169: Facebook Ads Strategy As Sweet As Lemonade

00:54 - Getting Started with Pink Lemonade Company   Kellie started toying around with the idea of Pink Lemonade Company in 2009, and it came to fruition in 2011. She was working in a hospital as a respiratory therapist, pulling 12 hour shifts, and never saw her son! “Things had to change,” Kellie said. She was always drawn to graphic design and art, so she pulled a 180 and changed directions.   Kellie knew she wanted to design products and marketing materials for boutique business owners, so Pink Lemonade Company was born.   1:52 - Graphic Design & Online Shop Pink Lemonade Company’s bread and butter is graphic and web design. In 2013 Kellie’s sister came on board, and now they offer t-shirt screen printing too.   In May, they started a graphics membership site. These days, Kellie’s baby project is that membership site.   2:40 - Getting Her FIrst Clients When Kellie knew she needed a change, she exchanged her scrubs for school books. She earned her Bachelor’s in Information Technology, and started learning design through Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. Kellie laughs now at that stage in life, “I was either really stupid or gutless , but I just threw myself out there. It started happening!”   Most of her first clients came through Etsy, before she transitioned over to her own website.   4:34 - New Membership Site   We were so curious to hear about Kellie’s new membership site! Kellie says she has been procrastinating on this dream project forever. “It was overwhelming, and I had a lot of fear about it...But you just have to jump for it.” We’re so glad she did! Kellie’s product received instant proof of concept with new members joining quickly.   The Need for a Membership Site:  As a new business owner, Kellie was having trouble getting affordable access to graphics. Many graphics require expensive licenses to use for business purposes and are just out of reach for new business owners.   Thanks to a community of designers who welcomed in Kellie, she saw how great it could be to have open access to any graphic a business owner needed.   With the help of a business friend, her membership site got off the ground. All members of her site get extended commercial license access to ready-made graphics (and social media posts, what!?) There are two plans: All Access ($97/six months) and Digital Box ($9.99/month)   All of the graphics on the site are from Kellie’s own stash.   Kellie is solving a real problem, here! There are only so many extended commercial licenses any business owner can afford! How great that her customers don’t have to worry about seeing those three dreaded words - ‘Personal Use Only’. They can just opt-in to Kellie’s membership site, and use ANY graphic they see that will be PERFECT for their creative projects.   Kellie’s numbers show just how brilliant her idea is. She started her membership site in May 2017 and already, in August of this year, has 325 members. “I had no idea this club would be this big or this fun!”   She marketed the site via her email list and Facebook (Hint: her email list grew through Facebook!) She sees 98% of her traffic come directly from Facebook.   11:25 - Perfecting Your Customer Email Funnel   As a business owner, I’m constantly trying to hone and tweak my email funnel. It’s tricky! I wanted to hear how Kellie nurtures her leads.   Her biggest trick is: test, test, test! She uses short funnels, and longer funnels. Her shorter funnels seem to work better at the moment. And with ever-shrinking attention spans, it makes sense! She’s hit a sweet spot with her shorter funnels.   Kelli’s also seen a big change in that people just seem to want tons of free content. That has been challenging to navigate. But at the same time, she has also seen big changes in businesses wanting to invest more in courses and coaching.   In Kelli’s experience, making those decisions to invest in her business was a turning point. (We have found the same at BBM!) If you’re not growing, have you dug deeper and tried to learn more? If not, you’ll stay stalled! In 2013 Kelli was at that stall-point. She remembers vividly the feeling of sitting on her back porch and wanting to close up shop. But the business HAD to be a money maker for her family. “I decided to start acting like a business woman and stop treating it like a hobby,” she says. And that can-do attitude made all the difference.   17:20 - To Discount, or Not to Discount? So at the end of her fabulous email funnels, how does Kelli get the sale? A limited time offer or bonus? Or just straight up pitch her product?   She usually offers a small discount, just to pique interest. Kelli’s finding that balance between valuing your brand (She’s not a Walmart!) and winning the sale. I love our discussion about value versus discounted products. SO many gurus say never discount, because then customers always expect it. But on the other hand, customers really do love a good discount! You’ll have to listen to us talk shop. I love the sweet spot Kelli has found for herself and her customers.   21:23 - Kelli’s Boosted Post   So let’s dig into the ads Kelli ran. First, we’ll look at an ad she ran over the weekend. This ad is unique for two reasons: 1) Kelli doesn’t usually run weekned posts and 2) this ad was a Boosted Post! (I know a lot of you might think I’m against all Boosted Posts always. Not true! I just want business ladies to understand there’s MORE to Facebook advertising than just hitting the blue BOOST button.)   So here’s her ad:   “We love drinking coffee out of our new funky mug, get yours here.”   And in the picture it’ s a cute photo of a coffee mug she designed. Her company has a great Texan vibe. It’s vintage, funky, and fun. Very colorful, but in a muted way. She’s really on brand, and drawing in people with that feel!   She boosted this post for $9.00. And it only cost $0.07 in engagement, to get 137 reactions. And 64 clicks to this $9.00 ad, for $0.14 a click. Kelli was able to track lots of sales and Facebook messages about her product from her ad! Which is great because the main purpose of her boosted post wasn’t even sales, it was market awareness and proof of concept. She wanted to know if the mug would be worth it to develop.   Kelli has a pre-set target group she often uses for ad promotion and will create duplicates or lookalikes of that audience. This particular ad was shown to a lookalike audience, so a cold audience who has had no prior engagement with her brand. These numbers are fabulous!   26:43 - Kelli’s Lookalike Audiences Let’s dig into Kelli’s lookalike audiences. Which ones look the best? It’s split between a lookalike of her Convertkit list. And she uses the most lookalikes of certain website pages - which makes sense since those people are all interested in a particular topic.   27:17 - Fine Tuning Your Audience Targets Sometimes ads don’t go quite as well as we hope! I certainly have experienced ads gone bad. (And on that note, one trick I’ve learned over time is to look back to your purchase values. Maybe you’ll have more purchases attributed to that customer you brought in through Facebook ads!)   A particular strategy Kelli uses to nail her perfect audience is just brilliant! Often she will use the same type of ad and freebie, but with different goals for the campaign. One campaign goal might be to get subscribers, one might be conversions, and one might be brand awareness. She wants affordable subscribers, like all of us! And this is a fine way to test out which ones are most affordable.   Kelli admits she doesn’t let her ads run as long as she could. But even so, her freebie ‘10 Ways To use Digital Graphics’ got Pink Lemonade Company 400 new subscribers. Her average cost per subscriber was $0.80 to $1.20 per subscriber. And that’s the power of testing! Try out different ads, different offers, and different audiences.   Amazingly, Kelli has great groups of cold audiences doing really well! She’s keyed into her unique Texan flair, and used that to find people to get her ads in front of. One of her best target audiences is the singer Miranda Lambert! This is so smart, you guys. She also has found success targeting boutiques, like Junk Gypsy Company - which is really popular in Texas.   Business focused sites don’t do as well for Kelli, even though her clients are all business owners. Kelli just knows they’re the people who would follow Miranda Lambert before Marie Forleo!   This is why branding is so important, you guys!   34:40 - Kelli’s Email Signup Ad So, getting to Kelli’s ad.   Text: “Grab our latest free download, 10 Ways to Use Digital Graphics, here.”   (I love this! Show people how to use your product, and eliminate the barrier to entry. And Kelli has had potential customers tell her, “I love your graphics, but don’t know how to use them.” She also has a course coming, teaching others how to use digital graphics!)   Then a link to her site, and “Includes ways to make money off digital graphics, too!”   Image: Her image shows tons of digital graphic examples. Vintage arrow sign with bulbs on it, and yard flamingos, and an old blue truck.   And this freebie has gotten 400 new subscribers for her in a 14 day range! Such a huge boost for her list. She ran the ad in June, and has seen tons of new members join her membership site. She was maybe spending $10-$15 a day, and securing 1-2 new members to pay $10.00 a month! Kelli does anticipate that Pink Lemonade Company will shift to this membership model in the future as it’s truly where her passion lies.   (And don’t you love that Kelli says her ad spend is on the cheap, but she’s making a profit right away!)   39:40 - Membership Site Launch Plan Initially, Kelli launched her membership site to her list. Over the course of a year she would offer free graphics here and there every. She thinks her audience became accustomed to, “Hey! She’s got graphics. We’ll stick around!”   To her list of 1,200, Kelli made 90 sales that initial weekend!   She eventually used Facebook ads to launch her membership site, primarily posts for engagement. Even drawing more engagement to your posts means that you can retarget those people later.   And to those of you struggling with self-promotion, Kelli says she pitched her list Friday, Saturday, and Sunday - AND got sales every day! The few unsubscribes didn’t bug her at all. Listen, we KNOW it’s not comfortable to send tons of emails, but even our favorite business gurus do it! Last chance emails are a proven way to get more sales, and if you do get a few unsubscribes due to the volume of mail, Kelli says, “That’s fine! Get off my list.” Be comfortable with your tribe.   46:12 - Some Additional Questions You’ll have to tune in to hear Kelli answer these final two questions:   What kinds of things does Kelli test in a new campaign? Does a certain type of campaign consistently perform better, or does it vary per promotion?   49:54 - Kelli’s Adorable Mom Moment   Stay In Touch With Kelli   Site: PinkLemonadeCompany.com Graphic Membership Site: PLC Creative LivingFacebook: Pink Lemonade Company