🍦My best Facebook ad ever

It's so much simpler than you'll expect

Author

Ryan Sneddon
May 09, 2024

Hello, Life of Scoop. I haven’t sent one of these in 2 months. Let me explain why.

I am not a charlatan who tells you how to build a local newsletter without ever having built one myself. I started one 3.5 years ago that I still run. It is my entire CV as to why I’m qualified to teach you.

  • 18,500 subscribers. 22,000 Instagram followers.

  • 6 employees. Two of whom I hired in the last month. And I’m hiring one more today.

  • $22,000 of advertising delivered in April.

I’m also in the process of starting a new business and leading a fundraiser to raise a quarter million dollars for a local family who lost their breadwinner in a horrific triple murder.

I don’t say any of this to brag. Merely to explain Life of Scoop’s absence from your inbox.

Now let us move to today’s topic. I don’t claim to be the world’s foremost expert. But I’m sharing everything I’ve learned for free. And everyone knows you can’t complain when the restaurant comps your meal.

So, let’s learn about growing a local newsletter with Facebook ads, shall we?

The foundation of my local newsletter’s growth

If this woman ever visits Annapolis, I like to imagine she’ll be vaguely familiar to almost everyone in town. They won’t know why. And she won’t either. But I will.

This woman – I like to call her Brenda – is the reason Naptown Scoop has as many subscribers as we do. I spent thousands of dollars blasting her face all over town in my Facebook ads. Here’s how they looked.

That’s it. I targeted anyone who lived within a 10-mile radius of Annapolis. Eventually, I figured out the ads worked best when targeting only women and only women over the age of 40.

One other change I made was switching from ads that sent people to my website to Facebook lead ads (connected to Mailchimp by way of Zapier).

Facebook ads do not have to be complicated. When you have a local newsletter, you are not a DTC skincare brand trying to reach a very specific crowd. You are simply trying to reach the potential readers in your geographic area.

That targeting is absurdly easy. I don’t remember how I learned to run Facebook ads. And that’s how I know it’s easy.

YouTube it. Or book a consultation with me and I’ll help you set up the ad account and your first ads. But honestly, just go on YouTube and figure it out. Then target women over the age of 40 within 10 miles of your town.

They are your core readers. You can grow from there. But start with them. Now, to answer another question I get asked far too often.

How much money should I spend on Facebook ads?

As much as you’d like. That’s the beauty of Facebook ads. They aren’t like my newsletter where I charge a set rate and if you don’t like it, you can take a hike. You can spend $100 a week. You can spend $100 a day. You can spend $100 an hour if you like. It’s up to you.

Try to get subscribers for less than $3. You can track this easily if you use lead ads. You can afford to pay more once you start selling ads. But this is a good start.

And before you email me with questions, search YouTube. If you email me with any ad questions except those that pertain to the copy and creative of your ads, I will respond, “Did you YouTube this?”

It’s not because I don’t have time to answer your questions. It’s because the gurus on YouTube are ten thousand times more knowledgeable than I am. You’re better off asking them.

What’s cookin’ at Naptown Scoop?

I hired two sales reps and fired one. There’s nothing worse in business than realizing you hired the wrong person and having to fire them. But you have to do it fast. It was the right choice. The one I kept has been with me less than a month and has already closed 5 deals. He’s far too talented to be working for me. But he believes in my vision.

I hired a head of content. This is a fancy title for editor. She’ll choose our content, assign it to writers, and be the final eyes before it’s published. Once she is fully onboarded, I will be 100% removed from daily content production and only involved in our overall content strategy.

I’m hiring a social media intern today. Our social media has gotten boring. Times have changed and we have not. Lucky for me, I found a tremendously intelligent and talented college student to join my team this summer. It’s my hope that she will not leave at the end of the summer.

Life of Scoop’s referral program

If you share Life of Scoop, I’ll reward you.

  • Get 2 folks to join and I’ll send you a PDF of all the tools I use to run my local newsletter.

  • Get 15 and I’ll evaluate a writing sample and tell you how to improve.

  • Get 100 and I’ll give you a free hour of local newsletter consulting ($350 value).

  • And if you somehow get 1,000 I will fly you out to my newsletter’s annual party, put you up in a hotel, and make you the guest of honor.

Life of Scoop stuff