I Changed My Whole Offer a Month Ago. Here's Exactly How It Went.
If you've been following along for a while, you know I ran Hometown Advantage as a group program for two years. Over 200 people came through it. So many of them got incredible results.
But I got to a point where I felt stuck in the middle.
The group program was around $1,800. On the other end, I have my done-for-you agency, where we run ads for clients in the seven figure range. What I didn't have was anything in between, or anything more entry level to bring people in. And with ads, you really do need the full picture. So I made a decision.
I turned the group program into a membership.
I also pulled back on some of the deliverables, partly for personal reasons and partly because I wanted room to focus on other things I've got coming. I have an entrepreneurial streak that wants to try things, even the parts that feel a little scary. The highs, the lows, all of it. That's how I grow, and it's how I help the people I work with grow too.
So I said, let's try it. Let's see how it goes. I can always go back if it's not the right model.
How I Actually Launched It
First thing I did was stop taking new sales into the old group program, while still fully supporting everyone already in it. Then I started warming up my audience, my email list, and my social followers, telling them a change was coming and giving them a peek behind the curtain at why.
This part matters more than people think.
While I was warming everyone up, my team and I were literally moving the whole program to a new platform in the background. It worked out well because I could get people excited about what was coming while the tech side was getting built.
Here's the thing I want you to take from this if you're ever launching something new: people need time. They need to see behind the scenes. They need to know it's coming before you ask them to buy. If you can hold off opening the cart and warm people up first, do it. Every time.
Once the backend was ready, we opened the cart and let people join for about two weeks. We ran a limited time offer for anyone who chose the six month option, giving them their entire ad account set up by me and my team. Real deadline, real reason for it, not something made up to sound urgent.
We also hosted a live launch sprint for everyone who joined during that window, no matter which payment option they picked. I got on Zoom and walked people through creating their first ad from scratch, setting it up in Ads Manager, writing the copy, and launching it, all in three days.
The Numbers
When the cart closed, we had around 30 people join the membership. For a brand new offer, I was thrilled with that.
I don't have the exact split in front of me, but it was somewhere around 40% choosing the six month option and 60% choosing month to month. Cash collected from that launch came in around $10,000, and that's not even counting the recurring monthly payments still coming in from it.
And here's what really got me thinking. I didn't run a single ad for this launch. I tapped into my existing email list and my existing followers. That's it.
It's not a brand new audience finding out about me for the first time. It's a different version of an offer going out to people who already know me. And it worked because I've spent two years building that list and that community.
Honestly, it's changing how I think about audience building, even for my local clients. Having people who already know you, follow you, and trust you is a bank you can tap into whenever you need it. A cash injection, a new offer, a reason to fill your calendar, whatever it is. You don't have to wonder how you'll make it happen. You already have the resources.
Since then, we've kept promoting the membership through ads and a webinar funnel, and we're now up to 52 members. That funnel has been a slow and steady climb, and there's still plenty I want to test and optimize with it. That's probably its own episode.
What's Actually Happening Inside the Membership
I want to give you a peek at what members are seeing, because some of these results are wild.
My client Alexis owns a hair extension salon and sells high ticket services. She said her one regret is not joining sooner. After running local follower ads for just one week, she closed two appointments for $1,700 services. Compare that to what she was doing before, running cold audience lead gen ads through an agency at $240 per lead, where getting people to even show up felt like pulling teeth. Now she's seeing a 90% show rate, and people are showing up pre-sold.
That's not a fluke. It comes down to the type of content going out and how much visibility these particular ads get for a lower cost. The more you ask someone to do right out of the gate, like pull out their credit card, the more expensive it gets to reach people. But asking someone to simply check out your Instagram profile? Much cheaper, and just as powerful, if your profile is set up to answer their questions and bust their objections before they ever talk to you.
Then there's Brennan, who opened a physical therapy practice about two months ago. He published his ads at 1pm, and by that afternoon he already had new followers. He's running them at $8 a day. By the next day, one of those new followers had booked in as a new patient. He's since had more people come in and says he's getting buzz he hadn't seen since opening.
And Courtney, who owns a custom bathroom vanity store, has had over 14,000 views on one ad, gained over 100 new followers, and seen a real jump in calls and texts. All from one ad running under $20 a day.
None of these people are doing anything complicated. They're getting visibility in front of the right people, and their content is doing the work of pre-qualifying and connecting before anyone even picks up the phone. Because here's the truth: the best business in town doesn't automatically win. The business that knows how to actually get seen and heard by the people who need them, that's who wins.
What Else We're Doing In There
Beyond the wins, we've answered a mountain of tech questions inside the community (Ads Manager is its own kind of headache, so we're there for it), given feedback on offers and ad ideas, and completed 16 ad data audits so far. That's where, once someone's ad has run for seven days, we pull the data and tell them exactly what to do next. Sometimes that's turning an ad off because it's overspending. Sometimes it's telling someone their ad is working and to leave it alone. Sometimes it's pointing out the messaging is speaking to the wrong person entirely.
Members also get monthly post prompts, and coming up in August we're rolling out profile audits, live trainings breaking down real examples of good ads versus bad ads, and new Ready, Set, Launch spots. Ready, Set, Launch is our seven day ad intensive where you hand us your business info and we build and launch your ads for you that week, plus you get a month of one on one coaching with our ad managers and me afterward. Spots are limited because each ad manager can only take on one person a week, so if that's something you want, you'll want to be inside the community before mid-August.
Where This Leaves Me
I had so much fun putting this recap together. My hope is to come back in six months and be talking about hundreds of members and hundreds more stories just like Alexis, Brennan, and Courtney's.
If you've got questions about the membership, send us an email at support@nicoleeldridgemedia.com, or shoot me a DM on Instagram at nicoleeldridge_ads. I'll talk to you soon.
