[social_warfare]

SHOW NOTES

A very common marketing question I get is: When will I see results?

Are we talking a year?
A month?
Six months?

I think it’s safe to say that when it comes to marketing, most people don’t want to play the long game.

Why should they? Playing the waiting game can be nerve wracking because of the uncertainty that comes with it.

Because like with most things, there’s not one right answer…
… but what I am certain about is this, the long game shouldn’t be dreaded!

Ads are an investment that you need to get to the other side to learn from because that’s the only way you’ll come out with a:
✔️better funnel
✔️better messaging
✔️better strategy

In today’s episode I’m going to break down different scenarios that could happen during your first 90 days running ads to a new funnel or offer along with:

Why mindset matters
Volume vs Quality
How to improve your targeting

Tune into this 20-minute episode and then hop over to Instagram (@emilyhirsh) to share your comments + questions inside our latest post!

If you want support with paid ads (and suggestions for impactful content marketing, too!), head to HelpMyStrategy.com to apply to work with Team Hirsh!

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Emily Hirsh:

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining me today. I recently did a live webinar and what I love to do after those webinars is go and look at the chat and the questions that I get, go through all that content and then create content like my podcast for you guys, because I like you guys to tell me what you want to hear. So today, one of these was a question that actually came up several times. Usually I know those they’re really good questions to make even more content out of, or even next time, alter my webinar presentation. So it answers it is if I get it multiple times, because you know, then a lot of people are curious and chances are, if they were then you guys probably are and other people watching more. 

So, today I’m going to talk about your first 90 days running ads to a new funnel or an offer. And also on that note, when should you expect to see results with your marketing? And so the question that came in during my webinar is throughout the webinar, I talked a lot about you’re playing the long game. If this is a new funnel, you’re going to have to buy data and just talking about playing that long game. But I know that’s pretty nerve wracking for people sometimes because they’re like, well, how long is the long game? Are we talking a year, like a month, six months? Like, what do I, what do I need to expect going into marketing my funnel? So I know when I should be making money and if I’m not that there’s something wrong. So there is not like most things, one right answer to this that I have for you guys. But I want to walk through what that experience should be like when you’re marketing a new funnel or a new offer and some scenarios that could come up.

So, first of all, it’s different for everybody. Like almost everything with marketing, you know, sometimes something works for one business and it doesn’t work for another, or it’s a totally different experience. So, I mean, I’ve honestly had people who launch a brand new funnel and a brand new offer. And within two weeks they’re making money from it one week, two weeks. Like that does happen. A lot of times that happens to people who already have an audience and who have previously had success selling to an audience and they are doing it to the same audience because that means they know their messaging. And probably the biggest thing that, and I’ve said this so many times in my podcast, but that contributes to the success of a new funnel or a new offer is the messaging, is knowing that you actually nailed the offer. You nailed the positioning of what you’re trying to sell. You nail how to speak to your audience. And you’re clear on all of those things. 

So, you know, people who have previously done that and they know their audience really well, those people are the ones that, see success faster. So it’s, it’s totally possible for something like that to happen that quickly. However, I would say a more realistic expectation, and this is a lot of times what we tell clients and I believe, go into things with low expectations. So that way, when you hit, you know, you crush the goal or you exceed that expectation, you’re super happy instead of disappointed. So a lot of times what we tell clients is the first 30 days you should plan on not making back that ad spend. And if by month two, then this is with a new funnel or a new offer. But if by month two, you’re at least breaking even you’re doing well.

So if you’re able, if you’re spending $3,000 and you’re making $3,000 a profit within the first 60 days, you’re doing well. After 90 days, we’d like to see that actually profitable. So you’re spending $3,000 and you’re making five or $6,000 and you’ve turned that around. And so I break it down usually is the first month you’re probably going to lose money because we’re just getting the ads up. You’re going to have to run something, fix it, test it again, most likely. And so that first month budget you should just plan on. I may not get it back at all second month, what you spend, you should be able to make that back. That would be an ideal, ideal scenario. Third month, you’re starting to get profitable, which means you’re probably not profitable for the past three months yet, but you’ve, if you achieve a profitable funnel within 90 days where you’ve proven to yourself that if I spend X amount of dollars, I’m profitable out the back end of it. You have a goldmine because you can then scale. 

And that is the goal. That’s where you want to be. So that is a good 90 day kind of timeframe. And what I really want to talk about is how your mindset going into it, the important piece is that you’re going into those first 30 days, like this is an investment and I need to get to the other side of the 30 days to learn from the investment and to come out the other side with better, a better funnel, better messaging, better strategy, better targeting, whatever it is. And you almost want to make mistakes. You almost want to learn about what did and didn’t work because there is no very slim chance you’re going to launch something brand new, a brand new offer, brand new funnel, and that there won’t be any opportunity to make it better.

Actually, I’m going to say there’s no chance because there’s always a chance to make it better. Even if it let’s say it was profitable within the first two weeks, there’s still an opportunity to make it better based on the data that you get back in. So you want to spend money and not, you know, I say, make mistakes, but basically not have the ultimate success right away, because you’re learning what isn’t working and what is working. So that Intel and that data, the only way to get it is to move forward and push your ads out and spend the money. You can’t get it by just waiting, waiting to know if it’s perfect and asking people and having to review your stuff or whatever you have to buy the data. So that is, is the first, you know, 90 days, how it kind of looks for everyone.

That’s like an average. And if you go into the expectation of you’re going to not make money the first month, you’re gonna maybe break even the second month. And if you’re profitable by the end of 90 days, you are doing well, then you’re going to set yourself up for that success. Because one, let’s say you’re profitable. Or the first 60 days, wildly profitable or something, you’re super happy, right? But if we go into it saying, if I’m not profitable by the end of the first 30 days, then I’m going to quit this. There’s a high chance. You’re going to quit it. And that’s not, where I want you to go. And what I want you guys to see is, and this is what I said on my webinar, answering this, this, this viewer was you only, like your only choice is to, is to start, start spending money and to get that traffic and to figure out what is, and isn’t working. If you don’t, you might be back on my webinar in six months from now and made no progress. Like we have to start testing things. 

If you’ve listened to my podcasts in the past, you know, the main thing we’re testing is our strategy and our messaging messaging me. Number one, like messaging. Usually there’s always an opportunity to improve it because so many times do we think like we’ve got this messaging nailed, this is going to attract my ideal customer like that. My offer is so clear, or my webinar title is so clear and the way I’m marketing it, but then you put it out there and you’re like, oh, I’m getting these questions back. And so I see how I could clarify this and now I can do this. And that’s happened to me so many times because we only have one perspective. And then we put it out to the public and we start marketing. We’re going to get a lot of other perspectives and data on our product and our messaging and our strategy that we just can’t get otherwise. 

So you want to go into it with those realistic expectations. You want to go into it knowing you’re going to either make mistakes or have bad strategy, or have bad messaging and have room for improvement because everyone will, even if it’s a success, there’s still room for improvement. Like you never just made it with marketing. We’re constantly. I was just having a conversation with someone, a friend of mine, and I was helping them because they were very like, I want to do a weekly live webinar and I want to do this, this and this, and like so much stuff. And I want this new funnel and this new promotion, and I’ll do seven videos a week. 

And I was like, the real success in marketing is when you go deep instead of wide and you really refine and make the thing you’re doing really good and give yourself time to do that. Every single, like if you do a webinar, don’t do it every week. Do it maybe every couple of weeks, because then you have a buffer week to fix things and to improve things. So it’s not about volume. It’s about the quality of what you put out and going deep with the strategy so that you can constantly make it better, even if it’s working. So that is your first 90 days. Now here’s the important part with your first 90 days running a new offer, running a new funnel, or really anything, even if it’s not brand new, is that you still have your tracking in place. And you still have goals that you set before you started your ads. And then you have the reality of what’s happening once your ads start. 

So this is like a scenario that I don’t want you guys to do is go into it saying, okay, well, 90 days, I know that at the end of 90 days, if I’m profitable, then I’m profitable. So I’m going to turn this on. I’m going to kind of let it run. And I’m just going to let it sit and then hope that by, you know, by the end of 90 days and profitable, and maybe you wouldn’t do that. But even if you did a modified, you know, scenario of that, where all you’re measuring is how much you spend in how much you make. And it’s like very vague what you’re measuring. And you’re, you’re not making a lot of changes probably because you don’t know what changes to make. When you start running traffic to a new funnel or a new offer, you should absolutely have metrics and goals for every step of your funnel.

So for your sales goals, for your leads that you’re needed to bring in for your applications that you need to bring in for your landing page conversions, for the cost per click of your ads, for your sales conversion and your total ROI, those are just some generalized metrics. You still should have ballpark goals that you should set before you ever spend a penny on ads. Even if you’re using industry averages and guessing. And even if you get it wrong, then we adjust the goal, but you have to have those projections. So if you go into it with those goals and then you track every single day, what you’re actually getting, and this is like exactly how we set it up for our clients, because I don’t know another way to do this, but every single day, you see, okay, my goal for all of those major metrics is this. And my reality is this. Then over time, let’s say it’s been a week. You already can make decisions on something you need to change. 

Let’s say you’ve run traffic to a brand new webinar funnel. It’s been one week, you had all your goals. You had all your metrics and you immediately see my cost per click is $3 on my ads. Okay? Boom. That’s the first thing we have to look at. And that in, within one week you can start making changes and update your ad copy, test new audiences, try new images. And it’s only been one week, right? So anyone who tells you, you have to just let ads sit and optimize is wrong because in a week you’ll have data in three to four days, you’ll have data where it, you at least see the direction that your ads are going in.

And so let’s say it’s been a week. We see that our ad cost per click is $3. So we get new copy. We try a new image. We test some new audiences and we get that cost per click down. Okay. It’s been another week. We got that cost per click now down to $2, much better. People are getting to the landing page. My landing page conversion, maybe it looks good, maybe it’s at 35, 40% good. They’re getting to my webinar, but then maybe they’re not watching it. Okay, that’s my next problem. How do I get that webinar show up rate higher? And I’m giving you hypothetical examples, but do you see how every single week within that 90 days, you’re still taking action to move yourself forward and improve things. And so it should never feel like you’re just waiting for your strategy to work.

It’s never that you’re waiting. You have a plan and you see that path and you’re following that process. And so, you know, you’re improving and you’re taking steps of seeing improvement. This is truly one of my most exciting things is when we get a client with a new funnel or with a new offer who didn’t have that historical data, and we set up projections for them coming in and we were like, well, you know, here’s our goals. Let’s meet again in 30 days on these projections, clients get weekly meetings, but every 30 days we meet on their projections and reevaluate. And it’s so cool when you see this process play out. 

We just had a client who had a webinar funnel and it was working to warm traffic, came to run ads. We opened it up for cold traffic. It really wasn’t converting. It wasn’t getting sales, it really wasn’t getting show up rate. So we switched the funnel around to have something else on the front end and then sell people to the webinar within two months, the 60 days time she’s at a hundred percent ROI. So she’s right where I would guess that she would be, she’s well, she’s profitable now. So she’s not just breaking even, but when you include our management piece, she’s now just getting profitable about that and she’s at about 65 days. But if we would have not followed our process, we would probably still be back at square one of like, I wonder, you know, what the problem is in spending money and I’m not making money. 

And that’s where marketing is so exciting and cool is when you can break it down to a science. And it’s like, okay, I just have to follow these steps and fix these things. And if I continue to commit myself to that process, into that science, into that, you know, method and dissect it and refine it, I will be successful! And not as how I want you to see the first 90 days, not like, cross my fingers, hope I’m profitable, you know, spend some money and you’re okay seeing it as an investment, but that you are moving forward week after week with action items in giving yourself to that profitability. But then you also have the mindset and the overall viewpoint that the first 30 days, you’re probably not gonna make any money. 60 days. You’re going to be lucky if you break even. 90 days profitable, like that’s the general goal and the buckets you can put yourself in. If you exceed that great. If you’re a little behind it’s okay, because then at least you should still see the progress that you’re making and the steps you need to take. And if something isn’t working, you know what you need to fix. 

That is the bottom line key. Because if, if something isn’t working and you’re just like, well, I’m spending money on ads, but I’m not making money. And you don’t know what the problem is. That’s the problem, because you should be able to know immediately, like, it’s my cost per lead. It’s my landing page conversion. It’s my sales conversion. And all of those have things attached to them that you can work on and fix to improve to get your results up. So that is what your first 90 days running ads to a new funnel or a new offer should look like. Now, I just did an episode on, When do I increase my ad spend? So I go back and listen to that episode if you have it too, because I talk about testing budgets and how, you know, if you’re spending $5 a day on ads, it’s really not enough to follow this method.

So I’m going to repeat this, even though I said it on the last episode, because this is very relevant here. This will not work this, 90 day plan, if you’re only spending a couple hundred dollars a month on your ads, because it will be really slow. This 90 day plan will work best. If you’re spending one to $2,000 a month of your ad spend, because that will get enough traffic, that you can then get yourself profitable in that 90 days, if you only spend like $200, this process could take you 6 to 12 months because there’s just not enough traffic. It’s just not enough momentum and it’s not going to happen fast enough. So ideally you get yourself to a place where you can spend $1,000 to $2,000 a month for these three months and go through that process. If you can do that and you really follow this and you really work at your strategy and finding and fixing what you need to, you will create success.

I promise you that because I’ve seen it happen over and over and over again. And I believe in this so strongly than anyone can have success, because it’s just a process. It’s just a science, it’s dissecting what is, and isn’t working. If you want support with this, because it can be extremely overwhelming to know what to fix, to know what goals to set, to know how to execute it. That is exactly what my team does. So you can see if you qualify for a free strategy audit first, so we can see where you’re at. Make sure that, you know, one of our services is a fit for you. You can go to help my strategy.com to see if you qualify for that strategy audit. And then from there, we’ll tell you what makes sense for your business. So that’s helpedmystrategy.com. Thanks so much for listening today, guys, and good luck with your new offers and new funnels.