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SHOW NOTES

Those who invest in their business will prosper.

Those who don’t will never grow.

That is something that I genuinely believe.

Buying data, no matter where you are in your business right now, is one of the most important investments you can make in your business.

What does that mean?

It means that you are willing to invest in your marketing knowing you might not make that money back…

BUT in doing so you will have acquired valuable data and intel.

And you can use that data to drive future decisions that will allow your business to grow and prosper.

Tune in to today’s episode to learn more about what exactly “buying data” means, and how you can use it to propel your business.

I even do this in my own business. When I decide to invest money in something, I go all in. 

If I make that money back, that’s great. If not, then I’ll know exactly what NOT to do in the future.

Do you invest in your business by buying data? Tell me what insights you’ve gained from it over on Instagram (@emilyhirsh)!

If you’re willing to buy data, but aren’t sure how to interpret those numbers to make decisions, sign up for my FREE live Webinar Fire Up Your Facebook Ads! I’ll teach you how to test your ads before they’re funded and provide you with a system for making sense of your data and what your next steps should be based on it. Register now at hirshmarketing.com/training.

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Emily Hirsh:

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Welcome to the podcast if you’re new. I know we have some new listeners with Ads Like A Boss launch and all we’re doing, so welcome if you are new. I hope you guys have had a good week so far. I know I say that every episode, but of course I do hope that. We have been very busy with our launch. I really do like launching. There’s a lot that goes into the beforehand, but then once you get into like the time to deliver the content, it’s the most fun because you just make new connections with people. There’s so much momentum happening between the team, and everybody in the group, and all that’s happening. 

So if you haven’t caught up on the Ads Like A Boss training videos, make sure you go do that. They will only be up for about another week from when this episode comes out, so make sure you watch them, you get the workbooks, you do the work, hopefully utilize our Facebook group. We’re going to actually be archiving that once this is over. So I want you to get the most out of it. We put a lot into the content, a lot into the videos, and that, you know, I want you guys to get the most out of that, so make sure to do that.

And then today, if you are listening to this episode, the day that this podcast comes out, I’m actually doing a live training, Fire Up Your Facebook Ads, and you can sign up for that at hirshmarketing.com/training, where I’m going to walk through the process and system for launching your ads and testing your ads. It’s the opposite of boosting, throwing stuff out there, crossing your fingers, hoping it works, you know, throwing a strategy out there and then seeing what happens. That’s what most people do. And I’m going to really simplify it for you so that you feel confident launching ads with a system and process, and then how to review those ads once it launches and how to actually look at those ads and say, okay, based on this information, what’s my next step? What’s my next move? So everything can be so intentional and simple. 

That’s kind of what I was talking about in my last podcast episode, but marketing shouldn’t feel super complicated. It can feel overwhelming because there’s constantly a lot of pieces and moving parts and things that you have to connect with your funnel, but it should be simple in terms of decisions and you a lot of times need to keep it more simple than you think. So I’m doing that training tonight. If you want to sign up hirshmarketing.com/training, there will be a replay. So if it’s past, you can sign up. Go sign up for that, but come live if you can. I always go the extra mile for people who show up live, and staying on for Q&A, and whatnot. And so I’d love to see you guys there. 

So let’s dive into today’s topic, which is what does buying data mean? This is kind of a term that I created in the last year. And a lot of people are like, oh, what does that mean whenever I say it. And so I want to walk through that because I think this is something unique in the way that Hirsh Marketing looks at ads, in the way that we support clients, in the way that we are very realistic with our clients, and also setting expectations for what to expect from your ads in the investment in marketing.

So one of my core beliefs is that if you’re not investing in your marketing in some capacity, whether that’s paid ads, building a funnel, nurturing a Facebook group, your organic marketing, like some capacity of outreach, marketing visibility, getting your brand out there in front of people, then I think you are leaving money on the table and your business is not going to grow. And hopefully, you know, it doesn’t go backwards, but it could. You have to consistently invest time and or money into your marketing. I believe that. So buying data is relevant when you have a new funnel or a new offer, or something that you just basically have never run ads to. 

So even an experienced business owner goes through that when they launch something new. So for us, when we launched our podcast secret series a couple of months ago, we went through this again, like, okay, we’ve never run traffic to this. We’ve never done this before. We don’t know what the conversion is going to be for registrations, for people who consume the content, for people who take action on the content, and our overall ROI, because it’s a brand new funnel. Not a brand new offer, but brand new funnel. You also will go through this when it’s a brand new offer and there’s something new that you have to sell.

What it basically means is you’re choosing to invest in your marketing and spend money to get data. And you’re doing it knowingly that you might not make that money back, but the value behind it is the data at first. And you might make the money back, you don’t know. For example, our podcast secrets series was a 500% ROI, but it could have totally failed. I mean, I didn’t think it would fail, but it totally could have because it was new. I didn’t know. I hadn’t done the topic before, the content before, so we were going into it with that, like, okay, we’ve got to test this and then we have a benchmark to go off of. 

So when you make the decision to buy data, everyone has to in the beginning and you have to make that jump. You are again, deciding to spend a certain amount of money and then knowing you might not make it back, but you’re getting that data and the value lies within the data. So we recently had a client who is considering working with us and Aandra on my team who speaks with all of our clients, actually flagged a question to me and was like, can you help me answer this? And it was somebody who was in this situation. They are very busy during the holiday season so they’re looking at hiring us for the holiday season, and they specifically have only run ads on Etsy before. So they had data of running ads on Etsy and they had, you know, cost per click and the landing page conversion and the sales that they got from those ads that they ran on Etsy, but they’ve never run ads on Facebook before. And so they were like, well, we want to run ads on Facebook, but what does it look like for us?

And, you know, I did break down like, well, based on your data from Etsy, if Facebook was to convert the same, then here’s what it would look like. And I helped Aandra do that to get it back to the client, but for them, it was like, you don’t have a choice, but to just either choose to invest in the Facebook ads or not because you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. We don’t know the exact cost per click we’re going to get on Facebook compared to Etsy, and the landing page conversion we’ll get on Facebook compared to Etsy. It could be better, could be worse, could be about the same, could be easier to scale. But at some point, whether it’s this year or next year or a different time, you have to make the decision to try it. And you have to make the decision to get that data.

And that’s what investing in your marketing looks like. And if now’s not the right time, if for your business, if you don’t have that, you don’t have the ability to spend something to eventually get it back, but to first buy that data, then now might not be the right time. And that’s an okay decision to make, but at least also be real with yourself. Like I don’t have the money to invest right now, but if I go out and do this organic reach and I do this outreach and I get, you know, some business, then I’m gonna put that money back in and invest. And so they don’t have, you know, this business owner, I gave him my best estimates of what I thought could happen, but he doesn’t have a choice but to either jump in or don’t. you have to either decide to go all in or decide to go all out. That’s kind of where you stand when you launch a new funnel or a new offer is you have to either decide that you’re going to go buy that data or not, and when I say that the value lies within the data, this is what I mean. 

So we recently had a client who came in actually with the new offer, hadn’t run Facebook ads before, had marketed it other ways, other paid traffic. I want to say Google ads, and had definitely done organic marketing and built an organic following, and came in and we launched it with them and ran their funnel. And after their 90 days, they had their 90 day review and their comment was how valuable all of the information they got throughout that 90 days. They did decide to stay on past their 90 days because they were profitable. They actually were not profitable in the first month. They were profitable by month three, but we had to make some tweaks and changes to the ads and even the strategy itself, mostly because on Facebook, it was all cold traffic, compared to a strategy that was created for the organic traffic. 

But his comment was how valuable this was for getting all of that information for learning that, okay, you know, this strategy worked, this strategy did not work, people responded well to this topic and this content, but they didn’t respond well to this. That’s all information you can take forever and you can use forever. And so even myself, whenever we do something, when we launch, I know, okay, I’m all in. I’ve decided to spend this budget now that I’ve launched Ignite a couple of times. I have metrics and data I can go off of and estimates I can make, but I’m all in. I’m committed to spending the budget. I’m going to spend that budget, and you know, I know what I should get out of it, but I also know if something happens, I’m going to learn from it. And then I won’t do it again. For example, you know, we’re mid launch, so I don’t have the data back yet, but what if after the launch, I realize most of my sales come from a webinar versus the video series, and then I don’t have to do the whole video series component. Or what if everyone who buys actually went to both of the webinar and the video series, you know? I don’t know that until I really start to analyze it.

There’s some times where people are like adamant, like everybody, you know what my strategy has to be this way, it has to be these steps, or without these steps, and it has to have this. And it’s like, okay, where are the buyers coming from? What’s that customer journey the buyers are taking? What content are they consuming? What steps are they taking? And you can’t get that information until you buy data and specifically until you buy cold traffic data, because sometimes a funnel or a strategy will convert one way for organic marketing and then it won’t convert at all for cold traffic. And you have to choose to kind of take that plunge to dive into that and figure that out, and then if it doesn’t convert, if it is not profitable, if you do not break even at the very beginning of it, then you’re still learning. And the value is in that data. 

So just like when you go invest in a coach, or you hire a VA on your team to get your time back, or you buy a course, or you get support in some way, or have someone build your funnel, all of those things, like you’re not like, oh, build my funnel and you directly are gonna make me back a thousand dollars. No. There’s a value in it in that it’s saving you time, and so usually your first 30 days of running ads to a new offer or a new funnel, the value in it is the data, not necessarily making the money back. That’s not to say you won’t be profitable, you might be, but nobody knows. You don’t know until you go to do it. And so that’s what buying data means. 

This is really important to me. This is like the mindset that we get all our clients, and when they come in, like sometimes we have clients who come in and they’re like, I’m already running ads. I’m spending this much money. Here’s my conversion. So it’s obviously a lot easier to be like, okay, we’ll maintain that. We’ll scale that we’ll optimize that, and here’s the projections. But especially for the ones coming in who are launching something new or have a new funnel or haven’t run ads before, this is where it’s very important to look at the first 30 days with that mindset and with the mindset of, okay, the value behind this first 30 days is the data because without that data, you can’t get to the next level. You will stay where you’re at. 

That’s why I’m saying either decide, I am going to stay where I’m at, or I’m ready and willing and able to move to the next level, which consists of buying that data. Everyone has to go through it. There’s no way to get out of it and you have to go through that. So what I’m teaching you on the training, and if you want to get access to, is that hirshmarketing.com/training is once you go to start buying that data, how do you take those numbers and make decisions off of them? Because it’s not like go buy data and then it’s going to either be really obvious or clear what the next steps are, or you’re going to know how it’s working or not. You have to know what to look at and what those metrics mean to then make decisions.

So that’s what I’m talking through on the training. I’d love to have you join me, but regardless, if not, I want you to be thinking about this buying data concept and do you stand true to this in your business? When you launch a new funnel or a new offer, are you willing to do that? Are you willing to put in, invest money in it because you believe in it and you believe in it’s success to actually get intel? I don’t think there is ever a waste of money in business. I’m saying that like, yes, you could waste money, but even with marketing, I mean, even with other things than marketing, it’s like every time I’ve made a decision where I maybe didn’t get my ROI back, it didn’t pan out how I wanted and I’m not just talking about marketing, it could be hiring a team member, a certain person, or getting support, or a coach or in some sort of investment, whether it’s actual ad spend or something else. Even if I don’t get my money back right away, I’m always able to say, well, I won’t do that again. You know, at least I learned that. 

And there’s many times where I will be like, man, I wish I did dah dah dah like this way, but it’s like, well, I never would have known that unless I went and tried it, unless I made this investment. And so with ads, if you go to launch something and you launch a webinar and let’s say the topic does not resonate, and it doesn’t work for you, there’s no way you would have known that until you put traffic through it. Now that you know it, you won’t make that mistake again and that alone has value in it. And so that’s the mindset you have to have. And every single successful entrepreneur I’m around who has a multimillion dollar business thinks this way and is willing to do that and is willing to aggressively do that. In some cases, the people who can do that aggressively and quickly and are willing, obviously they have money to invest back because they’ve been successful a lot of times, but they are able to get ahead faster. If you move slow with this, you’re going to be in the same place in three, six, nine months from now. And that’s what we’re trying to avoid. So join me on the training, hirshmarketing.com/training. Thanks so much for listening today guys, and I’ll see you all next week.