This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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How can I sell a language learning program? That's what today's episode's about. Welcome to Side Hustle School. Chris Guillebeau here. Yesterday we went to Miami, at least virtually, at least in the listener question.
Today we're gonna hear from someone in Montreal, Montreal, Canada. Beautiful city, especially during the summer. Not such a fan during the winter. I was in Montreal twice in January. And I was like, wow, what a beautiful place to come back to when it's warm.
But hey, you're not here for my commentary on global cities. You're here for some actionable, helpful, perhaps inspirational advice or a story, a case study of somebody who starts a side hustle and income generating project, let's say, without quitting their job, using a skill they already have, and without going into debt, all good things. So let's investigate today how this language learning method is making waves worldwide. What can we learn from it? How can the creator be even more successful?
Today we're gonna hear, I'm not sure I actually have a name. Oh, Chloe. Chloe is the name. We're gonna hear from Chloe. She has developed this method and wants to take it further so that she can reach more people, grow the business.
You know, again, all good goals. Let's see what we can do to help Chloe. Quick shout out to our sponsor, and then you'll hear her question. [Music]
My name is Chloe and I love your show. I've crafted a unique method for rapidly learning new languages, which has helped me become fluent in four languages in less than two years.
Residing in Montreal, Canada, a city known for its bilingual culture, I see a huge potential market for this method. How can I leverage targeted social media advertising to reach language learners across the globe? What steps should I take to create compelling ad campaigns on platforms like Facebook and Instagram that highlight the unique benefits of my method? And how do I measure their success? [Music]
All right, Chloe, couple of things going on here.
Chloe asked specifically how do I leverage targeted social media advertising? Well, okay, so before you do, before you actually think about targeted social media advertising, you need to have an offer that converts. In fact, it's much better to spend time on the front end working on your offer, improving the product, thinking about messaging, maybe split testing some stuff. And social media advertising can help with that. You can spend like a small amount of money and do some split tests, and that will give you some information that you can then use to scale up.
But offer comes first, because if you don't have a great offer, or you might have a good product, like the method is good here, but people find the messaging confusing, or it's actually not the right person, or maybe the pricing isn't quite right. You need to figure out how to optimize the free trial. For example, all of that kind of stuff is gonna have a huge impact on the outcome or results of any paid ad campaign. So lots of times people waste a lot of money on social media ads because they haven't first actually figured out what the best offer is and what is the funnel that's driving people to the conversion that I desire, right? Which is, I assume, some kind of course sale or sign up for the app, some subscription, whatever it is.
So first do that. And a big part of that is understanding your niche market. Like specifically, I mean, lots of people want to learn languages. Who are you trying to serve, right? Who exactly are you trying to serve in terms of their demographics, but also their psychographics?
What are they interested in? They might be interested in travel, for example. They might be interested in food, culture, you know? These are the kinds of things that people who are interested in language learning typically are kind of motivated by, but it could also be career, could be some other things. So you figure all that out and that's going to go into the mix of your social media ad strategy.
So I would spend a lot more time on that than on anything else. And once you have a strong offer, once you've really kind of figured out who this is for, and I know the language that reaches them, then that's where it gets fun to do some social media ads. So do that first. And then I think the last thing Chloe asked is how do I measure their success? Well, then you need some metrics.
You need some pretty core metrics, like hard numbers that you're like, okay, if I spend, for every dollar I spend on social ads, I want to receive what? You know, do you want to receive, maybe let's say every $100, I want to receive X signups. I need X new customers. I need these customers to remain customers for X amount of time, whatever those metrics are. Those need to be hard numbers, as I say, because you're dealing with real money now, and then you start spending thousands of dollars, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars.
I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who spends $10,000 a month on Facebook ads, and that's not unusual at all, like people spend a lot more. So you want to make sure you have some clear numbers and not just like, oh, it feels right. That's a way to lose a lot of money on social media ads as well. Chloe, I hope this is helpful. It gives you some next steps to go on top of your next steps, the ones that you're already doing.
Listeners, if you have a question, sidehustleschool.com/questions, let me know what you're working on, what's going well, what is the struggle. Excited to bring you many more episodes this year, one every day, in fact, and it's always free. You can always listen wherever you want. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
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- From the Onward Project.
