In another blog I introduced the concept of a 3 step funnel taking leads from strangers to engagers to buyers. Ironically this blog was about why you SHOULDN’T run ads. Or, rather why ads aren’t always just a blanket answer to grow your coaching business. Today I want to talk about when ads CAN be used as an effective tool to help grow your coaching business.
Strangers
If you meet a random stranger on the internet they likely have no awareness that your business exists. Maybe they’ve experienced the problems that you have a solution for but they’ve never encountered you. This step of the funnel is all about putting out content that will introduce yourself to potential leads and let them decide whether they want to continue engaging with your business. The real goal here is to just put yourself and your content in front of people.
Meta gives you a few tools to work with this step but the general idea is the same. You want people to become aware of who you are, what problems you help solve, and what outcomes you provide. The key aspect of this step is reaching as many people as possible. Often these will be the cheapest ads you run because getting people to view a few seconds of a video or read a post is relatively easy.
Running ads to build reach and awareness also allows you to use the “custom audience” feature in Meta. When you run awareness and reach ads you will likely run them to a cold audience. What does this mean? Your audience won’t be targeting people who are likely to have heard of you. Instead you’ll be targeting people who have a particular set of interests that are likely to align with your ideal audience. Once you’ve built enough reach you can then begin making custom and lookalike audiences that will be built around the people who have engaged with your posts and shown some interest.
Using this technique will allow you to build a more and more accurate audience that will match who your ideal client is. This leads to better results further down the funnel and ultimately lowers your cost to acquire new clients.
Engagers
Once potential leads have seen or engaged with one of your posts the goal is to keep them engaged and keep your business in front of them. This is where you can start re-targeting people that you made aware of your business in the first step. Serve them engaging content like videos, live stream opportunities, group invites, and things that will keep welcoming them into your business.
Meta has a multitude of tools at this step that you can use to tailor your approach. If you have a custom phone app then you can point traffic to download it. You can advertise your blog. You can boost posts directly for engagement or to grow likes on your business page and you can even target people to send you a message! The sky is really the limit here. The only goal you have is to make sure your business stays in front of potential leads.
This step is likely where you’ll begin building more accurate custom audiences. When you’re targeting cold audiences like in step 1 you are likely to have fairly low rates of engagement. It’s a cold audience! They must be warmed up first and once they make it to step 2 they are beginning to feel the warmth. They enjoy your content and they want to engage and you’re making sure they have ample opportunity to do it.
Buyers
Once a lead has been warmed up enough you’ll want to begin converting them. This can look like several different things although the most obvious is a SALE! A more common first conversion, however, would be to sign up for a freebie. I offer a guide that will walk you through developing your own coaching niche to brand your business. The goal is to create a freebie that is relevant to the transformation you provide to your clients that provides enough value for them to sign up.
Meta has a few ways you can target for conversions however 2 of them are really more relevant for a store front. So, the focus on the buyers phase is to run conversion ads that will enable your interested leads to give you their contact info. This is where the funnel diverts away from the Meta platform.
Once you have a lead’s email you can begin delivering the freebie as well as selling them on your offers. At this point you can assume they’re interested in your business and you. All you need to do is really hammer home the value you can provide them.
When To Use Ads
So there is a 10,000ft view of how you can use Meta ads to grow your coaching business. It seems pretty simple right? Well, it kind of is. No doubt you can get as complicated as you want with it. Meta offers a multitude of tools and platforms to help you grow your business. The core of it all is a funnel that will bring awareness to your business, build engagement, and convert leads.
The key here: This process isn’t limited to paid ads! There are so many ways you can do each step of this organically. In fact, if you HAVEN’T done any of this organically then I’d actually suggest holding off on the ads until you have developed a funnel that you know can make sales. Ads are a powerful tool to grow your coaching business but they can’t do all the heavy lifting. If you have proven that you can build engagement organically and ultimately funnel people to a sale then you’re ready to see the explosive growth that ads can have on your business.
How To Grow Your Coaching Business With Meta Ads
If you follow this 3 step funnel then you can expect to see growth in your coaching business. It is so critical to develop a working funnel first. Once you have one then you can use ads to grow faster and faster. As you develop more skills in the Meta platform you can build increasingly complex funnels with retargeting to lower your costs and be even more efficient.
Building a foundation funnel that works and nurtures clients towards a sale will enable you to start building an email list and an audience that you can sell to. Develop this funnel out using different lead magnets, finding new groups to engage in, and writing more emails that will convince your leads that you can help them.
Once you have a funnel that produces results it is FINALLY time to introduce ads. Once you have proof that your funnel works you can amplify its effect by reaching bigger audiences by investing in platforms like google and Meta to deliver your ads to a qualified audience.
If you want to talk more about running ads for your coaching business or if you’re ready to develop your own signature program offer, book a free Coaching Business Strategy Call.
