Content lives or dies with its promotion

No promotion = no new traffic

The thing is?

Traffic isn’t that hard to get. In fact, you can go out and BUY all the traffic you want today

The issue is knowing how to do it without losing money!

I’m going to show you step-by-step how to not only set up, test and run paid ads to drive traffic to your content from Facebook…

…But I’m going to show you the EXACT process that we use to bring new readers AND get a $22:1 ROI from our ads

Yup

$22 back for every $1 spent…

(All while building our audience)

By the end of this guide you’ll learn how to promote your content profitably, and collect far more leads than ever before

Even if you’re brand new at ads, have a low budget, or just want to polish up your knowledge

Keep reading to learn how…

Why Care About Content Promotion?

So let’s quickly break down why you need to be promoting your content

First off?

Competition…

Right now there are 83.6 million blog posts written EVERY MONTH      

Even worse?

That’s just for WordPress alone

(That’s not including Wix, Shopify, Drupal, Joomla etc…)

It’s a little overwhelming right?

But this is the thing you need to understand

Promoted Content Is Where The Leverage Is…

Why?

Everyone is in a mad rush to create as much content as possible, but they never take the time to actually promote it

Don’t just take my word for it

In a recent study of 1 Million web sites by Buzzsumo, they found that less than 50% had even a single backlink

No one is promoting what they have…

Its the equivalent of writing a book, chucking it on your coffee table and hoping your friends check it out when they come round

Madness!

If you take the time to sit down and measure your ROI from content?

You’ll soon see that promoted content is far faster way to both see a financial return AND grow your audience…

Why?

Because when you write new content, you’re only entertaining the audience you already have

Sure you might grow slowly over time like this…

But when you spend that time promoting your content instead, you’re going out and bringing in a new audience

Same content, same effort, very different results

It’s not just about a faster ROI though

Promoting Your Content Also Has Long Term SEO Benefits…

It can appeal to others who share and reference your content, raising your organic rankings

This then helps raise your traffic and helps your organic audience grow

Not only that?

By writing less content but focusing on promotion, it can actually help you rank faster

How?

If you have content on your site that isn’t ranking?

It can actually lower the rankings of your other posts…

Yep, by deleting weak content you can actually see a rise in traffic…

Can you see what this means?

By writing more and not promoting, you might even be hurting your previous efforts…

And sure- not everyone has time to do outreach for every article right?

But running paid ads can even help your SEO results:

In a recent study by CognitiveSEO, they found that an increase in non SEO traffic, lead to an increase in SEO rankings

It makes sense right?

Google tracks the traffic to your site

They see more and more people reading your content, and assume that your content must be good

So what do they do?

They start to rank you higher and suggest you more, because they always want to give the best content to their audience…

The final benefit?

When you focus on promotion, you can actually write less often

No more caffeine fueled writing madness!

Sounds good right?…

So Why Use Paid Promotion?

Most people think of promoted content, as those awful articles at the bottom of dodgy websites…

This is a misconception

(Its just how you see most people do it)

Paid promotion is paying to get your content in front of people sure…

…but it doesn’t have to be sleazy

Rather than chucking your new article at the bottom of a weird site, you’re going to be using Facebook to lazer target your audience

Why care?

Because if you don’t have enough hours in the day, but you do have a few bucks to use for adverts?

Then paid promotion is about to become your new best friend

In fact?

With the method we’re about to share,  you can start promoting your content for as little as $5 per day…

Yup

$5 buckaroos

Pretty cool right?

Now…

There’s a whole heap of places you can pay to promote your articles, but we prefer to use Facebook

Why?

Facebook is the perfect platform for content sharing

Not only does it have BILLIONS of users and be guaranteed to have your audience…

But its an ‘entertainment’ platform

This means they care about their customer experience

Why?

Because if their users are having a bad time, then they’ll eventually leave Facebook

Not great right?

This means that Facebook has a vested interest in sharing content that their readers love

How does this affect you?

Because you’re driving people to high value content, and those reader’s enjoy it, something cool happens…

Facebook pays attention to this and see’s your advert as highly relevant to their users

So what do they do?

They start showing your ad more often…

Better still?

They even lower the cost to show it to people also!

Awesome right?

There is however a small flaw…

Why Your Facebook Ads Fail

Facebook have made it super easy to set up a new advert

Literally click a button and you can start running one:

The issue?

There are so many ad options and goals!

If you don’t know what you’re doing, then its super easy to lose money…

The trick is learning how to promote your content at a profit

Now if you’ve ran paid ads before, and they never worked?

There’s a reason for it and it’s not your fault…

How ‘Bottom Up Testing’ Generates Traffic, Leads And Sales
(To A Cold Audience, At A Profit)

Let me break this down for you

‘Bottom Up’ Testing is a process of testing and improving your advert, until it becomes profitable

Its the same process they use in product design

We test key elements of your advert to find what fails, and what wins

Simple right?

This way your ad evolves and improves each time

(Its literally how evolution works)

Why bother to do this?

Here’s a big thing that most people don’t realize:

You can follow a proven process for ad creation…

…but almost all ads start out losing money

Yep

They almost all start at a loss

For every $4 spent, you might make $1 in return

Not great right?

Here’s the thing though:

Most people stop here because no one ever explained this to them…

They set up an ad, lose money and then assume that ads don’t work for their business

In the early days of your advert, we’re all about data

We need to know what fails to find what works…

In the test above?

We simply tweaked the headline

That’s all we did

But by testing different headlines, it totally changed the end result

Pretty crazy how these small changes can affect your advert right?

I know what you’re thinking

“But don’t you have a ninja process to write an amazing advert?

Sure… but people are weird

Sometimes its the image and headline that you think are weakest, that drives the best results

If you want to succeed?

The key is to test and improve each element of the advert until it becomes profitable…

Here’s a mile high overview of the 3-step process:

1. Find out how much your can afford to spend to get a new customer
   (This gives you ‘goal posts’ to aim for so you know that the ad is working and within budget)
2. Run ads to drive traffic to your article, and capture the lead
3. Measure the results, and then improve the ad, until its profitable

The best part?

This works even in a super competitive industry…

How We Get $22:1 ROI While Promoting Our Content To A Cold Audience

If you don’t know us yet, AmpMyContent is a new blog, dedicated to helping people promote their content

Our goal is to help you get out of the ‘publish, publish’ hamster wheel, and help you grow and scale with promotion

We create case studies and guides, similar to this one you’re reading right now

But even with good content, we still need to promote it

Why?

Because the content marketing space is incredibly competitive…

Heck…

Even if you look at our niche of ‘Content Promotion’ ?

We’re still competing with results like this:

Pretty competitive right?

It’s enough to make you want to never start!

Now we’re only a small team

Its just the two of us, and we have limited time, just like you

But that being said, we have had some pretty crazy results

Over on our sister site, we’re known for our paid ads…

We’re not just ‘paid ads guys’ though

Our content has had some pretty good results also…

In fact with just 8 blog posts in 2 years, we’ve managed to get results like:

• Top 10 Content of ALL TIME on Inbound.org (A forum where marketers share their best content)
• Top Content of 2017 on Growth Hackers
• Content shared by CEO of Microsoft, Neil Patel, Ryan Deiss, Sean Ellis and many more

Now I’m not telling you this to brag

What I’m trying to explain is that you can get results like this, even with a small team or limited resources

The key is to focus on promotion…

Our Results Using This Process

Before we break down the process, I want to share our results

Right now we’re using this same method to share our own articles, with a cold audience

Because our advert and content both appeal, we’re getting very low cost leads

I should point out that this is in NZD, to a US based audience

So for our US readers, that’s leads for around $2.60 in the marketing space…

Not bad right?

Especially when we know that we can afford to spend around $23 to acquire a lead

(We’ll show you how to figure out how much you can spend in the next chapter)

It gets better…

Not only are we getting great leads and traffic, but we’re also seeing a profit from our ads:

How?

Well traffic leads to readers, which leads to optins which lead to eventual sales etc

Why care?

Because by understanding these numbers, it means you can drive traffic, and have peace of mind that you’re not wasting money

Pretty cool right?

Not only do you ‘know the ad is working’ but you know if its making or losing money…

How Paid Promotion Stacks Up The Benefits

Remember how I said when you promote content, you can attract other benefits?

Because our content has been getting great feedback from our audience, its been generating a lot of interest and shares…

This has lead to new readers, subscribers and customers

Not only that?

Its also lead to new backlinks, as well as being picked up by podcasts and blogs to chat about content…

Free press ftw!

Not only are we getting the traffic so we can write less often, but its getting leads, sales and more

(All at around $5 of promotion, per day…)

Excited yet?

Now that you’ve seen our results, let me walk you through the process…

How This System Works

The system is actually quite simple:

We basically have 4 parts:

1. The advert that drives traffic
2. The article you send them to
3. The Hyper Specific (And Measurable) Offer to capture the Lead
4. The Tracking and Improving

Let me break it down for you…

Part #1: The Advert

The advert is designed to target your ideal reader

Better still?

Its designed to appeal and attract even a cold audience…

People who don’t even know who you are yet

Why care?

Colder audiences generally make up the largest share of your marketplace

Most people write ads for warm leads, and so are limited to how they can grow

But by speaking to a colder audience you can appeal to people who don’t even know about your services or products, it allows you to grow traffic at a huge scale…

Not bad right?

During this 8 part guide, you’ll run a system of tests, designed to improve your new advert

Your goal is to increase:

• The Click Through Rate (Number of people who click on it), and
• The Conversions (People who take an action when reading your article)

Doing this will improve the ads performance, lowering the cost to show it

Your ultimate goal?

To get people to click across, interact with the article, and then become a new subscriber…

Part #2: Your Article

You can have an amazing advert that gets clicks, but that’s only half the battle…

To get real success?

You need killer content to be doing its job on the other end

(Driving traffic to low performing content is just crazy)

Now this guide is already huge

If you want a guide to writing killer content, then click here

Alternatively?

You can grab our book!

Its a 475 page BEAST to direct response copywriting i. e how to use content to get traffic AND sales

Either of these will help you create far better content that ever before

Why care about the content quality?

Because improving the article makes a direct difference to your ad results, and how much you can spend

How?

If your article converts better, then it suddenly means you need less traffic to meet your goals

This guide is all about building and testing a profitable paid ads system

For it to be profitable, it helps if the content converts right?

For now, let me give you the quick ‘killer content’ cliff notes:

Of all the top performing content online, there are 9 elements that stand out

These elements work because they leverage certain human psychological factors…

If you can meet those elements, then you should start to see:

• Higher optins
• More back links
• More social shares etc

Simply improve the content and improve the results

That guide walks you through it all

That being said, there’s one other element that your content needs

Why?

Because its the most vital part of your content…

Part #3: The Hyper Specific Next Step Offer

The ‘HSO’ is a very specific method of capturing your readers email

Think of it like a lead magnet on overdrive…

Every article we create has an HSO and for good reason

Why?

Because traffic is great, but the ideal result is for that traffic to convert into a customer

• Subscribers become customers
• They become repeat buyers
• They help grow your audience and share your content etc

No joke…

If you focus on making your content more effective, then you can write less often, and get better results

We cover how to create an HSO in fine detail here, and walk you through it step by step

Every article you create from now on should have an HSO

Why?

Because if every article is getting leads, then every article will increase your sales

This way, even if your traffic is lower, it becomes more effective

Make sense?

It gets better…

If you know how much you can afford to spend to get a lead (on average), then you can also measure how effective your ad is, almost right away

See how important this is?

If you’re going to drive traffic to an article, then you need to be capturing the email also

You can read exactly how to capture more emails in our guide here

When you have this in place, you’ll be able to measure how effective the ad is, and improve it…

Part #4: The Tracking (And Improvement)

To run a profitable ad, you need to:

• Know your business numbers (What you can afford to spend to get a customer etc)
• And track your ad results (Is the result within range?)

We’ll cover how to find your business numbers in the next chapter

We’ll also cover tracking and testing later on, but for now a quick overview so you see how it ties into the process…

We use a simple method using a ‘success page’ and  ‘conversion pixel’

The success page is where your new subscribers get sent to, to access their HSO bonus from your article

On that page is a Facebook pixel that tracks the page visitor, and creates a feedback loop back to your Facebook dashboard…

Facebook then knows:

• Which ads drove traffic to the article,
• Which people clicked,
• Which people opted in,
• And who landed on the success page

Even better?

It’s not just the performance results on there…

Using this process it will tell you to the dollar, how much it cost to get that lead

Boom!

If you know your numbers, then now you can see if you ad is profitable or not, right there on the screen

(You can even track if those people buy from you later on…)

No more of this ‘not knowing which half of the advertising is working’ nonsense

Now this might all sounds complex but it really isn’t

In reality it’s just 4 working parts:

• Show an advert to a cold audience, so that they go read your article
• Those readers becomes subscribers
• We track the cost
• We adjust the ad to improve it until its profitable

Easy right?…

Can I Do This Myself?

You sure can!

You’re probably a little overwhelmed right now but don’t worry

There’s a few complex things, but we’re going to break it all down nice and simple

Even the nasty math stuff

By the end of this guide you’ll be able to run ads for yourself and have a profitable campaign…

Heck

By the end of the next chapter?

You’ll know if its cost effective for you to run ads for you rbusiness, before you even spend a dollar!…

How Much Of This Guide Do I Need To Read?

If you’re serious about being able to scale up your traffic then you need to read this entire guide

We recommend reading it chapter by chapter

Why?

Because it’s all broken down step by step, so that each chapter not only teaches you all about promoted content, but it also helps you build your campaign…

That’s right

You’re going to be creating your own campaign, as you read along with the guide

This is all done in a logical order of completion, and each chapter builds on the previous

Pretty cool right?

Lets dive in…