The Ultimate Blog Podcast - 114. Growing an Online Business with Cooking Classes and Intentional Marketing with Chef Adam Sobel

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

We have Chef Adam Sobel on to share more about growing an online business with cooking classes! Adam is the owner of Cinnamon Snail food truck and restaurant and has appeared on the Food Network, Cooking Channel, PBS, and several networks. Adam shares about his journey from food service to online ventures during the pandemic, focusing on his blog and online cooking classes. He shares about the technical aspects of live streaming classes, his pricing strategy, and the importance of community building. We dive deeper into monetization and marketing strategies for bloggers, sharing more about the value of email lists, paid advertising, and audience feedback. Get ready for this episode because it is one you aren’t going to want to miss!Thanks for listening! Let us know your thoughts on Instagram: @sparkmediaconceptsCheck out Short Pixel!Check out the show notes (link below) for more information including links and resources mentioned in today's episode!SHOW NOTES: www.sparkmediaconcepts.com/episode114

Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast with Amy Reinecke and Jennifer Draper. We're on a mission to empower women who want to start or grow their own blog. This podcast is for women who want to learn blogging basics and who crave inspiration and encouragement. Whether you're just getting started or have been a blogger for years, we're excited to welcome you into this space where we are passionate about creating community over competition. We are bloggers who want to encourage you to believe in your potential, step outside the norm and step into a life where you create your own schedule, your own success and your own story. Join us for weekly episodes as we navigate blogging

and work from home life all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. Welcome back to the Ultimate Blog Podcast. We have a treat for you today. Adam Sobel is here from the Cinnamon Snail. And this is going to be such an enlightening conversation. Adam and I actually connected over on Instagram. And he's just been a blast to talk to before even hitting record. So we are really excited to share Adam with you today. Adam, welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast. Get ready. It's going to be enlightening.

It is going to be really enlightening. Don't worry. So, Adam, I would love for you just to start out by sharing a little bit about where you started this whole blogging journey and kind of your journey through it and where you are today. Yeah. So for years, people were like, kind of making me to start a blog. And I had this, this like food truck business and restaurant that I launched back in 2010 that quickly became more wildly successful than I ever set out to, you know, like it was just somehow this thing became like crazy popular and people loved it. And like,

I did not have time to start a blog. Like I was running this business that was like a 24 seven, you know, like I had bakers coming in overnight to like make all of our donuts and pastries. And then I had like, you know, we were like catering weddings and I was starting like new restaurant locations and I wrote a cookbook and all this, like, I just did not have time for a blog. And then I had been teaching at some, some culinary schools. And when the pandemic hit, it was like the perfect time for me to close down my retail food service operations. Because honestly, it was like, it was so stressful. It was like, it was crazy.

I wanted to do something smaller and closer to home anyway. And so the pandemic hit. closer to home anyway. And so the pandemic hit and after having like half a year to kind of like reorient myself and snuggle with my dog a lot and like recover from the PTSD of like constant 24 hour a day emergencies with my food business, I started like teaching these online cooking classes. I was like selling the tickets for them through Eventbrite. I just kind of like kept it pretty simple at first. And they were going pretty well. And then a friend was like, you know, it's time for you to start that blog if you really want to like bring a lot of traffic and like what you're doing. And I was like, all right, I got I got time for that now. So I spent

like about a year just like researching the heck out of what goes into a food blog. And, you know, like I listened to your podcast and every other possible podcast and like joined the food blogger pro community for a little while and like chain smoked all of the top hat rank webinars. smoked all of the top hat rank webinars. And my blog only launched just about a year ago, actually. But by then, like I had kind of developed a lot of the other pieces to the puzzle of my, you know, like hosting my cooking classes and sort of like my sales funnel for it. And, and so, yeah, I, I launched this food blog and it's been really interesting for me because, A, like I love researching and love kind of refining my recipes more and more. And I really enjoy the writing. And it's just, yeah, it's been super fun. But it's been a heck of a lot of work. Don't let anybody fool you that like a blog is somehow less work than running a restaurant and doing all this stuff.

It's a whole lot of work. It is a whole lot of work. I'm glad that you're honest. Oh, yeah. I think that that's important to say like, hey, it is a lot of work. But I love what you said about kind of taking time after doing what you did, like having that retail side of your business, owning a food truck and all that. And you had success in that, obviously, but you decided to pivot to another

route. I mean, it's kind of along the same lines, but you pivoted. A big part of my livelihood still is doing culinary consulting for other people in the restaurant industry and in food manufacturing and caterers and stuff like that. You know, like I do a lot of recipe development for them and I provide a lot of kind of like professional mentoring for them. And especially over the last few years, you know, that retail food service has just become so much more volatile and risky and difficult, both with like the craziness of like supply chain and ingredients price stuff and how difficult it's been worldwide to find like qualified staff who really want to stick around, like no matter how much money you throw at them, it's just real tough. So I'm really lucky that I still get to do the like fun, creative side of that work without having the personal like financial risk of it, where I'm just like creating awesome stuff for other people's businesses.

And then it's like theirs to, you know, take and run with. Yeah, it sounds like you've really found the sweet spot for your own business and what you would like to do and what you have expertise in. for your own business and what you would like to do and what you have expertise in. And I know you have professional training as a chef and a lot of people listening that are food bloggers might not have that level of training. Do you think, I mean, obviously has benefited you in so many ways, but do you think it's possible for bloggers without that professional training to also get into teaching and doing online cooking classes as well? Oh, for sure. I mean, look, first of all, I don't have like professional training in the sense of like, I never went to culinary school. I had a child when I was like 19 years old, and really had to like, dig my heels in and work in the culinary field. And that's how I,

you know, got my education is just working in restaurants and stuff. But even so, anyone who's got a blog going on is already teaching food stuff. It's just a different approach to sharing that content and your expertise and your personality and stuff. So yeah, folks should not feel whatsoever like you need some higher authority or something. If you already have readers who love coming to check out your recipe on Inside Out, watermelon with spaghetti on the inside, you can teach how to do just that. Yeah. I think it's so interesting, Adam, how your shift actually was what some people might call like flip-flopped. So you started your online cooking classes first, and then your blog came. You know, they might have a blog that's monetized with ads and they're just looking for maybe other revenue streams, especially with like the kind of upcoming cookie apocalypse and, you know, people's like worries about AI content and stuff. You know, I think it's pretty important for folks to think about, you know, how else they can actually make a living wage out of what they do.

else they can actually make a living wage out of what they do. And me, I don't have any ads on my site. I monetize it entirely from just my own content. And there's a bunch of different ways to turn that into a really reliable, sustainable income. Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about your cooking classes. How do they work? And how do you decide like what to teach a class about? There's a few different ways people can go about this, right? Like one is that they can just make like pre-recorded courses. And that's, I think, very easy to have like as an evergreen thing you sell, right? Like the same way an ebook is. But what I've always done is taught like live streamed classes that are done through Zoom. And like I mentioned, like initially I was selling the tickets to them through Eventbrite,

which is a great way to get started if you don't have, you know, some whole like e-commerce stuff set up on your website or you don't want to slow down your website by adding that functionality. You know, it makes it pretty easy to like make sure your students get the recipes in advance and the zoom link like event where it's been pretty good for that. But I did switch from from using that eventually. And then yeah, like as as far as like the basic technical setup for my classes, I do them, you know, just out of my home kitchen, you course, with nice lighting and stuff like that. But my goal is to really make the recipes I share doable for home cooks with average

equipment and stuff. So I'm not trying to do it with commercial equipment or anything. What I like to do is kind of have control over what people see in the class. So I'll have like a few different DSLRs hooked up to what's called a switcher through HDMI, you know, where like you have, you know, right next to my cutting board, I'll have like a little control panel where I can hit a button and they'll see, you know, the top down shot of what's on my cutting board. And I can hit another button and then they'll see my beautiful glistening face covered in makeup and jewels. And then I can hit another button and they'll see like what's on my stovetop. And that way it's like, it's kind of fun. It's like a little bit like you're DJing a cooking class. Like you can, you can see people's reaction to what you're doing.

You can make sure they're like seeing what's applicable. And that's kind of what I do. Like that's like the very basic setup of it. So do the people that come to your class, are they coming like with their food and their pots and pans? And are they cooking along with you or are you just are they watching and you're teaching? There's a little bit of both. There's people who cook along with the entire class. cook along with the entire class. And I always include in my recipes that get sent out beforehand, like instructions to kind of mise en place stuff so that, you know, they have their onions already peeled and cut up. So it makes it easy for them to keep along with the pace of the class. Cause

I like to really cram a lot of stuff in my classes, you know, especially like a Thanksgiving class where we make an entire Thanksgiving dinner in the course of two hours or whatever. Like the only way to do that is by having some stuff prepped in advance. Then I have some people who just, you know, they might want to just make the dessert or something. And they're kind of watching the rest of the class demo style and asking questions in the chat. And then there's some people who just watch the entire thing demo style. And I include like recordings of the class to everybody who registers so that they can review it again later. Or, you know, there's, there's always a percentage of people who sign up for the classes who don't

even make it to the live, you know, broadcast of it, who just watch the recording later, especially like if you have, like I do, you know, students that are like on the other side of the planet to, you know, like I have some students to tune in from like Malaysia and whatever. And you know, that way, like they don't have to take the class at like four in the morning. Yeah. What a way to start the day. I'm so intrigued by this. So do you charge, do you charge for them to come to the class? That's my first question. Oh, for sure. Though I do occasionally do some free and donation-based classes sort of as like a lead magnet for my whole thing.

Like they end up on my email list and, you know, they've like proven that they'll pay a dollar for a class. Like it's much easier to sell to them than like some random cold traffic off of Facebook. Yeah. And, you know, people should not be scared to what students used to have to pay to take my classes in culinary school was like, I don't know, maybe like $150 for the class or something. And I mean, I would only get some like

portion of what they paid. And this way I can charge significantly less and people get the recording to follow along with later. And I get like, you know, paid as many tickets as I sell. It's great. There's no like middleman in the mix. How have you gone about like pricing for that? Because I know that there's got to be questions on that. Like, what is one charge?

Let's call it like an hour long cooking class. Have you had to kind of play around with that to see what pricing people actually are willing to pay? Yeah. Yeah. I've played around with it a little bit. I mean, I'll tell you what I charge normally is like a two hour. Most of my classes are two hours long and I charge $45 for that class, you know. And then what I do in addition is I'll continue to monetize that class by selling just the recording and recipes of the class off of my website, which I sell for less. I can sell that for like $28 because they're not getting the experience of cooking along in real time and stuff. And it's just like, I'll wake up and five people will have bought those classes while I slept and stuff. It's nice. Yeah. Yeah, that passive income. Yeah, you can kind of... Yeah, that quote unquote passive income. I know.

Let's be honest. The blogging thing is like, yeah, let me show you the dream of passive income. We're all working 90 hours a week doing this passive income thing. Yeah, I mean, it just it creates a lot of opportunity for other ways you can monetize this content. Like, for instance, another huge component to making this into like a good stable income is that I also sell like a membership to my cooking classes, which people can either purchase an annual subscription to them or a monthly subscription to them at like a lower price point than buying the classes a la carte but then you know like on average those people will remain in the subscription for a good while if you you know make the classes awesome right that way like you have it's the same class you're teaching live you're selling recorded or you're selling through the subscription and you have it's the same class you're teaching live you're selling recorded or you're selling through the subscription and you have these like three different forms of monetization on the same content you know or like sometimes i'll run some special like bundle thing that i'll like run some paid traffic to of like these are my top most popular you know classes and that like it comes

with an extra ebook and like it's not really like it's not really a whole lot of extra work to put things like that together for a Black Friday sale or whatever. And you can just make it really valuable to the customer, but it's stuff you don't have to do more work. You already have it recorded and stuff. It's nice. Yeah. I think that's just a prime example of what we talk about a lot, stuff. It's nice. Yeah, I think that's just a prime example of what we talk about a lot, which is like repurposing what you've already created. And it might feel a little weird at first, but the way you've explained it, I mean, you're obviously helping different people who are looking for different things, like the person looking for the subscription who can just come on on their own time and watch the classes is going to be a different person than the one who wants

the connection of being in the live class and being able to ask questions. So it's not weird to reuse that content in different ways because you're helping different people who want help in different ways. I think that's, I think it's smart. Yeah. And ultimately, like you're making your expertise in whatever the subject is you teach just more accessible to more people. You know, it's, you don't need to feel bad about that. That's like why you're doing this, right? Right. And I think it's also something to consider is like, I think we have this idea that, you know, somebody in our community or our audience sees everything that we do. Like they've seen every piece of content that we've ever created.

And that is just not happening. It's just not with the way the algorithm works, with the way email works, and all of that. So if you repurpose some of that content, we all are kind of like, there's so much input. But sometimes just that reminder of, I forgot that Adam did this class. And I actually did want to do that. I just forgot or didn't have time. Or now I do have time. And it might be something that you're repurposing, like you said, for a Black Friday sale or something. Or they could have even attended that, but they want to do it again. I would guess that people who are coming to online cooking classes too, this is a hobby for them. They want to learn how to do this skill. Maybe they weren't ever taught to cook and things like that. So is there a sense of community that is built with this too? Do you

have people... I know you have a membership, but do you feel like you have more people coming, like who just want that community of like cooking with others? are like looking to replicate the best features of like Facebook groups in a private way. Like, you know, there's the mighty networks and circle and these other things that allow you to really foster that connection. And it sort of depends on you and what you teach. And like, if there's some other dimension to it, like for me, I teach vegan food. And because of that, there's like a sort of like, we're trying to change the world type of aspect to it that, you know, might not be there if it's like some other topic. But, you know, it might be like you teach quick weeknight meals and there's a real like desire for people to connect with other parents and other, you know, like busy professionals like that. Like there's a lot of ways you can kind of position

what you do to have like a community benefit kind of aspect. What I did want to talk on the real quick is that, you know, I think a lot of bloggers don't realize what a like marketing goldmine they sit on top of, you know, which is exactly why advertisers are so eager to throw money at them to like position ads in front of a targeted audience. Right. But if you're positioning like position ads in front of a targeted audience, right? But if you're positioning your own product in front of that audience, like, dude, every other e-commerce business is spending a fortune in like Facebook advertising to get in front of the audience that's naturally coming to your website through your own SEO efforts and content efforts and stuff. And there's a lot of

ways you can kind of like get at least some percentage of that traffic to convert to being your own customer. You know, like, for instance, like I have all these classes now that are on different topics that my blog covers, right? I have like vegan Turkish recipes and vegan donut making recipes and vegan dim sum recipes, right? And then I have classes that are like on those topics, right? And so there's ways you can set up, you know, using there's a block called dynamic connector block or something like that. Anyway, there's ways you can create like those quote unquote reusable blocks with Gutenberg now calls patterns, right? To be like, oh, you know, if the main category of this blog post is like a Turkish, you know, category, then, you know, right above your recipe card, why don't you have this little block that's like, oh, here's like my Turkish cooking

class if you want to check it out. Or if they're looking at a Vietnamese recipe, it's going to be like, oh, we got this like Vietnamese class you could take. And that way you're putting like your own ad for your own product in front of people who are most, you know, it's almost like what you might do with having different lead magnets for different types of categories on your blog. But now you're positioning something you can actually like pay your bills with in front of people instead of just like hoping to get them on your email list. So you don't really have to be afraid of sharing the content in a free way, like via a blog post, and then also selling a package like a cooking class on the same topic, because you're bringing people there. They're showing interest in,

you know, like you said, like Turkish vegan food. And then you can kind of bundle that together and say, hey, we're going to dive deeper and I'm going to walk you through exactly how to make this. And so I think they're kind of getting the best of both worlds. Of course, it's not going to be everybody who like takes you up on that offer. But, you know, the biggest thing about selling, whether it's a cooking class or your e-book or whatever other products you might be selling, you really have to like put it out there and kind of put it in front of people who are already giving you indication that they care about that topic, you know, and bloggers have such a

good resource for that. Like that. I mean, that's exactly why advertisers are paying you to begin with. Right. I think that we don't give ourselves enough credit in that regard. I think bloggers a lot of times feel a little icky when it comes to selling, but that's essentially what we are doing. But it's actually to an audience that's more captive than a cold audience. If you have somebody coming to your blog, then one, if they're coming to your blog, Adam, we know that they are going to want to make vegan food. And it's going to be a little eclectic. They don't want to just make your run of the mill vegan food. And so somebody might be like, I really... Maybe they're new to vegan and maybe they're getting bored with their food. And they're like, okay, I don't really know how to make some of this stuff. So I need to gain more

knowledge. I think when we put ourselves in the position of we are providing a solution to someone else's problem, that is when we can take selling and take that icky word out of what we're doing. Because that's what we are doing. We're providing a solution to someone's problem, generally speaking. And it's okay and necessary because we all need money to live to charge for that if we need to. If you're spending two hours, think of what the preparation looks like to do that for a class. Think of all the backend stuff that goes to that. And if you have any online courses or anything, the backend stuff that nobody sees is a lot. There's a lot that goes into that.

It takes time. You got to get paid. You do have to get paid. And I think being unapologetic about that and saying like, you know, what I'm teaching is worthy of commission. And not only that, but there's a lot of different ways to earn a revenue and create revenue streams before like getting on an ad network if you even want to be on an ad network like we talk about ad networks a lot but that might not even be a goal for every

everyone in blogging look i mean for me it's like i may eventually i'm not going to say i'm never going to have ads on my site but i know it's a crappy user experience it's never a helpful thing for people to have ads. Even if you're like pretty deliberate in limiting the placement and number of ads on the thing, like it's going to cause your page to load slower. It's going to put like all kinds of junk and distraction in front of your reader. And look, I'm not saying it's wrong to do it. I think most people have like just gotten accustomed to largely ignoring it unless you're really obnoxious with your ads. But I mean, think of if you're successfully monetizing through your

own sale of whatever it is, classes, products, you now have that advantage if you don't put the ads on that your page speed is that much better and your user experience is that much better than everyone else you're competing with for that keyword, right? Yeah. So can we dive a little deeper into what that looks like? If somebody is wanting to either diversify their monetization, or they don't want to have ads on their site, and they're just ready to go, what does it look like? In what ways do you market what you're offering so that you're getting in front of the people that you want to be in front of? I know you started on Eventbrite, you moved to your blog. Does most of your traffic come from

your blog? Or do you have different ways of marketing to get those eyeballs on your content? And then what does it look like to convert them into somebody who's purchasing something from you? like to convert them into somebody who's purchasing something from you? Well, I mean, I think this is probably pretty common, but I find like my best resources, my email list for it. You know, I try to have like a really valuable kind of email list where it's lots of like just beneficial, fun stuff. And I'm not hyper salesy, but I'll like send out an email where I'm like, dude, here's these like five really popular Italian recipes on my website. And like, here's how to make, you know, vegan meatballs and this and that. And like, oh, you know, by the way, like I got this

Italian class you could check out if you want to take it or leave it. And I find that's like really the nice way to do it rather than be like real salesy about it. And I just feel better and more authentic like sharing that way. Yeah. It's giving them something before you're asking them to purchase. I do like some paid traffic to my classes and I find it's really effective if you take the time to like learn how to do that. Like, you know, Facebook advertising and stuff like that. More than anything, I use that like kind of in two aspects of my quote unquote funnel, right? One is like sort of prospecting, like putting this in front of people I know who don't know anything about me, right? Who are like maybe

lookalikes of my Facebook audience or have like certain interests or whatever. And then like, I'll also use it kind of for like retention and retargeting, like putting this class that I know somebody didn't purchase in front of them. And like now it comes with this bonus content and I know they're already somebody who buys my classes or whatever, you know, you can, you can take your email list and your recent purchasers and all that stuff and put that into Facebook as an audience and either include them or exclude them from certain types of audiences. I spend a couple grand a month doing that Facebook advertising. the kind of ad creative testing and audience testing, it can be, you know, like you're just like doubling your money. Like every dollar you put in, you're making two dollars or whatever. It's nice. But, you know, that's that's exactly like if you have a huge number of people already

coming to your blog who don't know you, but just they Googled like, you know, vegan blintz recipe or whatever, like that's your target audience already. You know, if you teach a class on that subject and it's just a matter of making sure they don't leave without like remembering who you are or getting on your email list or seeing whatever offer you might have, you know, of course, you're not going to like be able to convert, be able to convert 100% of those people at all. But it's up to your own design, how you present your classes or products and how you get that in front of that audience. Imagine if there was a tool that could easily make your website faster not only that but it would save you time and effort when dealing with images image compression is something that we are

really passionate about educating bloggers about and it doesn't have to be confusing with short pixel tools you can accomplish all of this and more. Their goal is to deliver the original looking images at the smallest size possible, which means that your website can run faster, which provides a better user experience for your readers. To learn more about ShortPixel and image compression, click the link in our show notes. Facebook ads are so interesting to me. I'm just curious, did you take a course or has this been something that you've researched in your own way? Because that is like a beast in and of itself. We actually have somebody coming on the podcast later this year who's going to kind of dive into that.

But just somebody as yourself who's using Facebook ads to generate more leads to your product that you're offering. How did you learn that? And like, because I know like investing back into your business can be a really scary thing to do. Yeah. I mean, look, I think I'm not an uncommon person that I hate Facebook ad manager. Like it's, it's a nightmare every time I go in there and if they're always changing stuff up and

I did very little of that, like the whole time I ran a food truck and restaurants and stuff, I was very lucky to get like a lot of press and word of mouth and stuff. But when I started selling classes through Eventbrite, they acquired this company called Tone. That was like, did this sort of like Facebook ads dumbed down type of interface that made it really fast and easy to be like, all right, here's like three different pictures. Here's three different like headline copies. Here's some, you know, different variations variations of the body text. And they would plug it in to different proven audiences

and basically throttle the better performing campaigns. It didn't work that well. I think it was supposed to work like that. And I definitely, in retrospect, probably burnt a lot of money that way. But when I stopped selling on Eventbrite and made it so that I'm entirely selling my classes through my own website, I knew I wanted to figure out this Facebook ads thing. And I was looking around for like, all right, what else could I use other than Facebook's ad manager to make this easier for me?

And I found this software that I really like, but I'll be totally honest, it does not make it easier. It makes it better. It creates a lot of opportunity for different automations and different kind of rules you give for your budgeting and ad spend and stuff. It's called Magix, and it's spelled in the wackiest freaking way you could ever spell the word Magix. There's like a D and an X or something. It's terrible. But it's spelled in like the wackiest freaking way you could ever spell the word magic. So there's like a D and an X or something like it's terrible, but it's a cool software and it really makes it easy to analyze like how different audience segments are functioning. And, but beyond that, like aside from controlling how you place your ads, you know, like a big part of making Facebook ads work well

is really testing like scientifically the elements of your ad, right? So I use this method where you, you run like a test kind of group before you even run any, you know, like purchase campaigns, right? Where you're trying to get people to like buy something and you're looking at the, you know, you've got a pixel on your site and you're looking at the like ROI of that advertising effort. Before I even do that, what I'll do is I run this test campaign where in one campaign, I'll have like three different ad sets, right? Ad sets are like Facebook's term for audiences, right? And I'll have one that is just variations of headlines with the same photograph and no ad copy. It's just the headline and I'm seeing and I'm running this whole campaign is like a traffic campaign to see

what's going to like encourage the best clickthrough rate, the outbound click-through rate. So I'll run 20 different variations of my headline as separate ads within that one ad set. And then I'll have another ad set that'll be one headline with 20 different ad creatives. Like, here's one with a video. Here's one with a text overlay. Here's one... I'll try to make them as diverse as possible so that you know, oh, are the best performing ones the ones that it's just a still picture of your food or it's got a person in it or whatever? And then I'll do another one where it's a bunch of different versions of my primary text. And then I'll look at the outbound. I'll just run them for 24 hours with a very small small budget. Like I'll give each one like a $3 budget. So you got to be prepared to spend like a few hundred dollars to do this test. But then after 24 hours, you can see, you know, which are the best performing headlines, images and body text and then you can kind of like put them together and have these things that like give you the best results and you know that it's not just some like anomaly like and you know why

they're clicking on it like because something if you're just like throwing spaghetti at the wall and you know putting up a picture you like like you might not know that the ad is working because of the headline that you put on it or not working because of the headline you put on it. And this way you have some like a little bit more scientific way of understanding like what's going to function. And then once you have that working, you know, ad or a couple different variations of the ad, then you run it as like an actual purchase campaign, like targeting, you know, a specific product or class or whatever. And it's much easier to scale that knowing that it's going to have a high outbound click rate, which is like that's in the same way that like your email subject line is like the envelope that you're getting people, you know,

like if people don't read the subject line and open the email, right? Same with the advertising on Facebook, like you could have a great landing page that converts well, but if you're running crappy ads that nobody's clicking on, you're not going to get that conversion. So hopefully that makes sense. Yeah, it takes some dedication and it takes patience. That was like a full day of my freaking time, like a couple weeks ago, running one of those tests. Like you got to like duplicate all these, you know, ads. And then when you do those kinds of tests, you want to like exclude all your hot and warm audiences from them, too, so that it's a really accurate test of like what's making these people click on it, not because they know you, but because they, you know, they

were like intrigued by that headline or whatever. So it does take a bunch of freaking time. And it's like, I know bloggers are not going to want to hear like, oh, here's a whole other job you now have to handle. But some of these things are like, if you have a tactic about it, you can find somebody who's great at running Facebook ads and just have them do that for you. I just do everything by myself because I like learning everything and I'm like real scrappy and stuff. Yeah. But

you don't have to. Yeah. It's kind of a genius way to do it because just like you said, it could be the headline, it could be the image, it could be any number of things. And if you if you just run one, then you really don't know what's working. And the other thing I like that you pointed out was that you ran it to a completely cold audience. Yeah. And you find this out quickly then. It's not like you got to run some campaign where you're throwing a lot of budget at something for weeks until it gets out of the learning phase for you to have any guess at why it is or is not working. This way, within 24 hours and a few hundred dollars, you know what's going

to work and then you can have that thing really run and throw some money at it. Yeah. Very intriguing. Jennifer and I, we always joke that we've donated a lot of money to Facebook when it comes to Facebook ads because we've just never been taught the proper way to utilize it. That's down the hatch, something that we'll do. But if you've ran Facebook ads and you feel like you haven't gotten anywhere, you could definitely try this tactic and see if it helps you at least refine who you're after. The other thing is that Facebook is doing a lot now in implementing AI in their advertising algorithm. And look, it doesn't work if you don't have a good, you know, ad itself. That's why this testing is really important. But then in terms of like who that ad gets put in

front of, Facebook's made some like crazy advancements within the last year with this like Advantage Plus shopping campaigns. And these, you know, like even their broad targeting has become a lot more influenced by AI to really try to put those ads in front of people who are likely to perform whatever the conversion objective is, you know, and it's changed a lot. It used to be that like years ago, you had to be like really finicky with like fine tuning these like interest based audiences. And now those don't seem to work that well. Like the kind of AI powered audience selection works pretty, pretty well. So yeah, it's an interesting time for that whole world. And you know, the other thing in regards to like third party cookies and stuff is having some other

way of attributing the success of a Facebook ad to like the purchase, right? And that's always been like a tricky thing. But since iOS like 14, when they kind of like rolled back a lot of privacy settings for iPhone users and stuff, it's been a lot trickier to like have correct attribution over ads. So that software Magix I use,

and there's a few others. There's this one called Hyros that's like just an attribution software. But Magix has this thing called Magic Cloud Tracking that's like their own first party cookies kind of way of making sure that you know where that purchase has come from. it got real fuzzy with that. And then you can't make very deliberate decisions based on the data they're giving you because they'll say, hey, this ad had like this many purchases, but like actually some of those purchases weren't caused by that ad. And now you're throwing more money at this ad that's not working as well as you think it's working. So having some means to have like a more clear understanding over that attribution becomes really important if you're like, if you're really incorporating that in your strategy for sales. I feel like I've learned a lot

about Facebook ads in the last few minutes. And I, you know, it's kind of exciting. No, I think it's exciting. I told you this was going to be a boring conversation, Facebook ads. But this is part of blogging that is important. I mean, especially if you have a product or service is how can you get in front of more people? Like, no, blogging is not dead, but we do have to be more creative with how we're getting in front of people and finding that ideal avatar and our ideal reader and or ideal purchaser, you know, just that person that we are really speaking to. And so I think it's helpful to see, like, how are bloggers doing this? Like, are you killing it on social media? Like, are you literally on social media, like nine hours a day

trying to find your ideal reader? I mean, I don't know anybody who wants to spend that much time on social media. So I mean, not saying it can't be like a tool that we utilize. But it's nice to know, like, this is kind of once again, the behind the scenes work that bloggers do is really refining who am I talking to? And how can I get in front of them more? Facebook ads is just another way that you can do that. And I know another thing that I've like heard you guys bring up on this podcast before that's really valuable is like really trying to get inside of the head of the people who purchase your stuff or who go to your blog, right? Like running polls and stuff and asking those questions. You know,

like for instance, I'm planning some whole like shake up of my own like membership, like subscription type of thing in the next month or so. And part of me was like, all right, how do I like present this and like really give the stuff that people are looking for? Right. And it depends on why somebody's purchasing my membership. Right. Like, and I could have the very misguided idea of why people, you know, what they really want to get out of it. So I went to my own community, you know, like I have a private Facebook group for it. And I was like, hey, why do you guys like come to this community? Like, what are you looking for here? Are you looking for just like more inspiration about cooking and like getting turned on to new ingredients and new methods? Do you just like like me and were a fan of my food truck thing? Are you looking for like easier stuff that makes it like more approachable to do this kind of cooking? And I was totally surprised by like what people said, you know, like it wasn't what I thought they were going to say. And by asking those questions,

then you can like give them what they actually want and also market it like to appeal to the, you know, their pain points or their desires or whatever, that's really, really valuable. And you can't do it if you don't ask. You can't just like guess why, you know, you think people, you know, I could say like, you know, they come to my blog because I'm so pretty looking or something, but the truth is in the pudding. People love to give their opinions. And we have to remind ourselves that if somebody's in a membership or if they're on our email list, they've tapped in. They're saying, I want to be part of this quote-unquote relationship. So it's okay to ask that

question like, Hey, why are you here? And we do say that. It's good. We encourage our students send out a yearly or twice a year survey. Ask people, are you getting what you want out of this? What is making you click? What is making you come here? What do you want more of? Or what do you want to learn? And that can just make our job easier as content creators when we know, are we hitting the target or are we off? And how can I adjust and shift to make sure that these people that I've already acquired as part of my community, how do I help them stay here? Like, that's the goal is to grow the community and further the impact.

And so, like you said, you're not going to know unless you ask. Yeah, like one thing I've done is I've kind of incorporated that feedback into like some of my lead magnets. Like I have some email opt-ins that are like, hey, this is like a 20 day email sequence that's like gonna teach you all these different things, right? And at the end of that, I'll have like a form that people can or cannot fill out.

And it's really helpful. Like, and it's just constantly being added to like what they did or didn't like about that program, like what they're actually really looking to learn. And it really informs my decisions in marketing quite a lot. Like you don't even have to make it something that you, it's like your new job that you have to remember

to send this thing out once a quarter. You can like find ways to put a form like that into things that are like occurring as automated sequences and stuff all the time. And then just every once in a while, you gotta check in with it and make sure the like tides then just every once in a while, you've got to check in with it and make sure the tides haven't shifted in some different direction.

I think you've really given good advice in general, not just about selling a cooking class or selling a product, but just as a blogger in general. You're constantly listening to your audience. And I know that's such a hard thing to do because you kind of get in a groove and you think you have your ideal person figured out, but your audience. And I know that's such a hard thing to do, because you kind of get in a groove and you think you have your ideal person figured out,

but your audience starts to grow and it may not grow in the way that you think it's going to. I know mine hasn't. And if you are at least asking for that feedback, you're listening to what people tell you, then you're able to meet them with what they need. And that is kind of the key to success is that you're providing the people what they want, what they need, what they ask for. Yeah. Even if you're not monetizing through like classes or your own product, then you know, like better what topics people are really coming to your blog for, you know, and that's going to like increase your sessions and all that stuff, you know? So just having a sense of like, that you're not just like relying on, you know, some keyword research tool

to tell you what to write. It's much more genuine and you're really there for your people, not just like having some algorithm tell you what is the next recipe you need to do. Yes. Adam, this has been so awesome. You've offered so much goodness,

like so many things that they can really take and I think, honestly, like call to action, like so many different calls to action that people can utilize after listening to this podcast. So thank you for just sharing your journey. So, so bravely, I think, because a lot of people, I think that that's how we help other bloggers is when we are willing to share what we've done and what's worked for us. So thank you for doing that. I mean, it's been like a huge part of my journey in this is that there's been resources like your podcast where you can just tune in and like hear so many great tips from other people who are like achieving some success in their own little way. And I think that I really appreciate that about this industry. Yes, we do very much. So thanks for that too. If you could let people know how they can connect with you,

that would be awesome. Sure. So my website is cinnamonsnail.com and all my stuff is there from my classes. If you want to see like the way I present them and kind of how I've structured the sales pages for those classes, that's there. And then, you know, I also have like

consulting services available on that site if you're interested in such stuff or you just want to learn how to make really good donuts because I teach you how to make some donuts. Awesome. We will put all of that in the show notes. And thanks for being here today, Adam. We appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you'd like to continue the conversation about blogging with us, please find us on Instagram at spark media concepts. You can also sign up for our weekly newsletter where we share blogging tips and inspiration. You can sign up by finding the link in the show notes. For those of you who are ready for the next step and want to start your own blog,

join the waitlist for the Ultimate Blog Bootcamp. The link to join the waitlist is also in the show notes. Go out and make today a great day.