[social_warfare]

SHOW NOTES

Most advertisers (including my team) use standard retargeting ads…

If someone leaves an application before it’s complete, for example, you can create ad-specific copy that says, “Go back and finish your application!”

But, if you consider WHY your Ideal Client stops mid-application (and then meet that need with a retargeted ad!)… that’s the goldmine.

And that’s good marketing.

In my case, we realized the missing piece was additional NURTURING, i.e. high-quality content directly from me that speaks to their specific wants and needs.

That’s why we created retargeting ads with my podcast content (that links to their application, too!)

(NOTE – the specifics of this strategy might be different for you and your business, but the basic foundation should apply. Remember that cookie-cutter marketing doesn’t work! Consider how this applies to you.)

In this episode, I’m diving deep into…

• How we use content (from this podcast!) to nurture potential clients, INSIDE the sales sequence
• The MISTAKE you’re likely making (i.e. why your sales funnel feels too “sales-y”)
• And the #1 reason cookie-cutter marketing never works…

Tune in – and then head over to Instagram (@emilyhirsh) for more marketing tips, tricks, and advice!

P.S. JOIN ME for a free training about how to market during the pandemic on April 8 at 4pm PT/7pm EST! You’ll learn our 5-step process to marketing success, plus why your Facebook ads aren’t working + how to fix them. (BONUS: There’s also a 30-minute live Q+A with me!)

Key Points:
[2:28] This is different from standard retargeting ads…
[4:02] Here’s exactly how it works in my own marketing
[7:37] And here’s why this works!
[9:07] “How do you convince the lead to take that final step?”
[10:42] Remember, this is why there’s no such thing as cookie-cutter marketing

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Emily Hirsh:
Hello. Welcome back to the podcast. How is everyone doing? I hope you guys are having a great week, a great March, a great quarter one. I can’t believe it’s coming to the end of quarter one. Crazy. Today, I’m diving into a really cool nurturing strategy that we’re using on my ads, but also on client ads, of course. I’m actually going to share what we’re doing specifically with my marketing, just because I know it really well, because I’m obviously involved in the strategy on a deep level and working with my team on it. But it’s something we do for a lot of our clients, which is using my podcast to nurture the audience. The most basic way to use nurturing content is to just run brand awareness and visibility ads, which is a core part of our process.

We run ads to… whether it’s podcasts or Facebook lives, blog posts, whatever way the influencer or the entrepreneur produces content, we then take that strategically, put paid traffic behind it, and then promote it to what we call cold traffic, so people who don’t know about them. The goal with that is to actually get them to pay attention to the brand, consume the content, start to build a relationship, begin to be nurtured and build that relationship, so that we can then move them through the funnel and move them through the next steps. That’s a core part of The Hirsh Process. It’s step two out of five in The Hirsh Process, and we’re always doing that for every one of our clients, pretty much.

This is a little bit of a spin on the nurturing content that we’ve put, which is using it for retargeting an already warm audience. Here’s how we’re using it in my own funnel, which I’m going to use as the example, but we’re doing this in various ways. It’s very customized to the entrepreneur, but we’re doing it in various ways in other accounts. So my main funnel for the agency is called The MicroWebinar. It goes to a 30-minute training, and then on that page you can go and apply to work with us. A lot of times, people go to the webinar page… and it’s no opt-in. The webinar is just on the page. It’s no opt-in. They can watch part of the training or all of it, and the goal is that they go to step two on the page, which is fill out our client application, see if they’re approved. What we did was, anyone who goes… We get a lot of people who go to that page to watch the training, and then they either don’t finish the training or they don’t finish the application, but they’ve initiated that first step, right?

So instead of just doing retargeting ads, which we have, our “go back and finish your application,” which is kind of the standard retargeting ad you’d plug in there… we’re actually using my podcast to do a very nurturing retargeting ad. We thought, we know that they have some connection to me, right? They’ve clicked on the page, they’ve either read some of it or they’ve watched some of it, and now they have this connection. Now we need to push them over to fill out the application, which the application takes a little bit of time, because there’s a good amount of questions on there, so I am requiring their time and I’m requiring their patience, and so I needed to nurture them.

So we turned several of my top podcasts [into ads]. Now, I was very specific with the podcasts I chose for the marketing team to use. I was thinking about this client, this ideal client for the agency, and what would be the top five podcasts that they would want to listen to? We turned those into long-form copy, so it’s really describing the podcast summaries and pulling them in through that in the ad itself. We turned that into long-form copy, and then in the ad, it sends them to the podcast, but it also links them to go fill out the application. The ad is to the podcast, to go listen to the podcast, but it also has a link in there to go finish their application. Our thought process, and my thought process with my marketing team was, if somebody is interested in my microwebinar and they go consume that content, I need to nurture them more. So yes, I can retarget them, and we do retarget them to go complete their application, but why would they complete it?

Are they fully convinced that Hirsh Marketing is the marketing team for them, is the team that they should fill out an application to see if they should work with, potentially hire, take those steps, spend that time? Are they really fully convinced? Probably not, which is why they haven’t done the application yet. Just retargeting them with, “Hey, come and close this loop here and finish your application,” will work for some people, but for a significant amount of people, I need to keep convincing them. I need to keep nurturing them, so that’s what my podcast is for. We’re very strategic with my podcast in my company in the sense that it drives a lot of our marketing. It’s the one content that I create, that my team can write emails based off of, that can write posts based off of, that our ads team can use for different various ads… so we’re always strategic with that.

I chose the most powerful podcast episodes I thought that this audience would want, and then we turned those into ads, with the ad’s purpose to actually further nurture them. That’s the key here is like, with retargeting… here is why The Hirsh Process works, and here’s why I always say customize your strategy, because there is no cookie cutter, right? The general retargeting, if you listen to my content, that you would think here is, send them back to the application, which is absolutely true. But if you really put yourself in the position of that lead, you pretend like you’re them, and you think, “What would they need to be convinced that, ‘I want to invest in Hirsh Marketing’?” Well, they probably need a little bit more nurturing if they haven’t done it yet, if they haven’t filled out the application yet, so let’s take my top pieces of content and make it so obvious, so clear to them why they should come and finish this application, and nurture them straight in the newsfeed.

We created these long-form copy, and it obviously sends them to the podcast, but the goal behind it, the secret goal, is that they go and they fill out the application, and it’s working so well. When we started doing this, honestly, our applications, I don’t think they doubled, but they significantly went up. It also becomes a snowball effect, because what happens is, you get all these people who are going to that page, they’re watching my micro webinar, and then they end up inside this retargeting audience. They maybe see a couple of podcast episodes, and they keep seeing me, and they keep, like, “Hey, this is good content. I’m connecting with this,” or “This is exactly what I’m struggling with.” That’s the goal. I want them to have that feeling when they see my content. They do, and then eventually they will apply. That’s why it also becomes a snowball effect.

My theme here is, using your content and using your brand awareness type of content, this visibility content in a different way. We still run cold traffic to my podcast ads, too. That is technically brand awareness and visibility. That is step two of The Hirsh Process. This falls under step four, which is retargeting and sales, which is how do you convince the lead to take that final step that you want them to take to complete in the funnel? You have to ask yourself that question, and sometimes it’s relevant here to use content. In my case, it was.

Another way you could do this is, let’s say you have a webinar. You could use content to close the sale, and it can be like sales, but then it’s also still a little bit of nurturing. I think the mistake people make in that sales and retargeting step of The Hirsh Process, where it’s retargeting is, they get so salesy, they lose track of the fact that you’re still trying to connect with the lead. You’re still trying to nurture them to a close. You’re still trying to build that relationship with them to a close. So I’m not saying just send them to content. We still put the link to the application inside of that ad, and that’s the goal of the ad. That’s the actual goal of the ad, but it would actually appear that the goal of the ad is to go listen to the podcast.

But the thing is, I know my audience, and if that long-form copy resonates with them enough, they’re not going to go listen to the podcast. They’re going to be like, “I need help. I want to work with Hirsh Marketing. Let me go finish my application right now, because this girl is speaking to me.” That’s what I want them to feel. Do you see how my thought process here… and this is why there is no such thing as a cookie cutter marketing strategy, and this is why you have to customize it to your audience and your offer. I say that so much, because here is exactly why… I put myself, and my thought process [is] putting myself in my audience’s shoes and asking myself, “What would they need to read or to hear or to see in order to be convinced to take the next step,” which for me is the application. Maybe for you it’s to buy something, or to whatever.

I know that they needed some content, and I know that they needed some more convincing, most likely, so that’s what we did. We used it. And I was also strategic with it being long-form so they can read it in the newsfeed. We have some cool ones that are video. They’re like clips from the podcast episode, too, so they could listen to a clip of it. Some people might go listen to the podcast, but it’s all feeding that bigger picture of, “How do I stay top of mind all the time with them?” So think about your strategy, especially if you have an application strategy, you can use exactly what I just described here as your strategy. But we do this with webinars, too, and it’s just turning that sales and retargeting phase into still being sales, and still getting people to go take action and buy or apply or whatever your goal is, but it’s also… not losing sight of the nurturing.

When you get to that step, you’re not just like, “Okay, I turn into a sales machine now, and I don’t nurture and build a relationship with my audience.” You’re still here to nurture and build that relationship, and whatever that looks like, you have to put yourself in the shoes of the lead and decide what that looks like for you and how that is going to work in your funnel, your audience. That’s my nurturing strategy, using content to nurture your audience in a strategic sales way, and actually using it in a different step of The Hirsh Process. So I haven’t shared that before, but after testing this in client accounts and in my own account, it’s working extremely well. It just comes back to customizing that strategy for your offer, for your audience, for how you need to talk to your audience, and maintaining that connection and relationship building through every step of your marketing.

If you want to work with Team Hirsh and have strategies like this applied to your business, we customize every strategy. You come in as a client, you do a strategy call with our team, and we’re making sure we’re really creating strategies that work for your audience, for what you’re selling, for the way you create content… that is crucial to marketing success. There is no template, one-size-fits-all that works. I’ve never seen it. I don’t think it’ll ever exist, at least successfully. So you can go to helpmystrategy.com to apply to work with our team. Thanks so much for tuning in, and I will catch you guys on the next episode.