Are ads bad?

Without wasting time, the origin story of why we started advertising:

Aravind and I run an India-specific coffee newsletter for those who love specialty coffee and brew their coffee at home.

We acquired our first 50 subscribers organically. I tweeted out asking my feed to tag people who are into coffee. Then I spent half a day speaking to ~70 people one-on-one on DMs. The feedback validated the newsletter plus gave us insights on what our readers look for.

Our total distribution across socials and newsletters is ~15k. Plus coffee brewing is a micro-niche. These two reasons convinced us ads are the best way to grow our newsletter at a steady pace.

We started with Reddit ads.

We planned to advertise on IG from day 1 but gave Reddit ads a chance. Big mistake. We believed it was a good idea as nerds hang out in subReddits like r/indiacoffee, and Reddit allows us to target specific subs. We spent $10 to realize the platform gives you impressions but hardly any conversions. We acquired only one subscriber. Someone I respect and has great knowledge mentioned, “Reddit ads are known for bot traffic. You get a lot of impressions or visits but little conversions.” I don’t know how accurate it is, but it turned out to be true in our case.

We returned to Plan A: Meta ads.

I had no experience running ads. I set up whatever was needed and created a basic ad. We only wanted to know if this is a path worth pursuing.

The objective was to create a minimalistic ad with zero friction - since this is only a test. We didn’t make a fancy carousel or a reel, but a simple static image with text and a cat picture (coffee + cat is kinda our branding. You can see it here.)

We hit publish; the results were pleasantly surprising:

- $8.13 ad spend
- 31 subscribers
- $0.26 CAC

I spend $8-10 once a week when I work from cafés. I don’t know the industry standards yet but acquiring 31 subscribers for the same price as my day out seemed a good deal, for a start.

What worked?

• Little competition. We’re early in the India-Coffee scene. Especially in newsletters - there are some IG, YT creators/channels. I am sure the CAC would have been much higher for a saturated market like marketing, AI, personal development, etc.

• Cat image + Simple copy (“Coffee science for those who brew coffee at home”): I can’t help but notice how we go aweee to cute animals, especially cats. It’s not a trick; just our branding.

• Website: 8/10 folks say we have a cool website; thanks to Aravind. The coffee + cat theme makes it look premium, legit, and kinda cute.

• “Free”: We didn’t have the word free on our website prior to ads. But we felt it’s a good reassurance to improve conversions.

By the way, the ad:

What are we doing currently?

• Continuing what worked to keep up the momentum - unless a new creative performs better.

• I spoke to Pratish. He runs ads at his job. While the test ad gave me context, the chat with Pratish helped me understand the levels of optimization we can apply to our ads.

• I am going wild on testing. It feels like a game now. I am curious how changing ad sets (age groups, genders, cities, interests, etc.) and creatives bring different results. Figuring out the best ROI.

• Thinking long-term. The newsletter is still early, but I am also collecting data that our potential sponsors would love to look at. Or the kind of products/content we plan to build for our audience.

What’s the problem?

I shared this progress on Reddit and a few Redditors were disappointed.

When my post got traction, I received comments like:

• “Why would you spend money on ads?”

• “Focus on organic growth; why are you buying subscribers?”

• “Just post on social media and ask people to subscribe. Why waste money?”

It got me thinking, “Are ads bad?”

I didn’t take a minute to come up with “I don’t think so.”

For some reason, advertising is perceived as not working hard enough. I don’t really buy this notion, but I understand it.

We take years to build an organic audience and if someone achieves the same results by investing money, it doesn’t seem fair. I grew my email list to 2000 subscribers over two years and I spoke to someone who acquired 26000 subscribers in two months because he could invest in ads.

I get it.

With time, my thoughts as a marketer and content person have evolved.

For example, I thought shitposting on Twitter is bad and I should respect audience by posting only ‘valuable’ content. Now I shitpost all the time because it shows my personality and helps me stand out. It grabs eyeballs too and is important to maintain a fun:value balance.

No one likes a strict professor who is all work.

Similarly in marketing, I was against ads too. But with caffeineletter, we realised ads are the right way to grow fast and reach the right audience. Not to mention, paid marketing is not all we do.

Advertising is just a marketing channel like everything else - social media, influencer, SEO, and whatnot. It’s easy to fall into the imposter trap and think, “We don’t deserve this audience because we didn’t grind enough,” but hard to acknowledge it is a result of good ad, landing page, and eventually content. Our open rates and clicks remained the same even after doubling the subscribers; that tells a story.

There are 1000 ways to grow a product. Good marketers pick the ones with better ROI.