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SHOW NOTES

One of my Core Beliefs is this: If you have a crappy product or a broken funnel, ads can’t help you. (And yet, so many entrepreneurs find themselves chasing “the next best thing” in marketing, only to neglect what matters first… their FOUNDATION!)

You know that paid ads work, right? You see them working for other people (and I talk about making $3M+ in ads revenue PER MONTH for our partners!). But, ads won’t help you if their foundation (your offer, your funnel) is low-quality or broken.

That’s why, in this episode I’m talking about why ads (and marketing) can only help you amplify what’s working already, not build your foundation + solve your problems. Here’s a few things I’ll explain…

  • The difference between buying data + paying for ads
  • Why we turned away a potential client, with money in-hand
  • How to get to “unlimited budget” + scale with “unlimited success”

Listen to this episode for a quick conversation about the real power behind paid marketing – then take a screenshot + share to Instagram stories (tag @emilyhirsh for a shoutout!).

Key Points:
[2:28] Here’s the power of paid marketing that works
[3:40] The difference between buying data + paying for ads
[4:45] Why we turned a potential client away
[9:00] How to get to “unlimited budget”

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Episode Transcripts:  

Emily Hirsh: 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. 

Hello guys, I am pumped, so pumped about this episode. Today I’m talking about my belief, my core belief and a truth, which is ads and paid marketing are here to amplify what you already have, not fix what is not working. So what does that mean? It means that way too often have I seen people, whether they want to come and work with us, or they just say this in a mastermind, or I see it online, feel like the answer to their problems, and their marketing is that they need to just start Facebook ads. And if they start Facebook ads, and they start paid marketing, then they will see the success that they want to see, “Because so and so is doing Facebook ads and everybody says it’s the thing, and I’ve seen people successful with it, so if I do it, why won’t it work with me?” And how many times as entrepreneurs do we look for that? Like, “What is the easy way to just solve my problems?” And then we get fixed on it and we’re like, “Yeah, that’s going to work.” 

I just went to a meetup where somebody did that. I’m not going to share the details of it, but it was such an obvious… I’m sure I’ve done this a dozen times. We get so close to it that we’re like, “Yeah, it’s going to work.” And we have convinced ourselves, and then somebody has to convince us that it’s not really. Usually, that’s my coach. But anyways, people really… I’ve seen this happen too many times, so I want to explain to you guys what I believe the true power behind Facebook ads and paid marketing is. And recently what we did was we pushed a client and we said, “No, we can’t work with you because you needed to go do a beta test of your course, of your offer, and prove the offer before we’re going to run ads to it. And before we even recommend you run ads to it because the offer is not proven and you don’t have a huge following.”

So ads and paid marketing are obviously extremely successful. We’re generating two to 3 million in profit every single month for our clients right now, we’re managing $1 million on ads spend every month, and it works. Paid ads work. But, they don’t work if your core foundation isn’t working right now and then you try to run paid ads. Paid ads are here to amplify what is already working and converting. That means if you have a funnel that is completely broken, or your messaging is off, or your offer is not even good, you should not turn to running paid ads yet. You should go fix those things and then run paid ads. 

Now, I will say sometimes in order to test your funnel after fixing it or test your messaging after updating it or test your offer, that’s new, you might have to run paid ads to reach enough people to achieve that, but that’s a testing budget. That’s buying data, which I’ve talked about. That’s buying data for the pure purpose of getting people in your funnel, seeing your numbers and proving it. Proving the funnel works, proving the messaging works, proving the offer is valid. Then you scale, then you amplify your ads. And that should be your goal.

What we said to this person and she was amazing, and we’re really upfront with this. I talked about retention rate in a previous episode because if I bring on the wrong clients who are not set up for success, my retention rate is going to suck and I don’t want that. So in the sales process, I actually have really unique sales process and way that we’re interviewing clients just as much as they’re interviewing us because I want the right fit. I want people that my team can rock it for. And some people are not ready for it. Whether they’re not ready for us… Like this person had the money in hand, she was about to pay us. It’s not that she didn’t have the investment or that her business wasn’t even at the level. It’s that it was a brand new offer, she didn’t have a massive influence or following yet, and she wanted to have a 60 to $100,000 launch. And we knew going into it, we couldn’t guarantee that because there’s no data, and because we don’t even know if this works. So we said, “Go sell five to 10 of these, try it with your organic traffic. You could run a little ads if you wanted to run a test budget of ads, but you don’t have to. Prove it, come back with the data, and then we’ll build real projections and we’ll amplify this.”

But if you try to sell something and it doesn’t even sell to your warm traffic, there is no world where you’re going to then be able to go to cold traffic who doesn’t even know you and make it successful. So you have to go out and prove that your funnel and your offer and your messaging is working. And you might, like I said, have to spend a little bit of money to do that. You might have to buy some data, but when we buy data, we’re doing it with the intention of like, “Hey, we’re spending $1,000. We might not get this ads spend back, but I’m paying for this because I want to make sure that my funnel is working, that my messaging is clear that my offer sells. And if it doesn’t, I need to go fix it before I go spend $10,000 or $5,000 on ads.” Because ads are not going to fix what’s broken. Ads are a piece to the puzzle and they’re here to really explode and get more eyes on something that’s already working. 

So I feel this is really important because I think first of all, there is a lot of people out there teaching Facebook ads, there’s a lot of people out there preaching them, and there’s a lot of people out there having success with them. But they’re having success because what they’re driving the Facebook ad to is working. They’ve nailed their messaging, their messaging is clear, and it converts. They have a funnel that converts people and they have an offer that’s good. And it’s okay if you don’t get that on the perfect shot. They probably didn’t either. We all have to alter things and optimize things. And it doesn’t mean you can’t run ads if you still have optimization to do, but you at least need to prove and know that things are converting before you really heavily start ads. Unless your purpose is buying data. 

There’s really like two purposes. You’re either going into the mentality of your ads of like, “I’m spending $1,000 to drive as much traffic through my funnel to see the results and I might not get this money back.” Or you’re like, “I’m spending $4,000 with the expectation I’m going make $10,000 because I know my numbers and that’s what I’m projecting.” Two different scenarios that you have to focus in on.

So look at yourself right now. If you’re not running ads, is everything in place? Do you have that foundation? Do you need to buy some data to get that foundation? Do you need to validate your offer? Do you need to hone in on your messaging? Or here’s my other question to you, are you running ads right now and they’re working and for some reason that you can’t explain, you’re not scaling them? Because I’ve also seen that happen. And literally the best investment you can make is back into a business that’s making two to $3 for every dollar it puts to ads. Why would you not scale it unlimited if that is the situation that you’re in?

I’ve also seen like people get emotional with their money and they’re like, “Oh, I can’t imagine myself spending $10,000 a month. That’s crazy.” Well, no, it’s not crazy. If you’re going to make 20 or $30,000 from that 10, that’s great. I mean, obviously the 20 is going to depend on if it’s e-commerce now, because then you’re not making enough money. But whatever your profit margin is, let’s say you’re getting $3 for every dollar you put into ads and you’ve got a good profit margin with those numbers and they work. Why would you not scale unlimited? I don’t know. Ask yourself that if you’re there. Because ads are here to amplify what’s working and you want to get a point where they’re working so well, you can put in an unlimited budget. And we have a lot of clients who come to us like that. They’re like, “We now have the budget, just scale.”

And the client I did, that was about going from zero to 1 million in revenue. I got questions to people like, “What was their budget? What was their budget when they started?” Their budget was unlimited. Their budget was keeping positive ROI and spend as much money as you can because when we shift our perspective and we realize that once we’ve created that, once we’ve created a system and a funnel and a strategy that’s making you $3 for every dollar you put in, are you kidding me? That’s the best investment you can make. What investment are you going to be able to spend $1,000 and make 3000 in a week, or however long it takes you to make it back in your ads? Literally none. Your Business is the best investment for you to put money back into when you have that foundation, when it’s time to amplify your ads. 

So get to that point, put in the work, be willing to buy the data and spend money testing it and validating it, and then amplify those things guys. It’s so powerful. And that’s what I watch happen with our clients. That’s what I watched happen taking that client from zero to a million dollars of revenue in 45 days. He obviously came to us with a proven product and a proven offer. And I talked about that episode, I believe it was episode 82, so if you want to go back and listen to it. But he came to us with a proven product, a proven offer, and he was ready to scale out. He had an unlimited budget. We knew it was going to work. So that’s what we did. We are spending $250,000 a month in ad spend for him. 

So think about where you are. Think about the phase that you need to go, and there’s two different mindsets for ads. There’s the buying data or just the amplify the scaling. Make sure that you’re not just somewhere in the middle doing nothing, staying stuck, treading water there. Don’t do that. 

And of course, if you have a proven offer, if you have a funnel that is converting and you want to work with team Hirsh, go to helpmystrategy.com and apply to work with us. We’ve got a couple of clients’ spots open for the right people. Like I said, we interview those people just as much as they interview us and our promise is, we’ll never take on a client that we don’t think we can really, really truly support. See you guys next time. 

Thanks for listening to the Hirsh Marketing Underground Podcast. Go behind the scenes of multimillion 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.