April 22, 2025
Data is Greta’s happy place, and in this episode of Bringing Simplicity Unfiltered she gets to talk about her favorite thing: the numbers behind ads that run to a downloadable, freebie, or quiz and lead to a sale. Judy keeps her hyper-focused (otherwise we’d be here for four hours), including the ad benchmarks we use for every freebie campaign.
As Greta says, data gives you the diagnosis for what’s going wrong, and strategy solves the problem. Here are the four metrics we always watch, the benchmarks to aim for, and a real client example showing how it all adds up.
Greta monitors about 15 data points, but if she only had four, she could still paint a picture of what needs to change:
If your ads person isn’t talking to you about all four, they probably aren’t doing a very good job on the strategy side.
There’s a misconception in the online space that you just need to hire a media buyer and they’ll solve all your problems. Media buyers are trained to get you a low cost per lead. Many aren’t looking at the full cycle, because what happens between a lead and a sale is in your control, not theirs. So they may not report on it or help you figure out what went wrong.
Ask ChatGPT for the key metrics for a media buyer and you’ll get click-through rate, cost per click, and cost per lead. It ends at leads. An ad strategist won’t leave out cost per sale. Some agencies have a strategist built in. Otherwise it might be someone you hire separately, or your OBM or operations person looking at the overall picture.
Judy adds that even your media buyer should have experience in your niche. Selling a course or a high-ticket coaching program is very different from selling a SaaS product.
CTR is the number of people who saw your ad and clicked through to your landing page. It’s calculated as clicks divided by impressions, times 100. For a downloadable resource, the benchmark is typically 0.9% to 1.5%, with top performers around 2%. So if 1,000 people see your ad and 15 click, you’re within the benchmark. That might sound small, but these ad benchmarks are predictable. We know we need to get in front of 1,000 people to get those 15 clicks.
CPC is your total spend divided by your number of clicks. We aim for $1 to $2.50, but it varies a lot depending on your audience. Dentists, realtors, and lawyers pay much more per click because more people are fighting for eyes in those markets.
Of the people who click and land on your page, 20% to 35% will typically give you their information on a freebie.
For freebies, we’re looking for a cost per lead of about $3 to $10 to get someone’s name and email.
A freebie typically goes straight into a nurture sequence (not a book-a-call). On a cold audience coming through ads, conversion from that email nurture to a sale is typically 1% to 3%.
You’ll even see ads claiming “freebies are dead.” Low-quality freebies are dead. Quality ones are good to go. The goal is to provide value so people get to know, like, and trust you, giving them a taste of what you offer without giving it all away and without it feeling like a bait and switch.
Judy’s simple version: ads buy people’s attention. Whether you realize it or not, you’re buying attention every time you post. Ads get you in front of more people and expand your audience in a predictable way, in a shorter period of time. They also build credibility, because people want to know you’re going to stick around, and ads help you show up consistently while the machine runs for you.
“I have 10K followers and an active community, so I don’t need ads, right?” No, you need to run them even more. Organic leads tend to click through at a higher rate (around 35%), but further down the funnel they convert at about the same percentage as ad leads. The difference is predictability. We can buy impressions and know roughly 1.5% will click. You can’t do that with organic.
And the stronger your organic, the better your ads perform, because you already have credibility and a following. Big companies still run commercials and flyers. The Hormozis run a lot of ads. Maybe you should consider it too.
One of our clients sells evergreen courses ranging from $297 up to about a $1,200 bundle. She’d been selling them organically, but it was a slow trickle. Here’s what her downloadable campaigns did in one month:
The one number Greta would work on is the 1.5% conversion to sale, possibly by adjusting the nurture emails or adding text messages.
We started in November with a Black Friday sale, spending only $300 a month on downloadables. Once we saw leads, conversions, and sales, we slowly increased the spend. Now we watch whether all the data points rise at the same rate as spend, because at some point results plateau and you keep spending money for the same results. Next, we’re introducing a second downloadable to compare.
Downloadables convert lower than things like a book-a-call. So we put the bulk of her budget into the highest-converting ads, where she spent $10K and made $90K. Freebies are just one tier of our three-tier ad strategy.
In your first month, stick to one freebie. You’re fine-tuning your click-through rate, which is tied to your graphics, hooks, and landing page. If you spread your budget across multiple freebies, it’s hard to know what isn’t converting.
For a downloadable freebie, a typical benchmark is 0.9% to 1.5%, with top performers around 2%.
Our ad benchmarks for cost per lead are $3 to $10, though it varies by audience and industry.
On cold traffic going through an email nurture sequence, expect about 1% to 3% of leads to purchase.
A media buyer typically focuses on getting a low cost per lead. An ad strategist looks at the full cycle, including what happens between the lead and the sale, so you can see your true cost per sale.
Yes. Organic doesn’t give you predictable reach, and a strong organic presence actually makes your ads perform better. They work best together.
If you want an ad strategist looking at the full picture, from click to sale, see our Meta ads services or contact us.
Want more? Watch every episode of Bringing Simplicity Unfiltered on our YouTube channel.
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