Run paid ads and scale lead flow 4 of 23 in this group
SOP 38
Turn the best organic post into an ad
What this page is for. Use it when something you posted for free performed unusually well. There are two things to do with that piece and one thing not to do with it, and running it as a paid advertisement is only the first of them. The page also covers the customer-made version of the same idea, which is the form that keeps producing material after you stop.
SOP-38-Turn-the-best-organic-post-into-an-ad.md
1. The finding
Your best free content can make your best advertisements.
Some of the best advertisements ever made were never meant to be advertisements. They were high-quality videos, made as content, that got shared widely — and somebody then thought to put money behind one.
Why it works twice. When you turn a video the platform already likes into an advertisement, the platform keeps liking it. It was being shared, so the platform was already showing it to more people; now it shows a paid version of the same thing to more people again. That is the double win.
Content that was not intended to be an advertisement usually makes some of the best advertisements there are, for exactly that reason.
2. Spotting the piece
You do not choose the piece. It announces itself.
Some content performs better and gets more people interested in buying, simply because the subject sits closer to what you sell. When you post something and a run of inquiries follows, that is the piece.
The thing not to do. Do not start posting more of that kind of content. A piece that produces inquiries is probably already closer to an ask than to a give, and turning your feed toward it spends the goodwill the give-to-ask ratio on SOP 24 exists to protect. You might have made it accidentally. That is fine. Get back to providing value.
What you do instead is take that one piece out and put it to work twice.
3. Use one: run it as a paid advertisement
Scoop the piece out of the feed and run it as a paid advertisement.
| Step | What you do |
|---|---|
| 1 | Identify the piece by the inquiries it produced, not by how much you liked it |
| 2 | Run it as a paid advertisement on the platform chosen on SOP 35 |
| 3 | Target it using SOP 36 |
| 4 | Point it at the landing page on SOP 37 |
| 5 | Return your posting to giving, on the cadence on SOP 26 |
This route skips the production problem on SOP 34 entirely, because the hook has already been tested — by the audience, for free, at scale.
4. Use two: a greatest-hits list for the sales team
The same piece also earns its keep inside the sales process.
Over time, as you make enough content, you accumulate more of these pieces, and each one usually lands on one specific worry a prospect raises — that it will take too long, that it might turn out to be complicated, that it may not work where they are, or whatever the standing objections happen to be in your own category.
| Step | What you do |
|---|---|
| 1 | Write down the objections prospects usually struggle with |
| 2 | Match each one to the piece of content that overcomes it |
| 3 | Label each piece with the problem it solves and the benefit it gives the prospect |
| 4 | Give the sales team the labeled list |
| 5 | When a prospect raises an objection, the rep sends one or two matching pieces |
Why the labeling matters. A labeled list lets a rep match the prospect to the right piece — the exact one for that objection — instead of sending whatever comes to mind. What the prospect receives looks like content and is functioning as a sales tool, and the side effect is that they consume more of your content between calls, which makes them more likely to close.
5. Beside the two uses: free content retains the customers you are already paid by
This is not a third use of the piece. It is a point about free content as a whole, and it changes what free content is for.
What a customer notices is not which part of you the value came from, only that it came from you. Somebody who is already paying you, and who also watches what you give away free, does not keep the two apart. They know they got value from you. So if the free content is good, they like you more and stay a paying customer longer — and the free content is quietly doing retention work that nobody budgeted for it.
That reverses the usual fear. Business owners are typically afraid of giving away too much free work, on the grounds that it short-changes the people who paid. It does not. It reinforces, for the people who already paid, that paying you was the right choice.
6. The customer-made version, and the flywheel it makes
The same principle runs one step further out, with customers making the videos instead of you.
If you can build a system that encourages your customers to make videos consistently — testimonials, recordings of themselves using the product or service, unboxing videos — then once that is a machine rather than an occasional favor, you can plug its output straight into your advertising.
| Stage | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1 | Customers make videos |
| 2 | Those videos run as advertisements |
| 3 | The advertisements bring in more customers |
| 4 | Those customers make more videos |
That is a flywheel, and the point of describing it as one is where you stand relative to it: once the machine is running, you are stepped out of the process entirely, and what you are doing is collecting the result rather than making the videos.
7. The order to run this in
| Question | The answer |
|---|---|
| Who runs this | You, and then your customers |
| What starts it | A piece of free content that produced a run of inquiries |
| What you do not do | Post more of the same kind; return to giving |
| First use | Run it as a paid advertisement |
| Second use | Label it and give it to the sales team as an objection tool |
| Beside the two uses | Free content does retention work for paying customers |
| A further source of material | Customer-made videos, produced by a system rather than by asking |
| Why the paid version works | The platform already favors a piece people are sharing |
| How many pieces belong on a greatest-hits list | Not established on this page |
| How much to spend behind a converted post | Not established on this page |
| Judging the paid version once it runs | Against a target cost, then cut it or scale it: SOP 275, section 7; its test budget is section 5 |
8. What this page does not cover
How often to post, and the twice-monthly session that produces the content in the first place, are on SOP 26. SOP 24 governs how often this audience may be asked for anything, and SOP 25 governs how wide a subject you post at. Building an advertisement from nothing is on SOP 32, SOP 33 and SOP 34. SOP 35 picks the platform, SOP 36 picks the audience, and SOP 37 builds the page the advertisement points at. Proof elements, which is what a customer testimonial is doing inside an advertisement, are on SOP 15.
Rights and permissions for customer-made videos, editing, and the cost arithmetic behind the spend are not covered on this page.
Terms defined on this page
- Customer video flywheel
- Customers keep making clips, the clips run as ads, the ads bring customers, and the new customers make more clips, so you are no longer the one producing.
- Greatest-hits list
- The content and customer results that convert, each tagged by who is in it, the problem it solves and the objection it answers, handed to reps so they can send the best-fitting proof before or during the sale.
- Organic post as ad
- Taking a free post that did unusually well, adding a call to action tied to a lead magnet or offer, and running it as a paid ad. A post that draws inquiries is likely nearer an ask, so don't start posting more like it.