Christina: (00:03) You are listening to the Scaling Your Freedom podcast. I’m your host Christina Bernhard, and in this episode we are talking about running Facebook ads during the holidays. Um, quick warning, I wanted to record this before I went on maternity leave and I did not get around to it, so I’m still technically on maternity leave. So I have my daughter here and she is swinging in the swing, so she’s sleeping, but she’s probably going to start grunting and making all kinds of noises. So, um, just a warning there. But, um, I wanted to get this episode out regardless, because it is so timely and this is such a common question, like I’m always answering the question, are ads worth at n q4? Should I turn off my ads? Um, so I’m gonna talk, I’m gonna answer that question. We’re gonna talk about that. Um, and I’m also gonna talk about what I don’t recommend for coaches in q4.

Christina: (00:54) Um, and then also just how to manage your ads during the holidays if you do decide to continue to run them, um, because there are some things that we need to take a look at. So, um, I get this question a lot. It’s super valid. It’s a great question. CPMs are higher. CPMs are cost per a thousand impression. It is what Facebook is charging you to get in front of that audience. So it is more expensive most of the time. Um, and the competition can be pretty fierce. As you can imagine. A lot of people are, a lot of companies are spending, um, a lot of their ads budget during q4. Um, so there is a lot of competition. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of ad, um, advertising going on, um, for obvious reasons for the holidays. Um, and companies often spend their highest budgets too at this time.

Christina: (01:41) So, um, with what I’m going over today, I do wanna point out that I’m specifically talking to coaches, so it is going to be a bit different for e-commerce. E-commerce is a totally different game, and I’ve actually done e-commerce, um, and, uh, ads for coaches as well. And, um, they perform differently in my experience in Q4 as well. So I’m talking to just coaches. So let’s talk about the first obvious thing. Um, let’s just answer the question, is it worth it? Um, the answer is it depends, , and I’m gonna go more into that, um, because I know no one likes that question, but it’s true, It depends. So for my clients, 80% of the time, it is definitely worth it. Um, there is that 20%, and it’s going to depend on your specific audience, what kind of competition they have and where their audience’s attention is during the holidays, um, as well as just how, um, how fierce that competition is.

Christina: (02:36) So I’m gonna do just a general overview of different audience behaviors that we have experienced in the agency. Um, again, we only serve coaches at this time, but, um, we serve all kinds of different coaches. So we have like weight loss coaches and business coaches. Um, we have finance coaches and, um, almost everyone is a life coach, um, with different niches in different areas. So I’m gonna go over those different audience behaviors. So the first one is weight loss. So weight loss does suffer a bit. Um, this is, in my experience, just lower interest, um, with weight loss coaches at towards the end of the year. Um, I have seen success with programs that help people get through the holidays or pre-selling spots for like a program that starts in January, but a lot of people don’t really want to start any kind of weight loss program during the holidays.

Christina: (03:27) Like maybe they need some guidance to manage the holidays, but, um, it’s just not, you know, we, we know that there’s gonna be lots of food around and, um, it’s kind of just in our culture to sort of indulge and, you know, a lot of focus is around food in the holidays. So, um, so it depends on what you’re selling. Um, and I will say that I have seen, I’m gonna throw this in there too, I’ve seen a similar trend with finances as well. And so this might be another reason because, um, towards the end of the year, it’s also part of our culture to kind of indulge, um, in consuming a bunch. So consuming a lot of food, consuming a lot of things. Um, there’s like Black Friday and there’s all these sales and a lot of people spend a lot of money. Um, not to mention, obviously you’re buying gifts for a bunch of people a lot of the time, so every situation’s different, but that is definitely just the trends that I see with weight loss and finance.

Christina: (04:16) So, um, the best way to go about that is to try in pre-sell spots before January because a lot of people are kind of thinking about the next year still. They just don’t really want to act on it at this time. Um, the second audience is, um, business coaches. Business coaches, um, in our experience do very well. Um, a lot of people are focusing on next year and their goals and, um, I don’t see a lot of business owners necessarily completely checking out in q4. So, um, my clients don’t necessarily launch in q4, but it does a great job at list building and selling discounted spots in pre-sales. So, um, with the discounted spots or pre-selling, uh, spots and things like that, we like to just target warm audiences. So you’re scooping up anyone, um, who has been maybe thinking about it, but they haven’t been, you know, ready yet.

Christina: (05:04) But everyone always kind of glamorizes the beginning of the year. So even though it’s q4, you’re kind of like, Oh, but next year this is something I wanna do. So, um, it can be a great way to get people in, um, especially if you do any kind of like sales or, uh, discounts. Like if you do Black Friday sales or any kind of, um, holiday sales. The, um, other audience is personal growth. So in my experience, um, it does well too. So with personal growth, I’m mostly referring to general life coaches. So our general life coaches that have maybe memberships or, um, programs that are focused on just personal growth, um, as a whole or getting better at something, um, those audiences, um, do have a certain lifestyle that do better with season. So, um, we see, uh, those do really well. Um, and then the other audience that I’ll go over, this isn’t a common one that we have, but we’ve had a few clients where our target audience were parents, um, so it was something to do with, um, the children and, um, these attend to have high CPMs, but not always, but I do notice that the parent audiences, um, they are probably a bit higher in competition, which makes sense cuz they’re probably, you know, targeting, everyone’s probably targeting them to try and get them to buy stuff for their children, um, for Christmas.

Christina: (06:20) So that is one, um, audience, uh, subset that I see that’s, uh, tends to be higher CPMs. So, um, that kind of goes over whether it’s worth it. So I would say most time it is worth it. Um, so what I don’t recommend you do, um, so let’s go into that, is to launch, unless it’s a season specific launch. So, um, most people are not trying to launch in q4, but if you are just be, um, mindful of, you know, what, what exactly you’re asking of people. So I would prefer it to be to pre-sale spots for January, that tends to work better, but it also depends on what exactly you’re launching. So even if your ads do really well and are worth it, it’s likely to still be a little bit more expensive. So, um, just because it’s more expensive does not mean that, you know, it’s not worth it, but it does just make more sense to launch this a little bit sooner in October or maybe the beginning of November to have cheaper ad costs, um, and a little bit more attention to.

Christina: (07:22) Cause once people start to, um, you know, it’s like once Black Friday hits it, everyone’s attention is on holiday parties and getting ready for Christmas and doing travel plans and doing, you know, all these things. Um, so as you know, a lot of people kind of check out to, um, you know, like maybe, uh, you know, trying to lose weight or, you know, get their finances in check and things like that. So just be mindful of that, but also the ads are gonna be a little bit cheaper, um, if you launch sooner than that. So let’s talk about if you do decide, okay, I’m going to run ads during the holidays, I wanna talk about how to manage your ads during the holidays because I do think that it is worth keeping them on and just seeing what happens. Um, you can always turn them off if it’s not the case for you.

Christina: (08:05) If you’re in the 20% and not the 80%, you can just turn ’em off. Um, but I do recommend just keeping them on and just seeing how they go. Um, all of our clients keep their main list builders on always. We never turn off list builders unless there is a reason to. Um, so maybe if we’re repurposing that budget for an event or something like that, um, or if you know, the CPMs are crazy high, most of the time, if the CPMs are really high, I will try some other audiences and sometimes that will work and we’ll find an audience that’s a little bit cheaper for q4. Um, otherwise then we just turn it off and we pause it. Um, but missing two months of lead generation, it can make the savings not worth it. And I wanna point that out because this is especially true if you want to launch in January, almost all of my clients launch at the beginning of the year, like this is just prime launch time for a lot of, um, different coaches because coaches are helping people better their lives.

Christina: (08:58) And that is obviously a time of the year where most people are wanting to better their life. They want, um, a better year. Um, they’re really focused on, you know, focusing on their goals for that year. And so it’s just a great time to put something in front of them to help them do that. And so coaching is huge at the beginning of the year. So disappearing for two or three months is just like not a great idea. Um, you know, it could still work out of obviously like you can still launch, but if you had been list building for the last two or three months, um, you’ll likely have a larger launch. So, or not, like you will have a light larger launch. Um, so what you wanna do is manage the ads. So you want to watch closely. Things can change very quickly.

Christina: (09:39) Um, one thing that we do, um, we are watching our campaigns, um, you know, through the holidays of course. Um, but what I also like to do, because things can change so quickly, is set up automated rules. So we watch them closely, but we also have thresholds that we are willing to go to. So we might talk to our clients and be like, What is the, you know, like we, we already know, like what is the, um, highest acquisition they’re willing to pay? Um, and so we make sure that we have automated rules, um, that will shut off the ad if it passes that threshold. Um, and sometimes during q4, because we know things are gonna be a little bit more expensive, um, we will have a different threshold for Q4 than we would normally. So we, you know, we always know what that threshold is throughout the entire year, but we wanna know what it is.

Christina: (10:25) Um, for q4, do we wanna increase that a little bit just to give it some more room to make sure that our ads do get to stay on during this time so we can have a nice great big launch at the beginning of the year. Um, so we just increase that threshold a little bit and we want to make sure that no money gets wasted. So the automated rules are set up in your ads manager and, um, and if you are a member of the Junior Ads Academy, my monthly membership that teaches you how to run your own ads, um, there is a training in there on how to do that. So it will show you step by step how to set up these automated rules, um, and what they are, what they mean, and, um, just help guide you through that. And I, I highly recommend doing that.

Christina: (11:02) That way, you know, if you do get tied up, especially if you know, like we have an agency, so we’re, it’s part of our job to be watching the ads closely, but if you are running your own ads, it might not be top of mind for you. So you definitely wanna make sure that you, um, have those automated roles set up that way, even if three days go by, I mean, things can really get crazy. So, um, you could waste a lot of money depending on what your daily ads spend is. You could be wasting a lot of money in those three days, um, just by like not thinking about it. So the automated rules, I love that as manager has that capability. Um, and it makes it just really easy and it also just like helps to know that, you know, you’re not gonna increase or go over your threshold, so you don’t even have to worry about it.

Christina: (11:46) So set up the automated rules and then just keep a very close eye on them. So that is what I have for you, you today. So, um, whether you should run ads in q4, if you are a coach, I highly, highly recommend, um, keeping them on, still running them. I do not recommend necessarily launching or doing something where you’re dumping a a ton of money into a live event, um, anytime past, um, uh, Black Friday, so beginning of December, that might be a sweet spot for you. You can try it. Um, I’ve seen, I, we’ve done launches at the beginning of December before, again, it depends on what you’re selling. Um, so they can be a little bit more affordable, but obviously stay away from the holidays, um, if you are going to be putting a bunch of money into like a hype event or something like that.

Christina: (12:29) But keep your list builders on and just keep an eye on them, um, set up your automated rules and you will be good to go. Um, so that is what I have for you this week. Um, we are actually taking a break from the podcast until next year. We take a break every q4. Um, so this will be the last episode of the year, um, which we’ve been doing for, it seems to be a different reason every year, but I actually like the opportunity to feature other episodes that we have because, I mean, this is episode 160 guys, so there are lots of episodes. And then I also noticed that, um, on the podcast I had it where it only showed the last, I think it was, uh, the last 30 episodes or something like that. Um, and so I turned that off. I totally forgot that I did that, I did that like two years ago.

Christina: (13:15) This podcast has been going on for so long. So definitely check out. I I’ve turned it off so you can go way back. Um, go back and listen to the other episodes and, um, on Instagram we’re gonna be featuring a different one, um, that the ones that perform the best and just get them a little bit more air time, um, as we go through the holidays. And then we will be back in January. So, um, in the meantime, go ahead and follow me on Instagram at Christina d Bernhardt and I will see you guys there for the rest of the holidays and we’ll be back on the podcast next year. Thank you for listening to the Scaling to Freedom podcast. If you are a seven figure coach, looking for ads management with an agency that partners with you to get your work out into the world and amplify your impact, see if we are a good fit by applying for a spot in our agency@christinabernhard.com slash apply. Find the link in our show notes.