Mastering the Art of Membership Launch Ads
Well, look at what popped up in my Facebook feed today!
There are two launches I get excited about every year…
One is Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula, and the other is Stu McLaren’s Membership Experience.
Now other launches may make more money, but these two are by far and away the best to learn from when it comes to applying the principles of launching.
Stu’s TME Launch is not scheduled until 20 April 2023, so imagine my surprise when an ad popped up on Facebook today.
Now before I delve into the ad and landing page there is a massive learning straight off the bat.
It’s 9 March today. The launch is not until 20 April. Stu isn’t focused on signing people up for his launch this early. No, he has created a long runway to test his ad copy, creative, and opt-in page conversion rates.
There are big challenges when it comes to running ads for a launch. By the time you have figured out your winning combo of ads and creative, the launch is over. It is incredibly hard to scale quickly and hit an attractive Cost Per Lead.
For any fixed-date event, there is an optimum window of time where you can start promotion and keep early registrants engaged.
Open registration too late, and you won’t have enough time to fill the event. Open it too early, and people will forget they have registered.
2 weeks tends to be the sweet spot. But it is hard to scale an ad campaign to tens of thousands of $’s a day in just 2 weeks.
My reading of Stu going so early with his ads is to figure out the winning ads and run a couple of rounds of optimizations on the opt-in page.
This means when it comes time to scale the campaign, they can do so cost-effectively.
Just to give you an idea of the scale of this campaign….
In total, there are 27 variations of ads in the Facebook Ad Library, which include the url membershipworkshop.com. These ads appear in between 4 and 15 ad sets. This is a significant test.
The best part of all is you have a ring-side seat for the next month and a half.
Ok let’s dive into the ads:
Ad Version 1 – Medium Form – TME Launch
3 Elements To Inspire Your Ad Campaigns:
- This is such a simple ad. Simple is beautiful. Simple is effective. The ad targets one pain point and one pain point only. Cashflow and business stability. This is always a top 3 problem for an entrepreneur. Something that keeps Stu’s perfect-fit client awake at night. So here is my question for you. What is a “top 3” problem that keeps your perfect-fit client awake at night that you can help them solve? The bigger and more painful the problem you can solve, the quicker people will flock to you for a solution.
- Hooks don’t always have to be crushing pain points or wild promises. Sometimes a simple pattern interrupt can do the trick. The simple “Hello there” is an interesting approach. Other ads published for the Membership Workshop open with “I’m Stu McLaren”… “What time is it???”…. “Patty started with a super simple idea.”. It will be interesting to see how these opening hooks fare over the duration of the campaign.
- The image is what drew me to review this ad. I love the screenshot approach. Almost everyone can test this option in their campaigns – My To-Do List – Complete the thing on offer. For an event / date-based launch, it also gives you an opportunity to prominently include the date. Notice how the action is transformative. Don’t just say download the lead magnet or register for the workshop. Paint the transformation someone will achieve when they take the action you prescribe. Oh, and a sneak two-for here! Notice the “all caps” FREE X 2. Free sells…
3 Elements We’d Test:
- The URL in the body copy is formatted in bold and italics to draw attention to it, which is great. I would want to test if there was any uptake in the outbound click-through rate if this was entered as a live link. I always include at least one live link in the body of every conversion ad.
- The headline Stu, Stu, Who The Heck is Stu? While interesting will possibly only resonate with people who know Stu. Now this version of the ad could be to warm traffic. It wasn’t one of the ads which appeared in 15 ad sets. However, I would test this ad with a headline that was focused on the avoidance of pain or attainment of pleasure. In this case, something like – Looking for more stability in your business? [FREE TRAINING] Proven Path To Membership Success
- While the single line “hello there” is a pattern interrupt partially due to the empty space, I would test including more text directly after it. You only have 140 characters to convince people they should click on the “See more” and read the rest of your body copy. You want to make sure it packs a punch and gives them a reason to read on.