[social_warfare]
SHOW NOTES
If there’s one thing I want you to know about marketing, it’s this:
It is a continuous process of testing, refining, and repeating that process.
On the front end, it might seem that the entrepreneurs and influencers that you look up to get everything perfect on the first try, but that’s not the case.
What you’re not seeing is that on the backend they are constantly making changes, optimizing, refining, and testing to get that end product in front of you.
In today’s episode of The Not For Lazy Marketers Podcast, I’m sharing a case study Team Hirsh put together that dives into how we followed this same process for a client who was not seeing the results they wanted for their webinar, and the most important components of your marketing to look to when this happens, AKA:
- Your messaging
- Your targeting
- Your Offer
I guarantee that by committing to continually test and refine these three components, you will achieve massive success, just like those influencers you look up to have done!
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Emily Hirsh:
Hello everybody. Thanks for joining me today. I hope everyone’s having a great end to their March, or beginning. Now it’s the end of March that this will come out. I just was like, oh shoot. I’ve been working to record podcast episodes really far in advance and get a month ahead. One of our quarterly goals as a company was to get a month ahead on all of our social media and podcast content. So I am almost there. I have done a record number of podcasts this week that I feel really great about, because I don’t just, like I can’t just sit down and be like, okay, come up with a podcast topic. I’m very strategic about my podcast topics. I have a constant note in my notes app where if I am listening to a book, or I hear a conversation, or I have a thought randomly, I’m planning out those podcast episodes. And if I don’t have one, I just think and go for a walk and think about what will serve you guys best.
A lot of times my episodes and my inspiration for them comes from my team, and comes from in our team meetings that I’m in weekly, hearing about the stories of how we turned around a client result, or got a cost per lead cut in half from what it was, or improve the return on ad spend and the actual actions people took, or the experiences they have. I think that’s one of the reasons that I believe my podcast has content that’s really actionable and real time, and it’s because that’s how I deliver it to you guys. It’s not really like these theories, or processes, or things that I just think are great, it’s coming straight from what’s happening behind the scenes almost every time, and very real, raw real time information.
Today’s episode is no different. Today I’m talking about the three most important components to improving your marketing results. I’ve definitely talked about these components before, but this was specifically inspired from one of our ads managers did a presentation about how she audited an entire ad account and funnel and improved its results, and it was just a reminder when she did that of how much marketing is a process. I’ve talked a lot about the process. I believe that marketing is completely a process of testing, refining, and repeating that process and if you commit to that, if you continue to do that, if you stay on that path of improving one funnel, and refining one funnel, and optimizing that funnel until it’s successful, you will create a successful marketing strategy.
Sometimes people think like, oh, that person was just lucky, or they know something that I don’t know, or they are more skilled at Facebook ads, or they found better targeting options. And it’s not that granular. Marketing is not about having a couple of secret tricks and tips that other people don’t have, and those people have it who are successful and the others don’t. It’s following a process of refinement and testing, and then refinement again. If you continue to do that, anyone can create success. Some, it might take longer than others if you have more refinement to do, but anyone can create that success. So when I heard this kind of presentation, I was like, man, it’s just like falling right back into our process, which is awesome. It just proved time and time again, because in this example of she cut the cost per lead in half of what it was and doubled the return on ad spend in a matter of 30 days, so that’s pretty amazing. And here, I’m going to kind of walk through the case study of what the thought process was.
So first thing, when she started ads to this account, basically the cost per lead was too high. It was the cost per webinar registration, it was too high. Things like the click-through rate was too low, the cost per click was too high. So that was a stopping point right there. The ads were not working how they should, but then also the webinar itself wasn’t converting to sales. So there’s really two problems. So she started the ads, it’d been about maybe 10 days of really getting some traffic through the funnel. You could obviously see like, yes, there’s some more testing we could do, but we need to take action. We need to adjust, and take action, and turn around the results.
So the very first thing that she can control is the ads, and so the two main components that you can improve with the ads are your targeting and your messaging. In this case, when you’re so far off, when you’re over two times what your goal is for the cost per webinar registration, you can change both. So sometimes when testing, people would try and just change one at a time, and that could be a good idea if you’re like almost there, if you’re close to your goal cost per result. But if you’re really far off and it’s clear that it’s not working, you might want to try new targeting and new messaging. So she started with the messaging. That is, in my opinion and our team, oftentimes the number one component that will make the biggest difference in people seeing your ads and taking action with them.
So first we have an internal copywriter who comes in and meets with the ads managers in these situations and says, okay, let’s brainstorm. Let’s figure out some different hooks. Let’s figure out some different angles. How can we take this to the next level so that we can get that cost per click down? So they wrote two new versions of ad copy, and in her presentation, she kind of showed the first one. It was not bad, but it just wasn’t as specific and attention grabbing as the next one. And so the new one that they wrote had a very in your face kind of stat and statement in the first line of the copy. Whereas, the other one was still good, but it was more broad. It was a little bit fluffy. And so they tone that in and got that more specific, very attention grabbing, and then adjusted the headlines.
Then for the images, they tried just a different angle with the branding. The original images, which actually we didn’t do. When she had started the original images, they just didn’t have that edge, that attention grabbing colors, and font, and professionalism that we wanted with the brand that we were putting out there. We also threw in one image that had no headline at all and had the client record a video straight to camera with her cell phone. A video like one minute inviting people to the webinar.
So they updated the ad copy with two new versions. They redid the images and really just went for like, they chose like red color. Well, that was the client. You want to choose the brand, but the client had red in her brand. So just getting it more polished, refined, attention grabbing images, then also throwing in one image that had no headline at all it was very organic, and another, which was a video. We had the client do a video, which in the past, she hadn’t tested a video to her webinar registration. So they updated all of that.
That was the messaging, and then the ads manager went in and found new targeting. So she tried to get more specific before when this client was running their own ads, or I’m not sure if they were running their own ads or it was another agency, but it wasn’t us. They just come to us, these were the results, and we kind of were using those audiences kind of given to us and they weren’t working, so we had to get more creative. So she started looking at what are, for her I think she said tools that the ideal customers would be using. They were targeting business owners, so online tools that they were using, as well as some shopping habits that she ended up finding.
So what she did, and I actually recently talked about this, I think it was two podcast episodes ago about improving your targeting, and our process for that is really going into the ad set level where the targeting option is and just playing around in there, putting in keywords, looking at different options, and coming up with some good creative combinations of targeting to test. Because at the end of the day, you need to test until you get something that’s working really well. We have noticed even more so in the last couple of months that it’s been important to try some new variations of creative, variations with your targeting, because those really broad general audiences have just gotten very competitive. So she found about five new audiences to try in this campaign with the new creative and relaunched it. So that was one piece with that relaunch.
She was able to take a click through rate that was under 1%, and you want all your click-through rates to be at least above 1%, ideally a little higher. But she took it, it was under, I think it was was 0.4% click through rate. Then she took it to a 2% click through rate. So huge improvement. The cost per webinar registration went from like 20 something dollars to $8 in that campaign. So that’s amazing. We were able to take the messaging of the ads and update the ad copy, update the images, try the video. The video was the top performer. That was what it came back at as the video was a top performer, so we pushed that out more, but try different creative, try different audiences and get that cost per webinar registration that cost per click down.
So we accomplished that, but the client was still not getting sales on their webinar. So what we did was, this was like phase two. So all of this happened kind of within a couple of weeks that we were testing different ad creative, testing different audiences, and we were able to make improvement on that one part of their funnel, which was get the cost per webinar registration down, improve the ad cost, get more leads into the webinar funnel. Now we kind of can reevaluate and look at it and say, okay, well now we’re here. We’re getting more leads. We’re hitting our goal. Our goal cost per lead, which was $10, we were below that, what do we need to do next?
Well, we’re getting leads. We’re not getting sales. So what we did was we actually, one of the things that we offer our clients, it’s not included in our basic ad management package, but it’s an upgrade that we only offer our clients, which is a webinar audit where we go through, we audit the entire webinar slide by slide, give them notes on how to improve the content, how to improve the pitch. And this client had a lot of opportunity on what they could improve. One of the things we noticed in the webinar was that the psychology of the content wasn’t as centered around the customer, the ideal customer and their pain points. So it didn’t line up the pitch. What it kind of did was overwhelm the audience, and then once they got to the offer, they were overwhelmed and it was not a very good transition to the pitch. Then the pitch definitely had some work.
Most of the time with webinars, the one major thing that people can almost always improve is the messaging and the language inthe webinars, even myself. It is, a good webinar is truly like an art, and being very intentional with the messaging. Every slide matters, every point matters because all of the content piece, you have to walk this fine line of delivering value and building that trust to your audience, while also not overwhelming them so that when you get to the offer, the offer is the next best step, is the obvious next step and is not, oh, I can’t buy that right now because I have 15 things I have to go do from your content. So it’s a fine line of walking that and it’s not easy. It is not easy to get a converting webinar. It sometimes takes months. And this client is still working on their webinar as of recording this, but we have seen a lot of improvement there, or at least starting to get the sales through the webinar that they were not getting before.
So we improve the ad costs, now we have leads coming through. We had to reshoot her webinar with all of these suggestions around her content, around how she positions the slides, how she positions the offer, we had her add in some additional urgency, and she started seeing sales. It’s still not quite where we want it to be, which is expected, and about it’s been about now, I’d say 45 days of this. So that’s a very realistic timeline of a process and of improving your marketing results. And so I want you guys to kind of see this because that’s exactly what everyone needs to do.
You start running ads, like let’s say to a webinar funnel, but this could be relevant for any funnel, and the three components that you really have control over and that you can almost instantly improve and work on are your copy and messaging. So your messaging, your creative, your targeting, and then the actual offer itself that you’re sending people to, not necessarily what you’re selling. In this case, it was a webinar. The webinar was the offer. In some cases, that offer might actually be a physical product, but those are the three core things that we can improve to watch our results change and improve, and until we get all of those things where we need them to be, our results might not be hitting our goals and that’s normal.
That is normal for you to launch something, launch a new campaign, or launch a new funnel and you’re not out the gate hitting those results. That is part of the process. If you are not doing this, and if you are not experiencing something like this where you have the opportunity, and notice how every time I never call something a problem, I call it an opportunity. I do this very intentionally in my podcast, but also internally to our team. Any problem we have in our business, whether it’s with marketing, or honestly, internally with our operations and our delivery, I call it an opportunity. We have an opportunity for improvement. We have an opportunity for growth. Not we have a problem that we have to fix because this is broken. Yeah, might be broken, but we have an opportunity for improvement.
So in your marketing, any place that you’re not hitting your goals is an opportunity because think if you are hitting all your goals and then you weren’t profitable, that would suck, right? Where’s the opportunity to improve it? If your cost per lead is not where you want it to be, if your cost per registration, or your cost per click is not where you want it to be, that’s an opportunity. An opportunity to improve your messaging, an opportunity to improve your targeting, and an opportunity to improve the positioning of your offer. If your sales conversion on your webinar is not where you want it to be, that’s an opportunity. If you’re getting leads, but they’re not converting, congratulations, you’ve gotten through a few of the first steps of marketing. You’re getting the leads, now you have an opportunity to better convert those leads. If you were getting those leads and they were converting and then you were not making money, you would have a way bigger problem, right? Then your whole model is flawed because your cost of your product isn’t high enough, or whatever it is that’s causing it to not be profitable.
Every time you’re not hitting a metric, it’s an opportunity for improvement. And there are actions directly tied to that. So the three most important components to improving your marketing results right now are your copy and messaging, that’s one component, your targeting, and then the offer itself. And if you go all in and you focus on that, and you figure out where potential metrics are not meeting your goals there, start with the first one and start taking action to make improvements.
In this situation, we ran ads for about 10 days. We were not hitting multiple goals. We were not hitting cost per lead goals, or cost per registration, cost per click, all of the ad side of things was not hitting the goals. Then we also were not hitting sales. So that, to some people, are like, oh, ads don’t work for me. I got to turn these off. I’m wasting money. And they freak out. Those are the people that we’re going to differentiate from the ones who do go and improve that. So we took that information and we took action. We wrote new ad copy, tested new ad images, tested new headlines, added in a video, changed the entire webinar, and did it again. And we’re still in that process of improvement.
Now, this is what marketing is about, and I’m so passionate about this because the entrepreneurs who are willing to show up, and do the work, and get their hands dirty with this testing and refinement process are the ones that are the successful business owners. You don’t run ads ,or hire an agency, or learn how to do ads yourself because you expect out the gate everything to be perfect. The game is about the refinement, who can refine and optimize the best. We have been behind, honestly, eight figure launches where we had to refine, we had to optimize, we had to pivot, we had to make adjustments, we have to throw something else in there to test. You are never going to escape that. Nobody can get around that.
So if you’re operating from the mindset that you can get around that, that you’re just special and once you launch something, it’s just going to work or otherwise ads don’t work for you, this is the newsflash of like that doesn’t exist. The people who are able to successfully focus in on these three components and utilize them to improve their marketing results, to hit their goals, to see progress, to get in momentum, to optimize, those are the entrepreneurs who you’re looking at saying, man, I wish I had that type of successful funnel. You’re maybe not seeing the backend and behind the scenes of all the adjustments, and messaging updates, and targeting changes, and webinar improvements that they’re doing. You’re not seeing that. You’re seeing the end result front side of it, but every single person successful is doing that.
Even the people, like I have direct relationships with people that you could definitely from the outside think they never have a flawed campaign, or flawed marketing strategy, or something that they had to put out there and test the first time. And you’re absolutely wrong. Even the people who look like they have it perfect, who look like everything is converting out the gate for them and it’s easy for them, is not correct behind the scenes. I have a unique perspective to be able to tell you that. So if you make the decision to focus in on these three components and tell you’re hitting your metrics, it’s not a matter of will I be successful with my marketing ads? Will my business grow? It’s just a matter of when, and the when is up to your dedication to these three things. Thanks so much for listening today guys. I hope you take this and you go take some action.
Have questions? Text my team at +1 (512) 648-5723!
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