Disclaimer: I didn’t go to Popeyes before they ran out of chicken sandwiches. I’m team Chick-fil-A! But I looked up Popeyes’ retail price. The sandwich cost $3.99 plus tax.
Investing $5.00 per day—roughly the price of one chicken sandwich— into Facebook and Instagram advertising for the last several months, the Bold Xchange team has grown our newsletter subscriber base from about 150 readers to over 1,000.
We believe that engaging with our supporters via email is critical. Even when the social media platforms we all rely on go down or they change their algorithms and limit our reach, email is tried and true.
Don’t view $5.00 per day as the maximum you could invest in Facebook and Instagram advertising—that’s just the figure we felt most comfortable with. Below is an overview of our $5.00 per day strategy that I hope brings you value. Our goal was to make that limited budget work as if it were much larger. I’d like to think that we were successful in doing so.
The Challenge: Growing a Newsletter
To grow a newsletter, obviously you have to convince people to give you their email address—and hopefully their name, too. Sometimes that can be hard. The more relevant your content, the easier it becomes.
Bold Xchange’s newsletter features product reviews, narratives, and articles that highlight black entrepreneurs and their creations. This content reflects our roots; although we’ve expanded in scope, our skills and exploration began here.
To attract more loyal readers, we had to consider what our already loyal readers enjoyed about our content. Maybe there were certain brands, celebrities, shows, or other interests we could use to find similar readers.
What do your supporters enjoy? The more accurately and detailed you answer this question the better. Your advertising budget will be spent more wisely and your truly committed tribe will steadily grow.
The Strategy: Getting Attention
Once you’ve identified your goal and figured out who you want to target, next you have to get your messaging right. What’s going to grab your potential supporter’s attention and convince them to share their information with you?
You’ll need to offer potential supporters something. Most often people offer some sort of discount. We just promise that new content featuring black-owned businesses will make it into supporters’ inboxes weekly.
We tested our copywriting, cycled through different images, and even created multiple videos all in an effort to get advertising right.
The Nuances: Using the Tools for Newsletter and More
I didn’t dive into the nitty gritty here. You have to get an understanding of the big picture first! If you email me at doug@boldxchange, I’ll gladly share more nuance on the financial, scheduling, and monitoring aspects of a successful advertising campaign.
If content isn’t your game, click here to check out a similar overview that’s more sales-focused.