The 5 most common mistakes founders make when trying to grow their subscription business
[Ads edition]
- Not doing enough research
The best marketers don’t try to reinvent the wheel, they try to improve the wheel
Look at what your competitors are doing by visiting the Facebook ad library
Take note of their hooks, headlines, captions, creatives and Calls To Action (CTA’s)
Build your swipe file of ideas you like and model them in your own ads
Don’t copy anything – let it inspire you to follow what’s already working
This will give you the head-start that little guys like us need at the start
- Running ads with no offer
People are generally not sitting around waiting to buy whatever you show them in your ad
That’s why it’s important to create an unbelievable offer which will incentivise them to click
The offer drives the click, and the conversion
Asking someone to join your subscription and pay every month is a big commitment
An offer helps them to see it as a good deal now and your job then is to deliver a great service
When running ads, shout about your offer and state the value to drive more clicks
- Not hitting Pain points in copy
What really grabs people’s attention is calling out their problems
Got yellow teeth?
Sick of getting awful sleep?
Feel guilty about leaving your dog at home?
Present the problems your subscription solves at the beginning of your ad copy
Agitate the problem by showing how inaction will make it worse
Present your subscription as the solution
Couple this with an offer and you’re on the path to serious MRR
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- Not Testing
What I say, what you think will work, and what your customer responds to are 3 very different things
Online ad platforms now have an amazing tool you can leverage to get better by the day
Real-time feedback
You can test variations of ads, creatives, headlines and copy in the space of a few days
40 years ago this would be months of work
Make more ads similar to the ones your customers respond to
Soon you’ll land on a winning formula and you can scale it up
- Not spending enough
When you’re just getting started ads are scary
Your money is at risk and you don’t get it back if it fails
But you need to spend enough to gather the data on what works
When you land on a winning formula – put the foot down and leave it down
Things change fast
Momentum is easy to lose
And going slow can actually hurt your business
One final tip: when everything is working – don’t touch it. You can break your ad campaign very easily
This week’s story –
“You could be about to discover something that will change the game”
I still remember the days when we used to celebrate getting one new customer
We’d text each other and celebrate
Because it was rare and wonderful – and it was damn hard
One day in 2017 we discovered a hack that allowed us to get 5-6 subscribers a day
(You may have heard me tell this story before)
It was messaging leads 1 by 1 on Messenger
It took 12 hours a day, and it was just a trickle
But it was reliable, and we were determined
Over the years we’ve ‘broken new ground’ a few times
– Our Facebook ads started firing and all of a sudden we could sell at will
– Our email game started working – we were getting free sales on top of our ads
– We dialed in our offers which poured fuel on the fire
Sales are not hard to get if you have a system
I can help you build it, but you need to be as determined as I was
Now its…
“Got 50 in yesterday”
No celebration – I kind of miss it tho haha
Lesson I learned this week
You don’t need more achievements. You need to describe your current achievements better.