Another buck down the drain.

You keep blowing through hard earned cash on Facebook Ads with the hope of building your email list.

Experts like Rick Mulready and Amy Porterfield make it look easy to get conversions at $1 each. Yet you keep struggling to generate a positive return on ad spend.

Is it time to call it quits? Maybe there’s still hope.

I achieved a 62.5% email opt-in rate from Facebook Ads with good custom audience selection and a well-designed landing page.

So how can you replicate this success for your campaign?

I’m going to breakdown five steps for achieving a 62.5% email opt-in rate from Facebook Ads.

#1 Mooch Off Your Competitor’s Existing Audience

Audience targeting is the biggest factor that can make or break your conversion rates from Facebook Ads. Similarly, this applies to Google and Bing Search Ads and most other forms of paid media.

Success with Facebook Ads hinges on your ability to find the right custom audience targeting settings.

Good custom audience selection begins with finding an optimal balance of demographics and page interests.

Use Facebook Audience Insights to analyze the demographic and behavioral profiles of direct competitors’ fan pages in your niche.

For example, if you’re trying to attract leads for a new social media course, look at the Facebook Ad Insights data for pages published by Amy Porterfield, Jon Loomer, Kim Garst and LKR Social Media.

The goal is to siphon off some people who know, like and trust your competitors since this audience is primed to subscribe to your email list.

After you’ve identified a combination of relevant competitors’ Facebook pages, build a custom audience that targets the demographics of your ideal audience.

#2 Find A Highly Targeted Custom Audience

If you’re selling an information product about optimizing Facebook Ads and you’re trying to get people to sign up for your webinar or lead magnet, make sure your audience spends money online and invests in business purchases (ideally, they buy business marketing products).

Your ideal audience may consist of people who work from home or in a small office since they’re apt to buy your online course or ebook.

Make sure the size of your custom audience doesn’t exceed 100,000 people.

If your audience exceeds 100,000, your targeting is too broad. Add some exclusions or remove a couple of interests to decrease it to fewer than 100,000.

Use Facebook’s Audience Insights to optimize the demographics of your custom audience targeting for high online purchase intent.

Ideally, you want to target the audience that spends money online more often than the average Facebook user.

Once, you’ve generated at least 100 conversions from Facebook ads, assuming you installed a Facebook conversion tracking pixel on your thank you confirmation page, then you should create a lookalike audience based on your mailing list opt-ins, or conversion pixel hits.

#3 Don’t Reinvent The Wheel, Stick With Existing Copy

When you’re first starting out, follow the best practices of heavy hitters already advertising in your niche.

Similar to if you were researching competitors’ ads when building a Google AdWords or Bing Ads campaign.

Analyze the images and ad copy of your competitors’ ads and review their landing pages. What types of photos are they using, what opt-in offer are they giving away and what language and tone are they using in the ad text?

Tools like AdEspresso’s Facebook Ads Gallery and Swiped can help you find recent examples of Facebook Ads from your competitors.

Don’t hesitate to borrow the look and feel of influencers’ ads and landing pages.

One way to find influencers’ Facebook Ad landing pages is by entering this search query into Google “leadpages.net” + their {Full Name}. Another way is to Google their full name and the name of the course or product they offer that is similar to your offering.

Stick with what works for now. Spend time later A/B testing slight ad and landing page copy.

#4 Set Up A High-Converting Landing Page Template

LeadPages has hundreds of professionally designed landing page templates that you can use with little customization required.

You could spend hours comparing different landing page applications, but I recommend using LeadPages when you’re starting out because it’s simple to use and straightforward.

Down the pike, after you’ve created an evergreen course launch funnel that’s generating significant revenue, then you can look into a premium platform like ClickFunnels.

Sort for the high-converting LeadPages templates designed for a standard email opt-in, video series or webinar.

Choose one of the top 10 templates and customize the copy a bit while maintaining the existing landing page framework and set up your lead magnet or webinar date.

Set up a two-step opt-in process for your landing page to increase your email sign up conversion rates.

LeadPages found that switching from a one-step opt-in to a two-step opt-in process increased conversion rates by 30% to 60%.

A two-step opt-in process could consist of a pop-up on the landing page or a confirmation page that offers a tripwire or free offer to improve the retention of new email subscribers.

#5 Optimize Your Opt-In Offer “Wow Factor”

If you don’t have a compelling course to give away as a lead magnet, reach out to LeadPages’ team and ask them for permission to use one of their existing courses to co-brand as your first lead magnet. Another option is to turn one of your existing blog posts into a lead magnet, such as a checklist or worksheet.

Here are two high-converting landing page examples you could use:

Landing Page Example 1

Landing Page Example 2

LeadPages’ course list is available here.

Usually, LeadPages is more than happy to give away their free courses and give permission to use them as your lead magnet because it helps them increase brand awareness and sales.

Even Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You To Be Rich has given away LeadPages’ Facebook Advertising course as a co-branded lead magnet.

It’s critical that your target audience takes a vested interest your opt-in offer. Otherwise, you’re going to waste money.

Try sending a survey to your first 10 or 20 email subscribers acquired from Facebook Ads to ensure your lead magnet and subsequent emails align with their interests.

When I first started building my email list, I scheduled a 1:1 call with a few subscribers to get a sense of what their life is like, show them that they’re not just another number in my email subscriber count, understand whether my lead magnet appealed to them and better understand what their needs and daily struggles are.

This in-depth information has helped me tailor the blog posts we publish and focus my emails around solving the issues my audience face.

Although this may seem backward to survey new people on your email list who haven’t purchased from you before, it could save you grief once you’ve already acquired those subscribers and try to convert them to customers.

Conclusion

When I first started running Facebook Ads, my conversion rates were dismal. I think I saw a 4% or lower average conversion rate.

I’ve spent over $5,000 on Facebook Ads in the last 30 days to build my email list.

That’s a heck of a lotta money to spend on list building for the Average Joe. Start with a small daily budget.

I recommend waiting to launch a campaign until you have an irresistible core product to sell. Otherwise, you’ll waste a ton of money without earning a good return on your investment.

The most profitable conversion funnels for Facebook Ads I’ve seen so far include an hour-long webinar to sell a course. Email video series leading up to a course launch seem successful too.

Customer value optimization is important to keep in mind when using Facebook Ads. For example, Digital Marketer uses a free lead magnet that directs to a tripwire offer. Then if you buy the tripwire offer, you’re asked to buy their core product. If you buy their core product they

Avoid sending Facebook Ad visitors to your homepage or a generic site page, since they won’t convert well and you’ll waste money.

It may be tempting to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to build your audience as fast a possible. Be patient and avoid spending more than $50 per day when you’re first starting out with Facebook Ads.

You don’t want to wind up like this guy.

My hope is that my experience will help you avoid some of the costly mistakes I made and improve your email opt-in rates.

It took me about a year to get up to snuff because–like most ad networks–it’s not as straightforward as it looks.

How are your email opt-in rates from Facebook Ads? What strategies are you using to achieve a profitable return on ad spend (ROAS)?