“I ran paid ads, but they didn’t work for me.”

If you’ve ever said something like this, you might be making one of these mistakes.

And that’s what I’ll be sharing with you today:

• 3 biggest mistakes when running ads for your newsletter

• Surprising things students didn’t care about that saved me 30+ hours: online course creation learnings (premium subs only)

P.S. Today’s article was inspired by people asking me for help with their ads, but also by this sponsored ad copy I was given (I refused to run it because the ad was so bad).

P.P.S. I’m launching pre-sales for my productivity/life tracking course! Check out all the details here.

Mistake 1: not setting up exclusion audiences in Meta ads

Don’t waste money showing ads to people who are already subscribed.

Instead, do this:

1. Export current list of subscribers (CSV file)

2. Go to Meta Ads Manager

3. Click Audiences

4. Create custom audience

5. Upload your subscriber list

6. When you create a new ad, add the custom audience you just made under “exclude”

Mistake 2: just promoting your newsletter

Which is more compelling?

1. Subscribe to get marketing tips in your inbox

2. My boss promoted me for my “genius” marketing…but she doesn’t know I get all my ideas from [INSERT NEWSLETTER] every morning

The format matters too. Instead of a plain screenshot of your newsletter, try:

• Desired lifestyle footage (aesthetic workspace, skyscrapers, etc.) with text on screen

• Memes

• Organic-like content (screenshot of some texts, a Tweet, etc.)

Here’s how to come up with winning messaging for your ads:

1. Write down everything your ideal subscriber struggles with. What are their biggest problems that your newsletter could help solve?

2. Write down everything your ideal subscriber dreams about. What ideal outcome would they want to achieve (that your newsletter could help with)?

3. Combine the two in your ad messaging

4. Add social proof (optional)

Examples:

• I did [ideal outcome] without [common objection]

• My boss thinks [ideal outcome] but I just read [insert newsletter]

If you have more time/budget, you can film a “story” - like:

• I left my laptop in the library to go to the washroom, but then this happened (shows a stranger reading the laptop screen which is open to your email newsletter → leads to some desired outcome)

• My friends kept talking about [insert newsletter topic] and I didn’t get the hype until [insert a popular topic of your newsletter, show an excerpt from the newsletter topic]

Mistake 3: not testing hook and messaging organically first

I once posted 3 of the exact same videos on TikTok (for my previous job at an education startup).

The only difference?

Text on screen for the first 2 seconds.

The different text represented different messaging (different benefits of your newsletter).

2 videos got 1,000 views.

The 3rd video got 500k views.

I ran the 3rd video as an ad and re-filmed it in different ways. It’s been a winning ad for over a year now.

Here’s a tutorial on testing video hooks.

I’m creating and launching a course in 2 weeks. Here’s how I spent week 2.

User research (hopping on calls with prospective students) only took 3 hours, but probably saved me 30 hours.

Here’s everything I learned…

Including the surprising things I thought students would care about, but actually didn’t.

Subscribe to Premium to read the rest.