Ep 432: Use This Method to Instantly Improve Your Marketing Results

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Emily Hirsh:

You know, one of my core values and promise to clients is that everybody gets results because everybody will get results. When you follow this, marketing always works, it’s just a matter of when, and this is why. 

You are listening to the Not So Lazy Marketers podcast, episode number 432.

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the podcast. I am excited for today’s episode. This is an episode inspired from all of the client work and support that I’ve been doing in the last six-ish weeks. If you haven’t listened to my last podcast, I shared a lot of the behind the scenes of that in kind of shifts and changes that happened, simplification that happened at Hirsh Marketing and some lessons I learned. Thank you to everybody for your response and messages. I always appreciate that. Especially when you get transparent and vulnerable in the podcast, you never aren’t nervous for that. And so it’s always so rewarding and confirming when I get such a positive response and outreach kind of thanking me for the vulnerability. So today is a back to the basics podcast. What I’ve realized in coming back into our delivery so heavily is that this is, you know, at the bottom of everything we do, this is the most important thing I do in marketing.

It is something that comes very naturally to me and is a gift of mine, but that most people, I either train on our ads team or clients or potential clients or our members of Market Like a Pro struggle with. And it also makes the biggest difference in your marketing. And so I wanna talk about it. I’ve talked about it before, but it’s one of those like foundational things that will always work. And it leads to my core value of marketing always works, it’s just a matter of when, and that is the concept of: projections, data, actions in your marketing. So let me explain what I mean by that. So I follow a process when we onboard a new client and we take on a new account, or I work with somebody where the very first thing we do every single time is we set projections, meaning we set goals for an account, and we have industry average kind of data and numbers.

We also try to go off of data. A lot of the Elite clients we’ve brought in don’t have a ton of data or their data is not accurate or fully correct because they haven’t been fully tracking this, which is the case. I mean, seriously, the case 95% of the time because people struggle with this so much. So the process I set is we set what the funnel is gonna be, what the strategy’s gonna be, and all the steps in the funnel. And then I assign a metric, a goal metric at every step of the funnel. And it’s usually a conversion percentage after the initial like ad cost. So for example, if you have a funnel where the steps go add to webinar, to application, to book a call to sale, that’s one of the longer funnels. So I’m gonna use that as an example, then you’re gonna have the cost per webinar registration, right?

And so you’re gonna set a goal for that. What’s your target cost per webinar registration? And then from there, you’re gonna have a goal of how many of those webinar registrants apply. So then you’re gonna have an application percentage goal conversion goal, and then you’re gonna move to the next step, which is in, in my example, book a call, and you’re gonna have a conversion percentage for how many people book a call. And then from there, how many of those calls that actually got booked will purchase? And so those are all percentages that you’re setting. And so what I do in the processes, I, number one, plan the strategy, and then number two, I assign projections in different scenarios to these funnels and I usually run different numbers. So I’ll have about five different scenarios of cost per lead. And then I’ll play with different conversion numbers of like, this is what it would look like if, you know, 5% of the leads converted.

This is what it would look like if 7% did, and this is the ROAS, this is the return on ad spend. This is your profit. This is what it’s gonna be. And so I set those projections. And what happens when you set those projections is sometimes you are guessing and you’re using industry averages, but you’re at least going into your ads with a benchmark. You’re going into your ads with something to shoot for and not just throwing spaghetti at the wall. If you don’t have data, you are guessing to an extent and, and the next, you know, one of the things I’m gonna talk about is the fact that you have to go and adjust these things in the future. However, going into it with that benchmark is key. And so what’s come out of this in some of the scenarios is, I had it one example of a client that I onboarded and their goal was to get, like, I think it was like 30 sales of this $7,500 offer.

And I ran the projections and I said, okay, based on this ad spend that you told me, you’re willing to spend, like, this is the most that you’re gonna spend. You’re not gonna come even close to that sales goal. We have two options and I gave them like, we have two options. We can increase your budget to X amount. And I showed them the scenario of what it would be if they spent more and how that would get them closer to their sales goal, or we can build your list for a longer period of time before your launch and then launch it. And so here’s the thing. If they didn’t go through this process with me, that company would’ve gone forward, launched ads and completely missed the mark on their goal and their sales, because they didn’t do those projections. And, you know, there’s other times where I’ve shown people like we need to adjust your funnel because this is not gonna be profitable enough.

As you can see from, you know, the return on ad spend we need to adjust something cuz when we run these numbers, it’s not putting out ad spend. There’s been other times where I’ve shown people that the volume, there was another example of someone who had a self-liquidating offer funnel that then led to an application. And I showed her with her budget and standard conversions. She’s not gonna get enough volume to get applications, to get sales unless we increased the budget or we create a different front end and that leads to decisions. So the very first thing to do with your marketing, always any new funnel, any new strategy, any new live launch is set projections and set projections for that very first action that comes from the ad, which is either gonna be a cost per lead or a cost per registration, or it’s gonna be a cost per landing page view because if you have eCommerce, right, you’re going to that landing page, the sales page.

And so you set that benchmark, you set a few different scenarios and then you basically set a percentage that drives every other action throughout the funnel and gives you those metrics. And you get to pull the lever of adjusting that percentage in the future to dictate how much you know, you’re gonna get out of this funnel. So that’s the first step we set these projections and then we have our proprietary tracker spreadsheet that I, to be honest, it got changed. And I just changed it back to what I had because I shared this in the podcast I had, unfortunately, someone in my company changed everything of mine. And without my knowledge and what we were doing, which is on me, but I changed it back to my original kind of proprietary way of tracking, which tracks everything through the entire funnel. And we have a really specific way that we track specific ad traffic with all of our clients to get a hundred percent accurate data.

And so we know how many leads from our ads are doing things like booking a call, filling out an application and purchasing and we’re tracking all the way through the funnel. And what we do in our tracker is we plug in a goal which is set from the projections at every step of the funnel. Then we go track the actual data every day that’s coming back and it highlights red for us where we’re not hitting our goals. So that’s the second piece is you set the projections, you set the goals, you launch the strategy, you launch the ads, you go capture the data, you plug in the data, and now you see where you’re not hitting your mark. And you have a few options at that point. You either need to say, okay, my original projections weren’t realistic. I’m not gonna be able to hit this sales conversion or this, you know, application conversion or whatever it is.

I’m gonna adjust it. I’m gonna adjust the goals and make sure that my funnel is still profitable. Once I do that, or I’m gonna make changes in adjustments to be able to hit that goal and to be able to get myself to profitability. So what happens is with our clients, we run the projections, we plug them into our tracker as goals. We track actual data. And within a week, literally that quickly we already have actions we can take. So some examples are we have one client who is getting an amazing cost per lead. They’re getting a really great cost per lead. We’re below KPIs. We’re below our goal on that. They’re getting like a dollar less than what we’re shooting for, but they’re not hitting the sales conversion on their first offer, which is an upsell right on the thank you page for $19.

So we are at like only a one and a half percent conversion. And we wanted to be at like seven, right? It had only been one week. So yes, you can get more data, but you’re already seen like it’s not hitting the metric. So what we did was we took that page. We sent it to our copy team. We audited it, we improved it. And we relooked at the data the next week. And that conversion is starting to go up. And so this process of like set the goal, set the projections, get the data and then take action. It just simplifies marketing so much and it makes it so you can’t argue with what you should be doing. You can’t argue with decisions, you can’t argue with data and you never feel like you’re throwing spaghetti at the wall. You always feel like you have a plan. You have a next step. 

And you know, one of my core values and, and you know, promises declines is that everybody gets results because everybody will get results. When you follow this marketing always works. It’s just a matter of when, and this is why you pay attention to the data. And then you look at each example and you just ask yourself like, okay, what can we do to improve this? So if we use my original example that I was talking about of that funnel going webinar, application call sale, let’s say we’re getting great webinar registrations. We’re hitting our goal for that for cost per webinar registration, which means we’re hitting our goal for volume. Let’s say we’re getting good applications. And those people aren’t booking calls. That’s where the percentage drops off in this example. So now we look at it and say, okay, people are getting this far through the funnel and then they’re not booking a call.

What do we do to get more people who are filling out an application to book a call? What are actions we can take? Well, we can create more reminder emails. We can look at the emails we are sending. We can look at the window that we opened up calls to be available. Is it too far out? Is it not enough time? Is there not enough times to book? We could create more outreach to these people. We could have salespeople personally reach out and try to get them to book a call. We could create a retargeting ad if there’s enough volume to target those people. There’s five actions right there that you could go take within a short period of time based on data to try to make your goal and your outcome. How do we improve that conversion? How do we improve that percentage?

You improve that percentage. And then it impacts the other piece of the funnel. And so I’ve had you know, people and clients go, oh, well, like we should change, you know, this page. And I’m like, well, not enough. Traffic’s even getting to that page. We need to change the step before. And so those type of decisions and actions become very clear, very simple and straightforward when you follow this process. And I’m not kidding when I say 95% or maybe even more like, it’s probably like 98% honestly, of clients who come in to work with us, especially an elite, don’t have this in place before working with us. And it’s like, no wonder, you’ve been flailing, no wonder you’ve been struggling. It’s because you didn’t know what to do next. You didn’t know how to track the data. And you know, this is something that’s just like so simple to me, but it’s not to everybody else.

And that’s okay. That’s where my, you know, kind of proprietary systems come into place when working with clients. But what I’m reminding you guys here and bringing this here, because I think there’s a lot of value in you taking a step back and asking, you know, are you following this simple process in your marketing? Are you following projections, data actions? And all of your actions are now driven by data. And the data is driven if it’s working or not by goals that you set. And every single month, what we do is we look at, in the first week of the month, we look at the previous month’s data and we ask ourselves, do we need to adjust any goals? Is there, you know, projections where we’re getting consistently, you know, 2% conversion and we said seven, we’re probably not gonna get to seven. We can improve the funnel that maybe wasn’t a realistic conversion.

So we need to adjust that and make sure when we do adjust that is the funnel still profitable, or maybe we’re get hitting our goals. We’re crushing it. We’re above KPIs. And we should increase the ad spend because then the client’s gonna get more out of the management fee is gonna make more money overall. And so decisions every month should be revisited based on that actual data. And then your goals are adjusted and you repeat the process every week. Our clients get that weekly report. It’s based on data. We highlight like, here’s all your data here right here in this funnel. Here’s your opportunity. And so therefore here’s what we’re gonna do. Here’s what we need from you. Let’s go, let’s move forward. So when people say things like, oh, you just have to let marketing sit and see, and like it might work.

And it’s early to tell it’s like, yeah, but you still can be taking action. You can be taking action as early, as like a weekend into something, depending on the budget, depending on the traction. And so you can stay super proactive. So don’t let other agencies or marketing experts be like, well, you just gotta let it sit. You just gotta wait kind of, but not really, because you can see pretty quickly where there’s a gap in, in a funnel and in a strategy and you can take action on it. If you know what you’re looking at and you have this process that you are following. So take a step back, evaluate your marketing, see if you’re doing this. And it’s really important to have that accurate data because otherwise, how can you make decisions if anyone ever comes to me and asks me a strategy question, I always am like, well, what’s your data.

If someone says my funnel isn’t working, I need to know, okay, well, what was your goal cost per lead? What was your goal sales conversion, and where are you at without that? I can’t give you advice because we have to pinpoint the problem to then move to the solution. If you’re listening to this and you’re like, I want this in my business. Then I recommend going and booking a call to talk with us about Elite. You can go to hirshmarketing.com/elite. That is our new agency done for you offer for ads management and strategy. And the cool part is for probably the next 30 days, I am doing the strategy still, I’m onboarding the clients. And I’ve onboarded our first 17 clients that we brought in and I’m gonna continue to do that. And right now through when this podcast episode comes out through the next day, through the August 19th we have a bonus happening where on top of everything you get in elite, I also will plan out for you a cash infusion strategy that you can leverage to your warm audience.

I’ll help you plan the offer and the promotion. And that can be separate from ads that can be just to generate some cash in your business. So if you’re listening to this and you want that, this is exactly what I’m doing with our elite clients is what we do with our agency clients. And I would love to support your business with that. It really has created so much momentum and clarity and results for our clients that we have so far onboarded in elite. So you can go to Hersh marketing.com/elite. Thank you guys so much for tuning in today, and I’ll talk to you next week.

Thanks for listening to The Not For Lazy Marketers podcast. If you love this episode and want deeper support with your marketing head over to helpmystrategy.com to see how Hirsh marketing can help take your marketing to the next level, no matter where you’re at today. We help our clients scale faster than ever, find hidden leaks in their funnel, experiment with new creative marketing strategies, and help their business explode and be more profitable than they ever dreamed possible. Head over to helpmystrategy.com and see if you qualify for a free strategy audit with team Hirsh.

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