BONUS – 5 Things I Learned From a Facebook Ads Bootcamp

Kirsten 0:04

You're listening to the creative teacher podcast, a show for busy teachers looking for ways to engage, inspire and make an impact in their teacher businesses. I'm Kiersten, a teacher business owner who is all about simple and actionable tips, strategies and resources that result in wins, big or small. If you're looking for that extra spark of creativity, you've come to the right place. Let's dive in together.

Hey there, welcome to a bonus episode of the creative teacher podcast. This is kind of a very impromptu episode that wasn't really planned. It's an honor my air table base. But I wanted to share with you just a little bit about a Facebook ad bootcamp that I participated in a few months ago. And just some takeaways from it, what I learned from it, and how you can participate in the upcoming boot camp as well. So I'll be sharing with you specific results that I got. And five main things that I learned from this bootcamp and ways that you can also join this boot camp that's coming up later this month, if you're listening to this in real time.

So let's start with setting out the scene of where I even learned about this Facebook ads bootcamp in the first place. So I think it was I don't remember who it was somebody posted it in the wallflowers Facebook group. And I remember, I was super intrigued. I was like, oh, it's only $10. And I can learn about list building Facebook ads and how to set one up. Because before that time, I really was not very familiar with Facebook ads, I was really just kind of blindly doing things. Getting leads, of course, but not really knowing, knowing what I'm doing. So I looked at the landing page, and I was like, okay, and then I remember the next day, I was trying to look for that same Facebook post, and I couldn't find it in the Facebook group. But because I had clicked on the sales page, the person had, I guess, put me in as a warm audience. And so I did eventually see it the next morning, as I was on my Facebook feed, so it kind of worked out. And so I was like, Okay, I'm gonna join. So it was $10. I shared it with my mastermind, and some of them also joined. And so I'm super excited. And this Facebook ads bootcamp is by Zach's buckler, he is a marketer. And he also hosts a podcast called not your average online marketing podcast, and he has a membership and all of that stuff. So I like didn't really know that much about him, I was just like, it's $10, it's really low entry fee, I'm going to just do it and see what I learned throughout the process. And when I tell you that it was life changing in various amount of ways, I'm like, literally not exaggerating, because by the end of that bootcamp, I had a much better understanding of how list building ads worked, I was able to walk through with Zach and his team to set up the ads, and get it running and getting leads from it. And so through his expertise, and through his different steps that he has, I was able to actually set up a successful list building lead magnet that still drives in leads for me today. So that's kind of what I'm going to be sharing with you is like what I learned and just kind of some indirect results from it as well.

So the first thing I learned is that you do need to pick a lead magnet that already converts well organically. If you're getting leads, just by sharing it organically on Instagram or Facebook, or in some type of email campaign, then it's likely going to do very well, if you are adding money behind it through a Facebook ad and promoting it. So I've heard from different sources of like maybe 30% 20%. But it does need to convert if there's a lot of use and very, very, very low conversion rate like you know, below 10% it's likely not going to do well as a Facebook ad. And it's likely going to cost you a high amount per result or just in general cost you more money to get leads or if it even gets leads at all.

The second thing I learned from the bootcamp is that you should consider using lead form ads versus traffic ads. So pretty Easily, I've always done my list building ads, when I do it blindly, I had no idea what I was doing. I used to traffic ad because I, I think that, you know, it makes sense to get people to click on the link from the Facebook ad, and it goes to my landing page and people opt in on that landing page. And while that is great for certain things, the bootcamp mainly focuses on utilizing the, it's fairly new, I'm not sure how new it is, it's a loot lead form ad. So it's directly opting in through Facebook, there are pros and cons to this one of the pros being, of course, they don't leave Facebook. So they could be scrolling and doing whatever they're doing. And they see your ad and they just opt in with a couple of clicks, boom, they get it sent to their inbox. So that's always a plus, it's like, okay, I'm assuming Facebook likes those types of things. The downside is sometimes it's odd, it's like a autofill with the name and the email address. And sometimes you're getting people with emails that they it's like their junk email that they you know, they don't think about and they just still click on it. So you may not be getting as high quality leads as people going directly to a landing page and taking the time to fill it out and opt in that way. But another pro to having a lead form ad is that you can track with the pixel, your leads for up to 12 months with Facebook lead form ads, whereas with landing pages, I think it's only tracked to up to maybe six months, or 180 days. So you do get the benefit of being able to track those, what would become your warm audiences for a lot longer than if you were to have them just hop onto your landing page and use the pixel for that. So I kind of was skeptical at this as well. And so I did during the boot camp, do some like side by side testing, like very basic testing. And I was like, You know what I'm gonna I'm just gonna go all in with this lead form. Um, it turns out, it did end up over time doing better than what I had already had been doing with the traffic ad.

Or the third thing I learned is to test it out. This is something that he recommends, as far as you're testing things out with the copy, having some type of long form copy and short form copy. So two different types of copy. And two different types of graphics. So we focus mainly on static images. And so I just did two different types. So it was like a two by two kind of thing. And then you're also testing it out with the ad sets or the audiences. So that was really kind of cool to see how these you what you think might be working like, Oh, I bet this image is going to be great. It turns out to be the opposite. Sometimes it convert, it confirms what you were kind of thinking might work. And sometimes it surprises you. So that was kind of really cool to see. And now the ads that I'm running truly are the best optimal ads I have that will get the most bang for my buck, because I tested it out. And that was a really cool part of the process is being able to see how this is you know how this whole process goes down.

The fourth thing I learned is that it's important to have a place for leads to go after they opt in. So you might have already some type of landing page and people opt into your freebie. And you might have some type of thank you page like Hey, thank you for opting in, come join me on in my Facebook group comm follow me on instagram comm check out my podcast. So it's very similar to that. But with the lead form ad that you're setting up, you can also kind of do something similar. So after they opt in on the Facebook lead form, it'll say like thank you click this button to join blank, whatever you want them to send, you can send them to podcast, you can send them to your Instagram, I went ahead and sent mine to my Facebook group. And I'll share with you kind of like how that's been working. But that's kind of like my little call to action is after they opt in like Hey, join my Facebook group. So I'm still trying to keep them on Facebook, make everybody happy, make Facebook happy.

The fifth thing I learned is to aim for B plus, I can be a bit of a perfectionist. always been that way. And so I kind of had to you know, think about okay, it's not going to be 100% Perfect. I can always tweak it I'm testing it out. I'm tweaking it as I see fit and I'm not going to spend hours and hours trying to get the perfect graphic for my ad because it may not even work. So that was something important that was helpful in the process is not to like overthink it is just aim for B plus, that's what he says. And so that's what I did, I just kind of kept it open. I'm just like, okay, one of my favorite parts of the boot camp is that on the first day, when you're focusing on the ad creative and the copy and stuff, you can actually get feedback from him, he'll like you just post in like the different options you're thinking about and the copy. And he gives you actual, like, feedback on what he thinks about it, and what you might be able to maybe tweak or which ones he likes. So that was really helpful in like guiding me like, hey, is this is this good. What I'm doing here is this good. So having that one on one feedback, where he can kind of help you out was super helpful.

Now, let's go into the results from my experience. So I did this boot camp in October. So I set up my ads beginning that Tuesday, the 10th. And on by Friday, or I should say from Tuesday to Friday, as I'm looking at my data, I got 274 leads in those four days. And my cost per result was at 41 cents, which is pretty darn good for you know, that amount. So that was really cool is like wow, you can just in four days, just think about what you can do in the future as you're running this constantly. Now, one thing to note is that the first couple of days, you are spending a lot more than what you would normally be spending like just throughout the year. So as you're testing it, you we were doing $5 per ad set, and I had done 10 ad sets, but you don't have to do that many. So the first day was like $50, then of course, you're cutting that down. So it was $25 all the way down to what your manageable ad spend you want per day for that specific ad. So it was just basically that's just something to keep in mind, if you're like, Whoa, that's a lot. But that was really, really helpful is being able to test out all those ad sets. And now I have it at a manageable amount per day. Indirectly, I've gotten some really great results. I've grown my Facebook group, it started before the boot camp at like maybe hanging hanging in with over 100, maybe just over 100. But now it has over 600 members. And I of course have those questions set before they can even join, I've had to decline people for not answering, but most of the time people are answering and so I let them in. And so it's been really great to have a community of like minded upper elementary social studies teachers that are looking for that type of support. Additionally, I've found that while I can't 100% track it, I do have specific cases where people have purchased my resources on TPT or have joined my membership. I know of one specific case early on, it was like within that first month, where the person messaged me and she's like, Oh, I saw the you know, the guided notes. And then she ended up buying the membership. And she ended up getting one of my growing bundles. So that just that was just one case. And I've had just kind of like this boom. And it seemed to coincide with when I set up the ads. The other thing that was indirect was that I've had more followers on TPT, and Instagram and Facebook. So it's more of an increase than um, when I wasn't running ads. Usually with my social media accounts, it's usually pretty stagnant depending on like, what promotions I have going on. But I have noticed that there's like, more of an uptick in follows more. So then what I had noticed before I even had the ads. So again, I've got these ads running currently they've been running since October. And just this is just kind of an indirect effect. And while it's not like we can't 100% track, okay, like these people saw my lead magnet ad. So they are also like going in and following me around. It's just kind of that indirect trickle effect. It's really helped expand my audience, just in this one short timeframe. So if you're wondering, okay, so like you're running this, how's it doing now, and as of January 2, I have generated 1987 leads and the cost per result is at 41 cents so so hold on strong on the 41 cents per results or per lead. So I'm really happy with the results. I recently refreshed. My creative or my graphic for the actual lead magnet I took took some pictures that were up to date and newer. And I've seen even more of an uptick in the last week and a half or two weeks. So that's been really cool to see. And kind of, I had to do some extra testing to see like, okay, are we going to keep the original ad? Or are we gonna go with this newer ad. And it turns out people like the newer ad. So that's been running in the background.

So it's been really, really cool to have this list building ad, running, growing my email list, and also indirectly growing my followers for my social media and my Facebook group. All because I took a chance with this $10 I was like, Oh, it's $10. This should we'll see how this goes. But it turns out, it was super valuable. And honestly, I'd say it's a steal, because I've seen other Facebook ad bootcamps. And they're like going for $97 or $200. So if you have a lead magnet that is doing pretty awesome, organically. And you are interested in starting up a list building campaign for Facebook, and you're thinking about ways to kind of build your audience in a way that isn't so like constantly, oh, my gosh, gotta constantly post about this on social media and my email list and all of that. I highly recommend joining the Facebook ad bootcamp because good news. There is an upcoming bootcamp happening beginning on January 15 2024. So you can join this boot camp for $10. It's a five day boot camp where he walks you through setting up the list building lead ads, and the goal is to have it up and running and generating leads by the third day. If this is something you're interested in, you can actually go to my special affiliate link at the southern teach designs.com forward slash bootcamp and you will be able to register there. Again, it's only $10. So honestly, it is it is truly truly for what you get the value you get and what you learn. It is an absolute steal.

So again, that is at the southern teach designs.com forward slash bootcamp. I promise you, you will not be disappointed. All right. Hopefully you enjoyed this bonus episode. And I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week. Bye guys.

Thanks for listening to the creative teacher podcast. If you enjoyed listening to today's episode, feel free to subscribe and leave a review. I'd love to hear your feedback. You can also follow me on Instagram at the southern teach dot designs. Have an amazing day.