Before Your Summit: Paid Ads & Marketing Strategy to Maximize Your Virtual Summit

BYS 8 | Facebook Ad Metrics Essential for Summits Promo Success

• Jenzaia • Episode 8

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For summit hosts, the advertising landscape can feel overwhelming with countless numbers to analyze. As a Facebook ad strategist specializing in summits, I've identified the five metrics that actually drive results: return on ad spend, cost per lead, click-through rate, landing page conversion rate, and ad frequency.

In this episode, we'll dive into each of the 5 key metrics, why they're important and how to track them.  Plus, I give some tips and strategies for improving the metrics if things aren't going well.

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Speaker 1:

This is Before your Summit, episode number eight. Hey, I'm your host, jenzea. I am a Facebook ad strategist and a lover of summits. Today we're going to be talking about five Facebook ad metrics that summit hosts need to be tracking. Now, before I kind of like dive into what those metrics are, or my little ramble about metrics in general, I just want to remind you, as I think I have in every single episode, my personal preference for a summit is that it is a free ticket. You just need to register name, email address and that's it, with a paid all-access pass on the back end of the free ticket, with the goal of getting as many people registered as possible.

Speaker 1:

There are definitely times when a paid ticket makes sense. There are definitely times when a paid ticket makes sense, but I would say, like 90% of the time, that free ticket for a summit is the best choice. A hundred percent of the time, having a paid upgrade recommended whether it's a free ticket or a paid ticket. And the post summit open cart period is definitely like business to business. If you're a coach or a service provider, then you probably aren't going to have an open cart at the end, but if you have a membership or a course that you are trying to grow and get new members, you might have an open cart, might have an open cart. So I specifically like to focus on the free ticket and the all access pass upgrade, and then everything else is separate. If you are opening the cart after the summit, then we'd be looking at the summit as a launch event and not the summit in and of itself, and I like to look at the summit in and of itself and then separately as a launch event if necessary. So these metrics are the summit in and like, the summit in and of itself, not including the post summit open cart period, if you might do that, and also again looking at this as a free ticket with a paid upgrade. So, with with all that in mind, I also just want to say that there is a danger in obsessing over your numbers, especially if it's the wrong numbers, which can be hard to know, like which ones are the right numbers and which ones are the wrong numbers, and that's why it's really important to have a good understanding of your customer journey so that you can identify one single metric for each step and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in a second so that you can use that metric to optimize your results and not just stress out about them.

Speaker 1:

So if we think about, like a pretty simple summit, you're running an ad, someone sees the ad, they click on the ad, they land on your landing page, they sign up for the summit. They're taken to a thank you page, which is actually the all access pass sales page. Then they're taken to like a confirmation after they've paid and they're put into an email list which is promoting the summit and helping to encourage them to actually show up right. So each one of those steps, there's going to be a metric attached to that step. That is like the most important one. So, for example, when somebody sees a Facebook ad, the most important action is that they go to the landing page, like, they click on the link to go to the landing page. Once they're on the landing page, the most important metric is conversion rate what percentage of people who land on this page are signing up or taking the action you want? Then you're on the all access sales page. The most important metric is sales what percentage of people are actually purchasing? And then, once we get into the email, we're looking at open rate what percentage of people are opening it or, depending on the email, the link click through rate. What percentage of people are actually clicking on the link and going and doing the thing. So you want to identify that number one action and the metric tied to that. With the Facebook ad, I said that the number one action is the percentage of people who click on the link. You can also look at the reach and the frequency and the cost per link click and the and the and the and the Like. There's so many different metrics that you can look at and all of them are valuable, but the number one one that we want to look at is that percentage of link click through.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and so that's part of the reason why, like, mapping out your funnel and then identifying that metric will help you have clarity when you're looking at the bigger picture For your entire funnel. There's also going to be like one major thing that you want to happen. So, from ad to registration, to all access sales page, all access past sales page through, the main thing we want people to do is buy that. All access sales pass right.

Speaker 1:

So let's talk about these five metrics and what they are, why they're important and how you can use them. So the first metric is your return on ad spend. This is taking the amount of money you make and dividing it by the amount of money you spent and that is going to tell you, in percentage wise, how much return you're getting on your ad spend. This is going to be your absolute number one, most important metric that you're going to track for the entire funnel, because it tells you if the ad is actually working. Are you bringing the right people in? Do you have a high enough conversion rate? Is your sales page actually working? You want that to be the first time you're running these ads. You want to break even and I consider breaking even between 75% to 125% return on ad spend, which means for every $1 you're spending on ads, you're making from 75 cents to $1.25. Now I understand that 75 cents made per dollar, you are actually losing 25 cents. So it's not technically breaking even. But that range is what we're looking for the first time we're running these ads.

Speaker 1:

And if you're outside of that range, making tweaks and changes to help get to like, bring your return on ads bet up to that at least 75 to 125 percent the best way to do this is to use an affiliate link for your ads. So, just as you would set up a speaker for your summit, setting up the Facebook ads as a speaker, so that they have their own affiliate link and that they can be tracked just as effectively as any a speaker, so that they have their own affiliate link and that they can be tracked just as effectively as any other speaker and that you know that all of the sales that come in through that affiliate link can be associated and attributed to the ads. I do have some clients that make completely separate Facebook ad funnels, so they have their own registration page, they have their own checkout. No other traffic, except for Facebook ad traffic goes through that funnel, which is a great way to do it if, if you want to. But the reason why some people don't is because then you have two separate registration pages, you have two separate checkout pages and if you need it to make any changes or updates, you have to update both of them, whereas if you use the affiliate link, then you only have to update one and the affiliate obviously just goes through that same one. So using an affiliate link ensures that you can very accurately track your return on ad spend.

Speaker 1:

Number two metric is your cost per lead. So this is how much you're paying in ad spend for each person that is coming onto your email list. Let's just say you spend $100 on ads and you get 50 new people onto your list, then that's $2 cost per lead. Each lead costs you $2. I have seen summits run anywhere from $2 per lead up to $15 per lead. I would say that like that's a fairly accurate range. I did just finish a summit that had an 83 cents cost per lead, without factoring in the return on ad spend. 83 cents per lead, which was phenomenal, obviously, obviously, but I would say that that's an outlier, typically from $2 to $15, depending on your niche, depending on your audience. That's the kind of thing that you just need to be aware of it. If you're in a niche that has a lower cost per lead so you're probably going to be targeting consumers like teachers in the classroom, moms, fitness enthusiasts, the consumers in the market your cost per lead is probably going to be lower. Whereas if you're targeting business owners, ceos, vps of companies, those higher level positions, your cost per lead is probably going to be higher.

Speaker 1:

Interestingly enough, some of my clients don't actually track their cost per lead because of the way they have it set up. When we're using an affiliate link to track the return on ad spend, depending on the platform being used, the affiliate link might not actually track which leads are attributed to that affiliate tag, and so we're not able to. And that's one of the choices that needs to be made when you're deciding how to set it up. If, depending again on the platform you're using, if you want to go with the affiliate route, which is one of the most accurate ways to track the return on ad spend, which is our number one, most important metric, you may not be able to count how many leads there are. If you choose to do the other one that I mentioned of you, set up a completely separate funnel so the Facebook ad traffic goes to its own registration page, goes to its own checkout page, its own email sequence, in that case, you would be able to track the cost per lead. Again, I think that that one's more work, because any changes that you make to the landing page you need to make twice. Any changes to the checkout page you need to make twice, right, so those are just things to consider, but the next, that is, the second most important metric, is your cost per lead. The lower your cost per lead, the easier it is to have a positive return on ad spend. If you have a higher cost per lead, your all access pass is probably going to need to cost more for you to have a positive return on ad spend. My client who was getting 83 cent leads for the recent summit, was able to have a low cost I think it was $19, a low cost all access pass upgrade because of the low cost per lead. But then sometimes when we have like a $4 or $5 cost per lead, we're looking at like a $47 or $97 all access pass to make it work and to make it be profitable.

Speaker 1:

Okay, metric number three is the click-through rate. Specifically, I look at the link click-through rate and this is that metric that I was talking about for the ad. To determine if the ad is effective or not is the percentage of people who click on the link to go from the ad to the registration page. The goal is to have at least 1% 1% or more of the people who see your ad are clicking on it and going to your registration page. That is our general goal. Typically, the first thing you want to look at if your click-through rate is low is the image and your headline. So that's the bold text underneath the image on Facebook. If those are doing well and you can tell by looking at the clip, the CTR all goal, which you want it to be like three to 5%. So if you're getting clicks on everything at about three to 5% but your link click-through rate is low, then you want to make sure that number one is your button well labeled.

Speaker 1:

I like to use the learn more, but you can also say sign up. Now I think it's sign up or download. There's a bunch of different options that Facebook offers. I almost always use the learn more. Make sure that's an accurate statement of what's happening. I also like to include the link in the ad copy so that as they're reading, they can click on the link right away and go. Links are clickable for ads on Facebook and Instagram If you create a post and you include a link in it. Last I checked, as of right now, those links are not clickable. But if I use a link in my ad copy, it is clickable on Instagram as well. So that's something that's really interesting making sure that you have a really good hook that's drawing people in your ad copy.

Speaker 1:

You want it to be lots of white space, easily scannable. You don't want big chunks of text. We're going to have paragraphs, and I use paragraphs really like loosely, because it's like one to two sentences. Lots of bullet points, emojis not excessively, but enough that you're pulling attention and you're getting a feeling and energy from the ad copy. That's how you're going to increase your CTR link click-through rate and metric number four is the conversion rate of the landing page.

Speaker 1:

So this is what people are doing on the registration page once they get there, are they actually signing up? We like to see that at at least 30 percent. Obviously higher for warmer audiences and the hired is the better. I've seen summit registration pages convert as high as 70% and, like I said, we really start to feel like something isn't going right If it's converting below 30%. You want to make sure and I definitely said this in one of the last two episodes that they can register very, very easily, and so it was the last episode where we're talking about mistakes that I see in the simplicity of pages. So, immediately upon landing on a page, you want to make sure that somebody can register, whether there's a button that says sign up now and they can click it or there's an actual form. It doesn't really matter which one you use, as long as it's really easy and accessible. And then throughout your registration page there's additional opportunities to push the sign up now button so that when somebody wants to sign up, they're able to do it right away. If it's hard to find the form, hard to figure out how to sign up, they're not going to sign up. And then sometimes something as simple as changing the color of the button to make it pop more, or making sure that the word free is very visible on a page so that people know that this is a free event, can make a huge difference.

Speaker 1:

The last metric that I always, always, always track with Facebook ads for summit is frequency. This is the number of times somebody has seen the ad and the way that it's found is they take reach. No, sorry, they take impressions. Impressions is the number of times the ad has been shown and they divided by reach, which is the number of people who've seen the ad. So I've seen the ad five times and Tommy has seen the ad five times and Susie Q has seen the ad three times, and that's a total of 13. Of course, I decided to pick a really ridiculous number, but it's 13 total impressions and then the reach would be three. So there would be 13 divided by three, which is 4.3333333, continuously on forever and ever and ever. So we want the frequency typically to stay below three.

Speaker 1:

Once people have seen an ad three or more times, they're going to start to tune it out and they're going to start to like not even pay any attention, they're just going to scroll right past it. Once they've seen it 10 or more times, then they start to get annoyed. They're like, oh, I've seen this ad so many times, like cut it out. And if you think about ads that you've had that reaction to, where you're either tuning them out or you're just annoyed by how many times that you've seen them, what exactly is it that you are recognizing? The image or the video? That is our brain, what we recognize immediately. So if your frequency is increasing really quickly and that is much more common with warm audiences than cold audiences, especially right now meta loves these gigantic 10, 20, 30 million sized audiences and so when you have an audience of 20 million people, it's really hard for it to get fatigued.

Speaker 1:

But our warm audiences, which is our email list, the facebook page engagement, instagram engagement, your website traffic, sometimes especially as newer ad people. Like the first couple of times you run ads, as you are starting to grow your business, you may only have had 100 500 people who have interacted with these different things, and so you can really fatigue those people a lot quicker. So I always like to keep a really, really close eye on the fatigue of my warm audiences also cold audiences, but more so warm audiences and the way that we combat that is to switch out the images so you may decide to create additional images right off the bat so that you have images to swap out. Or if you want to play more of like a wait and see, then you can make that swap a little bit later down the road. The great thing about running ads to cold audiences is when somebody interacts with that ad, they click on the image to see it bigger, or they click the read more. They click the like a like button, or they click on the button to see it bigger, or they click the read more. They click the like a like button, or they click on the button but they don't sign up. They now join your warm audience and so you are continually growing your warm audience and that can help slow down the fatigue, but you do have to still like keep that in your mind that your fatigue is.

Speaker 1:

The frequency number is something that you should be keeping an eye on so that you know when to refresh your images. Often, as frequency gets high, your CPM, which is the cost per mille, will also get high. That is, the CPM is how Meta charges you for the ads, and it is one way that they force you to swap your images. As the CPM increases, your ads start to cost more and more and more, which means that you realize, oh, it's getting expensive. So you will often see the frequency increase, cpm increase and then the CTR, which is the link click-through rate, decreasing. At the same time, those three metrics kind of move together once an ad is fatigued and it's really time for that refresh. So, yeah, with warm audiences, you need to keep a closer eye on the frequency. And then, if you're running all access pass retargeting ads, you actually need to keep an eye on those, because the audience is even smaller. Those are only people who've signed up for your summit but haven't purchased the all-access pass. And so, yeah, it's really, really important that you keep an eye on the, the frequency of an all-access pass or any retargeting campaign, and just be ready to swap those images out fairly regularly if needed.

Speaker 1:

So I could talk all day about metrics and probably bore most of you. I hope that I was able to break it down in a way that made sense and that was logical and gave you things that you can actually look for, metrics that you can identify as essential and then allow you to release the rest of them. There are so many metrics, so many kpis, that you could be paying attention to that, you could make important in your mind and then get overwhelmed by like, well, the reach says this, and the frequency says this, and the cost per link click says this, and the cost per whatever says this. But you really just need to focus on the metrics that you know are important and let the rest of them like wash away in the background. So that is our last episode of our launch.

Speaker 1:

I'm super excited. Before your summit is a project that's kind of been boiling in the back of my mind for a while, and then I was like, no, we're doing this and I gave myself a week, and here we are, two weeks later releasing the eighth episode Going from next Saturday onward. We are just going to be releasing one episode per week in September. Very, very excited to be doing a mini series. It'll come out. There'll be five episodes Monday to Friday that week, but otherwise just one episode per week going forward and I hope you'll stick around for the next one. Thank you.