Building Your Social Media & Business With Ashley Ann

I discovered several people inside The Kingdom (those are my followers) who have no idea how to set a real marketing campaign, compute max CPC, or figure out how many followers they need. You all don't know a lot about conversion rates, so we're going to solve that. Even if you never purchased a product from me, never come to a workshop, I do this because I want to help us win. These are things that you need to know so that you can create sustainability in your business. If you're wondering how people like me are pulling in over six figures per month with their social media, it's because of these types of numbers. More importantly, I'm going to give you all a system so that you know what to do.

I know that this material is new for many of you, and I love you all, I want you all to win, so I will take it slow.  The first thing I need you to do is clear out your brain to receive this information.  Many of the things you've learned about social media and monetization need to change focus from being popular to being profitable. For example, many of you think that the roadmap to making money on your social media has to do with having hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers. Now I know you all are like, "But Ashley, how can you sit here and say this, and you have all these followers?" I know, I know, I know, I know. However, please keep this in mind, when I made my first $15,000 on the old app Periscope, I didn't even have 1500 people ... I didn't even have 2000 people in my audience, and when I made my first $35,000 on Instagram, I did not have 2000 followers. By the time I cleared, my first, probably the first hundred thousand, that I did on Facebook, I think we maybe only had about 5,000 people who subscribed to the Events by Ashley Ann page. So, I need you to get in your mind prosperity over popularity, prosperity over popularity, prosperity over popularity. Once we can figure out a system so that we are profitable, that is when we can work on scaling.

Some of us are not going to be as popular as other people because we have particular niches. I see people all the time who have accounts who have a hundred thousand followers, even 250K-1 million followers, and they're not making a dime with their social media. So don't get sidetracked, and don't get distracted because of somebody who has 50,000 plus followers. And I'm not knocking it. I'm not dissing it. I'm one of those people with a pretty hefty amount of followers, but I started making money first. I don't want you guys falling into the trap of feeling like you have to get to 10K, 20K, and 30,000 followers before you can start to monetize your social media. I would much rather you guys have a thousand targeted followers and real subscribers who will purchase your products and services. You can make a hundred thousand dollars with a thousand real followers instead of having a hundred thousand empty followers that buy absolutely nothing from you. Yeah, they may like all your stuff, but they ain't buying nothing, and you have an empty bank account ... that is not what's hot in the streets. Blink, blink, blink!  Followers do not pay those bills, honey, and followers don't take you on trips, and followers will not get you new wigs. Followers are not going to keep those lights on. Followers did not give me all of the fabulous crown moldings in my home.

The second thing I need you guys to focus on is running a campaign. I want you all to focus on a particular product or service or a product or service line. Many of you are making the mistake of trying to be everything to everyone; don't do that. It's tough to create something that services everyone because you can't, and everyone has different pain points. They're at different stages in your product's life cycle. There are even people who are using your products and services for other things. So really focus on a particular product or service. Let's try and develop that. Maybe one month where we're focused on a type A and the next month, we're concentrating on type B, and then the first 15 days of the month, we're trying to put more people into a specific program or product. That's super important because if I'm focused on a particular product or service, now I know who I need to target. So when I'm running targeted ads and campaigns, I will do a much better job converting than when I'm just trying. I'm not here just trying to get anybody to follow me, and I'm using TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram.

The next thing we're going to create is the system. Someone may ask, how do you create multiple streams of income? You need to have a system. That's how I create multiple streams of revenue.  I do not believe in ramming. Ramming is random acts of marketing. It is not going to get you anywhere. It's going to get you frustrated. It's going to give you a headache, and it's going to give you hit and miss clientele and conversions. So the first thing we always have to do is be in an awareness state. At least once a month, I try at least once a week to run some awareness campaign. There are three ways that businesses grow. First, a business grows with new customers and new clientele. That's why your awareness campaign is essential. It is nothing more than how people find out that you exist, your company exists, or about your product or services. The second way companies grow is by increasing the average transaction amount. So that means I'm making more money. And the third way companies grow is to increase the frequency of the transactions. Those are our repeat customers and clients that come back. So we should all be doing some type of combination of the three. Would you please keep that in mind the very first thing you always have to do is run an awareness campaign?

Don't rest on your laurels and say, "I have a good amount of customers now, or a good amount of clients so I can relax a little." Nope. That's not what's going to work. So the second part of my little system, I run an awareness campaign. As soon as I hit my new follower goal, whether it's 5,000, 10,000, 15,000, whatever I'm trying to accomplish. When I'm focused, and some of you have seen it, I pick up like 10,000 followers in two days on Instagram. As soon as I complete whatever my follower goal is (your follower goal, maybe 200), I always offer a tripwire. Some of you may ask, what does an awareness campaign mean? The awareness campaign is me setting aside money and time to plot out how people will know about me? I may say I'm going to run $20 a day towards a Facebook ad with cold traffic so they can get to know me. I may also do a hundred dollars a day in a sponsored post on Instagram, and I'm going to pick up two influencer ads with people I know who have my audience or who have my audience's attention.

Next, you may ask, what is a tripwire? Good question. A tripwire is a ridiculously low price point product or service. It's like a deal that's so good that people would be idiotic to refuse it. The purpose of your tripwire serves several purposes. First of all, the tripwire will gauge for you how many people in your audience are interested in getting a solution to that problem or getting to the desired result, so it's who actually will open up their wallet and try and purchase something from you. The second thing a tripwire does, even if people don't buy it, is established to your followers that you have products and services for purchase which is very important. If you do not instantly show that you have products and services to sell, people will not know. What you will end up doing is you will create a whole bunch of people who only follow you and like your stuff, but they don't buy anything from you. And they don't refer you to anyone who purchased anything from you, blink, blink, blink. So the tripwire is essential because it establishes that you have something to sell. Whether people buy it or not, you're letting them know you have products and services to sell.

Many people will go and click on my website or go to our landing pages, and they'll skim down through my linktree after they see the tripwire. The third thing that a tripwire does for you is, of course, it allows you to offer some products. I have a pretty advanced funnel set, so once you enter my tripwire, I have all kinds of upsells and down sells and videos. Some of you have been there. We can have someone go from a $7 sale to a $97 deal, and that's not uncommon if someone purchases everything. Once they come into the tripwire, they will go from a $7 up to $147 sale. But that usually's someone who's kind of warm to me. Maybe they've been following me for a while already on Instagram or Facebook. They may be signed up for the Royal Court emails.

You can create a tripwire, create a product specifically to be a tripwire, or take a product that is doing well in your wheelhouse already and slash the price, which I will sometimes do. I love a tripwire, baby. Because I'm like a drug, and you're not putting me down. So once you get some of me, you're going to keep coming back. You'll be like, "This is so. I still can't believe I got all of this for only $17. I can't believe I got all of that for $34 99. I can't believe I got all this stuff for barely anything. It is crazy." When people come into your tripwire, it's an excellent opportunity for you to showcase your quality products and services. And that's how I create a lot of my lifelong clients. It's real talk. How many of you guys have come in through one of my tripwires, and you find you start seeing yourself opting into my programs? Think about it?
 
You come to my workshops, you show up to my meet and greets. You do a one-on-one Laser Session with me. Some of you have even hired me to be your business coach for 90 to 120 days and make significant investments, all from an initial $7 purchase. I know some of you are saying me, me, me, me, me, me, me. So your tripwire is super important. And a lot of people are not teaching you all about this. So the third part of the system, we have to remember awareness. So I have to let you know that I exist. You can come over and follow me. Then I'm going to offer you something unbelievable that you can't refuse. Even if you're unsure of it, you will be like, "Oh, it's only $7. I'll try it. Oh, it's only $10. I'll try it."

The third thing is to offer a lead magnet. Between the time of my actual product, service launch, and the tripwire that's being offered to the masses every day, I'm asking you, "Hey, do you want to do the blank?"  "Hey, you want a free cheat sheet on Facebook and Instagram ads, go click the link in my bio. "Hey, do you want to get free marketing and content ideas? Click the link in my bio? "Do you want to take a free digital branding or rebranding course? Click the link in my bio." So your lead magnet is your free 99. All of us have experienced the lead magnet. When you go to a website and are offered something for free in exchange for your name and email, that's a lead magnet, blink, blink, blink. That's how that works. So that's the third step in my little system of how I'm making money like this on social media.

The fourth step is providing amazing content. Now, this is the thing, amazing content is subjective. If the content is valuable to your audience, that's what makes the content unique and valuable. If the audience finds it useful, it gives them relief, or it makes them laugh, or they can connect emotionally with it. If it's content that makes people want to keep coming back to your page or your live stream and they're inviting or telling other people about you, that is good content. Another secret sauce, the content you're giving, should be helping people prepare to consume your product or service. A lot of you missed the mark right here. For instance, if you have a sales course coming up at the end of this month, you should be doing a lot of training related to sales because you want to establish yourself as a resource. You want to show people that they can trust you and get what they need if they come into the program.  So if you have an online boutique, you will show women how to wear the dresses, style them, and the different variations. You're going to show what hairstyle to put with it and what makeup looks to pair well. You're going to give as much as you can. Provide tips on how to dress different body types. So you're going to be valuable to the people. You will not just sit here and say, "Buy my dress, buy my dress, and buy my dress." So whether you're putting content on Pinterest or Facebook, or the Gram, the content needs to be valuable to the end-user.
 
The fifth part of my little system is offering the product. So whatever your program is, the services are the last part of the system. If it's a physical product, then it's after that. Then you wash out, and you repeat. Awareness, tripwire, lead magnet, content, product, or service, and it doesn't have to take a long time for you to cycle through your system. So if you have an online boutique or something like that, you're going to cycle through the system in less than 24 hours. If I run a dropshipping store, I'm going to do an awareness campaign.

I'm going to have a bunch of carousel ads running on my Facebook and Instagram timeline to pique people's interest. Then I'm going to make an offer with some type of tripwire. Or I may offer some ridiculously priced items, like clearance items, shirts, or something, or make an offer like the shirt is free today, and you only pay the shipping. Then I'm going to offer you a lead magnet. Then you're going to pop on my page, and I'm going to say, "Would you like free shipping today?" "Or would you want 25% off your offer?" "Or would you like a fall stop style guide." Whatever it is, I'm going to come up with some type of lead magnet to offer to you. So even if you don't complete the purchase, I now still have a way to stay in contact and communicate with you. After you get into my lead magnet, I may send you a couple of emails that talk about different ways that you can wear this garment or maybe proper undergarments or, you know, how to dress in layers. Whatever it is, it will be revolving around my product, and I'm going to do a couple of cool posts on my Instagram and my Facebook page. Finally, I will send you an email, and I will put a post on my Instagram page. I'm going to pop in my Facebook or IG Live and say, "Hey, you guys come over; the new leather bombers are in the right on time for the fall, be warm and stylish at the same time. They come in a multitude of colors, and they look great on all figures, shapes, and sizes and for all ages", or something like that. There's my cycle. And if I have a dropshipping store, I may have completed my cycle in a 24 to 48 hour period.
 
If you're a person like me who does consults and coaching, the cycle may be anywhere from seven to 14 days. If I'm preparing for a big launch, my sales cycle could be as long as 60 to 45 days. Are you picking up what I'm putting down? I want you all to win. So I'm giving you the stuff that nobody wants to tell you. I need you all to get these coins. You all know I like receipts? Blink, blink, blink.

Now that we've created some valuable content for people, something else that is important to mention about valuable content. First, people want to consume it, but it will establish you as a credible source, which is super important. Second, the know like, and trust factor is real. If people do not know you and don't trust you, valuable content is a bonus. If they like you, they will continue to purchase from you. If people like you, they may even spend a little more on your product or service just because they've invested in you and your company, your brand, and your team.
 
But if they don't trust you, they're not going to buy from you. So you must use your content as a tool to socialize with your audience and show you as a professional. Or that you know this stuff backward and forwards and inside and out, and you are the best place they should come if they need this. So your content is doing a lot more than just putting up a post on your Facebook or your IG, or you just going live. This is you giving your audience a chance to get to know you.
 
The next thing you need to make sure of is that your content correlates to the product or the service because that will help you make your conversions and sales. Conversion can reference a multitude of things. We're going to focus on sales conversion and opt-in conversions, but you just need to think about converting in an overall light of conversion. Simply getting people to complete the task you would like them to achieve. So sometimes, with conversion, you may be tracking how many people consumed your lead magnet. Another day, you may be tracking the conversion of how many people purchase something when you send out an email blast. While another day, you may track the conversion of how many people are opening up your emails. So there are all kinds of different conversion metrics. Think of conversion as how many people are doing, whatever you would like for them to do?  On other days, your conversions may track how many people are sharing or tagging someone to comment on some content that you put up?  Here are some numbers that we want to track. And if you don't know how to compute them, do not fret. We're going to go over that. First, I want you to track your cold sell conversions. 
 
For most people, you're at 1% cold. When I say cold, that's people who don't know who you are. They're very new to learning about you, so of course, they're not just going to jump right in and buy. Think about how you act the first time you learn about a product or a service or a company; you don't necessarily think, let me buy it right now. Right?  And unless you get a referral or an endorsement from someone, but then you're not technically cold traffic anymore if that happens. So 1% is most of the time is what our cold sales conversions are going to be. If you've never sold anything on social media, if you are new to business, and you're a startup, and don't have any metrics yet, then 1% or If you've been in business for a while, still 1%. Side note, If you're good at targeting like I am, a lot of times, my conversion rates are somewhere in between 2.5 and 4%, even with my cold traffic for sales.

The next thing you want to track is your warm sales conversions. This is super important because remembering the little system, I said, you're going to offer a tripwire initially, right? Then it goes lead magnet, content, and then you offer a product. By the time you get to the product, offer these people are now warm to you. They are familiar with you, your products, and your services because they have spent a little time with you. They've decided that they like your products, your content, so they may even want to invite and share you with other people. So they're warmed up to you, and these are people who will be willing to spend a little bit more money because if you've done an excellent job, you've developed a good know, like, and trust factor. Now your warm conversion rates should be much higher than that cold conversion rate. Your warm conversion rate can be anywhere from 2.5%, and if you are on fire in these streets, up to 10%. I usually fluctuate somewhere between five and 7%. It took me a minute to figure out how to do that. When I'm doing a webinar or training and people with me live, my conversion rate is closer to 20%, which is insane. But I know that my strong suit is being in front of people because I do well face to face. When I go out on sales calls and consulting calls, I have an 87% close rate, which is insane. And when I first started my business, my close rate was closer to 30%. So, if you can get me in front of whoever I need to be in front of, that's all I need is an introduction, baby, your girl is going to get out there and kill it in these streets.

So we want to track our warm sales conversions; we're also going to track our opt-in rate. You want to see how many people are opting for your freebie. That's going to give you a good indication of interest. And from there, you can gauge pretty well how many people will even click to look at the offer once you put it out there? So, there are metrics that people use, but my opt-in is a perfect gauge for me, so I stick with that. If you've never had a sale before, or if you've never sold online or through your social media, and this is new for you, let's try and set up maybe 20%. That's an impressive number that is not overwhelming. So, even if you come in at like 13% or 8%, the 20% is something you can work up to when you first start running your campaigns.

Let me throw this in here too, and we're going to go through how to compute this. I do need you all to pay attention to your follower increase. Many of you have no idea how much it costs you per follower as you're increasing; this is super vital because it will help you figure out how much your marketing campaign should be. It will help you figure out your flash sale or your tripwire; your price should be as it's a straightforward configuration, but you know people just aren't teaching you what to look at and pay attention to.

Let's start with the numbers you need to know to set your follower goal and make a ton of cash. The first thing to remember, I told you all, conversion can mean many things. But in this case, we're talking about sales conversions. Let's use an example about slides that are on sale, and we were going to sell the slides for $100. In my example, we know that we need to make 50 sales. I know that a thousand people looked at my page and my conversion rate is 5%. Also, don't worry about computing the sales price and how we got the conversion rate; we will get to that later. If you are using Leadpages or Linktree, it will tell you your conversion rate, so you don't have to compute it, but I want to teach you that if your software acts up or is new, you can still do your computation.  So this is your conversion rate. We need to make 50 sales. We know we have a 5% conversion rate. I have a thousand people who have viewed my page. The formula is the number of conversions is divided by the total number of clicks. That's your conversion rate.  So if I have  5,000 people looking at my page, and I've had a thousand people opt into the page, then I would have a conversion rate of 20%. That's how you compute your conversion rate for anything, for opt-ins, for sales, for clicks, whatever you're trying to figure out. It is nothing more than the number of people who did whatever you wanted them to do, divided by the total number of clicks or views. That's all that number is, so don't sweat it.

Now when you hear people talking back to conversion, they're just trying to track the percentage of how many people looked at it and how many people took the action that I would like them to take. It's 20%. Now, on to the cost per follower, which is a super important number. If you were running an ad in your power editor or a boosted post or doing a sponsored post on Instagram, it would be your cost per subscriber. If you are running a solo ad, it would be the cost per subscriber. iSo I'm going to tell you what the cost per follower is. Your cost per follower is your ad costs. Your cost per follower is the cost of your ad divided by your number of new followers. So for this particular example, I want you all to figure out if I have an ad that costs $30 and 700 new followers. So what is my cost per follower? It is important to know one of the most straightforward computations ever, but many of you are not looking at this number, and it is why you're not making money on your ads. And it's why some of you don't know that you're advertising in the wrong place or that your targeting is off. Your CPF, your cost per follower, tells you a lot. It will tell you if your campaign was good if you hit the right target audience or not. And it will also let you know if you are making money or not. And the answer is 4.3 cents per follower. That's what it's telling you. So let me give you another example. Let's say I spend $50 on an ad, and I pick up 250 followers. My cost per follower is twenty cents.

To, make sure that you get it. For example, I run an IG-sponsored post, and the page charges $200 to run a 24-hour post on my page. So I pay $200, and I get 450 new followers. So my cost per follower would be 44.4 cents per follower.

The following information I give you, please do not confuse this with the formula I just gave you. This is just information you need to know, especially if you're, doing sponsored posts on Facebook or Instagram land. When a notification goes out, it's typically shown to 10% of your followers, and that's even a post. So if I put a post on my IG page, right? I got a little bit over 70,000 followers over there. So whenever I place that post on my timeline, I initially only show it to about 7,000 and people. Now, if I run an ad with someone who has a hundred thousand followers, that means whenever they post my ad on their Instagram page or their Facebook account, that if all 10% are seeing it at the most, I'm looking at 10,000 people who will see that post. Everybody picking up what I'm putting down?

Remember, these people are cold to me. So my usual goal is to get 1% of the viewers. So if I run an ad with someone who has 100,000 followers, they put up my post, and 10,000 people see the post, and I get a thousand followers, I am super happy. That means I did a good job targeting, and I got a good amount of followers. Now, if people like the posts, they will start to come in a lot. Suddenly, Facebook and Instagram will open it up so that 20% of their audience can see my post. And if people keep commenting and talking about it and liking it, they're going to go, "Wow. People liked this", and then they'll let 30% of the people see my posts. If over 45% of that 30% that saw the post keeps liking and commenting, then they'll say, we'll let 50% of their audience see the post, and if people keep liking it after that, that's how stuff goes—viral, blink, blink, blink. So you need to know this because I want you all to have the proper expectations when you're running sponsored posts, ads and you're doing shout-outs. To know what a good follower conversion is for you? If you go and you drop a post on somebody's page with a hundred thousand followers, only pick up 200 followers from the post. I'm not shady, but what that's telling you is you have to do a better job with the content, or that page owner does not have your targeted audience,  one or the other. That's it. You sell by listening; you sell by listening; you sell by listening. So if I run an ad on someone's page with a hundred thousand followers, I should expect to pick up at least a thousand followers within 24 hours. Granted, I did a good job targeting, and you did a good job creating the content. Sometimes, I've had times that my target audience is there, but I've had to try two or three times to get the content right on some accounts, so I could pick up the follower count that I wanted.

Okay, good people, I just gave you the hot sauce to creating and setting an actual Ad budget for your social media goals, how to figure out your cost per follower, and cost per ad. You are ready to murderlize these social media streets.

Don't forget to follow us: @KingAshleyAnn and visit us: KingAshleyAnn.biz and EventsbyAshleyAnn.com.


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