Optimizing an Online Sales Funnel:
How This Course Creator Made Over $62,000 in Less than 2 Months of Starting Facebook Ads
by Dr. Eric Patrick
Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you.
Not Generating Enough Sales for Your Business? Let Us Help You Automate Your Sales Through Facebook and Instagram Ads
Are people showing interest in your life-changing product or service but haven't opened up their wallets yet? Breaking the bank on Facebook and Instagram Ads but your ROI is lackluster leaving you spending more money than you make? If so, then work with us to optimize your sales funnel through paid ads and get in front of the right people who are ready to pour their dollars into your profits.
AT A GLANCE...
When the creator of Trade and Travel reached out to me about never running Facebook or Instagram ads but wanting to increase her course's sales, I saw this as a great opportunity to work with a finance influencer that was changing the landscape of how people generate consistent monthly income.
The problem she was experiencing was not anything new but she needed a new way to approach her marketing, storytelling, and her strategies around growing her course. Below you’ll find the strategies I developed for Invest With Teri (home to Trade and Travel) to grow from 0 to $62,000+ in course sales in less than 2 months.
Intro: Most creators with online courses launch them to the public once, like an introduction to a new business, product, or service. Others, relaunch them over and over again on intermittent schedules. But launches require a lot of time and energy which leads to endless nights and fatigue while getting things done. This usually happens over weeks at a time for launches that only last a few days.
The financial ROI may be good, but the time and energy ROI is practically nonexistent. In the case study below, I break down how Invest With Teri's Trade and Travel course generated over $62,000 within 2 months, the launch framework that will put you in a position to succeed, and how to build a business that generates consistent sales.
Invest With Teri is a financial literacy company for new and experienced investors. When I began working with the founder, my first task was making sure she quickly understood the value of running paid ads to generate sales. Below I’ll dive into her most recent campaigns and how she made over $62,000 in less than 2 months of starting to run paid ads.
THE DEETS...
Invest With Teri was founded by Teri Ijeoma and what started out as a means to replace her income as an assistant principal to quit her job and travel the world quickly grew into serving others who wanted to do the same. Teri focused her efforts on the underappreciated and overworked employees who were tired of having to request time off for vacations and family time. Her course, Trade and Travel, focuses on those who want to see the world and build a legacy on their terms.
After her apartment flooded in Dallas, she went on a mission trip to South Korea which is where she taught her first trading class in-person to 30 students. Most people may see the flooding as a setback but she saw it as an opportunity to explore the world and fund her dreams by trading the stock market.
Although her course began to grow, she knew that doing it herself wasn't going to be enough if she wanted to help 1,000 students make $1,000 a day so they could collectively make $1 million dollars a day and make real change in the world while traveling throughout it at the same time. She was doing podcast interviews, IG lives, and churning out content to get new students in but she knew she wasn't reaching as many people as she could with her own efforts.
When I began working with Teri, my main priority was to understand the current business structure and the short and long term objectives before collaborating. Here is how I went about doing that:
Campaign Infrastructure
There were 3 key components I had to examine before putting together a marketing strategy and those components were: lead magnet, current marketing, customer journey. Those components allowed me to determine scalability. Meaning if these components were not in place then the marketing strategy would not be a success. Driving traffic to a brand is only as good as the structure that’s in place to handle it.
Campaign Results
There were 2 lead magnets involved to drive more sales towards her course. One sales webinar and one weekly webinar series that ran like a podcast. And in under 60 days of running social ads, Teri and the Invest With Teri team generated over $62,000. What’s even more important is that they have been able to maintain that momentum ever since.
BREAKING DOWN THE STRATEGY...
Before launching the webinar series and relaunching the sales webinar, I remember the Invest With Teri Team being a little hesitant about starting a paid ads campaign. I’m sure there were many questions and possibly even doubts creeping into their thoughts around marketing and sales. I mean they had spent the past year perfecting their course and growing their student community without running a single ad to generate automated sales.
This is what I find most common when working with solopreneurs and small teams. The same level of effort it takes to organically market products and services does not go into creating passive paid marketing efforts. And if you know business, you know that sales need to be made to stay in business. Why then do so many small business owners make the mistake of not focusing on the automation of their marketing and sales strategy?
If you’re a business owner who's made this mistake then you’re probably shaking your head in agreement right about now. I also don’t want you to think that you should stop spending time on your product or service to solely focus on marketing. The biggest take-away is spend the same amount of effort in both. Marketing activities such as website conversions, campaign development, traffic, etc are all critical components into your marketing strategy to make sales.
Working alongside the founder, I developed what the sales and marketing strategy should look like if they want to experience consistent sales while they sleep; not just the day ad campaigns are launched but beyond that — keyword: consistent.
Another important thing to note is that our best biggest spend that increased our sales was dedicated to Facebook & Instagram ads, and developing the proper assets needed for campaign development.
So how do you decide if running ads is right for your brand? You can start by weighing the pros and cons:
Pros
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It will allow you to increase your email opt-in and open rates by runnings social media ads to your email list and to those who are similar to them.
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It allows you to target anyone anywhere with 0 email list (you don’t even need an email list to start running ads).
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Ads allow you to become more visible, driving an extreme amount of the right traffic to your online website.
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You can start testing ads for as low as $1 a day to gauge engagement and potential return. Then, as you gain insight into what might work, you can ramp up your spending.
Cons
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If you don’t understand what you’re doing and the proper strategy, you can waste a lot of money and feel frustrated that it’s not working.
The truth is that if you’re working with someone who is well versed on how to monetize online that knows your industry and understands what needs to be done, then you can prevail and succeed.
FROM 0 TO $62K...
Pre-Campaign
Working alongside the founder, I developed what the sales and marketing strategy should look like if they want to experience continued sales in the form of passive income — consistently.
Every ad campaign needs to generate qualified leads. The best way to do this was by reaching out to our contacts — friends, family, etc. Making sure we had the attention of a small community that was familiar with us. This is very important because the “know-like-trust” factor is already built-in and because of that, this small community will be more inclined to open their wallets to you. Having more money on hand to invest in other parts of your marketing never hurts. When you look at Invest With Teri as a brand you notice how well designed it is and how simple each campaign we put together came about.
Once we established some buzz around Invest With Teri's webinar series and reintroduced the sales webinar, we needed to find a way to engage with our bigger community and people that didn’t know about the Trade and Travel program. Our strategy was focused around Invest With Teri’s core mission, helping 1,000 students make $1,000 in a day. So Invest With Teri developed student success commercials and a powerful webinar series interviewing successful entrepreneurs that made their first millions whether it be sales, podcast downloads, or YouTube views. Through these commercials and the webinar series, we developed a deeper relationship with our audience and even gave them the opportunity to join Trade and Travel before the next VIP cohort started.
Campaign
When the cohort enrollment period officially opened, Invest With Teri drove sales through targeted ads and content marketing campaigns in emails and on their social media. Invest With Teri began developing student commercials beforehand to not only capture real success stories but tell a story that their community could relate to. These commercials would quickly spread over social media as it resonated with their audience ultimately leading to sale webinar registrants.
Another key component during the launch was making people aware of the Power of 1 Million webinar series. Teri interviewed industry leaders from Danielle Leslie and Abu Fofanah to Ankur Nagpal and Luisa Zhou. The webinar series registrants became leads and then turned into course sales. The Invest With Teri community shared how great the sessions were on social media, driving more traffic, engagement, and emails, allowing us to target them strategically with ads which increased sales.
Post-Campaign
So what happens next? This is after the hype dies down and you come into work the next day scratching your head as to why you don’t have any sales today. We accounted for that and Invest With Teri began running ads, marketing email campaigns, abandon carts follow-ups, and so many other activities to track and capture sales.
Brands need to understand that marketing and sales are everyday things. Well, unless you don’t want to be in business anymore. Thinking that if you “build it, they will come” does not work, you must consistently and purposefully drive people to what you've built. Going viral is a pipe dream so banking on that just doesn't work. And when you accept that, you can begin putting together a marketing and sales strategy to stay in business.
Here are the Results
As a small business owner, you need to ask yourself:
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Am I doing everything that I can day in and day out?
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Do I understand what it takes to market and monetize on social and online?
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How can I better prepare myself to reach my sales goal working efficiently and effectively?
Invest With Teri’s tremendous advantage is that she has an offer that addresses a pain point.
DIFFERENCE FROM A GOOD TO GREAT MARKETING CAMPAIGN...
It’s important to be focused. You will be tested as an entrepreneur because it requires extreme focus, patience, and trial and error.
It’s important to have a social ads strategist to help convert followers into leads and leads into sales which is what I provide to entrepreneurs that work with me. The difference between good and great is just being really clear about what you want, how you define your brand and what you want to optimize for.
Are people showing interest in your life-changing product or service but haven't opened up their wallets yet? Breaking the bank on Facebook and Instagram Ads but your ROI is lackluster leaving you spending more money than you make? If so, then work with us to optimize your sales funnel through paid ads and get in front of the right people who are ready to pour their dollars into your profits.
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