Last week, I asked you to share with me your biggest marketing challenges and ask me your most pressing marketing questions so I could answer them for you. I’ve compiled those responses and I’m jumping right in with the answers you need, broken down into easy pieces, in my series, “Marketing Questions Answered.” 

In the first episode of this series, I’m answering how to create a winning ad that brings in leads. But not just leads that come in and sit there…leads that actually convert into sales. That’s what we all want, but how do we make it happen? First, having a clear, solid strategy as a foundation is an absolute must. After that? Listen in as I share the steps to nailing your ads and bringing in those sales.

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh:

Your goal is I need to use paid ads to generate leads and then those leads to turn into sales. The most important thing we need to have in place is a really clear and solid strategy.

You are listening to the Not for Lazy Marketers Podcast, episode number 491.

Hello you guys and welcome back to the podcast. Yay. We are doing something fun this week. So this is a Monday. We don’t normally release episodes on a Monday, but we are, and I asked you guys last week and the week before a little bit to submit questions and I was gonna answer and choose some of those questions and answer them on the podcast. So that is what I’m doing today. I have a handful of all of your questions. It’s interesting, there’s some themes I wanna almost pull out and do an episode on multiple questions because there’s some big themes from the questions that you guys submitted. But I pulled out a specific question for today’s. And so I am gonna do an episode every day this week called the Questions, marketing Questions Answered series. And I’m gonna be answering literally just those questions that you guys submitted because chances are if you have this question, other people have this question.

And so I wanted to do this just to kind of give back and create content that you guys need support with because why else would I have my podcast, right? Besides doing that. So today’s question was submitted and it was based on someone saying their biggest marketing struggle is they’re running ads, they’re not getting a lot of leads and they’re getting no sales. And their biggest question is how to create a winning ad that brings a lot of leads that convert into sales <laugh>. So this is probably everybody’s question with marketing and everybody’s need, and I’m gonna share some things today to answer this, but it is also things I have said on the podcast. You might be like, oh yeah, sometimes I have to say things a lot of times until it clicks and p and it’s like the right time for somebody to hear it.

So I think most people have the struggle of, I need more leads, I need more sales, right? That’s what marketing is for. So we need to create ads that convert in leads and bring leads, but also that those leads convert into paying customers. And this obviously has a lot of layers to it. So I’m gonna bring in some like top tips and things to remember and also maybe tie in some themes from other questions that I saw. So first of all, the most important thing for you to understand with ads and remember and like keep top of mind because it’s so easy to forget this is your ads are only going to amplify what you have as your foundation. So you cannot look at ads of how do I create this winning like magical ad that’s going to all of a sudden start working because that isn’t reality.

It’s not about a, a winning magical ad. And I’m not saying that this person’s saying that. I just think that there’s sometimes we convince ourselves maybe even unknowingly, that if we just get like the magic formula of the right targeting and like this awesome ad and we get it up, that then we will all of a sudden have all this success. And you have to always remember it’s obviously more layered than that. And if it were that easy, everybody would be doing it. And so everything that you do not directly related to the ads, but like that the ads go to and what happens after the ad and the nurturing that happens before the ad actually matters more than the ad itself. So there is no magical winning ad. Okay? So the, the first thing to focus on here is if your goal is I need to use paid ads to generate leads and then those leads to turn into sales, the most important thing we need to have in place is a really clear and solid strategy.

And I can tell you out of all the questions I got, that was the biggest theme that will probably focus on in a different episode of you guys don’t have a strategy, you don’t have a clear strategy, which means you don’t have clear direction, which means you don’t have clear next steps, which means you’re not making progress. And let’s just define strategy for a second cuz there’s so much to it. But, a strategy, first of all, a strategy can be consistently changing and shifting, but it has to be clear enough that it can drive your actions. So if I sat down next to you right now and I said, Hey, how are you going to generate leads? Like what exactly are you going to do? What are you gonna do? What are the actions? Like what are you gonna put out there? How are people even gonna join your list?

What’s in it for them? Like that’s your strategy. So having that defined is absolutely critical in order to have successful paid ads. So the strategy you create, so first of all, if your goal is I wanna bring in a lot of leads, well what are they gonna opt into? That’s really important and that’s like step one is creating an offer. And I say offer even if it’s free, a webinar free webinar is an offer. A downloadable PDF is an offer. A free challenge is an offer. You have to sell somebody on investing their time and that it’s worth it right there before you even get to your paid offer. So first of all, the first part of your strategy is defining, okay, if you wanna generate a bunch of leads, well how, what are they gonna sign up for? Why they sign up for it?

And can you create something that is so juicy and so valuable and so attractive that when somebody sees it they’re going to want to sign up for it. That’s step one. And then we build a strategy around that offer and then we build in things like the email nurture sequence and that’s what you then run ads to, right? Is that strategy. So that’s the first thing because your ads are gonna only amplify our strategy, which I know some of you guys know, but I think it’s easier to jump to like I need a winning ad or I need this before you have that in place. The next thing is it sounds like for this person that qualification is an issue bringing leads that actually convert to sales. And I have seen this a lot where people blame quality of leads when the problem is actually one or two things.

The experience for those leads in nurturing them to then convert them to sales oftentimes is missing components or has gaps in it or it’s not nurturing them enough or it’s not basically convincing them to buy or two, the actual sales language around the offer that’s being presented to the leads. So if you are bringing leads in and they are not converting to sales, it does not mean that they’re poor quality leads. I honestly think that is the easy route to blame. And instead I think it means potentially that the experience you create after that lead joins your list is not good enough to convince them to sign up for your offer. It’s not giving them enough nurturing, it’s not creating a gap that your offer fills or your actual offer itself. Maybe not the delivery of it, but the offer itself has something missing.

The way you’re talking about your offer the way that you position the outcome and results of your offer, that is not clear and that takes a lot of refinement. A lot of people’s struggles in marketing is selling their offer. Like that is the hardest thing to be able to accomplish because you’re proving an offer in refining language around it. So if you feel like you’re getting poor quality leads, ask yourself a few questions. One, is it actually poor quality leads or is my experience after they become a lead incomplete and needs to be improved so that I can actually nurture them enough to become a lead or provide them with more touch points to become a lead? Or is it the way I talk about my offer, the way I’m selling my offer? Is my offer in the offer positioning actually the problem or is it truly poor quality lead and what poor quality leads?

And one thing you can think about with poor quality leads, it’s oftentimes not like as simple as your Facebook targeting. Sometimes I’ve seen this actually frequently I’ve seen this and even I myself have gotten into this where I didn’t realize until afterwards, but you’re attracting your leads in through an offer, right? Some sort of free offer webinar challenge, pdf, et cetera. Sometimes we create those offers to be for the wrong person for our paid offer, like the wrong level of a person or the wrong thing that they’re struggling with. So you have to be really intentional that the offer that you’re bringing the leads in is actually an alignment in going to attract the paying customer. So I’ll give you guys an example. We had our marketing playbook, which was, you know, we had generated thousands of leads into that. But one thing I was really intentional with because I learned from last year was specifically trying to say, you know, this is for experienced business owners.

This is for people who want to go from six to seven figures. This is for people who have an offer and wanna refine their marketing around it because I wanted to attract people who were agency level and were able to get there. Now naturally I’m going to attract people who aren’t quite there yet, but if I am very direct and upfront in my messaging about who I’m trying to attract and I make sure that this free offer is positioned for the right person, then I’m gonna bring that right person in. So sometimes just in what your free offer is and the problem that that solves and the messaging around that you can qualify leads better. So if you do have a free offer, you do have an idea what that is, I want you to think about is that the right thing that’s going to actually attract my ideal customer to my paid offer and attract them based on the problems they have and the struggles they have and and the desires they have?

Or do I need to create something else? Okay, the next thing that matters a lot for turning leads into buyers is obviously the nurturing that happens after the Facebook ad. There are so many touchpoints, arguably 40 plus touchpoints. And the way I define a touchpoint is a simple like they see your ad and they don’t even click on it. They see your social post, they see your story, they see an email come into their inbox with your name on it. There’s a lot of micro-touch points that happen before somebody decides to become a paying customer. The price of your offer matters a lot here. I would argue that before somebody, most people become a agency client for me. So high ticket sales, they probably have 50 to 70 touchpoints with my brand. If you sell something that’s a hundred dollars, you’re probably gonna have less.

So those touchpoints and creating that experience through email, through text message, through your social media, through various ways that you nurture your audience is actually going to be what converts the leads, right? The Facebook ad can’t do that. The Facebook ad can bring you leads, it can grow your list. And if they don’t convert you can say, oh, it’s the quality of my audience, it’s Facebook. But the reality is it’s either the messaging of your offer, it’s either the offer that you’re, the, the freebie that you’re bringing them in with the free offer or it’s the experience and it’s the experience you’re bringing leads on from when they become a lead to when you’re asking them to become a paying customer. How consistent are you being? Are you pitching them one time after four days and then just like, well they didn’t convert or do you have a long-term plan?

Do you have a long-term experience to stay consistent? I think that one of the sweet spots is around six months. I’m not saying it takes six months for something to work. I’m saying if you have consistently grown your list and grown your audience for six months and really shown up and made consistency the goal and seen that growth for six months, something starts to happen around that six month point where you start getting this momentum and traction that wasn’t there before. Of people who have been hanging on your list for four months, who come outta nowhere, who message you on Instagram, who have been listening to your podcast, et cetera, et cetera. I just saw this happen with a client who probably will listen to this podcast who even though she went through something in their life, in her life where she had to slow down her marketing and her business, she stayed consistent.

She kept running ads, she kept generating leads, she kept showing up with her content and all of a sudden like she just like was like, oh I just signed a high ticket one-on-one client I wasn’t even expecting they’ve been following me for four months. Like all these things start happening. And so part of it is also consistency needs to be the goal, which I think most people don’t have it in them to stick it out. They do not have it in them to no matter what not give up and stay consistent even when things didn’t work exactly how they wanted them to work. So, okay. And then the final thing I wanted to note here is cuz because this person said that their biggest struggle was their biggest struggle was paid ads. They’re getting few leads and no sales. So if you are somebody who is running ads already and you have, you know, the ad copy and the creative, you have the targeting and you’ve tried ads and you aren’t getting a lot of leads as long as it has been really tried, like the effort has gone into the messaging and the targeting and testing different copy and creative after a certain amount of time, like even you know, a couple hundred dollars being spent, if you have almost no traction, there’s a high chance there’s something wrong with the actual free offer itself and the way it’s being positioned.

And so when this happens with clients that are new and we have, you know, this new strategy come in and let’s say we launched something and it doesn’t work right out the gate, if that happens, we are immediately going, okay, we’re gonna keep refining this, we’re gonna get new copy, we’re gonna get new creative, we’re gonna shift and test these messaging angles, but we’re also gonna think about a plan B of what’s another opt-in, what’s another freebie that we can bring somebody in with to try and get them results. So sometimes if you’ve really tried everything and you feel like I’ve tried audiences that I know my ideal customer is in, I have, you know tested different copy and creative like at least five versions and I know I’ve gone deep in my copy, then there’s a chance it could be the offer. And so you don’t wanna try to force something to work that isn’t going to work.

And when I say the offer, you know, maybe like we recently had a quiz that a client was running and I was like, you know, I think looking at it now from this perspective of initially it sounded great, we tried it out, it was getting all these landing page views and people weren’t completing it. I said, you know, I think this quiz, the reason why it worked so well for warm traffic is they knew the benefit of taking the quiz. But then when you bring it over to cold traffic and you’re trying to generate new leads coming into it, they don’t understand the benefit and that’s why we’re not getting leads. We need to shift and reposition the offer. We either need to move away from a quiz or we need to change the outcome in the way we’re communicating why somebody should take the quiz.

Understanding they have no idea who this person is and the benefit and what’s in it for them. And so sometimes you launch something and it doesn’t work how you plan and that even happens to us like that is marketing and the real true skill and test to marketing and to a business is what you do in those moments. Not what works The first time you press a go on an ad or you launch a new funnel, it’s what you do when you take the intel and the data that comes at you about that thing and you make adjustments and changes about that strategy, about that funnel. And so that happens to our team where, you know, we can have the best intentions and a strategy in working and collaborating with a client, but if it’s the first time launching a funnel, there’s a chance it isn’t going to work out the gate.

And so the pivoting and the optimizing that you do from that day over the next several weeks is when it really starts, that’s when it really counts. So if you are somebody who’s running ads, you’re trying things, you’re not getting leads, really digging in and just like taking a step back and asking yourself, is it my offer? Like am I trying to push something that there’s a big disconnect? Does somebody really want this? Is this communicating the outcome and what’s in it for them or is it not? And that’s something to think about. So obviously I could do a whole huge podcast on generating leads and sales cuz that’s everybody’s struggle with marketing. But I think these are some of the biggest points and what I said first on making sure you’re not going into paid ads to be your saving grace. Like there’s a reason we go so deep with clients in onboarding and spend so much time on the strategy, not so much time, but I guess so much depth.

Like it can be done in a couple of weeks, but there has to be a lot of thought and intentionality to strategy versus throw a spaghetti at the wall and then be like, oh, I need ads. Like I need ads to work for me. Ads are only gonna work as good as the foundation. The foundation is really important. If you build something on a crack found on a crack foundation, it’s not gonna work. It’s gonna crumble. All right everybody, I hope you found this helpful. I would love this week if you would share the podcast, if you found any part of this helpful. I just absolutely love your guys’ messages, either sharing the podcast or some of you guys send me a message and just go, Hey, thanks. Like I listened to your podcast and I really appreciate you. And I will be back every day this week answering another one of your guys’ questions. So thank you for submitting them. Thank you for participating in this. I appreciate you guys and I will talk to you tomorrow.

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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