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SHOW NOTES

Marketing is an intricate puzzle of moving parts. And sometimes it’s confusing to pinpoint the exact “problem” that needs fixed… Is it the ads or your funnel?

These parts have to work together, but also separately.

Think about it like this: If your ads aren’t connecting with the right audience, your funnel has a missing or broken piece. But, if your funnel’s not working, the ads won’t make much of a difference!

In this episode I’m detailing how my team of experts determines what’s not working properly (the ads or the funnel) and what we do to troubleshoot each problem.

Tune in for a quick (15 minute!) lesson in marketing, and then head over to Instagram (@emilyhirsh) to ask your follow-up questions! Tell me, are you having trouble with the ads… or the funnel?

Key Points:
[2:30] What’s the difference? Here’s an example to help you figure it out.
[4:29] Sometimes the ads are working + the funnel is not… But people blame the ads.
[5:42] Here’s how Team Hirsh would solve the problem with ads
[6:26] Now, here’s how to fix the funnel
[8:13] You have to identify the problem before you can fix anything!
[9:35] And honestly, the biggest hurdle is the TIME it takes

CTA:
If you’re ready to hire a rockstar team that will help you problem-solve + troubleshoot, head to HelpMyStrategy.com to apply to one of our variety of offerings! We would love to help you, if you’re the right fit.

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Episode Transcripts:  

Emily Hirsh: I’m Emily Hirsh, and this is the Hirsh Marketing Underground Podcast. Attention innovators, influencers, creators, and game-changing entrepreneurs: your internet domination begins right here. We are the powerhouse marketers that you’ve been looking for. You’re already making waves in your industry, and we’re here to help amplify those waves of change by creating a connection that cuts through the noise. We take everything you’ve built inside your zone of genius and find its audience. With killer strategy and laser eye for impact, we launch multimillion dollar campaigns and skyrocket your reach online. And now, we are doing the unheard of. We’re unveiling everything we’ve learned, taking you behind-the-scenes with the Hirsh Marketing Team, and giving away the secrets to our clients’ success. Stay tuned for top-converting strategy, ROI reports, and insider knowledge that you won’t find anywhere else. You’re changing the world, and we’re the team to help.

Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast. If you are new, hello. If you are a recurring regular listener, I appreciate you guys. All right, today I’m diving into the difference between Facebook ads versus your funnels performing. And I feel like this could be seen as an obvious one, but I think it’s really important to note, and I’ve had some conversations recently, actually over Instagram, with just a couple of people who were like, “Do you think that you guys could help me? And here’s kind of my situation.” And what I always go to is, is the problem, you know, why it’s not working right now, is it ads or is it the funnels? And I think it’s really important to note this. And in one way, they go together, but they don’t go together, like… they’re pieces to the overall marketing strategy puzzle. 

And so one thing we do in our company that I believe is different than most Facebook ad companies helping people with their ads is, we don’t just look at the ads, because they’re a piece of the puzzle. There’s a whole other piece, which is your actual backend and your foundation and your funnel and also your messaging. Those are all pieces to the whole marketing strategy success. And if you don’t separate these, you’re going to be frustrated, but you also have to remember that both things have to be working for your marketing strategy to be successful. So that’s something that I think people kind of… Like they blend it, and they’re like, “Oh, the whole thing’s not working.” 

And so what is the difference between Facebook ads versus your funnels performing? So let me just tell you about a conversation I recently had with somebody in Instagram. And they were asking me, “Do you think you guys can help me? Here’s my current situation.” And so they said… They’re doing a high ticket application funnel. Their cost per call was $600, and they’re doing a masterclass. And so with that information, I didn’t know. Was it the ad, or was it the funnel? That’s a very expensive, high cost per call. Like $100 to $150 is the max you want to pay, so it is not working. That’s very expensive. So I asked him, I said, “Okay. Tell me what your masterclass registration is? And do you think it’s the ads, or is it the funnel?” He said, “We’re paying $45 to $60 to register someone for our masterclass.” I said, “Okay, it’s the ads.” 

And so when you look at it, you’ve got to stop at the first thing that’s not working. So he very well could have issues with his masterclass that need improvement, but the first thing you really want to fix is that really high $45 to $60 cost per masterclass registration, because you’re not getting enough people in the funnel at that cost to know really efficiently, is the master class working? So then I could easily troubleshoot it with him. So he had another agency running his ad, so I said, “Most likely it’s the messaging.” And he pushed back on that. He said, “I don’t think it’s the messaging.” I said, “Can you tell me how many ad sets are in your campaign?” He said, “I think about five.” I said, “There’s the problem.” 

So when we run an ad campaign for clients, we usually have like 50 ad sets, because you’re testing multiple versions of creative, multiple audiences, and what you have to do is keep on doing that until it works. And so if you have five, and you’re just letting them sit there, no way. That’s the problem, so that’s the first thing that you would need to fix. So I said, “Yeah, we can help you. I definitely know we can help you. Like get on a call with my team.” So, anyways. 

But the other thing I see people do is, the Facebook ads are working and the funnel’s not, and they blame the ads. And so if you’re getting good cost per click on your ad, getting people to your landing page, and if you’re even maybe getting a good cost per conversion… so they’re signing up for the webinar, the cost is really good… then it is the funnel. A lot of times it’s the webinar, because webinars are really hard to master, and a lot of times people don’t do it enough times, and they turn it evergreen, and so a lot of times that’s the problem. 

But you have to be willing, when you’re running a marketing strategy, to look at both and fix the first hole that you find. So if we look at a funnel, and we’re like, “Oh, the cost per click is really high,” or “The cost per conversion to our webinar is really high,” like this individual who was messaging me, that would be the first thing that I would fix, because we’re just not getting enough traffic in to then find the next problem when there probably are more holes. But let’s start with the ads, and let’s fix that. Let’s get more traffic flowing in. And how we would do it, like the biggest things, is enough testing and messaging, and that’s how you get that cost per conversion down. 

And messaging meaning like, most of the time when somebody comes to me, and they don’t have something converting, it’s because they haven’t done enough testing, enough creative versions. These days Facebook wants constantly refresh of creative: new copy, new headlines, new images. And you just kind of have to keep going until you get something that really sticks. And then depending on your budget, you’re refreshing it every one to four weeks with something new. You’re not turning off anything that’s working. You’re putting new things up so that once that thing stops working, you have backup lined up. 

So that is how we would solve the ads, and then the funnel, what we have to do is really analyze the person going through it. So we have to look. Once they opt-in for the ad, what is happening? Are they coming to the webinar? Are they watching the whole webinar? Are they dropping off at certain minutes on the webinar? Are they even listening to the pitch? If they’re listening to the pitch, and they’re not buying, what’s wrong with the pitch? Let’s look at the whole, messaging as a whole. Are we giving them too much information, so they’re overwhelmed by the time it gets to the pitch? Do we need to look at our webinar and make sure that we have people have specific epiphanies and realizations during the webinar that they can do this, or the trust has been built, but you’re not giving them the blueprint. It’s a mistake people make a lot. So then when they get to the pitch, is the value being perceived in the product? Are we putting it in their shoes and looking at the whole thing?

And then, you know, usually the webinar’s the problem, so spend a lot of time troubleshooting that, but then you go to your follow-up email sequence. Are people reading it? Are they opening it? Is it getting delivered? Do we have enough information? Do we talk enough about client testimonials or customer testimonials versus just all about the business and what this does? Do we put ourselves in their shoes and fix it? And if you look at your ads in your funnel like a scientist trying to figure out the problem, and you don’t waver from that funnel, and you don’t change the whole strategy and start back at square one, and you really focus in on this, you will create a successful marketing strategy. You will, because it just is a matter of time, really looking at the messaging and the overall strategy, and nailing that. Those are the two huge components that you have to nail that have many pieces to them. 

But what is important is, you don’t ever say, “It is the Facebook ads,” or “It’s the funnel,” when it’s not. And so if your Facebook ads are doing really well… And I’ve seen people do this where Facebook ads are doing really well. They’re getting in quality leads. The funnel is definitely not working, but they just automatically say like, “Oh, the leads are not good quality.” It’s pretty hard to get bad quality leads with good targeting, and the targeting on Facebook is not like ninja targeting. Once you have data, you’re using a lot of strategic lookalike audiences, but if you use general audiences that people in your audience will like those pages, you’re not getting a bunch of poor quality targeting. 

The problem is the funnel or the messaging. And so don’t be quick to blame the poor quality targeting unless you have proof of that. Unless you’re like, I know… Like I can tell all these people on the webinar are not my ideal customer. Then, yeah, maybe either the targeting or the messaging is off. But it’s pretty hard if you go off of the simple strategy of, “Let’s go first and start with pages people in my audience like,” it’s pretty hard to have terrible targeting, so it’s probably the funnel and the messaging in the funnel, and so I’d focus on that if you’re getting those leads in. 

So bottom line of this short episode is really just making you think when something isn’t working in your marketing, are you one person to kind of blame the whole thing and say like, “Oh, the whole funnel needs to be redone. The whole marketing strategy sucks. We’re going to restart all of it.” Or are you able to piece it out with all the pieces that go into a Facebook ad, all the pieces that go into your funnel, and kind of just watch people go through each step, and find that first place that they’re getting stuck, and fix that. And then you do that again, and then you get people through again, and then you go, go, go until you find the next gap, and then you fix that. 

And I think the biggest thing that’s hard for people is the time that it takes to actually do this. The optimizing, and the updating, and the tweaking, and the copywriting, all of it, it’s hard to get a converting funnel for those reasons. That’s how you have success, and hopefully you have a team supporting you. And that’s something that I’m really passionate that we do for our clients is point out, “Hey, this is not working in the funnel. Here’s our suggestions.” And I think that’s something that separates us from a lot of other companies. 

But what I require, and what we actually screen for in clients is like, if we give you those suggestions, and you have a team to do them, and you don’t want to hire us to do them, you have to go do them. You have to go implement them and make those updates, because otherwise the ads are a waste. Not a waste, because if it’s working a little bit, but like, if you want to fully optimize it, we have to fully optimize it. And so my requirement is… I actually made a video for this for onboarding new clients… is that our relationship is seen like a partnership. And if we need support on the backend and of your foundation so that Facebook ads can do better, we need that, and we need that to be carried through. 

So make sure when you look at your marketing strategy, you’re comparing, and you’re separating things, and all the pieces. You’re fixing only what’s broken. You’re not changing what’s working. And you’re not blaming Facebook ads if it’s funnels, or blaming the funnel if it’s the ads. You’re figuring out what the actual problem is, ideally with some hard data to show it to you, and then you’re going and making the changes and the updates, and then you’re going to have a working funnel, and that is the process. It’s like rinse, repeat, do it again, and you just keep going until it’s working, and it will work. Marketing always works. It’s just a matter of time and nailing the messaging and the strategy. 

Thanks so much for listening today, guys. If you would like to work with Team Hirsh, if you would like that kind of brainpower on your account, on your marketing strategy, we have a few different offerings. Whether you’re going to do it yourself and you want a course, or whether you want us to do it for you with a few different levels, our performance and premier clients, you can go to HelpMyStrategy.com and apply to work with us today. We only take people we know we can help. We have a really tough application process, but we would love to have you if you’re the right fit. I’ll see you guys all on the next episode.

Thanks for listening to the Hirsh Marketing Underground Podcast. Go behind-the-scenes of multimillion dollar ad campaigns and strategies, dive deep into The Hirsh Process, and listen to our most popular episodes over at HirshMarketingUnderground.com. If you loved this episode of the podcast, do me a favor and head over to iTunes to subscribe and leave a review, so we can reach more people and change more lives with this content. That’s all for now, and I’ll catch you next time.