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Questions from someone new/overwhelmed in PPC
Hello, I hope this is an okay forum to ask some beginner questions. I would appreciate any advice on what we are doing and if I am going about this the ass backwards way or not…
**BACKGROUND/CONTEXT (put it here if you want to skip past to the questions below)**I work in an online education company that creates courses to help people build better careers, relationships, and lives by really learning themselves and applying mindfulness to their lives as a framework to create permanent change. It’s a very fantastic product with a team that believes in the mission and I’ve seen it work for people who have taken these courses in person. Most of us who work in the company currently are trying to make it work as a business and also have other full time jobs.
We have transitioned from doing things in person (and more as a public service) to now doing online sales (previously, the CEO of the company was giving lots of talks at colleges and venues like TEDx and we were considering going down the route of being a non profit and applying for grants but decided against it). Our business model is essentially new to us because we never needed to do advertising before and don’t have experience driving online sales. I have become responsible for our PPC strategy and I have done lots of online research to read about how to go about it, but without the experience of seeing what truly works I feel very gun-shy and anxious I am going to waste our limited budget of a few thousand $USD.
**THE PRODUCT**
Our first product is an online video based course that is focused on building better relationships throughout your life. It’s a $700 course we are discounting to $100 for the introductory period where we launched this month.
Users get a lot: a book with over 100 pages, 9 course videos, online community with Q&A, and bonus videos released for a year. When we did these courses in person, they were a full 2-day with lots of interaction.
**CURRENT STRATEGY**
I am currently trying to advertise the course on Facebook. I am running a few campaigns and wondering if this makes sense:
Campaign 1 optimized for Video Views (Thru Plays): Targeting new audience by demographic interests (income, relationship status, age range) – the video ads entice them with an opener, brief description of the benefits of course, and CTA to click and learn more that takes them to the sell page.
Campaign 2 optimized for engagement on post: Retargeting people who watched the videos with another video ad that approaches the same product with slightly different opener and benefits. CTA gets them to go back to sales page.
Campaign 3 (??): I haven’t set this up yet but I was thinking of retargeting people who make it to the checkout page but don’t complete checkout. New video ad that talks about the benefits of investing in your relationships and how that can benefit your life.
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**QUESTIONS**
1. Am I setting up the right optimization goals? I was thinking we need to build some familiarity/trust first, and get people to take baby steps towards knowing us, so that’s why Campaign 1 and 2 are about getting them to view / engage with the video ad.
2. Is the campaign 3 the right campaign to set up to try to drive sales? So far we have spent about $100 and gotten 38 clicks but no sales yet.
3. Is Facebook the right platform for a course like this? I think so… but I wonder if I am missing a crucial step of having a warm audience first.
4. I’ve heard a lot about look alike audiences. Should I be creating LAL audiences now before I have even gotten the first sale?
5. In total we have 6 different video ads we can show our audience. Should I be trying to show them all to each person, and set up a “super retargeting” approach in Facebook where each campaign targets the people who saw the video in the campaign before? Meaning campaign 2 targets the people who saw Campaign 1 only. And campaign 3 targets the people who saw campaign 2 only. Etc.​
Thank you so much in advance for any help you can offer!