The Two Warm-Up Paths
Warm cold traffic either by taking their credit card, or by retargeting the 75% who watched your boosted video.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 87%
When asked the best way to warm up paid traffic, Mawer names exactly two paths. The first is monetary: make the offer in your funnel so good that they buy even unwarmed, because the best way to warm someone up is for them to hand over their credit card — that transaction is a trade for attention, not money, and a buyer finally pays attention. The second blends organic and paid: take a video that already earned 100,000 organic views, put $10/day behind it to push it to a million views, then build a retargeting audience of everyone who watched 75% of it and send those 200,000 people to your webinar. They are still cold, but measurably warmer. He is explicit that email retargeting alone — which Hala tried — is not enough.
Origin
Hala asked directly how to warm people up, noting that she brought paid traffic to a webinar, got some conversions but everything was watered down, and even retargeted attendees by email without fixing it. Mawer answered with the two-part structure, drawing on his agency experience where cold prospects complete four commitment steps and still get on a sales call with no clue who the celebrity brand is.
Core principles
- 01The best way to warm someone up is to get them to hand you their credit card — then they pay attention.
- 02The transaction is a trade for attention, not money.
- 03Ad spend behind proven organic content buys reach into an already-validated video.
- 04Video-view retargeting at a 75% threshold isolates people who chose to keep watching.
- 05Warmer than cold is still cold — but it moves the numbers.
How to run it
- 1
Path one: build an offer good enough to buy cold
Design the funnel offer so a stranger wants it anyway, without warming. This is a design constraint on the offer, not a messaging trick.
Watch out This forces the price down into the sub-$100 spontaneous-decision band.
- 2
Convert them into a buyer of some sort
Any purchase flips the relationship. Once they have paid, they pay attention and you finally have an opportunity to warm them up properly.
Pro tip Think of it as trading for attention rather than for money — the revenue is incidental at this rung.
- 3
Path two: find your proven organic video
Pick content that already earned real organic traction — Mawer's example is a video with 100,000 organic views. The organic performance is the validation.
Pro tip Focus your organic effort on virality specifically so you have candidates for this step.
Watch out Do not boost content that never worked organically — you would be buying reach for a video the algorithm already rejected.
- 4
Put small ad spend behind it
Boost the proven video at roughly $10/day to take it from 100,000 to a million views. You are buying reach into content that is already validated.
Pro tip Boosted-post cost per click is far cheaper than product-selling ads — the economics of this step are forgiving.
- 5
Retarget the 75% watchers
From the ~900,000 new viewers, build an audience of the ~200,000 who watched 75% of the video, then send that audience to your webinar.
Pro tip The 75% threshold is doing the selection work — it filters for people who chose to keep watching you.
Watch out They are still cold. This makes them a little warmer, not warm. Keep cold-traffic expectations on the conversion math.
In the wild
Take one video that got 100,000 organic views, boost it at $10 a day to reach a million views, then target the 900,000 new viewers — specifically the 200,000 who watched 75% — and send them to the webinar.
→ The webinar audience arrives having actively watched most of a video from you. Still cold, but measurably warmer than a straight cold ad.
Hala drove cold ads to her webinar, captured emails, and retargeted attendees by email to keep warming them before the session. Everything was still watered down — attendance and conversion both dropped.
→ Mawer's implicit verdict: email follow-up does not create the know-like-trust that the two real warm-up mechanisms — a purchase, or deep video consumption — do.
Common mistakes
Relying on email retargeting to do the warming
Capturing an email and sending reminders does not build familiarity. Hala did exactly this and the funnel still tanked. Warmth comes from a transaction or from real consumed attention.
Boosting content that never worked organically
The whole point is buying reach into a validated video. Spending against content the organic algorithm already declined just buys impressions for a weak asset.
Treating a retargeted viewer as warm
Someone who watched 75% of a boosted video is a little warmer than cold, not warm. Applying warm-traffic conversion expectations to them re-creates the original disappointment.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders running paid ads to a webinar or mid-ticket offer who need a cheap way to raise conversion.
Not ideal for
Businesses with no organic content library and no low-ticket offer to sell.
From the transcript
“the best way to warm someone up is they hand their credit card to you and now they pay attention right because part of it…”
“always teach make an offer in a funnel and a sales process so good that they just want to buy anyway even if they aren't…”
“you take one video that got 100,000 organic views well now let's boost that at $10 a day take it to a million views and…”
“you can set it to hey people that watched 75% of that video so now you got 200,000 people that watch 75% of the video…”
From the episode
Rudy Mawer: The Ultimate Direct Response Playbook for Scaling Multi-Million-Dollar Brands
Rudy Mawer