The Ultimate Blog Podcast - 122. Roberta West on Using Ads to Market Your Blog

Episode Date: April 16, 2024

Have you used ads to market your blog? We have Roberta West on to share more about how to use ads. Roberta is a writer and consultant who helps part-time entrepreneurs design automated digital products so they can create multi-income and money freedom. She is bringing tips for you to put into practice today! Tune in to hear all of the wisdom that Roberta has to share!Thanks for listening! Let us know your thoughts on Instagram: @sparkmediaconceptsCheck out MiloTree Cart HERE!Check out the show notes (link below) for more information including links and resources mentioned in today's episode!SHOW NOTES: www.sparkmediaconcepts.com/episode122

Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast with Amy Reinecke and Jennifer Draper. We're on a mission to empower women who want to start or grow their own blog. This podcast is for women who want to learn blogging basics and who crave inspiration and encouragement. Whether you're just getting started or have been a blogger for years, we're excited to welcome you into this space where we are passionate about creating community over competition. We are bloggers who want to encourage you to believe in your potential, step outside the norm and step into a life where you create your own schedule, your own success and your own story. Join us for weekly episodes as we navigate blogging

and work from home life all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. Well, today we are so excited to bring you Roberta West, who is a writer and consultant, and she helps part-time entrepreneurs design automated digital products so they can create multi-income and money freedom. And we are really excited to talk to you today, Roberta. We're going to really dive into this idea of Facebook ads and how content creators can be utilizing Facebook ads in order to grow their brand, increase their traffic and their sales. So welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited for this bridge conversation between content and ads and how we can maximize our efforts. Yes, and become successful. Absolutely. So Roberta, we always like to ask our guests when they come on just to share a little bit about your story and how you got into the online space. And so I'd love to hear more about you and how you got started here.

Oh, great. I came in a little bit later than most. You know, my first digital product, I was still working nine to five in a corporate job back when the pandemic started. And I just decided to pick up a course on how to make courses and, you know, create my own. That's kind of like when I really got started. Before that, I never done anything like I never had a blog before. I never like even I don't even think I had a Facebook account or like Instagram. So I was completely out of the whole digital game. Instagram. So I was completely out of the whole digital game. But you know, being home and I had a young son and worked before as a part time kind of designer and kind of like the more creative

side of things. And that's how I started actually creating my own programs while working, while taking care of my son at home and, you know, my family. So that's how I created my processes and got started. And my quote unquote, like claim to fame was one of my evergreen or automated programs just took off and did so well. And then people started asking, like, how am I doing this? How am I, you know, keeping my full time job and creating those products and selling? And the answer most of the time or primarily was, well, I'm using Facebook or meta ads. And that's, that's how this whole thing whole thing started I really couldn't and the more I learned about you know Instagram and Facebook and you know back then they were TikTok was starting out and all of that the the more I got confused and just extremely stressed with all this. But I'm sure we're going to get into it.

I couldn't manage the content creation and the social media. Keeping up with that was just too much. So I found my way into business with Facebook ads. my way into business with Facebook ads. I love that you had a feeling and were like, I can't stay here. And so I like what I'm doing. And I have to figure out a way to make it work. That's in alignment with my life. That's what I heard you say there. And I think that is really, really encouraging to anybody listening who feels like they have to be in every single space in order to be successful. And that, Roberta, is a great testament that you don't have to. You find where you can grow and you go all in there and learn that well. And so thanks for being really vulnerable about that because I think that that's something that we really try to share with people. But it's always encouraging when

somebody can say, I did that. And it worked to just go in on one. So thanks for your honesty with that. And I'm sure it did feel stressful and overwhelming because I think the content creation space can feel that way, to be honest. There is so much that we can learn on any given day. And we kind of feel like we have to do it all, all the time. And we have to do it all really, really well. And something that we kind of discussed before hitting record is that it shifts, and it changes. And even the name of Facebook ads is now meta, you know, Even the name of the actual program has shifted and changed. So when you decided to go all in with Meta... We're going to try to really hard use the current term. It might be hard for the 3 of us. When you decided to go all in with that,

was that like an overnight thing? Or this something that you kind of had to do some you know checks and balances and see like it does this work or doesn't this work what was the timeline what did that look like for you at that at that time you know from decision to adopting it and liking it and kind of connecting was pretty quick but as we were talking before, you know, there's always a learning curve for myself, obviously, like how to learn. And, you know, I got a few programs to lay a few courses to learn. I also got a few, I got a membership to help me on the day to day, like, you know, not every day, but help me set up and see the results and guide me through the very early stages. But there was also a learning curve for Meta and for my ads account as well. I think we were talking a little bit about it before, you know, there is always,

even after committing and seeing the results, small results with it, and I was getting leads, I was getting people into my list that I could, that I was then, you know, launching my course to it in a few months time. So I was seeing a little bit of progress, but my account and my ads and the algorithm itself wasn't fully trained. And that's like, that took a little bit more time and more patience than I think most people assume they will need. But adopting Facebook, adopting ads as a model to sell my course to sell my services it was pretty fast because like I said I was in the Instagram game and Facebook you know posting and groups and all of this and was and didn't see as much traction at all. Compared to Facebook ads or to meta ads, I saw a big result much faster. So obviously, at that point, I'm like, this is working. I'm going to invest more time, more money, really dig in and make this my primary way to sell. I love that you started this, like you said, in 2020. I feel like there's a lot

of people sitting out there thinking, oh, I have missed this boat. There's no way I'm going to be able to join now. And I think what you're proving is that you still can. If you have an idea and you have something that's going to serve people, you can still get into this and you can find a way to reach these people and make it work. So I mean, it sounds like you developed this in a reasonable amount of time. I know it's overwhelming to think about creating a website and building a course and then trying to market and sell and all of that. Can you kind of talk a little bit about what you focused on besides just like the facebook ads as a way to promote them but how did you focus on creating your product and in staying focused on like being able to create something that you could start bringing an income in with versus like

trying to do all the different things all at once i always always did. And I know a lot more people nowadays that use the same kind of mindset for product creation. I always create from the need, from what people are asking me for. And that's another great way that I use content, my blog content or any content that I put out there to test it out. And I used ads to kind of maximize and get more feedback even before I create the program. Back in the days, honestly, like, let me just go back here and be totally transparent back in 2020 I know back in the days seems like so many it seems like 2020 feels like a long time ago because

there's been a lot happened since 2020 in our world 2020 and now a completely different world but you know not that long ago when I started the current advice was still like you sit you create your program you know once it's all beautifully done you create your sales page and your emails and then you try to launch but very quickly you know my second product already, my coaching program, I already did backwards, meaning I created that program from the need and from what people were asking me for. of just meetings with people and chatting about how they wanted to learn what they really needed, what is the biggest struggle, why they were seeing my efforts and kind of like they were connecting with it and they were feeling kind of attracted to it. What points they really they were attracted to? Was that because I was a mother and working? Was that my corporate job and working?

Was that growing their business, scaling their business? With that information, I then write, and this is still how I do it today, I write a sales page. I don't create anything that I don't know who I'm gonna sell to, how I'm going to sell it. And what's the main message? Like, what is this going to do for people? And I think this, it's getting, I feel like it's getting more attraction to start with the, the offer and

not so much about with the product or the course or what you want to teach. But I still feel like people could hear this a little bit more like, once you meet a big need of the market, and then when we're talking about ads, we want to even go deeper into what is that the the people that are sitting scrolling through facebook or instagram what do they need and not necessarily everybody in the world but like if you're gonna run ads you want to make sure that you are creating an offer that those people that are sitting on facebook or Instagram that they want and need. So I always start from there. And then the course or the program or the coaching comes to fill that gap and to deliver on the promise that I created with that sales page kind of draft. Does that

make sense or is that... Total sense. It makes complete sense. And I think that it's actually really helpful. Because a lot of people when they come into the content creation space, one of the fears that they have is, am I going to run out of ideas? Am I not going to... What if I just dry up one day? But when you are out there and you are communicating to your ideal community, your ideal audience, people want to tell you what they're struggling with. They want to tell you what the need is. And so I think we just have to be... As a content creator, we have to be brave enough to ask the question and then sit back and really soak in the answers. And that's when then we can do the internal work of, okay, so they've told me they need help with

A, B, and C. How can I provide a solution for those things? Because often if you're with people who are in that same niche that you are, you likely know the answer to the issue that they're having. It's just, you might think that it's either too elementary or they already know that. And so I think it really does help to talk to people who need the information that you want to get out there. And you as the creator having kind of a guidebook of this is how they want it. I love that you said that you sit down and you ask them, how do you want to learn? Like that is valuable information because I think we were kind of taught to do it the opposite way. I know that that's how we created our course was the complete opposite way. We created the course and we're like, now let's go find the people.

Like, where are they? You know? And so it is a different, it kind of like turns it over on its head you know to think of it in a different way but it's it's much more streamlined in my opinion to create a course or a product or a service that you know there's already a need for when you're doing it the way you're explaining at this point sometimes i i run into the question of like, okay, but I'm not getting any feedback. I don't have an audience big enough to tell me what they need. And there are a few hacks that I used at the beginning. I still do with, you know, my clients and students. And it's like, first, you know, any comment, even if you have one person that replies to your email, to your newsletter and say this was valuable.

This is one critical piece of feedback because someone actually took the time to respond and give you feedback, right? Asking people in groups that you're together. And obviously, if you are trying to sell something to someone online, you got to be where they are, right? Like you got to kind of be part of the conversation. If it is other entrepreneurs, there are so many groups out there. Like you don't even need to ask necessarily. You can get snapshots of what people in your niche, in your area, what are people asking for? What are they trying to solve? And you don't even need to get in conversations with people.

You can just snapshot exactly what they're asking and kind of plug together this kind of overview of what you can serve people with, or what you can create that would serve a big need online. And then my favorite way, actually, because I kind of don't like to wait for anything, To run ads, run a few ads to a blog post or to a podcast that talks specifically about one of your questions. So let's say if I think that I want to create a program to help with Facebook or meta ads, let's say hypothetically, because I'm not doing that. But let's say, and I would create a piece of content and run ads to that content, see what kind of, you know, I would promote this like it is my business, promote everywhere that piece of

content is free, you're giving people a lot of advice. You're helping, you know, there's no downside. And all I'm looking at is to see feedback. All I'm trying to do, I'm not trying to get followers. I'm not trying to get people on my list. I'm not trying to sell anything. All I'm trying to gauge, even put a few traffic ads behind, like to send more eyeballs if I don't have a big audience, for example, to give me results.

I want to see like, is this title enticing to people, right? Is Facebook ads or meta ads? right? Is Facebook ads or meta ads? We're going to be doing this all day, I feel like. Bear with me. I mean, meta ads or any kind of ads, even Google ads, like, are people interested in this, right? Or no, it's kind of a lukewarm, and if it is, we need more proof, right? So I use ads to test anything that I want to put it out there just because I get in front of more people for, you know, $5 a day or less. I can get in front of a lot more people than I would otherwise,

especially if I have a small audience, which by the way, I still do. Like I don't have a big audience. I don't create content. So I don't grow organically much, but that said, I get to test my ideas with actually the people that are going to be on the end side of it anyway. So I feel like there's a lot of synergies by creating with the help of ads and content. And then you just turn it back on and it's like, here it is. You asked for it. Here's a... Well, you're kind of like getting in their head. I mean, you're kind of getting in their head a little bit. You know what I mean?

Exactly. And then they're like, oh my gosh, that is exactly what I've been looking for. And then they're like, oh my gosh, that is exactly what I've been looking for. You know, after so much money in ads, I learned that people buy the better version of themselves. And those were always our best ads. It's like, how can I give you your better version? They don't care about me, my business. Even my results are, you know, not what people expect. When you see an ad, an ad that makes you really want to buy it right away, this ad is telling you there is a better version and there is a better way to accomplish what you want.

But this all starts with like, do you really, are you really listening to what people want and need and how they're speaking about it? So you can flip that back when it's ready and say, back when it's ready and say, here it is. You told me, I listen. You want meta ads, you want it fast, you want cheap, you want to try it out, you want quick strategies that work. What do you want? Here it is. I'm giving it to you for a great price. Just go to this page and get it. Are you looking for a simplified way to earn revenue from selling your own digital products? We have found an incredible resource for you with Milo Tree Cart. Milo Tree Cart is founded by Jillian Leslie, host of the Blogger Genius Podcast. So she knows exactly the kind of platform a blogger needs to sell their products. There are ready-made sales pages, one-click sales funnels, a user-friendly sales dashboard,

all while also getting a dedicated support team to assist you. You can bundle your digital downloads or sell them separately. You have unlimited product storage and all file types are accepted on the platform. Milo Tree Cart simplifies the process of getting your digital products into the hands of those you created them for, all while generating more revenue for your blogging business. Click the link in our show notes today to sign up for Milo Tree Cart and start earning more from your digital products in 2024. You are speaking like so directly to our people who are sitting in this place right now asking all the questions that you just answered. They're like, how am I going to figure out what to sell?

How do I know it's going to sell? You gave some really, really good advice in terms of how they can take action, even if they don't have a big social media following, even if they are not getting traffic to their blog like crazy right now. They can take action today and start doing things that they want to do. They don't have to wait till X number of page views a month. They don't have to wait till I have X number of followers or even their email list because they can start today. And even like you said, just create some of that content that you think might be what people are looking for that you can answer and start running these ads and testing it out. And I think that's incredibly exciting. So can you maybe even just talk a little bit more

like, okay, I created this blog post, and I want to run an ad to see, you know, is this something people are looking for? Can you talk about some of the first basic steps they can take to run their first ad to a piece of content? Yes, absolutely. I like to always start with engagement ads. And I don't know, like, in my mind, there's a lot more out there. But for the purpose of beginners and people that are just starting out, you know, we're talking about three types of ads, right? Like engagement ads are low cost and it's just putting that ad or the short information in front of people. Usually there's no call to action. You're not sending them to any page or anything like that. Engagement ad is just trying to find, Meta is trying to find people that likes that visual, that likes that kind of high level content and topic. So it's much cheaper. You can get engagement or people to see your ad or to stop

scrolling or, you know, to if you have a carousel, for example, to kind of flip your carousel slides, you can get that type of engagement for cents, right? It's not going to do great things for you. You're not going to see sales or anything like that. But it's the first step to teach the algorithm to find the people that are slightly interested in your brand, in your offer, in how you say things, right? It's very top level. I like to always run

engagement ads and just add new ads under a campaign. Every time I have a new piece of content that really speaks to my core business and my core offer. In my view, you can't promote everything that you write about or get distracted. Being super focused helps the algorithm find the right person that is really struggling with what you do, right? That person that engages with one of your ads and maybe gets in the second level, which is to get into your email for free, like get a lead magnet, right? A lead ad or a traffic ad that someone that is actually going to click and go to your website. Those are all levels of commitment to that topic, right? And Facebook is, or Meta, let's try one more time, is always trying to rank those people and find more of them. So if you say, I want to find more people

that engage with my blog post, the first thing I would do is just to create that campaign that runs in engagement. And you can start with $3, $5 a day, or as much as you have and put it to cold audiences, people that never heard of you. And just start giving those breadcrumbs so the algorithm can start thinking about your ideal person or someone that is slightly interested in your content. And then I would really promote if you have a piece of content, you want to test it out the best way, the most conclusive way. Let's put it that way, right?

That gives you like, yes, for sure, this is a good answer or this is a good topic. or this is a good answer, or this is a good topic, I would create a quick guide or something free for people to consume even deeper and give something back. So getting someone on your list is proof that people want to give their email, which nowadays cannot be taken for granted. It's not 2020 anymore. Even people to sign up for your free lead magnet or for your free stuff needs to be something of, it does demonstrate that

people are interested and do have a need for that content because otherwise people just don't do it anymore i feel like it's it's a lot harder and you should approach this as an experience or let let me rephrase like you should think of it not as my thing is not good enough or my thing is a wrong like you're not looking for to validate completely but you're looking for indication right and if you do feel like maybe your blog post didn't hit a mark yet write it again like you are the creator you're the expert and you need to trust your instincts. But there is something to say about running those tests, right? And kind of dissociating from the result, which it's another big major block

that I see for my students and people is like, they give up Facebook or ads so quickly because they're like, this is not giving me the right result. And it's like, give yourself time to write proper copy, to reach the right audience. And the same for the algorithm to learn how to find those people. It takes time. And obviously, when we talk about ads, we talk about money as well. It takes time and it takes a little bit of money. I don't make any decisions on a new account. If you never ran ads in three months, it's like when we start seeing that that algorithm is starting to learn and starting to perform and spit out good results, better results.

Then you can really step up on your ask and start making bigger asks of that audience that you curated within the algorithm. Does that make sense? I feel like I'm going like, no, I love it to the Facebook. And by the way, I have no insights never worked for meta. Just how we approach, you know, newer accounts, because it's easy for me to say, oh, I get this kind of cost per lead or, you know, anything I put it out there. Like I rarely see a campaign that doesn't perform anymore, but that's after hundreds of thousands of dollars spent to grow, to learn, to, you know, train my algorithm. And it only works for my thing. It doesn't work for anybody else, right? So I'm really giving the way we look at brand new accounts. If you're starting right now,

start slow. And again, I think you guys also give the same advice, like consistency is really what is going to bring you the best results. You may decide not to do it. That's okay. But expecting, you know, a brand new account or something that you ran a few ads years ago to perform at a really high level immediately, it's not feasible.

It's just not a good goal. So start slow. Give it a few months of like low budget. Just let it cook a little bit. Let it simmer down. And then you start progressively making bigger asks of the algorithm and your people that are now not followers, but they are within the algorithm kind of reach. I really appreciate all that information that you just gave. To be honest,

I like going in the weeds. I kind of like it there. Because I think that it's tangible information. And like you saying, give it three months and let it cook a little bit. We give that same advice to new bloggers. We are not in the business of building overnight. It just doesn't happen anymore. And anybody who's selling that to you, please be very weary of what they are saying. Because most people in the content creation space are going to be very honest with you that it just does take time. And sometimes it takes doing something one way and being like, you know what, that actually isn't working. So we need to pivot and do it a different way. I think one of the questions I do

have, Roberta, off of what you just said is, is consistency. I mean, I know what consistency means as a content creator. But what does consistency mean in regards to ads? Is that like, what would you tell basic new bloggers? Like, is that like running a new ad once a week? Is that running a new ad each day? Or what does that really look like when, when we talk about consistency and ads? Consistency and ads, obviously there is a budget consistency, right? That's the first level is being responsible with your ads and planning it out longer term. You need to create a budget for it.

It's very easy for people that are like, okay, I want to invest X, but I need to see return next week. And that's part of the consistency is like, okay, I have to consistently invest even a little bit. And this is the long run. This is my long plan with, you know, instead of I need to post three times a week on Instagram. Now your consistency goal is to keep your ads running on the background, like to have $5, to have $3 and not deviate from it and just trust

the process and keep going. The second level is kind of put on your mad scientist hat and say, you know, every week I'm going to look at those ads and I'm going to make one change, right? And see how that performs. I have one question for my ads campaign. One question, one ads campaign, different sets, you know, like for a different audience of video on a test. But primarily, every campaign has a question to answer. And that's the consistency way that I'm speaking of is to consistently have questions for your ads and always look at the results with this science hat kind of or overview, which is like, I am making experiments and I'm learning and I'm growing, but this is, this needs to be done at least once a week. You got to look at your ads

with answering or trying to answer questions for your business or for your, you know, for your content. It could be like we mentioned before, I'm trying to pass this new course idea. Is this working? And this week I ran, let's say, I ran some ads, traffic ads. It didn't work really well. Can I try a different message?

Can I try a different branding? Or maybe I'm not finding the right people. Maybe I need to try new audiences and so forth. So consistency in ads, it's a give or take. Like you don't have to create new content all the time. You can have the same blog post and have honestly months of testing with your ads. You can have one lead magnet and have, like I said, months of different ways to create ads, different audience. There's so many things you can test. And then even more so if you have one offer, stick to that offer. There's so much you can do running one campaign and saying this is not working. It's probably the same advice you guys give to people is like, well, you wrote 10 blog

posts and like you wonder why you're not a famous blogger, not getting, you know, ad money or whatever. It's like, hold on. We're not there quite yet. So being consistent with ads, obviously you're running so you don't have to be promoting, creating new content, emailing people all the time.

But there is an expectation that you are looking at your ads critically and, you know, understanding what all that data and numbers really mean in terms of your content and in terms of your offer and reaching your ideal audience and having those conversations. Really, the advice you gave is just solid business advice. It's being systematic about your approach, knowing what your question is, what your goal is. And then you have to have so much patience because you have to just like you said, change things one at a time, give it enough time to simmer and then make your adjustments as you go. And it's

just overall good advice when it comes to blogging or running ads on meta. No matter what it is, you have to pull the emotional piece out of it. And you can't just say, Oh, it's not working. I give up. I quit. If you do that, you're not going to be successful. You have to have that patience to invest. And like you said, something that we talk about a lot is you have to come back and look

at the metrics so that you know if what you're doing is working. If you wrote a blog post and you never went and looked at your page views and you didn't go look at your page views month over month and year over year, how do you know if that's the content that's resonating with people? If they're finding your content, if they like your content, you have to go back and look at that data. content, they like your content, you have to go back and look at that data. Can you talk a little bit about then after you've after you've run these, these ads, what are the things that you go back and look for to know, like, are people is this resonating with people? Is this working? Or, or I do need to change something. Like I mentioned before, I do quote unquote rank the interactions, right? And this is for everything in my business, especially when I was starting out. And this is especially good advice for people that don't have a big audience or a big budget

to be, you know, reaching tens of thousands of people every week, right? The quality of the response is more important sometimes than the numbers. People get really trapped into cost per lead or, you know, cost per click and so forth. And I'm like, hold on. We ultimately, we want to, we are business owners and we want to sell something, even if it is information, even if it is, you know, podcast downloads, whatever it is, we're selling something here. Having the right kind of response is more important than quantity. point of view, for example, like if I get people to subscribe to my newsletter, you know, through a lead magnet campaign, for example, and I get responses and I get, you know, replies right away, if I get people interested, if I offer to talk to people and go jump on a call, if I get people to take it, then I know I'm in the right track because there are those few, but very warm people in my audience, meaning they really need what I am, quote unquote,

selling, you know, at all times. So that's important to me. and for everybody out there that don't have tens of thousands of responses or hundreds of comments on a blog, on a post, in social media. The quality of the responses, if someone wants to ask you a question and go into your DMs, for example, or if they leave a comment on your ads, on your ads, that kind of response gets a 10x, let's put it that way, gets much more weight than, you know, for example, like, I don't look so much about on my cost per lead, for example. It varies, it fluctuates, but I'm much more interested in following through with those people that I'm getting through ads and making sure they are my people, right? Primarily,

I want to see the results. And if you are comparing, let's say, one blog post ad to another like a different topic for example I want to see how many clicks obviously like how many people liked it but I want to see how many people engage with that content a little bit further I don't know if that makes sense it's kind of like there's no real metric that I look at. I just like to see every week, how is it performing? Is there anything that stands out? And obviously, for my volume, I get to see smaller differences, right? If I am testing this week, for example, I was testing a new color combo. A while ago, I changed from very bright and colorful and very feminine. I changed to a more neutral, you know, and more masculine kind of branding. So those are things

that obviously I get to see what are the costs per click. And then I go into the audience and I see, is there more men? Is there more women? How are the audiences performing? I like to look at the countries. I go into everything on my ad to try to piece together what are the outliers? What are the things that, what is Facebook doing? What is Meta doing in the backend?

Or like, where are they really reaching? And sometimes there's a lot of focus on the cost per lead necessarily, or like the cost per action. And I don't love focusing on it. I like the more qualitative approach to it or looking at the quality of the people that my ads are running because in the long run,

when you're ready to sell something, I know those audiences are going to perform better. Cheap is not always what you want to go for. Ooh, that's a great piece of advice. It is. I like that. Cheap is not always what is going to work for your business. So yeah, I think you've said it perfectly in terms of you don't have to only be focused on the numbers, but you can be focused on the interactions with your audience as well. Absolutely. I think there's a lot of details that we can use to make decisions. And the good thing about Facebook or any paid ads is that you see results a lot faster. So we're talking about

being consistent and so forth. But if you put, as a rule of thumb, like when we run lead magnet campaigns, for example, when you have something that people can download and so forth, you know, if you put $100 into ads one week, you know, if you get $5 a lead, for example, you just got 20 people into your email that you can nurture further. And if you have something to sell, you can even test that audience further with another call to action that's just not getting into your, you know, getting your freebie or lead magnet. But it can be, I like at the beginning, if I don't have anything to sell specifically

for that audience, I like to ask if they want to jump on a call with me. I know exactly how much my people are responding to my content. If they take the time to book a call with me, it can be a 15 minute. I like to do strategy calls. I don't sell anything. And I'm like, hey, jump on a call. I just want to learn from you. And if I can help you on the call, I will.

Absolutely. And if I get a lot of people interested, I know this is a topic that there is a big need. And I know I actually tapped into a really good audience because they are more responsive. And you can do that with a survey. You can do that with reply to this email. You can do with like, here's another piece of content that if you're struggling with X, you know, you're going to need Y and go get it here. So any type of further interaction is just more proof, bigger proof that you're hitting the right audience and you're really getting the right people into your business. No matter the cost, obviously, you've got to have a cost analysis here. Like, are you getting people at a reasonable price that matches your offers?

You know, and that's a conversation, I guess, for another podcast. But, you know, in some, don't look too much, you know, having cheap leads are just cheap. That's that doesn't mean there are good leads. They're just cheap. Yeah, they can be great leads for cheap. That's what we want. But that's not the end game. Let me just really quickly, this is so funny. We've had, you know, for years, I have a program in Evergreen. And we, you know, we test ads all the time and one time I had an ads agency at one point and they sent I don't to this day I don't know what they did they just tested in this super broad audience right and immediately I got a ton of sales but almost immediately like the hours within purchase people were canceling their transactions with their credit card they were refunding the product like I'm like shut this down

yes the costs were great the purchases were coming in but, I don't know where we went with those ads to this day, but we were just getting the wrong people. Definitely, like, they were not our people. They did not know what the product did. They didn't even understand how refunds worked. So it was like, shut it down. So don't focus too much on the price and the data, especially if you don't have a really big budget that you can test with thousands of, I really hate that a lot of people got refunds. But I think it's valuable to know that really, our goal as content creators is to connect with

the people who need the content that we're spending time to create. That is the ultimate goal. We can get really lost in the weeds with the data and the cost per click and all these different things. But at the end of the day, our purpose is found in helping the people that we're meant to serve. And so I think just getting that consistency and patience like you've talked about is really enlightening, to be honest. And knowing that whether you're writing blog posts, whether you are creating blog content, whether you're running ads, patience is going to get you where you need to be at the end of the day.

And kind of like Jennifer had mentioned, being non-emotional about it and just having this data-driven lens of like, I'm just looking at data right now so I can get in the right circle, so I can find the right people who are actually looking for my content. Because when you find that group

that's looking for the content, then it's effortless almost. I mean, it's like you're the answered prayer that finally showed itself to whatever they were looking for. And it's so rewarding. So rewarding. It's like all this work really

comes together. And it's that moment that you're like, okay, I'm doing something right. Yes. Yes. Awesome. You have just given us so much to think about, Roberta. I am so thankful for your transparency and sharing more about meta ads and just ads in general and how you kind of approach this. And if our audience wants to connect with you, how can they connect with you and find you? I'm giving you guys all the links down, like on your show notes,

but you can find more about what I do and ads and funnels and evergreen, all that good stuff at robertowest.com. And I have a training for you guys down below a free training that I'm going to give you guys the link to get started with promoting your content. Awesome. Thank you so much for your knowledge. It is so much appreciated. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you'd like to continue the conversation about blogging with us, please find us on Instagram at Spark Media Concepts. You can also sign up for our weekly

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