Steal my Black Friday Strategy (whether you're running Facebook Ads or not!)

Written By Sophie Griffiths

Welcome to the next EPISODE of the LionHearted Marketing Podcast!

What’s this episode about?

Love it or hate it, Black Friday is here to stay. As small businesses we have to decide if creating a Black Friday offer aligns with our services, values and marketing strategy. In this episode I walk you through I help clients make the decision to do an offer and the strategy I use to create Facebook Ads that generate BIG sales.

In this episode we cover:

  • The 3 questions I ask when I kick off conversations about Black Friday with my clients

  • What to do if you're NOT doing a Black Friday offer

  • Should you run Facebook ads for a Black Friday offer if you've never run them before?

  • Steal my Facebook Ads strategy for Black Friday including the type of campaigns to run, audiences to target, images to use and numbers you need to be tracking

  • The key to prepping my client Facebook ad accounts, including a behind the scenes look at one of my clients results

  • My own Black Friday offer and an one-off way to work with me in 2024!

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Read the transcript:

NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors. LHM - Solo - Black Fri === [00:00:00] Hello, and a big welcome to Lionheart and marketing. This is the podcast where both businesses learn to evolve from haphazard marketing to creating seamless evergreen customer journeys. You've shifted away from the exhausting cycle of big launches to the more sustainable rhythm of an evergreen sales model, but now finding the audience growth has become your new issue. I'm here to help. Here we are not about chasing the next big thing. Instead, we're focused on creating a system and strategy that supports a steady stream of sales by using Facebook ads, strategic email, and content that creates connection. I robust evergreen sales strategy needs a robust evergreen marketing strategy to give you that stability and growth you crave in your business. And that is exactly what we talk about every Tuesday here on the podcast. I'm, Sophie your guide on this journey? A T enthusiast marketing strategist and specialist in demystifying, the art of funnels, or as I love to call them joyful journeys. My [00:01:00] mission to guide you in building a marketing ecosystem at tirelessly supports your business, ensuring growth without the endless hustle. Join me every Tuesday for a dose . From my lighthearted approach to marketing we'll dive into practical strategies as well as have inspirational conversations that will support you to sustainable business growth and take your business to new Heights with a calm confidence. Sophie: Hello. And welcome to this week's episode of Lionheart in marketing. Now this week, I am going to be talking all about black Friday, So this year Friday, the 24th of November is black Friday. And if you're listening to this, as it comes out, that's about four days away. Now my eldest daughter's birthday is actually the 25th of November. And for me, it's been incredibly interesting since I had my daughter. At seven years ago now how black Friday has changed quite dramatically actually from where it was to where it is now. So for me anyway [00:02:00] black Friday always been a really American thing. Like what are those things? They're like Halloween where they go kind of all in really big it's just before Thanksgiving. Isn't it for them. So. It's really, really big. And it has been for a lot of years, I think in the UK, I think some of the bigger brands in it, but I don't think I ever really remember it being a massive thing maybe until the last yeah. Five, six years. I still remember the days of seeing on the news that people like queuing overnight and like stampeding to get insanely. Reduced, TV's and stuff running around the show with these huge, huge box. I, which kind of seems insane now. And I think to shows how far online shopping has come, because I just really don't see that so much anymore. And at that point black Friday was about of the day. So it was one day. That's why there was this insane hype about getting there early. And then there was cyber Monday. [00:03:00] Which was like the internet version of when you could get all this stuff cheap. If there's anything left. Now of course it's totally different. And I think, you know, For small businesses working out how you fit into black Friday. With where it is now. I have no doubt. It will change more in the future. You know, do you try and compete? Well, you know, with a big businesses, what kind of discounts do you offer? And when I was working much more on e-com. Four or five years ago. This was something that we talked about a lot and service businesses. I think haven't really engaged with it as much until I thought were really a shift last year. Actually of like really service businesses getting involved. And I think partly that's the rise of passive income. In terms of having more courses that don't involve your time so you can discount them. And sell more. But also I think, because it's not related to one specific day anymore, it feels like actually, you know, most of [00:04:00] November, we're starting to gear up for black Friday. And it's a real opportunity and customers are almost looking for it as well. So what I'm going to talk about in this episode is I'm going to kick off with the three conversations that I have with my clients. When I'm talking about black Friday, now these actually have nothing to do with ads and they were all about strategy because something I've realized as I've spoken to clients recently is a huge amount of what I speak to them about. Is it related to ads? I mean, it feeds into the app, but actually a lot of it is business strategies. I want to kind of give. A bit of an insight into that. Next, I'm going to talk about whether you should be running ads if you've never run them before. So if you're listening to this, you've decided you're going to do a black Friday offer. You've never run ads before, and you're thinking, do you know what it's going to jump in, see if I can get out to loads and loads of new people. I know. Talk to you about whether I would recommend that or not. And some tips as well. And then if you are writing ads, we're going to be talking. The types of audiences you want to be targeting the images to use a numbers. You [00:05:00] need to be checking. All that really, really important stuff. Because if you are spending money on ads this time of year, you really need to make sure you're getting the most for your money, because you're going to be competing against a lot, a lot of businesses. And then finally, going to talk about how I prep my clients accounts because actually it's probably things that you can be doing all year round and. And it really feeds into this core belief I have of running your ads strategically all year round so that you are never faced with this question of, oh my God, am I going to have to spend a load of money? On ads to try and make some sales and not know what the outcome is. We always want you to be confident of what the outcome is going to be. And I'm actually going to use a client account they've been working on for the last six months building up to November and, you know, black Friday and Christmas as well, what I've been doing on it and the kind of results we've had along the way so that you can see. How that builds over time. And then as well, I'm going to let you in on [00:06:00] my own black Friday offer. Which is being launched on the podcast fast. Say, make sure you listen to the end to get the exclusive of what that is going to be. Okay. So let's start with these three questions that I always ask my clients when it comes to black Friday now, I normally have this conversation around early mid September. And the first question is normally, okay. We need to start talking about black Friday. Have you decided if you're going to run an offer or not now? Full disclosure, that response is not oh yes, absolutely. We've got it all planned out. This is what we're going to be doing. Here's the plan. This is the marketing, you know, we are good to go. Normally the response is. Wide eyed, slight panic. I'm like, no, should I have, oh gosh, I haven't even thought about that yet. I'm not really sure. So if that's how you felt. Oh, that's how you still feel with it? Four days away. It's totally normal. And that's why you have people in your life like me [00:07:00] to prompt you and make sure that you're thinking about this stuff early, because normally there's quite a lot to get ready for black Friday and it can be an incredible you know, addition to workload. If you're trying to do it last minute. So once I've asked that question of. Are you going to run an offer or not? Normally they know if they're not. So some clients For a whole range of reasons often decide, no, I'm not going to run an offer either because their profit margins can't, take the huge discounts. Because they fundamentally disagree with black Friday. Which is absolutely okay. You know, you don't have to do black Friday or if they only have a high ticket offer. So if they only have that and it's really very dependent on their time and they have a huge value to clients often, it doesn't make sense for them to offer a black Friday offer. Some of them will add a bonus. So if you join in this period, you know, my black Friday offer is I'll give you, I don't know, an additional one to one. And that absolutely can be the case, But for a [00:08:00] lot of my clients who have a high value offer, especially if they sell an evergreen, they just don't subscribe to that. Kind of discounting mentality, even adding extra bonuses that then other people haven't had when they've kind of joined. So if they say, no, I'm not going to running a black Friday offer, that's absolutely fine. But the one piece of advice I would give you, if that is you. Is tell your audience, tell your audience either. You don't have to tell them in September, but you know, you tell them now, if you haven't told them already. In an ideal world, maybe you tell them like a week or two before I make it make it part of your marketing strategy, part of your messaging now than why you're not doing it, tell them what you're doing instead, or why you offer great value all year round. But tell them. And the reason I tell them is because otherwise people will hold on. In case you were going to do a black Friday offer. And they miss out. And even I do this. So he now at. Like all weekend, I have been researching presence. It's a bit of a nightmare. Because as I said, my daughter's birthday on Saturday. [00:09:00] Hello of the things we want to buy, how it will be in the black Friday sale. And it's sort of a game of. Of check-in of how late I can leave her to order her presence and not miss out on sometimes huge discounts. So if I still the company wasn't doing black Friday, I'd be like, oh, thank God. I can just order it. Like I know I want it. I'll just order it and get it done. Whereas if I'm waiting, like when are they going to do that black Friday sale? And this is part of this bigger shift, you know, that it is a black Friday anymore. Some companies have already got their black Friday sales on. I think Bowden in particular I was looking at, they started as Quite early this year in November. But a lot of other companies are already running a lot of discounts. And for some of them, they kind of just treat it as a whole month of November. Others. So a lot of my smaller clients. So a lot of my clients will tend to go maybe from Wednesday onwards. Some of them will start just do the. Black Friday through to cyber Monday. Most of my clients will do at least a week because it gives you that time and space [00:10:00] to kind of catch people's attention. You know, speak to them, give them that messaging and then convert them. And my own black Friday offer, which I will talk about later. I'm going to be running it from today, which if you're listening to it live tuesday the 21st through to 30th of November. And that is because , I want to give myself plenty of time there. People get bombarded at this time of year. This comes up a lot. I see with my clients say, oh, I don't want to send too many emails. Because, you know, people are getting bombarded and I don't want to add to that. I think honestly, the reality of it at this time of year is you can't, you can't be too sensitive to that. People know they're going to get bombarded. I know I'm going to get bombarded and I will pick through the ones that I'm interested in and I just won't open the ones I'm just not interested in and that's fine. I don't feel any kind of bad feeling towards the companies that are emailing me, we're all running our businesses. And sending emails. Is real. An incredibly important part of that. So if the answer is, yes, I think I [00:11:00] am going to run a black Friday offer. Then the second question comes, which is what is it going to be? Or they got, and they're like, oh my goodness. I just told you, I don't know. I'm really at this point, I'm just talking to them about, okay. Just have a think about. Does it involve your time? Are you going to have to limit the number that you're going to offer? And this really is where your low-cost offer is incredibly powerful. So I've talked a lot on the podcast about, using ads to sell something that's like seven pounds, 11 pounds, 27 pounds. That doesn't involve your time. And that's the way, , Then you don't have a limit on how many you can sound. And the reason why I'm asking these questions of, you know, are you going to have to put a limit on it? Does it involve your time? It's because if you're going to offer something, that's just for five people. Let's say Because it evolves your time and you can't just sell like a limitless number. Actually our, are we going to use ads to sell that? Or are we just going to focus on growing your email list so that you can sell those five spots to your email list? And that's really where I'm starting to think about what strategy [00:12:00] are we going to use over the next few months? Do we need to be priming people to buy straight from an ad or do we need to be getting people on your email list and then priming them to buy from email list? So that's where I'm starting to think at that point. And then finally this leads into who are we going to offer it to now?, this is a question that can actually really stump people because most people just want to send to everybody. So it's a great offer. I'll be offering a big discount. Like let's just take upon them. Put it out there and hope that someone bites. And, and that can absolutely work. However again, you know, you are competing with. Companies with huge, huge budgets, like they will be spending thousands of pounds a day. On ads. So, you know, to make sure you're getting in front of the right people again with, you know, being people, being bombarded with emails. It's really, really hard. To make sure that you are standing out and reaching the people that you want to reach. So yes, absolutely. You can go out to a cold audience, say people who've never heard of you, but you're going to want to make sure [00:13:00] that you have incredibly well-tested robust ads doing that. Generally speaking my clients especially service businesses we're going mostly out to our warm audience. So people who are already in our world. And on our email list and sometimes even doing outreach to our hot audience. So people who have already inquired. We separating them out. We're making sure we know exactly who is really, really interested. And then we're trying to do some really personalized outreach to them. To make sure that they know about our offer, because that's ultimately what it's about. Getting people who are really close. To buying and getting them over the line with this incredible offer that you're offering. Okay. So those are the three questions and the kind of conversations I have with my clients. And as I said, generally, with. In September. Often that is not a fully complete conversation. We don't get to a point where we know exactly what we're doing, but it really prompts them to start thinking about what do I want to be doing? If I want to create a low cost , downloadable or, you know, additional product or [00:14:00] service. I'm going to have to do that, to make sure that I can then sell it for black Friday. That's what these questions are designed to prompt. So the next thing I want to talk about today is should you be running ads if you've never run them before? So If you listen to these three questions and you've decided you're going to do a black Friday offer. You know what it's going to be and you know who you're going to offer it to. Should you start running ads? Today, tomorrow, just in a pumped, trying to reach people. Now, hopefully at this point, listening to podcasts and knowing my kind of ethos, you're thinking. Safety is probably not going to recommend that. Is she. And your rights, if he's not going to recommend that. Especially untested audiences, untested ads, untested offer you might get results. Like it's absolutely possible, but you might not. And for me, ads, aren't about gambling. This is about having a consistent approach. Where you feel confident in getting a return on your ad spend? If you've got money and you just want to try it, then absolutely do it. But the things I would encourage you to think about is. Does [00:15:00] your offer involve your time? And is there a limit on the number? So, as I said, if you've only got five things to sell, like please don't spend ads on it, go out to your warm audience, invest your time and energy in In your Instagram audience on your email list, on people who've , inquired with you and never purchased or never converted to a client, you know, have a look there's going to be. Quite a lot of people in your world that you don't even necessarily recognize. Spend your time and energy reaching out to them, make sure you're connecting with them. Just putting an ad in front of someone is if I'm going to be brutally honest, it's just a bit lazy. If you think that you can just pop an ad out there and get a load of sales. Okay. If you really want to get some sales black Friday and your offer involves your time, there's a limit on how many you can offer. Or it's, you know, higher ticket. So if you're offering something that's like over I even probably a hundred pounds then I really would just be going out to your warm audience and spending that time and energy on really connecting with them [00:16:00] because that's the difference between a small business. And a huge business. But it's chatting out the ads and the emails. You know, they are going for a much more like, you know, high volume. They just going for a maximum volume game, you can connect with people, you can offer them value and you can make sure that they know why you're the best person to buy this. This service from. The second thing I think you really need to think about is this, who are you going to offer it to really come back to that? Do you, do you really want loads of people buying this, that you're not in your world right now? Or do you actually want to convert all the people you've spent a lot of time and energy nurturing, bringing into your community, you know, sending emails to being on your social media. Now, all that being said, if you have a low-cost product that you want to put a discount on, cause that's face that that's what black Friday is about with a low-cost offer. Then you definitely need to be running sales ads. If you're running ads directly, you want people to sign up. And just try [00:17:00] and think about, you know, what have you put on your social media or what have you written in your emails? That's had a good response and it's got people to buy this, this low-cost service from you before you're obviously need a sales page because that's where people want to go through To look at and you'll need to make sure that sales page quite frankly, is shit hot. Okay. Because you need to make sure that once they reach that sales page, they are reading it and they are totally enthralled and are going to buy from you. I tend to spend months testing these kinds of low cost ads with clients. And often it's a sales page. That's the downfall, not the ads. So if you're confident in your sales page, confident in the, in the low ticket offer. And confident that you've got the money to try and get some sales from ads, do it, but I'm sure you can hear, but generally I'm going to say, put your time and energy elsewhere. If you haven't run ads before. Don't don't do a test for black Friday. Let's move on, lecture over. Let's move on. And talk about if you [00:18:00] are running ads, because we really need to get into some strategy. If you are running ads. And you've probably realized by now, Nice. Quite a lot of moving parts to black Friday, and there's a lot of things you need to consider. So the things that you I'm going to kind of run through are the types of campaigns you want to be running the audiences you want to be targeting. The type of images I found in the past work really well. And then the numbers you need to be tracking to see if your campaigns are working or not. Let's start with a type of campaign to run. So I said just now you need to be running a sales campaign. Now that is true. If you want to get sales directly from ads, now, it really depends on the types of campaigns you're running at the moment. So based on my client, they're running lead ads and then they sell to their clients. And then they sell using that email list, you know, over time they kind of build that connection. Now, if your lead ads are still running well, and you're happy with the kind of amount of signups you're getting and the cost per lead, then I'd absolutely continue to run it. Just, you know, keep an eye on it and make sure those people are coming in. But the reality is that converting someone,[00:19:00] , on your email list can take time. And so the people that you're bringing in this week might not necessarily be the people that end up buying from you in black Friday. Some people will be joining your email list. Knowing that you are potentially going to be running a black Friday offer. And to be honest, I have used that strategy in the past where I have run ads to say. Join our email list to get exclusive access to you. Black Friday offers. It actually works really, really well for econ brands. The incentive to sign up. Isn't a lead magnet. Isn't a download or anything like that. It's literally the opportunity to get X. Either an additional discount or first access, if you're going to limit the amount. Of the, you're going to give away the black, black Friday. So an incentive to join the list that they get something extra. Forgot Friday. That has worked really well for me in the past. I'm not really running that this year, just with the types of clients I've got That isn't probably a strong enough incentive. And I think, [00:20:00] you know, people have to be quite bought into what you're offering. So, you know, for example, in the past, Run it for a baby playmat company that I that I worked with. And people could easily see, the baby playmates. They probably wanted one. And they were like, okay, I'll find them to the list to make sure I get early access. Cause I want to get a discount. With service businesses that slightly harder. And I think you would have to be really confident that people would recognize you your brand and what you offer. To kind of have that incentive to sign up, just to get access to your office. So if you've only been running lead ads up until this point what I would say is to absolutely test them sales as, okay. So Facebook will have quite a lot of data. On your account by now, if you've been running ads for awhile, it'll know who your ideal clients are, it will be able to try and pick those people out. And if you've been. Testing your low-cost offer, or you've got something that, you know, works really well. A sales page that converts really well. [00:21:00] Then. Absolutely run the sales ads. Some of my clients, we only run it to their warm audience. So that's people on my email list who have visited that website. Or are engaging on that Instagram and Facebook. Because what we actually want to do is try and cut through the noise on the email list. As I said, you know, people are getting bombarded with emails and some times people with the best will in the world will just miss your emails. This is the way of getting your ads back in front of people so that they actually see what you're offering. So only goes out to people who are already in your world. Now you can spend a lot less on those ads than you would need to, if you were going out to a cold audience so that you could just spend two to three pounds a day. So really nice, relatively low risk because you're not spending a huge budget way of making sure that you kind of maximize You know, telling people about your black Friday offer. But again, you are going to need to have a sales page, which you have tested and you feel, you feel confident is going to convert those people because you know, seven [00:22:00] spending money to send people through to a sales page that you are not confident in is. Is not going to give you the best results. You. And then finally, like if you want to go out to a cold audience with sales ads, you absolutely can't do that. I would be spending a minimum of 10 pounds a day, and that is like the absolute minimum in an ideal world, you'd be spending 15 to 20 pounds a day just to be able to compete with the all of the other people out there and make sure your. Kind of winning in the in the auction, which is kind of how it works behind the scenes. So absolutely. Do that make sure that if you've got, especially if you've been running ads for a while, Facebook will understand your audience. It will try and get out to the right people. But again, just make sure you're looking at what your. And in an ideal world, you'd also [00:23:00] have these warm audience. Ads running as well. Just say that everyone who sees your cold ad and clicked through to your sales page, then get paid, then gets picked up into your warm audience and gets shown the ads kind of over and over again. You know what happens? You go into a website. And then you leave and then you see ads for that website or that thing that you were looking at everywhere you go. That's kind of what you want to be doing. If you're spending money. Getting people who don't know you onto your sales page, there's going to be a lot of people that don't buy the first time they read that sales page. So, if they're not on your email list, the only way to then remind them, prompt them, show them what your offering is to get more ads back in front of them. So that's the types of campaign and then the audiences that I would target now, in terms of what images to use, this will vary depending on the type of campaign that you're running, but also what's worked for you in the past. So if you're running ads already eat well, I do tend to find is a certain type of ad will resonate with your audience. And I mean, I do a lot of testing for clients and it's, and it's different for most [00:24:00] clients. I have some clients where almost exclusively it's reels, you know, anything else we put up just bombs . Some clients are carousels work really, really well. Others, just a single image is working well at the moment. So it really depends. Now, historically for black Friday, I have found a single image with a really blatant offer on the image works really well. Also very short copy. Really catchy headlines. So, you know, Just does what it says on the 10, when people are scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, they know it's black Friday. They know you're going to be offering a discount. They just want you to tell them what it is. So, you know, whether it's up to 70% off or 50% off or. Whatever it is, put it on the image and make sure if in that first line of your copy. And just make sure that it's really, really obvious what you're offering.. Often for clients, I will test things like, you know, an image of the business owner, or , more [00:25:00] of a lifestyle image with, you know, most of the copy doing the hard work for black Friday. For me, that's always proven too subtle and you just need to kind of really. Really be blatantly obvious. And then I just wanted to talk a little bit about tracking. To see whether they're working or not now, obviously. You know, the kind of basic ones you're going to be tracking purchases. And you're going to be tracking the number of people signing up to an email list or, and that sort of thing, you know, all your kind of obvious. Metrics. However, at this time of year, what I'd really encourage you to also start looking at as well is your CPM, which is the cost or the amount you have to spend to reach a thousand people. Now, this was different for all of my clients, but some people, this is like five or six pounds , for other clients. This is like 20 pounds. At this time of year, the likelihood is your CPMs, your cost to reach a thousand people will go up and I'm starting to see that with some of my clients so definitely keep an eye on that. And if you're running sales ops, the other thing I would really keep an eye on is link clicks and then [00:26:00] landing page views. So you want to know how many people have clicked on your ad to go through to your sales page? And then how many people have actually stayed and read the sales page? I mean, you can't know if they've read the whole thing, but they are landing page kind of is clocked once they've stayed on the page for a couple of seconds. So they haven't just clicked on it, but then abandoned and gone somewhere else. So really making sure that, that the difference between link clicks and landing page views, isn't too high. And then also obviously tracking them for your purchases. How many people are then purchasing, because that will give you your conversion rate as well. Of how many people who actually go to that go to the sales page are actually buying. So those are the key things. I would be keeping an eye on. And the things to think about if you are going to be running ads for the next week or so, if you've got any questions, please always come over to Instagram and ask like, I love chatting and strategy, and it's a really exciting, busy time. But there's also always a little bit of apprehension, you've got one shot in. They've got this whatever time period you're running your black Friday offer. From until you've got that time. [00:27:00] And if like, if the ads don't work, if the offer doesn't click with clients, you know, if the sales page isn't great or, you know, we can't just can't seem to reach to people. It's really, really frustrating. And that's why I spend a huge amount of time. On my client's accounts in the lead up to November, rarely to make sure that we give ourselves like the best platform possible to kind of make these sales. So I thought I'd just talk you through briefly. Cause I know this episode is getting a little bit long. I've got so much to say Talk a little bit about what I'd do with my clients over the six months beforehand. Now, none of it. Isn't none of it is rocket science, but I wanted to share the one thing that makes a difference to my client's accounts in the, in the six months before November, the I'm thinking about that bigger picture strategy. That often gets lost in the day-to-day of running ads. When people think about, you know, what's my lead cost right now, or how many thousand I'm making this month. And that is balancing. The day-to-day results because you have to be getting results. You know, [00:28:00] you have to be getting those leads at reasonable cost. You have to be getting those sales to make sure those ads the worthwhile. Absolutely. But the key to a long-term successful strategy. It's always testing. And not just thinking I've got something that works, I'm just going to leave out. Okay. And it's really, really tempting. And I totally understand that because especially if you're managing your ads yourself, you've got something that works. You're just going to leave it alone and just let it run. However, probably at some point it will stop working and if you haven't ever tested anything else, that can be really, really stressful. Trying to find something that then is going to work again, because it can take a while for things to work and kind of kick him. So with my clients I'm always doing is yes, having something that's working, but also testing it different as I've talked about through this whole episode, you know, different audiences, different types of creative, different messaging, different, Looking at the sales page, what's our conversion rate. How can we improve that? And I just wanted to talk a little bit about a client that I [00:29:00] started working with in may. Now that average order value is about 20 pounds. So definitely within that realm of that low ticket. Offer. And they spend 20 pounds a day on their ads. Now we split the budget 10 pounds a day on bringing new leads in. So growing that email list and then 10 pounds a day on. Sales ads to make sure that we bring in those sales. Now in terms of their email list, we've tested lots of different things. And we've found like our sweet spot is around like 350 to 400 leads a month. The 10 pounds a day and that's really consistent. And that really is great in the email list. And then our conversion rate from the email list is about 3% of people who joined the email list, go through our nurture, welcome sequence and buy from us. So those stats we've tested over time. We know that's, what's going to happen. Now with the sales ads. It's it's been a much more volatile picture. If you like, say. For the first [00:30:00] three months, we average like mid twenties. In terms of the sales. Which we were really happy with. It cost us around 15 pounds of ad spend to get one sale. As I said, it's worth about 20 pounds. So, yes, we're making all the money back and a little bit of profit, but we weren't hugely into profit. And that was really the goal for these sales ads. So we were doing well. We were covering our costs. But we wanted to do better. August hat. We tried a new type of ad. So it was a carousel and we've really been focusing it on wheels before. I'm this carousel when bananas. So we went from like mid twenties purchases to 52 in August. So we were like, I was. Absolutely. Railed. We were really excited. Now September came and suddenly that ad burnt out. So it just wasn't performing anymore. We tried different variations of the carousel. We tried different content, different messaging. We tried to reignite that carousel. And in that process tested a lot of different ads. We bought reels back in again, I bought the [00:31:00] single images back in just to make sure that we were testing everything we could. So September and October, we had mid thirties purchases, which so much better than the three initial months, but we just couldn't quite hit that August peak, which was frustrating. But what it did allow us to do is test. Then we tested new audiences as well as we did a lot of testing and it has set us up so well for November. So as we've come into November, we have found that combination that's working again, but this time it's not a single ad that's working really well because that's the risk, you know, you have, you have one that's working well and it banned, found. This time, we have five ads that. All working really, really well, really strong a mix, actually, mostly carousel, but some reels as well. And so far in November. So I'm recording this on the 19th. Of November. And so far this month we had 62 purchases and it's costing us five pounds of ad [00:32:00] spend to get one sale instead of 15. And that just makes such a massive difference because if you're spending 15 pounds a day, we're getting three sales a day versus the one sale a day we had before. The return on ad spend is now five. So for every pound we spend, we get five pounds back. Now, again, this isn't necessarily going to continue, you know, in December and January and onwards, because November and early December, is this kind of special ecosystem where people are really primed to buy just culturally. And so there's definitely not saying, like we found these five ads and they're going to run like this forever. However. It is an incredible boost financially to the business, but also it really shows that all that hard work we've put in over the time testing them. You know, being resilient, keeping testing, not being disappointed by like a high month and then a lower month. Like not thinking, oh, ads, aren't going to work for me because you know, they obviously just, don't like, I'm never going to get great return on ad [00:33:00] spend. And what this month will allow us to do is just get a huge amount of learning on the account. Because we're getting so many people in and so many people are buying. So that's a bit of an example of how testing and kind of looking at all the way out from may. We have been looking at this bigger picture, trying to get something working within the month, but also keep pushing ourselves to testing and learning. So that we can get to this point. So I hope this episode has been helpful I have just got so much to say on faith on black Friday. And also just generally on strategy with ads. It's really easy to get stuck into the, technicalities of Facebook ads, which campaign should I use? Which audience should I use? Should I run a low product? What kind of sales ads should I run? But the reality is yes, that's the foundations of your Facebook ads but the real success is running your ads over time. It's not about that initial setup. It's about being able to see what's happening and adapt and keeping the eye [00:34:00] on like where your business is going and how you want the ads to support your business going forward. Because it's not a case of like, yes, definitely run ads for black Friday or don't run ads for black Friday. There are so many variables within that that you need to think about. So my black Friday offer this year, I am launching my audience builder course, which is all about the foundations of Facebook ads. It's the setting up the ads. It's the creating your first campaign. It's making sure that your lead ad set up. Right. It's all those foundational elements for you in a simple, easy to access actionable online course. I've made it really simple. There are short videos for you to follow, and then you literally can just have your screen up, have my video up and do it alongside me. Now I was going to run this as a totally self paced like DIY course, however, I have decided to kick it off and launch it just once in 20, 24, I am going to run it live. So you'll have all the [00:35:00] content there as well, but you will then have access to me so that when you are actually getting that campaign live, you can see how it's running. You can make tweaks, you can ask questions and there will be group calls where I can review your campaign. There'll be hot seat coaching. And I will also be sharing with you, like what's working in ads right now. So you can feed that in to your campaigns. I am really excited. It's going to be six weeks. It's going to be starting in January. And it will be a live group community where you can all build your ads together, get them live for the new year. And then make sure they're working really, really well with my support. I'm only going to be running it live in this way once in 2024. So if you are interested in setting up your ads, finally taking it off your list. And getting ads ready for 2024. Make sure you go to the show notes and and grab the audience builder calls for the discounted price and the access to me for six weeks in the new year. I am so incredibly excited about this. [00:36:00] If you've got any questions at all make sure you DM me on Instagram. , which is at Sophie Griffis co, and I will see you next week when I am going to be talking all about. Christmas ads. Should you be running your ads over Christmas? Is it going to be too expensive? What's the best strategy to use? Honestly, it's going to be another Corker. I cannot wait. I love talking about Christmas ads. I will see you next week. Thank you so much for tuning in with me today before you dash off, I have a small, but mighty favorite ask. If you could hit the subscribe button, you'll get new episodes delivered straight to you every Tuesday morning. And if this episode struck a chord with you, I'd be over the moon. If you could take a moment to rate, subscribe, and leave a review your words, not only brighten my day, but they're the magic that helps the others discover online Hartford community. Again, thank you so much for spending your time with me, Sophie here at lighthearted marketing. See you next week​ [00:37:00]
Sophie Griffiths https://www.thesocialpod.co.uk
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