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*SPECIAL GUEST EPISODE* with Maria, our Director of Strategy.
One of our newer clients had huge success in his first week working with us (think $4k in sales.. before ads!) all because of the customized strategy that our Director of Strategy, Maria, put together in their first call. So I brought her on in this episode to take us behind-the-scenes on how we set our new clients up for success.
Here’s what you’ll learn inside our conversation…
- How to create a “cash machine” if you’re marketing budget is tight
- What to put together BEFORE hiring out your marketing
And BONUS: Maria shares a *secret* Facebook Group Hack! - A little more about Maria… She’s on your first call as a new client, and she supports our ads managers with high-level strategy.
She has more than 15 years of experience in digital marketing, so she leads the team with thoughtful, innovative strategy + support. We love her! And you will, too.
Tune into this behind-the-scenes episode, and then share your takeaways on IG + tag @emilyhirsh for a shoutout.
Key Points:
[2:15] How to prep for success if you’ve never done a webinar before
[5:30] Why your messaging matters (+why strategy is pointless without it)
[6:51] Set the stage: What you need to know before you hire an agency
[9:20] “He made $4k in sales, even before we started ads – just from our strategy call.”
[13:16] The Facebook Group Hack you need to know!
[14:47] The shortcut to your success in the Influencer space
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Episode Transcripts:
I’m Emily Hirsh, and this is the Hirsh Marketing Underground Podcast. Attention innovators, influencers, creators, and game-changing entrepreneurs, your internet domination begins right here. We are the powerhouse marketers that you’ve been looking for. You’re already making waves in your industry, and we’re here to help amplify those waves of change by creating a connection that cuts through the noise. We take everything you’ve built inside your zone of genius and find its audience. With killer strategy and laser eye for impact, we launch multi-million dollar campaigns and skyrocket your reach online. And now we are doing the unheard of: We’re unveiling everything we’ve learned, taking you behind the scenes with the Hirsh marketing team, and giving away the secrets to our clients’ success.
Stay tuned for top converting strategy, ROI reports, and insider knowledge that you won’t find anywhere else. You’re changing the world, and we’re the team to help.
EMILY: Alright, in today’s episode I have a special guest with me, and the first guest ever to the Hirsh Marketing Underground Podcast is Maria, who is a team member of mine. She’s the Director of Strategy on our ads team, and she’s in charge of doing all of our initial clients’, when you come on board to team Hirsh, strategy calls, setting up your strategy, your funnel map, your projections, a lot of work. And then, she also supports our team in going in and auditing accounts with high, high-level strategy.
Maria has 12 or 15 years of digital marketing experience. She’s amazing. And today, we’re going to give you guys behind the scenes of an amazing client, a new client of ours, who has had great success already in the first week. But we did something really specific with his process and coaching him along with his webinar, and I want Maria to share what she did and what she found in that process, because already he’s just promoted it to his list and had four sales on his webinar, and he’s just so excited. So I’ll Maria dive in to that story, and then we’ll go off of that.
MARIA: Alright. Well, thanks, Emily. I’m so glad to be on the podcast, and I didn’t know that. I’m honored to be that first guest.
EMILY: Yeah!
MARIA: So let me set the stage: Kyle Goldie is in the digital product space where he sells a $997 course. Target market is more wedding photographers, of how to build a six-figure or more wedding photography business. Now, he’s never done a webinar before, and he came to us with some initial sales over the past 12 months, just through a small list of his and his free Facebook group, but he wanted to kind of scale it up. So he started with a strategy call with Hirsh Marketing, and that’s where you would spend an hour with me, and we go over your strategy, your goals, and really map it out, and how much ad investment will it take to really get your business growing? And with Kyle, Emily, what was interesting is that, he had not even had webinar slides yet prepared.
EMILY: Yeah.
MARIA: So one of the first steps was to first map out, obviously, the strategy for the webinar, and I know actually, Emily, you strongly suggest this as well, where we want you to do at least four live webinars before turning it Evergreen. Is that right Emily?
EMILY: Yeah, so a lot of people like to just go in and do Evergreen webinar. I mean, that’s the dream right, getting an Evergreen webinar converting? But the problem is, especially if you’ve never done a webinar, you’re going to do it once, and even if you think your script is perfect, and it was written for you and it’s all perfect, you’re going to do it and then some parts are going to feel off. And how, if you’ve ever spoken or done something afterwards, or even had a conversation, and you’re like, “I should have said it that way.” You’re going to feel that way after your first couple of webinars, maybe even more. So that’s why we recommend doing it live, so you can really perfect that.
MARIA: Yeah. So it’s really important to hone in on what your webinar’s going to be, and you get used to it, you get comfortable with it, because when you start spending precious money out of your own pocket to get people on your webinar, you want to be ready for success. So with Kyle, we actually had a meeting with our Creative Director, Emily McGregor as well, to really deep dive more into the right message to market, which is an invaluable asset they get with the Hirsh Marketing and The Hirsh Process basically, phase one, step one, strategy. But then I had a further call with Kyle, which went over his webinar slides. And what it was, it’s not like a four-hour, or an eight-hour intensive, Emily, so I know you’d get mad at me if I spend eight hours with him!
EMILY: Which Maria happily would! Maria just does strategy for fun.
MARIA: Yeah, I love it, live and breathe it. And so, what we did though is, we had one Google sheet, or an Excel kind of sheet, and basically each slide was on [a different] row, as far what the content was for each slide, because that’s really important, because the eyeball typically looks at the headliner of the text on each slide, and what the end result is or what you want to achieve with that slide.
So, Emily, it made it really easy for me. Kyle made my job effortless, where I could look at … he literally had about 150 slides that I could look at really quickly going, “Okay, we need to move this around,” or, “No, you know what? You’ve got ten slides on this one thing. No, move that to seven,” and it helped him tremendously. When a lot of people, I find, come to us, there’s just a few little tweaks or levers in wording that, from a copywriting or neuro-linguistic programming, convincing someone to buy from you [perspective], that they need to make.
EMILY: Yeah, yeah.
MARIA: So Emily, a simple wording change from a subtle, “You will learn,” to “You will discover.”
EMILY: Yeah, so I think that this is so important, and this is why, if you listened to our previous episodes recently, on how we’re not an agency, this is why we changed that is, because you come to an agency, and you would come and say, “Here’s my webinar. Here’s my converting page. It doesn’t need any changes. Just drive traffic to it. Just scale the traffic,” normally. And I think it’s so important to notice here that … and maybe we should even back up, like, what exactly happened on that first call, and then where did you go from there? Because Kyle was somebody who had pieces together, and then we had to in deep on certain strategies. And messaging is so key here. I want you guys also to hear that, how important messaging is, because if we just started ads without going into this depth, and going into these details, and into his webinar and the strategy, they wouldn’t have worked or even mattered until we did that piece, right? So that was so important.
So let’s go back. Where was Kyle exactly when he came to us for his first call. How much did he have together?
MARIA: He did not have a webinar put together yet at all. He had the course, so that was the good thing-
EMILY: Yeah. Sales [page].
MARIA: Yeah, and he had a sales page, so that was a good thing, and he had sold some over the last year. I forget the exact amount. Not a huge amount, but he had sold some. He had taken … I don’t know if you want me to name the names, but he had a webinar course from someone. That’s up to you.
EMILY: So did he kinda know, “Okay. I wanna do a webinar, and here’s my course, and I wanna sell it”? Is that how he came to the call with you, the first call?
MARIA: No, he wasn’t sure. He was coming to us [for] the right strategy and even what product should it be, because he has a few other products, and actually really cool products that sell as well. And a lot of clients come to us with that, too, that “Hey, I’ve got two or three products in my product portfolio.” But we know from a focus perspective, because Emily, you’re the best at this, is if you don’t focus on one thing first, then even if you have the four best products in the world, you’re gonna fail, right?
EMILY: Yep!
MARIA: So we kind of do a phased approach where I mapped out, “Okay. Forget about these other products. These can maybe be your downsells, down the road in your funnel, but let’s focus on one product, one funnel to get you to one money solution,” so to say.
EMILY: Okay, so Kyle had what we would recommend, which is, he sold some of his courses before coming to us, because that means he proved the concept. He proved that people want what he has, that the material was good. Organically, that’s great. And then he came to us looking for the strategy, which is what you get essentially in that first call with Maria, is either the strategy or your strategy re-worked, if you already have a funnel. So Maria then mapped out his funnel. And I love that she mentioned that, because we do, I’d say 50% of people come with multiple products, and “I wanna promote this and do this,” and the problem with that is, not only the lack of focus in your time and energy, but if you’re starting something new, it’s a spread of your budget, because you probably don’t have $10,000 a month of ad spend in your very first month testing new products, so if you take $2,000 and you spread that across a ton of products, none will do well, right?
So he came to the first call with Maria, you mapped out the funnel, you gave him his funnel map, you gave him his projections, and then from there you guys had to go deeper into messaging, was the second call that you essentially did. And Kyle got two calls, because he came in with a special deal that we did around Black Friday, and then he actually joined on as a client, right?
MARIA: Right, and we came up too, this is something, because we have so many clients, Emily, and we can look at what’s working and what’s not working across the board off of … How much per money do we manage?
EMILY: Last month [we] hit over $450,000 of ad spend that we managed last month.
MARIA: Just last month, so that equates to, like $5 million per year. Yeah, that’s huge, right? So we have access to a goldmine of data, right? So I helped Kyle as well with the end of the webinar, because you need to go take someone from cold, they don’t know you, to sold, on that webinar. So we really worked around with the scarcity. I know, Emily, you’re big on this, too on … When you talk to anybody it’s like, “What’s the hook? What convinces someone to go from that brainwave state, where they’re in Alpha, “I’m calm and relaxed watching this webinar,” to Beta where they take action and, “I wanna buy.”
So we mapped out a scarcity plan for him. And then also, his concerns were a little bit around cash positioning and his cash flow, because sometimes you’ve gotta spend money on Facebook ads, and it’s on your credit card but you might not see the sales until 14 days later, 30 days later, so we mapped out also a bit of a cash machine for him, too, because his existing assets we look at … he had a small list, so I said, “Well, let’s test this on your list with your webinar as well,” and that’s where, literally, two nights ago when I was voxing you, too, Emily, it was so exciting! He tested the webinar out, and he had made $4,000 in sales. Huge, right? With less than 20 people…
EMILY: With so far no ad spend but just taking the strategy that you helped him with and tweaking the messaging. And that’s also when you know, “Okay, let’s really put some ads to this, because the webinar is already converting.” Sure, we might need to tweak things as we turn on ads and we start scaling, but that’s amazing. And so, what Kyle did really well was he implemented. Whenever someone’s investing in something new and they don’t have the webinar going with money coming in, it’s scary, right? And so he knew, “I will do whatever you guys say to get this to work,” and he really did that, and he did a great job, obviously, with his webinar. And these people need what he’s offering, that’s obvious too.
But, do you have any, Maria, top takeaways that you feel like … By bringing in a marketing team for Kyle, what were the game-changing shifts, maybe even two or three, that you guys made that would have been from him … If he was to just go say, “I’m gonna just go try this. I’m just gonna do a webinar. Take what I have, see if it converts,” versus being really intentional with the strategy … And that way people could take that and look at their own strategy, maybe what they’re missing, that we see because this is what we do all day long?
MARIA: Yes. I see the shift in our clients when this happens. This happened with Kyle, that there’s fear, and this “I’m not sure if this is gonna work” feeling, and that, when you map out a strategy that works and that looks like it’s gonna work, what that does is it injected confidence into Kyle. It’s almost like a confidence competency loop where you have the right strategy, and then he knew he had the right team, because what we do with our new clients, and Em, I know you suggested that we start doing this a couple of months ago, we start a group voxer so that we know that there’s gonna be people … You might be scared the first few weeks of starting up with Hirsh Marketing or any investment you make, so by group voxing with Kyle and whenever he had a quick question he could ask, that gave him … The shift was confidence, the other shift was [to] take massive action, because he’d made a bigger investment, so you better believe it, that puts a fire under your derriere, to take action.
EMILY: Yeah.
MARIA: And then, third, you know, we provided some advanced strategy that most people aren’t aware of, and that’s because we are, since we manage over $5 million in ad spend over a year, that even when … I’ll give you one little tease for this, Emily, is the Facebook group hack, where … He has a fairly active Facebook group, and it’s free, and we’re gonna run some of the visibility phase of The Hirsh Process, we’re gonna run some strategic videos that we asked him to make, less than three minutes long … But one of them was just, “Hey! When people join your group, why don’t you record,” and you actually put it on your Facebook page, not in your group, “a video that welcomes your group members?” And you don’t have it showing on your timeline, on your Facebook page, but you share that video within the Facebook group, and you make it as an announcement.
In the old days you could pin it, but it’s an announcement now. So whenever someone joins the group they see that right away, it’s an announcement, to watch that welcome video. And who’s not gonna watch a welcome video when you first join a group? Guess what? We now have a precious “video views” audience of people who joined this free group that I’ll take any day over a lot of other types of audiences … when you’re starting to [run ads] … to cold traffic.
So, yeah, I think when he saw the power of the marketing team and the strategy that was supporting him, I wouldn’t say at a cellular level, Emily, I don’t wanna go too “woo woo,” but we all want him to be successful, we all want a new client that comes with us to be successful, and when they see that energy in the group voxers, and we’re even sending funny GIFs to each other to celebrate wins. So, yeah, I think that sums up a lot of the shifts that happen that we see for our clients.
EMILY: Yeah. Amazing! And I think, too, most people who are trying to sell, influencers trying to sell their products, they’re not necessarily marketers. This is not what they do all day. And by bringing in somebody who, this is what they do all day, it’s just like a short cut at the end of the day, because otherwise what will happen, and what happens to a lot of people, is they do it themselves and they struggle for months and months and months and months, and you’re spending money on ads, you’re wasting money doing that, and then you decide to go bring somebody in. And because of that quick implementation and what you just shared, I mean, that could take somebody a year to realize to do something like that with a video, is such a short cut and fast track, and especially when you’re launching a new funnel, there will be things that you have to tweak, like, never do you just launch something and it works right out the gate.
So there’s definitely things on the ads and the funnel itself that you have to tweak, and you have to have the eye to be able to look at that, and you wanna be in a place as an influencer to just to be able to go and create content and do your webinar and connect with your audience in the Facebook group or wherever it is that you are, and do what you do well, and then have somebody take that content and put it in front of more people, and the right people, and be really strategic with it.
So it was an exciting week. This happened this week in our team, and so it was an exciting week to have somebody who … Definitely it was a bigger investment, and it was a stretch, but then, not even spend money on ads yet, but take all the webinar strategies that you guys created, and the messaging, and then make $4,000 off of organic traffic, and now we can scale it. And maybe we’ll do an updated episode three months from now where Kyle’s at, with his results, because it’ll only go up and get better from here.
MARIA: Yeah.
EMILY: So thank you so much, Maria, for joining us. And Maria is amazing on strategy. She’s who you get to meet with when you come into Hirsh Marketing, and she will customize … That’s what she does so well is look at your business, all the assets you have. So that Facebook group strategy for Kyle, it’s looking at these goldmines of opportunity that you might have that you may not see, and so Maria does that really well. You get to have a call with her. She sets it up for success, and then she hands it to our ads team to then go and implement, which is where they are at with Kyle right now.
So if you wanna go to HelpMyStrategy.com and apply to work with Team Hirsh, that would be amazing! If you guys are the right fit, and then you get to have your strategy call with Maria and we can skyrocket your success in 2019.
Thanks so much for listening guys, and Maria will definitely be back on the podcast in the future.
Thanks for listening to the Hirsh Marketing Underground Podcast. Go behind the scenes of multi-million dollar ad campaigns and strategies, dive deep into The Hirsh Process, and listen to our most popular episodes over at HirshMarketingUnderground.com. If you loved this episode of the podcast, do me a favor and head over to iTunes to subscribe and leave a review so we can reach more people and change more lives with this content. That’s all for now, and I’ll catch you next time.