes course creators to track wrong data and make the wrong decisions as they attempt to fix their ads.
What makes our program so powerful is that our methodology looks at the sales cycle as an entire system.
Everything from your prospect’s first touchpoint with your brand to when they officially enroll.
Now, our traffic and conversion systems are all designed to work together seamlessly.
Linear Thinking and data tracking is both rigid and short term. It doesn’t give an accurate picture of what is actually happening, and you won’t know whether or not your ads are truly driving sales.
The problem is that many well-meaning folks are still teaching about paid traffic through a Linear Thinking lens, and while that may have worked before all of the iOS changes that happened in April of 2021, they certainly do not work now, leaving many course creators discouraged and feeling like ads just don’t work for them.
So let’s move on to the next paid traffic mistake to finally quit making this year.
Mistake #2: Pressure vs. Connection.
Your ads can be the first point of connection between you and your prospect, so you need to be sure of two things. Number one, your message reaches the right person.
That’s called ads targeting, and number two, your message uses words that connect.
That’s your ad creative.
We use a proprietary sales psychology in everything that we do called Connect and Convert.
We use this throughout all the content frameworks that we teach, including advertising.
Nobody knows your audience better than you, which is why I strongly discourage you from outsourcing every single bit of copy inside your funnel.
I know it can seem like an easy solution to have someone build and write your entire funnel, but I have never seen this work well.
In fact, many of our clients came to us because they tried this approach and it didn’t work.
I remember a specific case where one Scaler had spent upwards of $150,000 on hiring people to build his funnel, and the results were terrible.
He’d hired a funnel expert to build a funnel that unfortunately used all the hard closing tactics under the sun.
Our methodology is so completely different than what he used before, but he felt like at this point, he had nothing to lose by giving it a try.
Within days of implementing our copy frameworks in everything from his ads to his webinar, suddenly he was getting a positive return on his ad spend.
Now, I often think about him and I wonder what would’ve happened if he never joined our program.
Maybe he’d go back to launching or worse, maybe he wouldn’t even have a business.
I know it sounds counterintuitive to stop using high pressure, hard closing tactics in order to convert more people, but I’ve got news for you.
Consumer behavior has shifted.
Consumers today are not the consumers of yesterday.
They have loads of experience buying products online and their BS meter is on high alert.
➡️ Now, I talk more about Connect and Convert inside my free masterclass, so make sure that after this podcast you go check it out.
Onto our final paid traffic mistake to quit making this year.
Mistake #3: Busy vs. Effective.
This one’s going to hurt, but most businesses fail, because the owners are busy solving the wrong problems.
If it feels like you are busy doing all the things and yet none of the things are actually moving you forward, then it’s highly likely that you are solving the wrong problems.
When you are running ads, it’s likely every day you wake up and think, “Are these ads working?”
You check your PayPal and see that no one has purchased, leaving you with a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach.
So, what do you do?
Well, if you’re like most course creators, you jump into action and start solving problems left, right, and center.
Change the targeting, change the creative, change the placement, change the budget, even turn off your ads sets all together.
Or worst of all, start posting in private Facebook groups asking who everyone recommends to start running your ads.
Now, the truth is that even if you do have an ads manager, you still need to know how to identify what to fix and come to the table with some ideas of how to fix it.
I put all of my 1:1 mentorship clients through a private training that shows them how to effectively manage their ads manager to get optimum results, even if they have no idea how to even run an ad themselves.
Taking a hands-free approach to working with an ads manager is dangerous, and it leaves your business vulnerable to a huge loss.
When you track the right data and have the right benchmarks to measure your results against, then things become pretty straightforward.
You don’t need to know all the tech behind ad setup, although we do include that in our bonus package for Scale With Success® Accelerator, just in case you do want to do it yourself, but you must have visibility into what’s working and what isn’t.
The right data can give you a paint by numbers approach to fixing your ads and transform them from useless to profitable.
Ads do work, but they are not a standalone solution to scaling your business.
➡️➡️➡️ If you are serious about taking a stand for your business and building a Profitable Sales Engine™ that will give you the growth that your business needs in just 30 days, then sign up for my free masterclass right now.
I’ll see you next week on Scale With Success®, The Podcast.
Are you sick and tired of launching and looking for a proven method to generate consistent revenue from your online course on auto-pilot?
Sign up for my free masterclass, “How To Generate Launch-Sized Revenue Without Launching” and I’ll show you how our clients are making MORE money in LESS time than they ever did while launching.
If making sales everyday in a way that is completely automated and doesn’t require paid advertising sounds good to you, then click the link around this episode and sign up for my free masterclass today.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Scale With Success® Accelerator — an online course designed to help you generate launch-sized revenue without lanching. If you want to learn MORE about our proven method for success, click here to watch my free masterclass. See you in there!