Opportunity Awaits podcast Episode Transcript
Aaron Henriques: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. And welcome to the get growing online podcast. My name is Aaron Henriques. And today I'm going to talk to you about why I blocked over 780,000 people from seeing my online ads. But just before I get going, I just wanted to just one thing out, if you start hearing some weird engine noises in the background or anything like that it's because I'm currently on an airfield for those of you who don't know.
[00:00:24]One of the things that I'm doing is I wanted to learn how to fly bigger aircraft than the current. Yeah, single engine planes that I could fly at the minute and during Corona virus I was actually on a commercial pilots training course, and I'm currently locked down on an airfield in Essex where I'm meant to be doing my training.
[00:00:45] And obviously at the minute they're not flying, but what they have been doing is engine running tests. So. If you are interested in aviation at all you can always head over to the British pilot podcast. That's another one of my podcasts that I have going. Or you can, you know, have a look at the pictures and stuff I put up on [00:01:00] my Instagram.
[00:01:00] It's @AaronHenray that's AaronHenray. Nearly forgot how to spell my name there. But yeah, you can have a look at that if you're interested in that, but the reason why I come on to this today is because. You know, while we've been on lockdown here. I've not, I've not had as much to study for in terms of like the aviation side.
[00:01:20] So I I've been, I've been doing a lot more with the get growing online sort of side of things. And actually this was an idea that I had back in 2018 and it's during Corona virus that I thought, you know what, let me just. Get it all set up and, you know, started and get it launched. Because I want to be helping, you know, small business owners or, you know, people who are looking at getting their own online businesses started.
[00:01:44] And one of the things that I want to sort of get people away from is the amount of hype and nonsense that you will see out there. Okay. It might sound really attractive and good, you know, go from six figures in, you know, go from zero to six figures in six weeks and crap like that. And [00:02:00] that's one of the things that I want to try and avoid people from getting into.
[00:02:03]So. The reason why I actually ended up blocking you know, over 780,000 people from seeing my ads. That was because I'd been running a campaign to my webinar. Some of you listening may have already seen that webinar. And what I noticed. But basically the way I set up my Facebook campaigns, when I first get started is I go wide first and then narrow down.
[00:02:26]I I've I've I now do that from over years and years and years of marketing on Facebook for across various different of my online businesses that I have. What I've noticed is that if you narrow it down too early, you actually put a massive cutoff of people who are really good customers, who you would never would have got through the really narrowed down sort of Facebook ads.
[00:02:47] So I go wide, fairly wide. First of all, then I start to narrow down. Once I start seeing the sort of people that are interacting with me and I noticed a trend and it was a trend that started to bother me [00:03:00] a bit, actually. So it's where it's really what made me sit down when I was here doing nothing to have a look at the stats and look at a look at the individual profiles of the people that are interacting with me that are following me.
[00:03:12]And the people that were signing up for the webinar versus the people that would like signing up and then not actually attending the webinar at all. Okay. So those people that weren't taking action on that they were just, you know, signing up, getting the freebie and then disappearing sort of thing. And the trend that I noticed that these people was, it was people who I actively don't want to attract into my own audience.
[00:03:36] Okay. And that might, that might seem bizarre. You know, when you're starting out in business people, they just want to get everyone they possibly can into their list. And they want to, you know, they, they, you know, they, they want this big following of people. To make it, you know, cause it's a vanity metric.
[00:03:50] It makes you feel good inside. Right. But I'm not interested in vanity metrics myself. I'm interested in, you know, what can grow, what can help grow my [00:04:00] businesses and the sort of people that I can help through doing that. Right. And so, yeah. The trend that I noticed was there was lots of people who are, you know, like intimate into MLM type businesses, you know, pyramid schemes you know, the zero to six figure in six week type rubbish that these people put out.
[00:04:19]You know, when he's fake millionaires that you know, where they'll, there'll be making out, you know, there'll be showing themselves with flashy cars, they probably walked past the car on their way today, job. You know, and they've, they've taken a picture then, then next to this really flashy car or some, you know, some fake Rolex that they've got on their wrist or something like that.
[00:04:34] And, you know, trying to convince you to join them and, you know, join their crappy little scheme that they're on their MLM scheme to you know, so, so they can make an extra five quid a month for whatever it is that they make on those things. And I started noticing quite a few of those people were starting to engage with my ad.
[00:04:52] So I actually had to look at my ads as well, and I ended up tweaking my ads and I was also looking at, well, why [00:05:00] is it? I mean, why is it I'm attracting these particular type of people and lots of cryptocurrency as well as lots of people. I mean, there are genuine people who do cryptocurrency very well, but there was also lots of these people who claim to be, you know, forex traders and all that stuff.
[00:05:12] And, you know, really they're, they're not okay. They don't have a clue about it. They've they've just seen that. Or they've heard that some people make a bit of money from it. And so they thought, well, I'm going to do that as well. Suddenly they wake up overnight and I'm a cryptocurrency trader, you know, that sort of thing.
[00:05:28] So those are the people that I wanted to dissuade from being in my audience. I don't want them in my list. I don't want them following me, interacting with me. I don't want them in my group. You know, I don't want them in the get growing online group because I don't want that sort of. You know, I, I don't want that sort of thing rubbing off on other people because it's easy to get caught up in these sort of schemes.
[00:05:51] And, you know, if you're the type of person you've, you've watched read the book, the secret or anything like that, and you know, you're stick, you're still sticking notes on your wall and stuff like that, [00:06:00] carrying around something in your pocket, you know, I've, I've read all these books, right. Because I feel like you shouldn't be, you know, it's hard to be critical or something that you actually haven't bothered to actually go out there and find anything out about it.
[00:06:11] So I have read them. Right. And I, you know, I don't resonate with things like that. As you may have heard throughout my previous podcasts, I'm more about practical things doing, you know, actually taking action on stuff to actually get results and actually build your businesses and, you know, long-term sustainable businesses.
[00:06:29] So what I did was when I started looking through individuals profiles, cause I had so much time. So I thought, well, okay, I find out who, the people who are engaging with me and who do people I don't want so that I can attract more of the people that I do want. And so I started looking through them and I noticed that all of those people, like I just mentioned MLM's, the fake millionaires, you know, who pretend to be millionaires, but actually they're, you know, they're probably stacking shelves in Tescos still.
[00:06:57] And there's not a problem with that with honest, hard day's work. [00:07:00] But honest is the key here. You know, there's no, there's no point trying to pretend that you're some fake millionaire when actually, you know, you are still, you know, you are still doing, you know, normal nine to five job. You know, for just above minimum wage.
[00:07:14] Okay. There's no point trying to pretend that to people, but lots of people do. And lots of people buy into that crap. And that's, that's something I definitely want to get you away from. So these people, you know, they're never going to get any value from me because the sort of things that I teach and the, the, you know, it's, it's never going to be in tune with what they're doing.
[00:07:34] You know what, whilst they're wasting their time and effort in trying to create these, you know, these fake businesses, these businesses that run on, you know, complete fakery, you know, there's people like myself and the other people that I work with and, you know, like yourselves, hopefully I'll, you know, people I want to be working with and want them in my groups and in my audience who actually be building real online businesses, like actual sustainable businesses, they actually give real value to their [00:08:00] customers.
[00:08:01] Okay. Not just, you know, fake stories and then people end up spending, I don't know, 500 pounds on some, you know, to join some MLM scheme. And then the only way they make money is by recruiting other people into that MLM scheme. You know, they're called pyramid schemes guys, but you know, they'd been rephrased as MLM schemes.
[00:08:21] Right. I, I don't want that sort of type of people in my audience. So. After I realized who they were, what I did is because I was running all of this through Facebook, all of this has been run through Facebook ads. I just went onto the audience and, you know, literally you can narrow down your audience and you can also not only target people who specifically want to get, but you can also within that group of people where these people were in, okay.
[00:08:48] You can also. Put like a negative sort of marker on so people who are into MLM type products, cryptocurrencies you know, the secret you know, does the zero to [00:09:00] six figure type schemes. I've put all of them as like within my audience that had, I think it was about 1.3 million people. I put all of those people.
[00:09:10] I didn't want. The people that have shown interest in certain types of things that I don't want in my audience as like a negative marker on, on the Facebook group or on the Facebook ads. And what that would do is make sure that Facebook doesn't show my ads to those people. Right. And so. Well, I'm going to be looking at over the next few days is, you know, who are the, who are the people who are now starting to follow and engage and are they different to the type of people before?
[00:09:36] And it may be that I have to fine tune it even more. And yes, among those, you know, there are going to be people who I would have been able to help, who I would love to have in the audience and you know, who do genuinely want. Yeah. You know, sustainable online businesses, but maybe they got caught up in all the hype that they'd read or, you know, one of their friends had convinced them to join this scheme and, you know, then they finally realized [00:10:00] that actually the only way they make money is not through to product, but it's actually through just recruiting other people to join this scheme.
[00:10:06] Okay. That that's not a business guys now that's, that's not okay. And if you are one of them people, you know, I'm sorry to say, it's not, that's not something I want. To, you know, I want to be involved in, it's not something I would teach you at all. Okay. I will only teach you to have online sustainable businesses.
[00:10:24] Okay. And hopefully, you know, keep listening because hopefully you'll start to see that all of that stuff that you may have been caught up in, in it's so easy to get caught up in. I've seen so many people, I know, get caught up in stuff like that, and then realize it's all fake. It's all a load of fakery.
[00:10:41] The only people making money are the people at the top in that. Right. So that's the main reason why, and I just thought I'd share that with, you know, this is just like, I'm a bit of like an extra side note episode, because you know, when, when people are starting their businesses, one of the, you [00:11:00] know, you see the things that they do when they start out, they'll, you know, What what's really common.
[00:11:05] And you may have seen this yourself, you know, you know, put your hands up if you have, because you know, I've done it and I've seen other people do it where they'll start, you know, they'll create you know, a Facebook create a Facebook page and they'll create like an Instagram page and a Twitter page.
[00:11:19] Then they'll get all their friends to like it. And they'll, they'll start, you know, they'll put out three or four posts and suddenly hope that somehow that is going to lead to them, making a load of money. And when it doesn't, I sit there a bit confused thinking, you know, why is no one buying from me? And then some people even get angry at their friends, you know, they're, they don't, they don't like the fact that their friends are not following their page or their friends are not you know, sharing their stuff and their friends are not liking their posts and stuff like that.
[00:11:48] And they get really annoyed about it. But, you know, really you shouldn't because if you've just got a ton of people who are not your customers, and that includes your friends, No for the things that I, I sell, [00:12:00] you know, with my digital marketing agency, for my you know, for it, for my cleaning company.
[00:12:05] Right. I've got lots of friends, but I don't invite those people to like my page. I don't invite those people to, you know, to see my posts or anything like that. Cause they're not, they're not in my audience. They're not my, they're not my target market for my buyers that, you know, they're, they're never going to be buying from me.
[00:12:21] And so why do I want them in my audience? I only want people. Who are genuine, you know, potential customers who I can give value to. Right. And that's something that you need to think about in your business, because if your main focus is about growing your Instagram following, or if it's about growing your, you know, people liking your Facebook posts, but not actually buying from you, then you don't have a business.
[00:12:47] Okay. So that, that's definitely something to, to think twice about is. Are the people who are joining your list, whether it's an email list or if it's, you know, your Facebook page or whatever, are they [00:13:00] actually potential customers for you in the future? Right? Because if they're not, there's no point in having them there.
[00:13:07] They literally, it's not, if you, if you cannot give value to them because they're not interested in what you do, you know, if you're, if you're making wedding cakes and that's all you do, okay. You. You know for, I don't know if you're, if you're trying to get, you know, some, a load of your friends who are already married to like your page and like your stuff and buy your stuff.
[00:13:26] I mean, they're not going to, they're already married. They're not going to buy a wedding cake from you are they. Okay. So on the, on that note as well, you know, if you are looking at growing your list, okay. I would highly recommend you do get people on your email list. And I explained to you why, right?
[00:13:43] Because I remember. I think it was early twenties, either late 2018 or early 2019. I, you know, I had over a list of, well over a thousand people. That's not much in, in that type of, in that type of industry, you know, it's a tight, it was a tiny, tiny list anyway, but I'd been bashing that list with [00:14:00] with emails about, about the digital marketing products that I had.
[00:14:04] And then I, then I sat down one time and I was sitting there thinking like, why are these people not buying? And I was, you know, sending out generic stuff to, to this, to this list then I thought. Do you know what, let me have a look through this list again, you know, boring, boring task, but I'm glad I did it because I've done it from my list.
[00:14:22] I started looking at it. Different industries and stuff. And I was looking at industries that were already helped. So I tried to identify more, some of the people who we'd already helped within that similar type of industry and that narrow down a particular industry down to just 26 people. Okay. So there was 26 emails in this little segment of that list of just over a thousand people.
[00:14:47] And so I thought, you know what, let me send out a tailored email to those 26. That's more specific to their industry, right? One email. And from that one email within a [00:15:00] couple of days, I've made over 12,000 pounds, just from that one email. Okay, because it was more tailored and more specific to them. And yeah, I had a ton of people that are on my list that were, you know, they were never engaging.
[00:15:10] You know, there was a ton of people that just opened emails, but never, ever clicked on any links. There's even way more people that never even opened the emails and stuff like that. So I thought. Well, let me make something a bit more specific. And the reason why I'm talking about email is because the problem with just relying on a Facebook group or anything like that is your heavily reliant on their own alogarithms.
[00:15:31] Now. If you've got a Facebook page and you've got 10,000 people, but then some, for some reason, Facebook decide that they're changing their rules and your particular type of business, or the type of posts that are going on in there are no longer allow them Facebook and they shut down your group. You've just lost 10,000 contacts, 10,000 potential customers.
[00:15:53] Whereas if you've got your own email list, right, if you've got your own email list, you don't lose them [00:16:00] because. If Facebook shut down, you've still got your list. So you need to be encouraging people to get onto your email list so that you can contact them and not so that you can bombard them and spam them and stuff like that, you know, give them value.
[00:16:12] Okay. I'm really crappy at emails. I admit that I'm I'm crappy emails because it's not so much email content is the fact that I don't send out enough. You know, I, I, I may go two months and I don't send an email to the list. And then I've got to remind people who am again, you know, sort of free to email if they're not listening to my podcasts or they're not engaged in anything else that I'm doing online, like on my Instagram or whatever, they'll forget who I am.
[00:16:35] They're like, who's this guy. Right? And then that's when you'll start getting a lot of unsubscribes. If you're not constantly showing up and showing these people that you're engaged with what they're doing. And so, yeah, if you are looking at, if you are looking at growing your list, Be careful of who you're putting in there because you could eat, you know, you can have a thousand people, but like I showed you, I narrowed it down to [00:17:00] just 26 and then made 12 grand.
[00:17:02] Whereas when I was bombarding, you know, bombarding, but I was sending out emails to that whole list of a thousand people that are more generic, then it wasn't making any sales from that. That's not where I was getting my sales from. Right. And it's only because I took that time and actually narrowed down to people that.
[00:17:20] Actually, you know, potentially that, you know, the right type of people for my business, that I actually made some money. Okay. And that's going to be exactly the same for you. So don't, don't be going out there thinking, look, I need to get 10,000 followers and I need to, you know, get an email list of thousands of thousand people.
[00:17:38] You just don't need that. Right. But we do need as the right people on your list. And all that starts from is how your. How you're sort of presenting yourself and who you're presenting yourself to. Okay. So if you do have a fairly wide you know, advert, that's going out to a wide group of people have a look at who, in those who are in that group of people [00:18:00] who are interacting with you, or actually people you don't want on your list and people you don't want, you know, you don't feel that you can give value to because of the way that they do things or, you know, the industry that they're in, for example, okay.
[00:18:15] And when you find that out, then all you need to do is not show your ads to them. Okay. So you'll exclude them from your ads. Okay. If you're not running ads, Then think about your messaging overall. You know, if you're putting up posts, like my posts, I, one of my posts I took down because I feel like it was too, it was too close to those type of posts that people who deal with MLMs and stuff would see this as sort of, you know, clickbait that they would click on.
[00:18:45] So I took down those ads and I just put up new ads that are a lot more. Sort of plain and a lot more like less click baity, but they are designed to attract the right type of person into my audience. And hopefully that's you, you know, if you've [00:19:00] come from one of the Facebook ads, fantastic, good to see you here.
[00:19:02] Right. You know, always get in touch with me. I like I said, I just wanted to put that out there because it's important for people to realize that it's not about the numbers, you know, it's not about, it's not all about the numbers of people that you can get into your list. It's about the quality that you have there, right.
[00:19:20] That sort of people that can resonate with what you're doing. Okay. So that's it from me today. Of course, like I said, if you want to join our, you know, you can know that you can obviously follow me. I've already told you, you can follow my personal account. I don't really. Do anything about get growing online on my personal account, it's more, you know, you'll just see stuff of flying and wherever else I happened to be doing that day.
[00:19:41] Not much at the minute, because obviously you locked down. But it's @ AaronHenray on Instagram Aaron Henray on Instagram. It's also, you can get me on Facebook. If you want to follow my page on Facebook, or of course what I'd welcome me to do. I used to join the, get growing online Facebook groups.
[00:19:59] If you go [00:20:00] to Facebook and just typing, get growing online it's also, you also have the links in the show notes, so you can just click on the links in the show notes, and it will take you straight to the group. Just click on the apply apply to register or whatever it says on the screen to you to, to register into the group and get in the group, you know, ask any questions that you have, and if you use any sort of thing, any value you can bring to the group, you know, Do that, but don't be afraid of asking questions because everyone of us we're all at different stages.
[00:20:26] Right. You know, I started my first type of, you know, my, my first journey into online business was in 2005. Okay. For some of you, you are 15 years behind where you're just starting out now. Right? So there's people at different stages. There are definitely people who are ahead of me. Right. There's a way ahead of me in, in many respects of online businesses.
[00:20:46] So, you know, get involved and we can all help each other out. Cause we're all at different stages and don't be afraid to ask questions because at one point I had those questions and every single person that will be in the group and that will be [00:21:00] involved, also had those questions at one point. Okay. So also if there's anything that you want to see.
[00:21:05]On the podcasts that you know, that maybe I haven't spoken about, haven't mentioned that's coming up in the future, then get involved. You know, you can contact me on my Instagram or you can just pop it into corporate into group, actually, you know what? Get in the, get growing online group and pop it in the group.
[00:21:19] And you know, if it's something that I can talk about or have experience in, then I'll talk about it. If it's not, I'll see if I have anyone in my. You know, my contacts who could actually come on onto a podcast episode with me and actually talk about this, because maybe they're more of an expert in that field than I, than I am, then I can actually give to you myself.
[00:21:38] Hopefully we can give value in that way as well. Okay. So have a good week and yeah, I'll look forward to the next one.
