Do you really need to warm up an audience or do people just convert straight away when they see an ad from someone they’ve never seen before?

That’s what I dive into in this episode of Online Confidential, where I take you behind the scenes to talk about ‘Secret Ad Manager’ business.

The answer to both questions is ‘YES’.

Influences behind warm and cold audience decisions

There are people who will convert from an ad straight away. We see it all the time. Conversion campaigns are meant for the hottest audience. Whether it’s to opt in for a webinar, or they see an ad that takes them straight to a purchase event where they might buy a low ticket offer, or something in that vein.

It’s not likely you’ll get many people purchasing a $10,000 offer from an ad straight to a sales page though. For high-ticket offers you want people to opt-in for a webinar or go through an application funnel.

There’s always a percentage of the audience who are ready to take action. The reason they’re ready to take action is because someone else has educated them along the way. Your client’s webinar is probably not the first webinar they’ve watched.

Someone else has already been in front of them marketing their offer with conversion campaigns.

People have already been on a journey.  They’ve opted in, they’ve learned a bit, but for whatever reason, they weren’t ready to buy. So they didn’t. And then that other person stopped nurturing them. People are still scrolling through the newsfeed, seeing new ads for new people come up. Your client’s ad comes up, they click, and it’s just the right time for them because someone else has warmed them up and educated them.

Let’s look at the numbers

Of a hundred people that click and go to the webinar registration page, opt-ins might 25%, so 25 people opt in and out of the 25 people who opt in for that webinar, you might get a 3% conversion rate, which would be great.

When you look at it, that overall number of 100 opt-ins goes down, down, down to get to that smallest percentage that’s the hottest people who are most likely to convert.  These are the ones who have already been warmed up by other people, prepping them and getting them ready.

But you still have the other 75% of people who didn’t opt in. Additionally, you still have the 97% of people who didn’t purchase from the webinar or book a call that are still interested, but not ready. So if you just forget about them, then they keep floating along for your client’s competitor to get in front of and capture their purchase.

Just like the 3% who came through the conversion learnt from someone else, and then purchased from your client instead of the person they saw in their newsfeed before.

This is why pre-targeting and retargeting is super valuable for you to recommend for your client. Pre-targeting is when you get your client’s content and offers out in front of the audience. You’re not leaving their audience open to only being educated by your client’s competitors.

Sure, they may be opting in for their webinars, but you are also getting out in front of them to bring them in so that when they do register for your client’s webinar or book that call, they’re a bit more educated about your client.

They know who your client is, and they’ve built up some level of trust and rapport with them. So ideally, when it comes to that point of the sale, either on the sales page or the booked call, there’s more familiarity, more trust, and more likelihood of the conversion happening.

The benefits of pre-targeting and retargeting strategies

Audience building to warm up the audience is a valuable part of ad campaigns along with a scaling strategy. While you’re running conversion campaigns to get to the hot, hot audience who are ready to convert straight away, and by the way, they’re also the most expensive audience, you could also be scaling with other campaigns at the same time.

With those other campaigns you could be getting more people into your client’s funnel, and educating them while bringing them in with a lower cost objective. This is another scaling strategy to warm up audiences.

Some of my Elite Ad Managers have done an amazing job with this type of strategy in their clients’ launches. First they start audience building three months out and warming up the audiences.  They have retargeting campaigns as well, so when it comes time for the release of the client’s $2,000 product, people are ready to buy.

One of our amazing Elite Ad Managers who achieved over $2.4 million in sales with less than $300,000 ad spend did the audience building to warm up the audiences beforehand. Using pre-targeting campaign to bring people into the client’s funnel.

Yes, you can get people to convert straight away and people do, but just by focusing on that, you end up leaving out a huge section of the audience that you could be bringing into the funnel.

There’s also the people who visit the landing page and don’t convert, and people who registered for the webinar and don’t convert. All the people you bring into the audience and don’t convert straight away can be nurtured longer term with effective retargeting strategies.

I teach this retargeting nurture strategy with the Client Attraction Code. It’s an amazing way to stay front and center of mind, so even when people haven’t converted straight away, they’re stay in your client’s sphere.

Your client’s competitors are out there with a webinar ad, to get people to purchase. They might retarget them for 7 to 14, maybe 30 days, if you’re lucky. And then they forget about them. I don’t know about you, but I personally, and so many of my clients have had people buy things from them after watching them for 3, 6, 9, 12 months.

You can very effectively get in front of all the people in your funnel who haven’t converted straight away and weren’t ready at that point, they weren’t in that hottest market. But you can continue to get back in front of them with retargeting strategies and continue to educate them, inform them, and show them there is a way to get from A to B.

By continuing to be in the newsfeed they’ll see your client can help them when they’re at that point of thinking ‘It’s time. I need to buy something. I need to take action now’ with you or with your client rather than another competitor.

If you’re not in the newsfeed then it’s just a matter of who comes along after the potential client has become more educated from watching your client’s webinar.  They’re just ripe and ready to be snapped up because now they’re in that small 2-3% of the audience who is ready to purchase.

Instead, keep them in your client’s funnel with effective pre-targeting and re-targeting strategies.

To wrap up, is it essential to warm up audiences and do audience building?

I believe so.

The data also indicates it’s the right strategy. Bring people in, warm them up, so they’re more likely to convert straight away. Yes, people do convert straightaway without warming up, but you’re missing out on that big chunk of the audience who are likely to convert but need to be nurtured to convert later and convert with more know, like, and trust factor influencing their decision.

I hope you found that useful. I’d love to know what you think?

Have you tried pre-targeting and retargeting campaigns alongside conversion campaigns?

Send me an email at success@socialcharlie.com. I’d love to hear your thoughts. That’s it for today’s episode.