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The Art of Online Business

[Formerly The Art of Paid Traffic] Are you an online expert working toward the 6 or 7-figure mark in your business? Welcome to your one-stop-shop for practical tips, mindsets, actionable strategies, detailed case studies and everything else you need to build an online business and a life that lights you up. Whether you’re ready to increase your profit through Facebook and Instagram ads or you’re looking to find and focus on the CEO activities that’ll make the most meaningful difference in your business — you’re in the right place. Host Rick Mulready is an online business coach, ads expert and lifestyle entrepreneur sharing his path to building a million dollar business as an online expert and course creator. His specialty? Breaking complex overwhelm-inducing ideas and strategies into bite sized easy to understand pieces. His not-so-secret superpower? Teaching simplified Facebook and Instagram ad strategies you can use to create a foundation for more freedom, leads, and sales in your business. Ready for more income AND impact? Discover why The Art of Online Business has over 4.5 million downloads from ambitious online experts committed to creating profitable and purposeful businesses!
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Now displaying: September, 2016
Sep 28, 2016

We all want to create and run killer Facebook Ads.

But if you’re using Facebook Ads as part of a marketing funnel to drive measurable leads and sales for your business (which I hope you are!),  there can be quite a few elements to strategize and optimize.

For your Ad to perform successfully, you should be strategic and intentional about the image or video, the ad copy, your target audience and a lot more…

And once your Ad is up and running, you’ll want to keep an eye on it and make improvements as needed to maximize your success.  

Still, it can be tough to know where to start when it comes to improving your Facebook Ads. That’s one of the biggest questions we get in The FB ADvantage Facebook group -- people asking for help in critiquing their Ads.

Heck, we can all benefit from having another set of eyes on our work from time-to-time.

So, today on The Art of Paid Traffic, I’m going to walk you through my assessment of a Facebook Ad created by FB ADvantage student, Alex Afterman.

Alex was kind enough to share things like his ad copy, image, targeting specifics and a url to his landing page.

Now, I can give the full breakdown of improvements I’d make since I have the complete picture of his Ad setup.

And share with YOU, a critique of what I like and areas and suggestions for improvement.

I cover a ton of actionable tips today that you can apply to your own ads.

Make sure to reference everything that we discuss during the episode below as I’ve laid everything out for you.

On Today’s Show You’ll Learn:

  • Funnel strategies Alex is considering for his client, a local wine business that sells direct to consumer, and wholesale in several states
  • How to think differently, and see more success, when you’re targeting cold audiences using Facebook Ads
  • Why the value-first approach only works when you have a clearly defined target audience
  • A few ways you can tweak your ad copy to be more conversational
  • What Alex did right when he picked the image to use with his Ad
  • Some bonus ideas I have about alternative images, plus a video Ad that Alex could test
  • The ins and outs of creating multiple Ad sets for maximum trackability
  • And a lot more…


***Are You a Local Business? Join Me For a Free Live Online Training!

If you’re looking to:

  • Get better at targeting your exact local customers
  • Learn smarter ways to reach your local audience
  • Get “noticed” on Facebook so you can get traffic to your local brick and mortar location
  • Create effective ads to drive traffic because you haven’t been able get people to click on the ads you’ve been running
  • Learn how to tweak your current ads to get better results (been boosting those posts with little to no results?)
  • Better understand the stats/metrics in Facebook so you can have a clear understanding of your ROI…

This live online workshop is for you!

Grab your free spot here --> rickmulready.com/localtraining

Sep 21, 2016

As entrepreneurs and online marketers, taking risks is simply the nature of the beast when you want to be successful.

Sometimes you have to shake things up a bit, see what works...and then keep doing more of what works.

Today on The Art of Paid Traffic, I talk with one of my students who is testing what I’d say is an unconventional strategy, marketing a high-ticket live event offer to cold traffic, directly off of a webinar.

Her name is Heather Hubbard of thelanguageofjoy.com and she’s a lawyer turned lifestyle entrepreneur.  She coaches female lawyers to find work-life balance without sacrificing their professional careers.

Last year she hosted her first ever live retreat weekend, exclusively for female law firm partners.

This year Heather is gearing up for her second annual retreat to be held at the luxury Miraval Resort in Tucson, Arizona. And tickets to her event are $3,500.

I wanted to have Heather on the show because, like I said, she sort of ignored the “conventional approach” when she decided to sell her high-ticket offer to cold traffic using only Facebook Ads and webinars.

And so far, she’s seen great success. Plus, she saved herself a ton of time and stress in the process.

The stuff Heather and I cover will give you a unique perspective on how you can take calculated risks and avoid costly mistakes with your own sales funnel strategies.

On Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:

  • Heather’s step-by-step strategy for shortcutting the process most people use to market a high-ticket offer to cold traffic
  • The targeting tactics Heather used to reach a specific, sub-niche audience with her Facebook Ads
  • Why changing your Ads once they’re already running is not recommended, plus the impact it has on Ad performance
  • How Heather avoided making one of the biggest mistakes people make when they’re first starting out with Facebook Ads
  • Heather’s recipe for achieving fantastic funnel metrics
  • What Heather did to protect her profits and minimize the risks associated with high-ticket refunds
  • And a lot more…






Sep 13, 2016

We’re switching things up on The Art of Paid Traffic this week!

On today’s show, you’re going to hear an episode I recorded a little over a month ago with my good friend Amy Porterfield on her podcast, Online Market Marketing Made Easy.

As soon as you get into it, you’ll understand why I just had to share it with you here on AOPT.

During the show, Amy and I cover one of THE most common questions we both get (sometimes multiple times a day) by our students and podcast listeners...

How much should I spend on Facebook Ads if I want to have a successful webinar?

In the past, Amy and I have both always answered this question on a case-by-case basis.

Because the truth is, there’s a lot you have to factor in when you’re calculating an ad spend that will allow you to hit your specific revenue goals.

While we still don’t have one “right” answer to this question, Amy and I were able to put our heads together and come up with a formula that makes it a whole lot easier to determine a ballpark budget for your Facebook ads.

If you’re using webinars in your business,my hope is that you’ll find game-changing clarity in the content we cover today. This stuff is seriously actionable and I’m super pumped to share it with you.

On Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:

  • The specific formula you can use to determine an ideal budget for promoting your webinar with Facebook Ads
  • A step-by-step process for predicting webinar revenue
  • The funnel metrics you need to consider when determining what you should spend on Facebook Ads
  • How to map out a gameplan strategy that minimizes your Cost Per Lead (CPL)
  • The benchmark numbers Amy and I recommend shooting for when it comes to your CPL, webinar show-up rates and other must-know funnel metrics ...
  • Ninja retargeting strategies to help you optimize your webinar registration rates
  • Bonus tips on where and how you can promote your webinar to more people, without increasing your FB Advertising budget
  • And a lot more...

And the awesomeness doesn’t stop there...

Amy and I put together a really cool bonus for today’s episode -- a Facebook ads calculator to help you determine your exact Facebook ads budget for your next webinar.

Click the image below to get access to the Webinar Facebook ads calculator

Sep 7, 2016

On this episode of The Art of Paid Traffic, we dive into measuring the effectiveness of your sales funnels.

Specifically, I walk you through how to make sense of all the stats and metrics as you take someone from being a stranger to your business all the way through to becoming a paying customer.

If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, then you’ve heard me talk about how important is to “know your numbers” so you can:

  1. Measure the success of your sales funnels
  2. Make data-based decisions on where improvements need to be made
  3. Do more of what’s working and…
  4. Drive leads and sales automatically every single day

But recently I realized that a ton of people get stuck in step one because they don’t know the specific measurements to shoot for, in terms of what’s considered “successful”.

So if you’ve yet to experience the fun of optimizing and automating your funnels (#2 - #4 above), the content of today’s episode is going to help you get to the good stuff.

Just as a heads up, the stuff I cover on this show is a follow up on “the easiest and fastest way to create a high-converting sales funnel”, which we covered last week during episode 100.

If you missed it, no worries -- you’ll still get a ton of value out of today’s show. But if you get the chance, I’d encourage you to check out our 100th episode (especially because I walk you through one of my favorite sales funnel building exercises that I typically only share when I speak at live trainings).

In this episode you’ll discover benchmarks for your funnel stats and simple strategies to help you set goals and determine your success as you work to improve your funnels.

Get ready to gain clarity and confidence around knowing your numbers and figuring out what’s working… to track, improve, optimize and automate your high-converting funnel.

On today’s show you’ll learn:

  • How tracking the right funnel metrics will help you to know exactly how much you should be investing in your Facebook Ads
  • The numbers you should focus on once your sales funnel is up and running
  • The specific metrics you need to be tracking in each step of your funnel, so that you can measure success and quickly identify areas for improvement
  • Cost Per Lead, Customer Value and other most-know metrics for measuring the ROI of your FB Ads
  • Key benchmarks that will tell you when your funnel is on track for success
  • Simple strategies for improving each step of your sales funnel
  • And a whole lot more…

Enrollment for The FB ADvantage Is Re-Opening!

I’m getting ready to re-open the doors to my flagship Facebook ads program, The FB ADvantage: Leads & Sales on Autopilot.

I’ve made some changes to the program so it’s a bit different than what it’s been in the past.

The FB ADvantage is now tailored for online businesses so if you have an online business you’re looking to grow and automate, The FB ADvantage is for you!

To celebrate the reopening of The FB ADvantage, I’m going to be doing a series of live online training workshops where I’ll be teaching…

How to Create An Automated Facebook Ads System that Gets Leads & Sales Everyday

There will be 3 live times over September 14th and 15th and to register for a day and time that works best for you, click the link below:

How to Create An Automated System that Gets Leads & Sales Every Day with Facebook Ads

Facebook Metrics You Want to Be Looking At…

Look at the results that are most relevant to your Objective. Check lifetime, weekly and daily stats (depending on how long your ad campaign has been running).

For example, if your objective is:

  • “Website conversions” — look at your cost per conversion first.  Then how many conversions you’ve had and then the amount of money you’ve spent.
  • “Clicks to website” — look at your cost per click first.  Then click-through-rate and then how many clicks to your landing page.

Every niche is different so results will vary GREATLY.  Here are some general guidelines:

  • CPL = < $8
    • If you know roughly what your CPL should be, and the results you’re getting are at least 3x your expectations, pause your ad and test something new.
  • CPC = < $1
  • CTR = 1%+
  • Landing Page Conversion Rate =  > 20%
  • Sales Page Conversion Rate = ~2% average

       **If you are a B2B company, your CPL is likely going to be much higher.

  • Facebook ads Reach:  Reach is simply the number of people that your ad has been shown to. (I like to have a reach of at least 1,000 before optimizing)
  • Frequency: The average number of times a person has seen your ad.  If Frequency goes 4+, it’s time to refresh your ad.
  • Relevancy Score: A rating of 1-10 based on how your targeted audience is responding to your ad. The higher the score the lower cost you’ll pay and the more people will see your ad.
    • 1-3 — your ad isn’t resonating with your audience, change up your ad
    • 4-6 — not bad but keep an eye on the performance of your ad.
    • 7-10 — nice work, keep it up!

Webinar Stats (Benchmark Rough Guidelines):

Show Up Rate: Average is ~20-30%. Shoot for 30% +

Conversion Rate (% of people buying on webinar): Average is ~2-6%

**40-60% of your total sales during a launch where you’re using webinars will likely come post-webinar!

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