How to Cover Your Ad Spend Before Your Next Launch

Before we get into it, I have a question. Tell me the truth. When you finish a launch, even if it went well, do you ever think, oh my gosh, I can't believe I have to do that all over again? Like even if you hit your goals, making the money that you're making, sometimes just feels like so much time and effort. Okay, if you've ever felt this way, I want to invite you to a free training. It's for six figure female founders, and I'm laying out a different type of marketing model. I call it my revenue consistency formula, and it's how you go from successful because you've made your company successful to successful because you have marketing systems that grow your business for you. You don't need any new offers. It's not just like another marketing tactic that I want you to try and hope it works. It's a new way of aligning your business so it compounds. Instead of relying on you to show up and move it forward all the time. This training is live, it's totally free, and you can reserve your spot at emyporterfield.com/training. All right, let's get into today's conversation. Every investment feels significant, and when you hear people say things like, "Just test it and see what happens," that feels more reckless than it is helpful. Either way, the goal is the same. Offset your ad spend so you can grow without gambling, but here we go and I say this, you don't need a huge budget or a big team to make ads work. As long as you have a smarter approach. And that smarter approach has a name. It's called Self Funding Your Growth. My guest today is a dear friend of mine. One of the girls got one over there. She's big money, and it was my guest today. Her name is Amy Porterfield. Amy Porterfield is the ever-amazing best-selling author of two weeks notice. Miss Amy Porterfield! I want to talk about something that comes up all the time when I'm working with my six-figure female founders growing in online business. And this is you, you'll totally be able to relate. You know you need to run ads. You know that running ads is how you're going to grow your email list faster and reach more people. And you know that if you start running paid ads, you can stop relying on the very fickle algorithm to show your content to the right audience. And no one wants to rely on the algorithm, right? But every time you think about actually running ads, something just holds you back. And the thing is ads are tricky, especially if you are a solo prerumer. So you don't have a big team. You're running the ads yourself. So you're trying to figure them out. And that's stressful enough. But then one of your biggest fears is you do not want to lose a bunch of money. Either maybe you've ran ads in the past and you have lost a lot of money. Or you've heard the horror stories of other people doing that. And so the spend is like at the top of your anxiety list when it comes to running ads. Where are you getting the money? What if you lose a bunch of money? Is this even worth it? What if you don't make enough money in the launch? Where you're using ads for that launch? I mean, it comes up a lot. And it starts to feel like more of a gamble than anything else. And I get it. Ads can feel risky. So today, I want to talk about finding the money to run the ads so that you have this additional way to bring in money. So you have a little wiggle room to experiment and to know that you don't have to always get it right right from the giggle. Because nobody does. If you're running your own ads, just know anybody who has figured out how to run their own ads has totally messed up in the beginning, has lost money. There's no way around it. And it's part of the learning curve, essentially. And I do think that it is smart for you to run your own ads in the beginning so you can see what works and what doesn't work. It's also a financially smart thing because you don't have enough money to pay an agency. It's very expensive for an agency to run your ads. So I get why you feel like you need to do it yourself. I can get behind that. And I understand that you're kind of freaked out. You don't want to lose a bunch of money. I could also get behind that. But what if you could set things up? So you're bringing in money specifically to run your ads and give you a little wiggle room to experiment with those ads when you're just getting started. Does that sound good? Well, that's what we're going to talk about today. I'm going to walk you through why ads feel so scary at this stage. Introduce you to a concept called self-funding your growth and give you real examples of how to make this work in your business. I am not going to tell you how to run ads. I don't run my own ads. I haven't for many, many, many years. And I'm not the girl to do that. However, I am going to help you figure out how to find some of that money to fund you running your own ads. So overall, if you've been wanting to run ads, but you haven't been able to pull the trigger because it feels too risky, this episode is for you. So let's dive in. Okay, let me just say this out loud. Ads feel very scary when you're making anywhere from 150K to, let's say, 300K annually. And it's just the truth. I've been there. I know this. And there's a few reasons for that. Number one, you're afraid of losing money. At this stage, you're probably not sitting on a huge pile of cash that you can afford to lose, right? Every investment feels significant. And when you hear people say things like, "You have to spend money to make money," or just test it and see what happens, that feels more reckless than it is helpful, right? You've worked hard to get to this level of revenue. So the idea of spending $1,000, $2,000, $5,000 on ads and maybe watching it disappear with nothing to show for it because that could happen. Well, that is terrifying. I mean, I make millions of dollars in that thought I hate. So I don't take any of that lightly. So I get it. There's some fear behind it. Number two, you're afraid of the complexity. Ads feel like a whole separate skill set, right? They are. There's the targeting, the creative, the copy, the pixels, the tracking, the re-targeting. It's a lot. Jesus' episode is starting to sound like I'm trying to talk you out of running ads. I'm not. We got to do what it takes to get what we want. You know, that's my motto, right? And so in this case, it might take you fumbling and figuring it out and taking a risk because ads are worth it. But it's a lot of work, right? And if you're already stretched thin running your business, the idea of adding this whole other thing to your plate, it feels overwhelming. And you might be thinking, I don't have time to learn ads. I don't even know where to start. So valid. Number three, you're afraid you need a big team to do it right. You've seen the way bigger businesses run ads. Maybe you watch me and you know, I have an agency and I've had an agency for years running my ads. And then some people have not only ad managers, but creative teams and copywriters and people pouring over the data. And you don't have that. And it feels like maybe ads are for businesses that are way further along than yours. So you hold off. You tell yourself that you'll figure it out later. You keep reliant on organic content and hope. Just cross your fingers that that's enough. But here we go and I say this, you don't need a huge budget or a big team to make ads work as long as you have a smarter approach. It's called self-funding your growth. So I'm going to walk you through it. Now the idea is simple. You use a low priced offer to offset the cost of your ads. So that by the time someone buys your bigger offer, you've already covered most or all of your ad spend. Let me say that one more time. So I really want to make sure we're on the same page. The idea. So that by the time someone buys your bigger offer, your signature offer, you've already covered most or maybe even all of your ad spend. So let me explain how it works. Traditionally, when people run ads, they spend money up front to get leads onto their email list, right? Maybe they're offering a free lead magnet, a free webinar, a free challenge. I've done all of it. You've probably even tried some of it. The hope is that some percentage of those leads will eventually buy something. The problem is you're spending money now and hoping it pays off later. That's the gamble. And if your launch doesn't go well and it happens to all of us, or if you fewer people buy than you expected, you've lost that money. Self-funding your growth flips that. Instead of just giving something away for free and hoping people buy later, you offer something low priced right away. Something valuable enough that people are willing to pay, I don't know, let's say $17, $27, $37, something like that for it. And that money comes back to you immediately offsetting what you spend on ads to reach them. So instead of spending $1000 on ads and hoping you make it back in a launch three months from now, you're spending $1000 on ads and making $800 or $900 or even $1000 making it back right away from your low ticket offer. Now you've grown your list with buyers. magical about growing your email list from the get go with buyers. Something that I didn't do for many, many, many, many years. I would say for at least 15 of my 17 years, the bulk of my email list was built on free lead magnets. But when we started doing this technique, I'm sharing with you here. We realized, holy cow, these people on my email list, these email subscribers, these new email subscribers that came in from small paid offers. They're more quality. They're more engaged and they're more likely to buy even a higher ticket offer. So that's a big deal, right? So growing your email list with buyers and higher quality leads, essentially, not just freebies seekers. It's a big shift and you didn't have to wait and hope that all the money you spent on ads to get them there will then pay off when you do your big launch. So the math is actually working in real time and it gives you a little boost of confidence. So this is perfect for business owners at your stage who want to grow, but don't want to feel like they're crossing their fingers every time they run ads. So I want to show you how to actually put this into action. There are two main ways to self fund your ad spend with low ticket offers. So you've probably heard of both of them, but you might not be clear on the difference. And more importantly, you might not be even using them yet. So that's why I want to really make sure they're on your radar. And hopefully by the end of this episode, you commit to trying at least one of these strategies. So let me break it down. First, we've got trip wires. You've heard of trip wires, right? But just to make sure we're on the same page, a trip wire is a low priced offer that you present immediately after someone off sin to something free. And it should be closely related to whatever they just opted in for. So it feels like just a natural next step. So here's how it works. And once you're at for a free lead magnet. So I want to be clear initially in this strategy, the ad is running to something free checklist cheat sheet guide some kind of template, make it really juicy, make it worth it like irresistible. They've got to get their hands on it some kind of toolkit, maybe a free video series, whatever it might be. So they want it and the ad is running to encourage them to sign up for it. They enter their email to go get it. And on the thank you page before they even get the free thing that you just promise them you offer them something related for a really low price. And something that goes deeper on the same topic or helps them take the next step that they definitely want to take with your free lead magnet, take the next step, go deeper, go faster, something like that. It usually costs somewhere between $17 and $47, but you do you whatever feels right, but it's something that is a no brainer price. And whatever that free thing is it is related that trip wires related to it, but the trip wires sexier than that free thing. It is better for sure, which is why they're willing to pay for it, but it's a line so you know that they're going to want it because they already wanted the free thing and they just signed up for it. And by the way, if you're wondering why all these prices end in seven, you're not alone, I get asked this all the time. There's actually research I learned this from Tony Robbins way back in the day when I used to work with them. There's research that shows prices ending in seven tend to convert better than prices ending in nine in zero. It's so funny. I have some rebels in my audience, some women I work with that they just refuse to end any of their prices in a seven because everyone else does it. I've got that rebel soul so they're like screw it. I'm ending in a nine or zero or just a random number, which always throws me off, but again, you do you, but there is research that shows that the sevens work. I guess it just feels more specific more intentional like you actually thought about the pricing. I don't know I'm making that part up, but I'm not making up the part that studies have shown it convert tire with the seven. So huge difference, probably not, but when you're testing and optimizing every bit helps. So you'll see 27 37 47 and a lot of places and they're doing it for a reason just for just so you know, so you could be a rebel do something different, but studies have shown. So wait, the idea is to capture the momentum. They've already taken action by opting in their engage they're interested. They gave you a hot commodity their name and email and a percentage of them will say yes to the trip wire offer because it's relevant. Low price no brainer and it's right there in front of them that purchase immediately offsets some of your ad spend and you've just turned a freebie seeker into a buyer, which is thing, thing, a big deal. Okay, if you're multitasking come back to me because I really want to talk about this next one. Okay, so this next one you could call the small offer a low ticket offer my friend, Ellie, research, she coined the term a tiny offer. And so there's different ways to kind of look at this, but it's a small offer, but we position it differently. So this is a stand alone low price product that you run ads to directly. So there's no free opt in first someone sees your ad lands on a sales page buys the thing 27 37 keep it low. And they're paying for the product and in the process they're joining your email list. So now you're instantly getting subscribers who are buyers, which you know I love. Okay, real quick, I have to interrupt you know that training I mentioned earlier. If you can say yes to any of the following this is the training that will help you not just make your revenue more consistent, but grow past the plateau that's probably haunted you for months, maybe years. So first you have had a great month, but it's hard to repeat it. A launch works in April, a funnel works once and when you try again, you get completely different results or second, you know you're capable of more than your revenue reflects right now. So if you're a third, you have an audience offers paying customers a real business, but it still feels so hard. If this is you, I created the revenue consistency formula to get you out of this exact situation. So this free training is for six figure female founders. And if that is you, I want you to go to even you quarterfield dot com forward slash training. So I can show you how to refine what you have and turn it into revenue. That's far more predictable. Deal. Deal. Okay, let's get back to the show. So again, my friend Ali, she's the expert on this. She's been on the podcast before she literally trademarked the term tiny offer, which I think is baller. And I had her on episode 38. So if you go to emuportafil.com forward slash 38, you can get to it. And if you haven't listened to that one, it is really good. I highly recommend you go back to that one. We get into all the details about tiny offers and why they work. And again, when you're listening to it, think in terms of this could actually pay for my ads. So when I get to my launch, all my ads are paid for. And everything from the launch, well, at least more of that is gravy, right. So the benefit of a small offer like this is that everyone who comes through is a buyer from day one. They've already demonstrated that they're willing to spend money to solve a problem and people who pay pay attention. So they're more likely to open your emails engage with your content and eventually buy your bigger offers, your signature offer. These smaller offers, they tend to attract people who value their time. So they'd rather pay a little money to shortcut the learning curve, then spend hours hunting for free information. Me, I will pay for that kind of thing all day long. So you just have to ask yourself which one is right for you. Do you want to start with a trip wire or a small offer both can work and you can use both in your business. You could do both of them at the same time, but you know my motto, right. We start small. We start with one thing, perfect it, get it working, make sure that it's converting. Then go on to the next thing. So we're not going to do tiny offers and trip wires at the same time, right. Just choose one trip wires work well if you already have a free lead magnet that's performing and you want to just add revenue layer to that funnel without starting from scratch. So if you're already running ads to something free and it's working, freaking get that trip wire up tomorrow. And again, it's just on the thank you page, hey, do you want this it's 27 bucks or 17 bucks. And it's like a tiny, tiny mini sales page and they can just buy it right there. So that's one of the best ways to do it. And then the smaller offer like Alice tiny offer they work well if you want to build a list of buyers from the start, you're sick of the free lead magnets you feel like they are attracting the wrong people and you want people that will pay and pay attention. Go for the tiny offer either way the goal is the same offset your ad spend so you can grow without gambling and if you're new to ads, you have a little wiggle room to experiment sure no one wants to lose money you will lose money. And the beginning when you're running ads yourself every one of us has lost some money like oh damn I didn't know that I had to click that or do that or that went fast. But imagine if you've got a little buffer with let say this trip wire, it doesn't sing so much. And then you'll get good, fast, and you're not losing any money. And now it becomes profit. Or in this case, it becomes the way you pay for your ads for your launch. Okay, so I want to give you some examples of low ticket offers that work well with business owners at your stage. So the key here is that the lift needs to be low. You're not trying to create a whole course or a huge program. You're creating something simple and valuable and easy to deliver. So adopt the motto, let it be easy. Whatever we're creating for either a trip wire or a tiny offer, let it be easy. You might even have something already that you can pull out, dust off, and have people pay for it. So you might already have something. Ideally, you want to market it to your existing audience first. So your social media following, your email list, let them be your testing ground because here's the thing. If you go straight to ads with an offer you haven't validated yet and it doesn't sell, you won't know why. Is it the offer? Is it the ads? Is it the messaging? You'll be guessing. Gary Vee really hits home. Like he's appalled. If you ever run an ad that you haven't tested on social media to prove that it works. I've ran many ads that I haven't tested on social media. Some I very much regret. Some that were gangbusters totally worked. But I hear Gary, it's just sometimes not totally feasible when you're a solo preneur and you've got a million things going on. You can't test everything that you're going to turn into an ad. But definitely he's on to something in terms of if you can test it first, do so. And you can test a trip wire or a tiny offer with your existing email list in your social media. And just make sure that it's converting with your existing audience. That way if you run ads and it's not working, you know it's the ad and not the offer, which is a very helpful thing to know. The clarity saves you a lot of money and a lot of stress. So with that in mind, here's just a few examples. Number one, templates like a template pack. Templates are one of the easiest things to create and sell. Think about what your audience does repeatedly and then you can make it easier for them. So if you're in the marketing world, social media captions or if you help people pitch themselves, pitch templates or proposal templates, lesson plan templates, meal plan templates, budget templates, workout program templates, wedding planning templates, the list goes on. Did I say templates at the end? Uh, now I'm slurring my words, but that was a lot of templates. The list goes on. Now, if you're already, if you've already created something like this again for yourself or for your clients, like I said, you might already have it, package it up, sell it. Number two toolkits. Oh, I love a good tool kit. So a toolkit is a collection of resources around a specific problem. It might include templates, but also checklists or swipe files or maybe short training videos, walking people through how to use everything. The key is to make it focused on one specific outcome. So don't try to include everything you know. Just choose one problem, give them everything they need to solve it in some kind of toolkit, like a hiring toolkit. Uh, how to figure out who you need to hire, job descriptions, onboarding plan, interview questions. That would be an example of a toolkit. Okay. Number three audits or strategy sessions. So if you're a service provider or you're a coach or a consultant, a load ticket audit or strategy session, that can work really well. This might be like a $47 offer where someone submits their website, their funnel, their content, their strategy, depending on what industry you're in. Maybe they submit a week of eating, like they're super honest. This is what I ate in a week and you're going to audit it and give them feedback to clean things up. Like you can do this in a lot of different ways. You can go higher like $97 since you're providing someone customized value, but don't go much higher. Remember, there is this concept for both of these strategies, no brainer. They're not like, ah, should I spend it? That's a lot of money. I need to look at my bake account. None of that. It's a no brainer. Yeah, I can spend that. So we got to keep those prices around that area, depending on who your niche is. Because for me, a no brainer price could be like $200, but in another niche, a no brainer price could be like only as high as $47. It just depends on the niche you're in. Now, the lift is a little higher here because you're trading time for money, but it also gives you direct insight into what your audience is struggling with, which could inform your bigger offer. So it might be worth it to you. And it's a great way to identify people who are ready for more support. So some of them will naturally want to continue working with you after the audit. So if I did one-on-one work, I would totally sell some kind of audit so that they could get, you know, a taste of, let's say if it was a video review or a loom review like my personality, hear my voice, I can be in a position of authority, teach them something, build trust. So that maybe they're more likely to become a one-on-one client. So it could be worth it. But what makes this work in general is all of these examples share a few things in common. They solve a real specific problem, one problem. They're easy to deliver and they don't require a ton of ongoing support. That's the sweet spot for self-funding your growth. You don't want it to be a big, big to do for you in terms of a lot of work. If it's a heavy lift, it's a no for either these strategies, a tripwire or a tiny offer. Now beyond the revenue, there's something else this approach gives you that I think is just as valuable. It lets you build confidence before you scale. So you prove demand before investing more. When you create a low ticket offer and people buy it, you've validated that the idea resonates. You're not guessing anymore. You have real data, real buyers, real feedback. That's incredibly valuable before you go spend thousands of dollars on ads or build out a bigger offer around the same concept. You generate data without pressure. Running a small offer lets you learn how your audience responds without the pressure of a big launch. You can see what messaging works. You can see what objections come up. You can see what questions people have after they buy. All of that information makes your bigger offer stronger. So your signature offer is going to be stronger. And you get to fund list growth responsibly. Instead of draining your savings to grow your email list, you're funding that growth with revenue. Your ad spend is coming back to you. Your list is growing with buyers. To me, that's the biggest thing of this whole thing. And you're not lying awake at night wondering if you made a terrible financial decision to run ads. That's a very different feeling than crossing your fingers and hoping your next launch makes all the money that you back that you spent on ads. Now, I want you to feel excited about this and I also want you to be smart about the timing. Before you run off and create a low ticket offer, I want you to check a few things first. This strategy works really well at a certain stage, but it's not right for everyone and it's not right for every moment in your business. First, let's do a revenue stability check. Do you have consistent revenue coming in right now? I'm not talking about tons and tons of consistent revenue. But if your business is in a cash crisis or you're not sure how you're going to pay yourself next month, this probably isn't the time to experiment with a new offer like this, right? Get stable first, then add this layer in and you do not need to wait till you're rolling around and cash. Like, have tons of money. Just, you know, I was going to say just until you feel stable. The truth is, I don't want to go on the tangent, but do we ever feel totally stable with our revenue? Even where I'm at in my business now, there's times that I'm like, "Ooh, that was a bigger spend than I felt comfortable with." So, let's not wait till we, if you don't see me right now, you don't know, like, feel confident. I'm doing my air quotes. But be realistic about the money. Speaking of you seeing me right now, I forgot to mention that I recently moved to my layhouse. It's a whole thing. I'll get into it later. Hopefully you listen to my newsletter because I like to give all the personal details about what's going on in my life in my newsletter. So, if not, any porterfield.com/newsletter, go there, sign up. I'll tell you the whole story of why I moved out of my big, beautiful, wonderful Nashville home to a very small home at the lake about an hour and a half outside of Nashville, why I did it, and why now I'm in this studio that I'm recording in that I have zero background and the audio is not that great and I'm in flux. We will have a background soon, and the audio will be better soon. But I could have made the excuse I'm not going to podcast for a while until I got this set up. Hell no, this is a rain or shine podcast. I'm committed to it. So, we just do what we got to do. So, this isn't the most aesthetic video you've ever seen of me, but it will get better over time. But I fully went out on a tangent. What was I talking about? Oh, um, you want to just check the, check the numbers and just make sure that you've got some consistent revenue coming in and you're willing to spend some of that to figure this out. Second, a capacity check. So, do you have the time and energy to create something new right now? And like I said, this episode isn't how to run ads. I don't run my own ads anymore. That's not something I teach. However, not only do you need an offer like a tripwire or a tiny offer, which I'm convinced you already have somewhere buried in your business that you can pull out dust off and use, but also you're going to be learning ads and that does take time. It's a very good skill to learn at your level though. You can't afford an ad agency yet. It's just the truth. So starting to learn ads slowly, I do think it's a really, really good idea. It won't be forever. It will be a great day when you can pass it off. But let me tell you, there's a million challenges that come with working with an ad agency as well. So like more money, more problems, kind of situation. So there's something kind of pure and simple around running your own ads and having that control. So take advantage of it because one day you're going to be making a lot of money and you're going to look forward to giving it off to someone. And then you're going to say, oh, I miss the days when this is more simple. So trust me on that one. OK, so what you do need to create something like a template or a toolkit, if you don't have anything, do you add the capacity? Did you so more importantly, the capacity to run the ads and figure them out? And again, repurpose if you can. And third, an offer clarity check. Do you know what problem you want to solve with this tiny offer or this trip wire? The biggest mistake people make with low ticket offers is trying to include too much or being vague about the outcome of what they're getting. So get clear on the specific result your offer delivers before you actually build it. So that clarity is what will make itself. So if you can check all three of these, not what total confidence you're going to be like, oh, this is scary. Am I ready to start running ads? Am I ready to get back into it if you like fell off the wagon because things were hard with ads? I will say figuring out the trip wire or the tiny offer where you run ads to them, it's worth you getting back in and trying this again, if you were kind of burned by ads before. This is a good reason for you to give it another shot. So here's what I want you to take away with this episode. You don't have to gamble your savings to grow with ads. You don't have to spend money and hope it comes back to you someday. And you don't have to put all the pressure on one big launch to make the math work. Tripwires and small offers let you cover your ad cost as you go. You build a list with buyers, not just freebie seekers. And you get to see whether things are working right away before you've spent thousands on your ads. Tripwires and tiny offers are two tools that can help you do this. And they're not just for beginners or people with huge audiences. They work really well at your stage when you're ready to grow, but you want to do it responsibly. And here's your action step. Think about one simple, valuable thing you could offer for, let's say, anywhere from $17 to $47. Something that solves a specific problem your audience has. Something you could create in the next few weeks or better yet. You already have that you can pull out and start using. That's your starting point. Choose one offer, put some ads spend behind it, watch your list, fill up with real buyers. That's how you grow without the risk. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. I hope it helped you see that running ads doesn't have to feel like a gamble and that there's a way to grow your business that feels responsible and strategic. If you're watching on YouTube and enjoyed this episode, make sure you subscribe so that you do not miss what's coming next. And if you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, be sure to follow and subscribe to the show. Let's talk to you soon.