[social_warfare]

SHOW NOTES

Curious about the experience of being a Hirsh Marketing client? 

I have the unique opportunity to have that experience myself – because Team Hirsh runs all my ads! 

So in this episode, I’m sharing a behind-the-scenes look at The Hirsh Process in action, using our microwebinar-to-application funnel (more about that in episode 136!)

You’ll often hear me say, “Follow the process, and I promise – marketing will work for you!” 

But here’s my proof. 

In this behind-the-scenes look at our “test, refine, repeat” process to marketing, I’ll take you through our ads strategy + how we determined the parts to refine, PLUS… 

• Why the “perfect funnel” is a complete MYTH
• The #1 mistake to AVOID (+my many reasons why!)
• And why I’m willing to pay $500 per application… 

If you want this level of support in your own company, head to HelpMyStrategy.com to apply for a free strategy call!

Listen to episode 136, “The microwebinar strategy,” for more about that!

Key Points:
[2:25] Here’s the basic process: Test, Refine, Repeat
[3:59] The biggest mistake you can make is…
[5:43] Here’s exactly how I use this process with our microwebinar-to-application funnel
[9:16] Our biggest area of refinement was MESSAGING (which is pretty common)
[11:52] My Team treats me like a Hirsh Marketing client – so this is what working with us will be like!
[15:03] For example – by knowing my numbers, I know my max spend
[16:18] Improving this funnel, improves other parts of my business, too (so it’s okay to focus on JUST ONE!)

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Emily:

Hello friends, how are you all doing? I am excited for today’s episode because I love going back to core, foundational things and telling them to you guys as many times as I can, to pound them into your head. And, that is what I’m doing today because I’ve definitely done episodes like this, around this, in different ways. But, I want you all to also know that I follow my own process for my own business. So I’m going to tell you what we have been doing with our own funnel, our own microwebinar and application funnel, so that you know I do it, too. And, because it works, and because that’s the only way to do it.

And so, what I talk about a lot is the importance of basically following this cycle of putting out a funnel, putting data through it… so actually driving paid ads, running traffic through it. Getting people to take action, go through the funnel, so that you see all the numbers. Tracking all those numbers and watching them, and then looking at the numbers and letting the data tell you what you need to fix and what you need to update. Updating it and then doing it again.

Test, refine, repeat. Just keep on doing that. Keep on making things better, because I would argue, you’ll never have a perfect funnel. There’s always things you can improve, because the data will always tell you where holes are. There always will be a hole, even if it’s small. Even if your funnel is profitable, you still have ways you can improve it and make more money. So if you stick to that and you really focus on that one funnel, you will see so much results and amazing results.

And, I know this, because I’ve seen it happen dozens and dozens and dozens of times with our clients. We’re huge on this. And then, also I do it with my own company, and the key here is this, you have to have a focus with one main product that you push and you sell, or service. And, a very clear customer avatar or ideal client that you’re going after, and one strategy that you are trying to create, so that funnel. And so, then you have to run traffic to that and continually do that process of test, refine, repeat, with that one funnel.

And so, here’s the huge mistake that people make and why I do so much content on this, because I see this mistake happening so much, is people will create a funnel, have their offer, they’ll create their funnel, they’ll run traffic to it. It maybe… Let’s go with the theory that it works, it’s profitable, and then they decide, “Okay, my next step is, create a whole new funnel.” And, just let the one that’s working there either sit at the same ad spend or use it for a little bit and then switch. That is killing your success because what you should be doing is optimizing that funnel so you can make it even more profitable, and then spending more money on it. So you can get even more results with it and make more money with it, and scaling that.

Let’s go with the theory that it doesn’t work. So you create the funnel, you have the offer, you run traffic to it, it’s not making you money back. What people do is, they will go and make a brand new funnel and throw that whole funnel away. When in theory, a piece of that funnel probably works fine or several pieces of it, and you just need to fix a few things. Maybe it’s your messaging. A lot of times it’s messaging. Maybe it’s the positioning of your offer. Maybe it’s the way you’re nurturing and your strategy, the way you’re selling your offer. There’s many points, but the data will tell us the answers.

So we must track the data, let the data tell us what we need to fix, what we need to update, what’s not working, fix the holes, do it again until it’s working. And I say this, I get quoted on this, it’s my favorite thing. Marketing always works, it’s just a matter of when. And, your willingness and dedication to follow this process continually, and invest in the longterm of your company, is what’s going to decide that when. So here’s what we did, exactly what we did with my funnel.

So in November of 2019, I launched my microwebinar funnel, which I did a podcast about the microwebinar, if you want to reference that and what that strategy is [episode 136]. But essentially, it’s a short video. I’m not requiring anybody to opt-in and below the video is our application. So it’s, watch this video, apply for our free strategy audit. It’s about a 20-minute video and the goal is to get applications. So it’s an application funnel, but it’s my thinking and theory behind, my own theory, behind the microwebinar. And, the reason why I don’t require an opt-in is because for high ticket sales, those people, that ideal customer, rarely opts-in to things and watches an hour webinar. If I think about myself, I haven’t done that in a long time.

And, what they want is they just need to be proven that they need your help, whatever it is that you offer. And so, they need to see that in a video format, is the best way. And then, they need to go apply. And, the actual strategy call in this session has value in it, and so that’s a free thing. You’re not getting them to obviously buy on that page. So that’s why this works. So we launched the micro webinar, we ran it, let’s say November to February. So December, January, February… November, December, January, February. Yeah, three full months. It was really three and a half. Three and a half months, it converts, it’s getting applications, it’s converting to sales. We’ve made money off of it, we’re hitting our targets. We had to adjust our targets a little bit. I can talk about that in a second.

But what I did was, we ran it for just over three months, and then we audited everything. So we took all of that data, we looked at the ad data, we looked at how many people were watching the webinar, how long they were staying on. And, we also analyzed heavily, the leads that came in and actually had a call and the quality of those leads. So I did a whole audit. Aandra Bohlen, if you know her, she’s amazing, she actually does our sales calls. But, I hired her to do an audit of my webinars, because she is very good at messaging, and she’s doing my calls. So she has all this feedback about if those leads are right and what was wrong, and the pain points I could touch on. So we did a whole audit.

I reworked my entire webinar based on that audit and just made it even better. It was already good, but made it better, next level. And then, we also changed a few things with the ad strategy, because what we found was, the best applicants had already had a touch point. And so, we massively upped our podcast ad spend to then make, “Okay first they see the first level of the visibility, brand awareness and The Hirsh Process. They see podcast ads and then they see the microwebinar and then we have re targeted application ads.” So, that’s our levels.

We do run the microwebinar to some cold traffic. But honestly, it hasn’t been crazy successful. They need to have another touch point, because I’m asking them… Investing in working with our company is high-ticket, it’s not a small, it’s creating a partnership. So most people need to have, either be referred and know that we’re awesome or have a couple of touch points.

So first of all, I’m excited about this because it works so well. We’ve already improved our conversions, just by doing that and got in the right… Getting in the right people to this application, and I want you guys to see, I follow this process for a reason, because it works because it can’t go wrong, because if you want to be successful, just do this and continually do this. It’s not actually hard, it’s foundational stuff.

So we updated the microwebinar and what we also found was, the biggest thing for us was messaging, that we were improving. So the messaging on the webinar itself, the messaging on the application page, we redid. And then, also the podcast that we choose to promote, instead of just saying, “I’m going to promote every single episode I put out.” We chose specifically, podcasts that were speaking to our ideal customer. I always try to speak to our ideal customer, but for example, a podcast about leadership won’t really… It’s great, and it helps people connect with me, and I like doing those podcasts and people love listening to them. But, that’s not boldly telling people what we do and that we run paid ads and who we are and who we want to work with. It would be a little confusing.

So we chose specific podcasts that would speak to both our premier and our performance clients. Because, we have two different clients that we speak to, depending on where they are in their business. They’re either ready to scale, have run successful ads, and they want to take it to the next level or they have success organically, they have got a product, they know who their audience is but they haven’t maybe run ads or they’ve only run a small amount of ads, and they need to take it to the next level, bring in high level strategy by that data.

So we have two different clients and so we chose episodes speaking specifically to them. We run traffic to those and then we re-target people to the microwebinar. I updated the whole webinar to have very specific language to talk to the people. And, that was the biggest thing we took away from the audit was, we just needed to go deeper with our messaging. And honestly, there’s almost always room for you to improve messaging because if you just listen to your audience, if you really pay attention to things people are saying, to actions they take, to reasons why they don’t buy. If you really pay attention to that, you can always improve your messaging.

And, messaging is so important. Language and how we connect with people, is everything in your marketing strategy. So I didn’t actually change my strategy, I updated all my messaging in the way I was talking because I want to attract even more of the right people, because some of the wrong people were getting in and I don’t want that. So we changed all the messaging across everything. I redid the microwebinar and then we shifted how we ran our ads, because the data told us that people who had a couple of touch points, with our brand before booking a call, became a client, they closed.

And so, we know we want to pay for that visibility ads to warm people up before they go to the microwebinar, before they get on a call with our team. Now, here’s the other thing. So when we went out with this campaign, we do… I’m treated like a client in my agency, so my ads manager and I, we set goals. So we said, “We want to pay a max of $200 cost per application.” So, we set that goal. But my application, if you’ve gone through it ever or you’ve tried, it’s very strict. It declines a lot of people, because we only want people that we know we can help, on the call. And, if you’re not ready, in a place where you can invest, if you’re not financially there, if your business isn’t ready yet, then we decline the application, because I am pretty strict with who we get on the phone with.

Which, gets our sales close rate very high, because of that and that’s what I want. And so, with that $200 application, if it was an approved application or call, so many people were getting declined that we were not able to hit that metric. I don’t think I could ever hit that metric, because I’m declining half of our applications. And if I want to… I said $200 application, it’s really call-booked, so it would be cheaper application. But, what was happening is, it was ending up $400 application.

But, what we found with ROI and our return on ad spend was, we were getting a huge, 1000% return on ad spend, because the investment is high to come and work with us, right? The average cart value for me is very high, because we sell people into a $5,000 or $7,000 first payment and then a monthly retainer of $3,000 or $4,000. And so, that investment is high, so the quality of lead I need, I’m willing to pay actually… What I did was, I took here’s how much we made and here’s how much we spent, and then I adjusted the numbers and said, “What if I paid $500 cost per call?’ And, you guys might be like, “Whoa, that’s really high.” Because it is, it’s very high. Average is a $100 to $150. But, because we’re declining so many people, I said, “What if I paid $500, could I still be profitable?”

Well, if I paid $500 and we hit our close rate of 50% to 60%, I’m still massively profitable with a call, because of that high close rate, because of how my funnel’s setup. So what the data did here was, it allowed me to see how much is the max I can actually pay and still be profitable. Now you might be thinking, “Why would you want to pay that much? Don’t you want to optimize it lower?” Well my funnel, because we decline so many people and we’re so strict, it’s not realistic for me to hit that goal of $200 cost per call. But even better, Russell taught…

I remember when Russell [Brunson] talked about this. “Whoever can pay the most to acquire a customer wins,” is what he has said many times. What that means is, my competitors might be trying to get $200 cost per call. Which means, they’re shutting off ads when they hit that threshold. They’re like, “Oh, this isn’t working anymore, we’re going to turn this off.” I am pushing more aggressively and I’m like, “Hey, we can pay more, we can pay more, we can afford more.” And so, I’m actually making more money by knowing those numbers, than somebody who is saying, “Oh, I got to keep it at $200 cost per application, so I’m going to shut this off.” So by knowing my numbers, I knew we could push that threshold even more and still be massively profitable. But, I wouldn’t know that without knowing my numbers.

So I followed my process, we launched this funnel in November. Three and a half months, we did a massive audit. We updated everything we needed to, so we didn’t change the actual strategy of the microwebinar. We updated the messaging, because that’s what our data told us. Then, we also adjusted our goals and our strategy on the ads front, of making sure that we had even more re-targeting in there. Because, we tested and we found the results, and now I’m going to go another three months. I’m going to run this and hopefully scale it even more, and then do it again and audit it again. Because, there’s always going to be room for improvement, there’s always going to be.

If my data… If you’re paying attention, there’s always something you can improve, and then that ultimately will make you more money. So test, refine, repeat you guys. I cannot say it enough. Marketing always works, it’s just a matter of when and the when is up to you. The when is how dedicated you are to this process, to staying focused, and to really honing in on one strategy, one core offer. And let me add one thing here, because I have Ignite, right? And so, we actually…

I want to update that funnel and do the same thing, because it’s been running evergreen for a while, but we put that on the back burner, because people who get declined from my application go into Ignite. And so, it’s naturally feeding Ignite by me improving this funnel. But, I could have split my team’s resources and my ad budget into multiple funnels and I chose not to do that, because I knew it would help Ignite a little bit. My next phase will be actually doing the same thing to Ignite. And, we’re working on a webinar audit of Ignite, as well. But, I think it’s so crucial that you have one main focus in one funnel and you master that and you get that converting so well.

All right you guys, if you want this level of strategy, basically, my team did all this. The auditing, the ad strategy, the numbers, even the strategy itself. I treat myself like a client, my strategist maps out my funnels, and if you want that level of support in your company and that customization to get your marketing working… Because, it will work, as long as you stick to the process and trust that process. You can go to helpmystrategy.com, you can go through our application, and like I said in this episode, we only accept people that we know we can help. We’re not going to waste your time and get on the phone unless we know we can make a massive difference in your business and that you’re ready to work with us.

And so, the worst that’s going to happen is you get told you’re not ready and we give you some great resources to get you ready. And then, on that call, we really customize what we think you should do. And so, even on that call, we’re also filtering to make sure you’re the right-fit client. And, if you’re not, we say no. And, I say no to a lot of people who want to work with us and they’re not ready. They don’t have a product yet, they don’t know who their audience is, and they’re not ready for paid ads yet. And so, we tell them that. I don’t just sign people because I want the business. We’ve got a 90% client retention rate for a reason, and it starts in the onboarding and the sales. So you can go to helpmystrategy.com to apply to work with us. And, I’ll catch you guys on the next episode.