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Emily Hirsh:

I’ve been feeling this for like the past month, so we actually went and pulled some data to make sure it was right before I can claim this. But this is super exciting, you guys, because I think ad costs are down, costs are finally down. 

You are listening to the Not for Lazy Marketers podcast, episode number 444.

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I am excited for today’s episode because I just got out of a meeting with my team a few hours ago where we really dove in. It’s coming to the end of a month. So we dove into like what’s working, what trends are using, what’s something cool you tried? This is one of the reasons that our clients get to benefit from this intel because we have a full team of ads managers and account managers and creative team that’s in ad accounts and actually getting millions of dollars of data every single month that we go and collaborate on and leverage that for our team and for all of our clients. And so I just got outta that meeting and it’s fresh on my mind. And so I wanted to share a few things here and one I’m so excited about because I’ve been feeling this for like the past month.

So we actually went and pulled some data to make sure it was right before I can claim this. But this is super exciting you guys because I think ad costs are down, ad costs are finally down from them rising in the iOS updates. And the last like year and a half across the board, we’ve actually seen a significant decrease, sometimes half of the cost of ads. And so I have a theory on it, but I wanna share a few things. So I started to notice this because I’ve been very involved in our client accounts again over the last 90 days. And I’m seeing these campaigns that are like B2B business owners that are targeting, you know, the most saturated market, which is like online business owners and they’re getting like $8 webinar registrations. And I’m like, wait, what? Like a year ago that was like $25 that was like, it was so hard to keep it under $20 a year ago.

And I, and I went out and did a podcast and I was like, you know, you might have to have a different strategy like opt in to webinar because you can’t pay for these, you know, higher leads and your business can’t sustain that. And it’s like $8. We have about like $6. I mean I have my own opt-in cost that have been down to like four, $5, like what that’s like five years ago cost. And so I was like, is it just me? And so we started digging in and I mean we have people in the B2B space getting four, five, $6 cost per leads, which is really good. And then some of the B2C space getting less than a dollar cost per lead. Like one right now is at 30 cents. I’m like, are you kidding me? This is like when I started my company.

So across the board in almost every account we’ve seen a decrease in ad cost. And here’s my theory and I kind of predicted this and I actually talked to some good friends about this like maybe four or five months ago about like this is what’s gonna happen. Which is over the last year and a half ad costs went up and then a lot of people pulled their ad spend, they diversified to different platforms, they shut down their business that that’s happened to a good amount of people, they shut down their business or they stopped running ads altogether because they couldn’t afford it anymore, which then forced their business to shut down cause they didn’t have new business. And I mean how many online business owners have you seen basically throw in the towel in the last three to six months? Will all of those people doing that and all of those people beginning to diversify their ads, they just made it cheaper for us because now there’s more ad space available.

That’s my theory at least that combined with Facebook has probably started to improve and figure out its algorithms better post iOS updates. A long time ago on here I shared this article about how Facebook said they’re basically working on algorithms and different things in their backend that was gonna be like years in the making and that was at the start of iOS. And so likely that’s also played a part in it is that they’ve started to figure things out and that’s contributed to lower ad costs. But I really think it’s because a lot of people have either diversified their ad spend or they’ve actually pulled their ad spend and businesses have shut their doors. Like more businesses have this last year because of recession economy, increased ad costs, all those things. And so that’s good news for any of you guys running ads. And for our clients like I’m super pumped that live launch that we just did, she had a 10 k budget to spend in seven days and my projection projections that I did were like 12 to $15 cost per lead.

And I was like, if we can get that, that’s good because especially with a live launch, when you spend a low or a large amount of budget in a small amount of time, you oftentimes pay a little bit more for that. So we did that and she was getting like $8 costly and I’m like, this is so cool. So I’m super pumped about that and that’s my theory why. Now I will say another thing that’s happened that’s kind of like counteracted, this is buyer hesitancy is higher. And so that means sales conversions are often lower right now because people need more time to decide to buy not every time but in a good amount of cases. And whenever there’s scarcity and things happening in the economy that make people hesitant, I think right now we’re in a place where, where people still have money and they’re still doing okay, but there’s a lot of fear being thrown out there so that when people consider making an investment or consider buying something, they’re just thinking about it a little bit more.

And if you look at recessions and you look at things that happen in our economy, they’re very much driven by mindset and society’s feelings of safety and security and spending their money. And so when people see things like interest rates go up and you know, supply chain issues or just overall like their confidence in the political party that is there, they become more hesitant to spend money because they know or they at least think and assume this isn’t gonna be good over the next couple of years. And if you look back, like I don’t have a ton of history knowledge, but I do know like for example, there’s always something that triggers a recession kind of ending. And usually it’s when the government or you know, the Federal Reserve decides to do something to help it. And so one time it was they introduce credit cards cuz then people felt confident spending again.

And so a lot of a recession is really people’s mindset. And so if people right now are feeling more hesitant to buy buyer hesitancy is higher, it means your sales cycle might be longer as a business or you’re gonna have to work harder to nurture and build trust slash also communicate that your offering your service is a need to have and not just a nice to have. And so what this means is, number one, it’s a great time to grow your email list. It’s a great time to run ads. I’m super excited to buy it if you could hear it in my voice because I’m like, we’ve proved it with all these accounts. Like I’m like this is not just a couple one off things like ad costs are less expensive and I’ve had really good friends spending a ton of money on Facebook too, say the same exact thing.

So that’s super exciting. It’s a really good time to capitalize on that, grow your list to get, you know, pay less for traffic and to increase the leads coming into your, your list. Now with buyer hesitancy being harder, the back end of your funnel and your messaging and your copy and the way that you sell is so critical that you really nail that And you really go above and beyond in making sure that you come off and stand out and communicate benefits and outcomes and you have an extremely good strategy and experience for your leads in your customers. It also means another thing which as I’ve seen the basically comeback of low price digital products. So I was just talking to my team about this today cause I was like, I, this is why marketing changes so much and I think it, it changes but it also cycles.

I did a podcast probably a year ago or a year and a half ago where I was like, I don’t like slow funnels and I don’t like low price digital products because here was why because traffic is so expensive that the effort it took to sell a low price digital product or be able to sell a trip wire was not worth the amount. You weren’t gonna be able to self liquidate let alone profit. And because ad costs were so expensive that if you had like a $200 offer and you’re paying you know, $20 cost per lead, you couldn’t do it. The numbers just did not add up. But now that ad costs are going down, those things are coming back. We have clients retrying, self-liquidating offers, we have clients trying trip wires to self liquidate. A trip wire is an offer on the thank you page.

So you have like a free opt-in and then on the thank you page it’s a low priced offer and we have clients doing that to pay for their ad spend again. And so those low price digital products even leveraging back to like the 9 97 course there was a trend because ad cost got so expensive that everybody had to increase their course prices to 1500, 2000. What used to be a thousand dollars became $2,000 because they couldn’t afford to do it otherwise. Now in my opinion, with ad costs less but buyer hesitancy higher, that’s just reason for you to be offering something that is affordable for somebody who might be struggling in their business or their life and not have as much cash to invest. And your business can afford to do that because traffic just got cheaper. So for myself and a good amount of clients, we’re bringing back the trip wires, we’re bringing back the slow funnels and even the automated webinar funnels to a 9 97 offer and selling.

I did a podcast a while back on selling low price digital products to capitalize on leads you’re already paying for that you’re trying to sell a higher price digital product for. So this really gives you something to think about in your own marketing strategy and maybe ask yourself the question of, if I know that ad cost is less expensive now it’s less saturated, honestly it’s less expensive and it’s easier to get, you know, leads in my business, what would I do differently? And if I know that buyer hesitancy is higher that people need a little bit more time nurturing or they’re nervous to buy, what would I do differently with my strategy and my business? Does that mean that I should go back to spending money on ads? Does that mean that I should spend more money on ads and generate more leads? Cuz it’s never forever, right?

Ad cost being inexpensive, there’s always gonna be an end in site where that changes and that goes back up. It’s a cycle. And honestly the the strongest businesses are the ones who can hold on through both cycles of expensive ad costs and lower ad costs cuz what choice do you have? You have to keep generating leads and new customers and people into your business. And so if you know these two things are true, what would you change about what you’re currently doing and your strategy? Are you missing out on opportunity? Are you looking at things in an old way? I’m telling you these things are true. So if you’re operating out of the mindset from six to 12 months ago, a ad costs are really high and I have to have a $2,000 plus product and I, you know, can’t have a load of highest digital product but you know you can help people and you can create ideal customers out of leads or effort or traffic that you’re already generating, what would you change?

So this is a short and sweet podcast episode. I’ve done a few of those recently but I was really excited coming out of that meeting. I’ll share a couple others things that came out. Those are like the two big pivotal shifts and the industry that we’ve been watching for the last 30, 45 days in this meeting we were like okay, here’s the data, we can confirm this. Here’s multiple examples of this. And even in my own ad account, I mean I used to have a hard time paying less than $20 cost per lead or cost per webinar registration. I mean I just did a webinar and it was like seven, $8. That’s so crazy in the B2B space that’s very, very saturated. And then like I said, we have some that are 30 cents, $2, $3 in the B2B space, B2C space, which is crazy. A few other things that came up in that meeting were number one using, making sure to always test lookalike in interest based audiences because they see a very big mix in accounts where some do really well with lookalikes, some don’t at all and they wanna leverage interest audiences.

Number two was in a lot of accounts we’ve noticed that if you go broad with targeting and you let Facebook hone in on the ideal person to target, it oftentimes does better and leads to less cost per lead, but it also quality leads in more sales. So really letting Facebook’s algorithm do the work and the other was utilizing reels. But knowing that when you use a reel or a video, you have to often refresh it and keep it really fresh every two to four weeks at the most because they seem to saturate faster than images. So kind of as a standard, we always test images and videos and reels and a lot of times we see that reels are less expensive traffic but we have noticed that sometimes it’s less expensive traffic for a week and then you have to put like a new one in to keep it less expensive.

So sometimes what we do is we batch or have our clients batch like four or five, six reels and then we spread them out over a period of time and use them spread out in that way cuz they seem to kind of expire faster, which makes sense, the type of content that it is. And the algorithm wants that constant freshness, right? With reels organic too. It’s like they have a a short lifespan so that also makes sense. And so, you know, always out of these conversations. What’s interesting though is we’ll see, you know, have an ads manager say, Yeah I saw this in one account and then it’s like the opposite in another account. So you’re never gonna get over that need for testing and seeing what works in your account. Is it interest? Is it lookalikes, is it bigger audiences? Is it narrowed audiences?

Is it images, is it videos, is it reals? Is it all of them? Is it a constant mix of them? Is it automatic placement, is it standard placement? Is it dynamic creative or using post IDs? You need to test all of those things and you don’t test it one time. I mean you probably test those things at least every quarter and try new things because Facebook does change so rapidly and the algorithms are changing without us even knowing it. I mean Facebook has entire engineer teams constantly working on their backend and changing things that they don’t put out an announcement and say, Hey guys, make sure you use more lookalike audiences. And most of the time when you talk to a Facebook rep they have no idea what they’re talking about. So they don’t even tell their own reps or their own workers when they’re working on things.

It just happens. Which is kind of how most platforms are including Google and and the other ones. And so the important thing is as a marketer that you are always testing and you have those answers for your business. So if this episode excited you and you’re like, I need to restart ads, I need a custom strategy in my business, I need someone to drive it, I need someone to tell me what to do, I wanna capitalize on this opportunity and I’m truly not just saying this like we have the numbers, just wait till you see the Hersh marketing report in October. You can go to hersh marketing.com/apply or you can go to help my strategy.com and fill out our application and chat with us. We actually fully booked out our clients in the month of September. So if you’re even thinking about working with us in October or November, I would jump on a call because we have been blowing up, I’ve doubled my client roster in the last 90 days, which is amazing and have been getting incredible results I think in the month of September so far where at almost $2 million collective revenue for all of our clients.

And if you hear that and you’re like, well I’m not a big enough business, a ton of our elite clients are only spending one to $2,000 a month and they are newer, they have either not run ads or they’ve only DIYed their ads themselves. So that’s collective against all our clients and it shows that things are really working right now and there’s a lot of opportunity to capitalize on and we booked out in the month of September. So if you’re thinking about it, don’t delay. Cuz I think that’s gonna happen in October too, based on what we have planned. So yeah, I will talk to you guys on Thursday. Thanks so much.

Thank you for listening to the Not for Lazy Marketers podcast. If you love this episode and want deeper support with your marketing, head over to help my strategy.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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