Organic isn’t more honest

One reason I’ve always been a little skiddish of paid ads for list growth (despite knowing at least a little bit about how to do it, and having spent thousands of dollars on it) is…

Subscriber quality.

Some genuinely great people have come into my world via paid ads. But the majority, like at least 60%, are fake emails, deliverability risks or folks who will never open or read anything I write.

Another reason was organic always felt somehow more honest.

But now I know that’s not true, and it’s a bad way to think about running a business. I now say, use whatever channels actually work for you and your business. Try ‘em all!!! Then pick the ones you like. And often times, the ones that work involve trading greenback dollars for someone else to show your stuff to others.

All to say, I’m running ads again to my own list with serious effort for the first time in a handful of years.

And I’m happy to say I’ve solved the subscriber quality problem.

Because the last thing I want is to fill my list folks who will bounce, complain, or just let my emails melt in the bottom of their inbox for all eternity and not ever engage with them (because that looks bad to email inbox providers and they will de-prioritize your email).

First, by using an email validation tool in my ad workflows.

This doesn’t just check if the email is valid, it can rank that email according to your specification across at least 10 or 12 metrics so you can be very specific and fine tune the type of people you’d like to subscribe to your email list. In my case, something like 60% of people who subscribe from ads just get dropped before they make their way to my list.

Then, the second way I’m solving the subscriber quality problem includes (safely and anonymously) sending data back to Meta about who actually sticks around and engages so Meta can find more people like that to show my ads to.

If that sounds creepy, I might used to think that way too.

Now I’m just like… Oh facebook only shows me stuff I’m interested in? Cool. Because the alternative is ads for gambling, trucks, and things I’m not interested in. I mean… I guess I’m interested in trucks, but I have no interest in seeing truck ads. Anyway…

All to say, you don’t have that power with organic social media.

You can’t tell the Threads algorithm that this subscriber is a good fit and that one is not. You can’t report your sales to Threads and say show my content to more people who are interested in my offers and services. And that’s not to say organic social media isn’t useful.

In fact, it’s particularly effective for writing to articulate your thoughts, build your brand, and establish credibility.

And I highly recommend you do both.

But the organic social media algorithms also often optimize for metrics that aren’t necessarily useful for your business. Which is why I’m doubling down on paid ads this year (and will be talking about it more inside the community as well).

So who’s with me?

Write back and let me know if you’re interested in running paid ads to grow your list.

Talk soon,

Kevin Hood