Episode Transcript:

In this episode, I’m going to talk about the three factors that you should always be or will always be paying attention [to] when you market your sales funnels. Whenever something is or isn’t working with your marketing, these are the three main things … And I put them in order of importance, basically, of what usually is wrong with your Facebook ads or funnels. We usually start … Because we run ads for clients, we start the with ads, and this is where you start, because the ad is usually the front part of your funnel and the first thing people see.

The first thing to pay attention to and really hone in is your messaging. And this is most of the time what people have not given enough time and effort to testing … different ways to test their messaging … that they either jump to that it’s something else or they give up too soon. And most of the time, it is your messaging. It takes a while to really understand messaging and hit messaging in the right deep, emotionally-connecting level with your ideal client.

When we are looking at this for the ads, we look at the messaging, and we pull up the ad, as if we are the lead. First of all, our client goes through an extensive strategy session with me, where we really pull out and make sure there’s a deep understanding of who their ideal client is. And we pull my creative team into this, where my copywriter will get on … my head of the creative team … will get on a call with the client and really understand, on a deep level, those emotional pain points with their customer.

Normally there’s a few different angles that you could go. Think of a chart … I’ve talked about this in other podcast episodes … think of a chart, if you were to list 4-5 different pain points, or problems people have, or angles that you can even go at. You could even go as far as saying, “We could target health people, or [people] having health issues, or we could be targeting people with time issues” … different angles basically. And you build that out, and then you build the messaging around that. It’s so, so crucial that you are able to really connect with people on a deep level, emotionally, from the start of the ad. The webinar, yes, but the ad matters here, because this needs to stand out.

A lot of times, when something is not converting, it is the messaging, and that’s the first thing that we try and fix, and troubleshoot, and test. We’re usually putting … We start with two or three creative versions, and if it doesn’t convert, we keep on putting new creative versions out there until we get something to convert. So that’s the first thing to look at and really, truly understand, and in your ads and your entire funnel and your webinar and all of it, is the messaging.

Then the next thing to pay attention to is the actual targeting. So when we’re testing ads, first we look at the messaging … and especially for us, because we have so many clients that we know what audiences do and don’t work. If you’re running your own ads, obviously you have to do a lot more testing, because you don’t have this background information about “Here’s the Top 10 audiences in the coaching industry,” like we do. So you have to do a lot more testing with your targeting. But, for us, we’re like, we know that Marie Forleo is a top audience in the business-to-business entrepreneur space, and so if it’s not converting at all or barely getting any clicks on the ads, it’s the messaging. But there are audiences that work better than others and lookalike audiences, and here, with targeting, it’s either that, if your ads aren’t working, the targeting is wrong, or you haven’t tested enough different targeting options and put enough of a net out there to try and get something to work, especially with things like lookalike audiences.

Really leverage that data and try and grab all possible lookalike audience options that you could, and make sure … Between the messaging and the targeting, you will have a lot of ad sets that you’re testing, and that’s where you start. If something isn’t working, or even if something is working and you want to optimize it, that’s also an option.

Those are the two main things. Usually, that’s what’s wrong.

The third factor that you have to pay attention to is the actual offer. And I don’t just mean the end product offer, because yes, that obviously matters with sales, but it could even be as simple as, “This PDF we’re trying to offer, this opt-in, is not what people actually want, and we were totally off mark with this,” or “This webinar topic and title is not what people are wanting, it’s not going to convince them to come for an hour to this webinar, and we were off with this,” as well.

Once you do extensive testing with the messaging and the targeting on Facebook and in your ad strategy, and you’ve really exhausted what you think is all [the] options, then you can move to the offer, and then you can look at that. And sometimes that is the issue. And sometimes, the other thing people do is, they feel like, “Well, we’ll just keep on throwing things out there on Facebook,” when it’s actually the offer.

The important thing to remember here is, sometimes people get caught up in like, “Oh, I’m giving a free PDF, and it’s free, so why does it matter?” But especially if you are targeting the business-to-business space, but really anyone … people value their time, they value their email, they value what they sign up for … even down to your PDF basic checklist. They need to have a promise. What is somebody going to get out of downloading that? Like, what are they going to get out of downloading that? What micro-problem is it going to solve for them if they download this checklist or they attend your webinar? Whatever that is, you need to actually know what your promise is, and your problem that you’re solving on a small level is, for even just your opt-in. And if you haven’t clearly defined that … or in the flip side, if it doesn’t solve a problem big enough, if the problem is not big enough … then it’s your offer.

You can pull these three things, and you can say, “Let’s look at our Facebook ads. Is it the messaging, the targeting, or the offer that’s making the ads not work? Let’s look at our webinar. Is it the messaging, the targeting, or the offer that’s not working? Let’s look at our sales page, at our emails … all of these factors.” Normally, it fits in one of those categories, why something is not working. Analyze all the stats, and just … Where are people dropping off? A lot of times, it is starting with the Facebook ads that it’s not working. We start there. We say, “Is it the messaging, the targeting, or what we’re actually sending people to in the Facebook ads that’s the problem?” We solve that, we get people in the funnel, and then we analyze the next step. Maybe the next step’s working. Maybe once we’ve solved that, it’s working. Maybe it’s not.

It’s one of these three things always, and this is what you always have to pay attention to, because with anything you do, if there’s a gap, it’s going to be one of these three things. And I believe that 75% of the time, it’s the messaging. It’s very little the targeting, especially if you’re smart about it and you use standard audiences and lookalike audiences. It’s just a matter of testing enough. And maybe another 25%, 20% of the time, it’s the offer.

Those are normally how I see the issues lay out, and as long as you’ve extensively tested the messaging and targeting, then you can move to the offer. And maybe the messaging ties into the offer. Maybe when you figured out the messaging, you realized, “Oh, these are actually the pain points and the struggles that people are going through, and something’s off with my offer, too, because I can’t properly address these pain points and solve these problems with this current offer that I thought people wanted.” And it’s okay to have that happen! I see this happen where people are like, “I put so much work into this opt-in, and it has to work! … or this webinar, it has to work!” And I’m like, “Just change a few things and listen to your ideal client, and you’ll get better results.”

You’re going to put out things that don’t work as well as other things. And even the more and more successful entrepreneurs … this still happens to big entrepreneurs. The more you connect with your ideal audience, the more you know what they want and the less that this will happen. But this still happens, and you have to be willing to look at it and shift gears and listen to that advice, to be able to move fast enough to get the results.

If you enjoyed this episode, and if you would like somebody to come in and help you do your done-for-you ads or sales funnels and work with my team, if you go to HelpMyStrategy.com, you can book in a call with the Hirsh team. Thanks so much for listening today.