Show Notes:
The hard truth; when it comes to your marketing and ad spend it’s all about testing. We can’t really know for sure what will work and what won’t. There’s no magic bullet, and it’s a mistake to think that there’s one strategy to rule them all, one strategy that will work for every single person.
And when you get to that point of knowing what is and isn’t working, you’re one step closer to nailing that winning strategy, helping you cut the time it takes to reach your goals.
In this episode, I’ll introduce you to the GPS Method: Grow, Profit and Scale, our signature process at The JW Agency. And if you want to do just that – grow, profit and scale, then following the 5 phases of the GPS Method will get you there faster.
Share-worthy Quotes:
“For some of you, Ad Manager is just really, really scary and overwhelming and daunting. Or you just aren’t sure if your webinar’s going to work. You feel like you’re just throwing spaghetti and money at the wall by doing all the things. And I get that.”
“Here’s the silver lining, knowing what is and is not working will help you get to a winning strategy that much quicker and test and tweak faster so that you can reach your goals in less time.”
“Once we have winning audiences and winning creative, we then start to scale. Scaling though, I can tell you, can be really tricky and really difficult.”
Get the Transcript here:
Episode 1 – The GPS Method – Predictable & Profitable Marketing
Welcome to episode one of the Ad Agency Secrets podcast. My name is Jessica Walman, your host, mama of two, wife to high school sweetheart, avid coffee lover, successful agency owner, and someone who’s been in four robberies, three of which were banks. Yes, that’s a 100% true, but we’ll talk about that in the later episode. And guys, I’m so excited to finally be doing this. Creating a podcast has been on my radar for a couple of years now, and I finally did it. And the reason it was so important for me personally to create this podcast, was really for you. I speak to so many entrepreneurs who are struggling with their pay traffic and overall marketing. They have such amazing products and services and offers, but they can’t seem to explain what they do in a way that converts on a sales page or they’re running paid traffic to a webinar and their lead cost is massively crazy high.
And I know some of you can really relate with that. Or maybe you are getting a good lead cost, but you can’t get people to show up to the webinar or buy on the webinar. And for some of you, ad manager is just really, really scary and overwhelming and daunting. And I get that. Or you think that you need to spend thousands of dollars a month in ads in order to see any success, or you just aren’t sure if your webinar’s going to work. And so you feel like you’re just throwing spaghetti and money at the wall with doing all the things. Look, I get it. And after managing over a million dollars per month in ad spend at the JWA agency, helping our agency clients over the last about four years, take their ad dollars and turn them into profits. I thought it was high time for me to share the behind the scenes of what our clients are doing and how we help them.
So that you can be a fly on the wall, listen in on what is, and isn’t working and implement exactly what you need in order to start seeing momentum in your business and in your ads. Look, I’ve been in some high-level masterminds like Russell Brunson’s inner circle. And I worked and work currently with A player clients, some of which you know, and I help them spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per month on ads, while scaling the shit out of their campaigns. Now, you will not hear me curse that much on this podcast, I promise you. But there is a common phrase that my team laughs at me about at the agency, which is scale the shit out of it. And really that just refers to when our client’s campaigns are doing really, really well. And we talk about it on our team huddle. I just get excited and I’m immediately saying scale the shit out of it.
And yes, I did totally create a shirt with that phrase as well. And I’m sure you’ll see it on social media somewhere. Ping me if you want one. No, I’m just kidding. Don’t do that. But here’s the thing, one thing I learned by being around all of these A-players and rockstar clients is that there really is no one way. There’s no magic bullet. No strategy that works for every single person. No one size fits all. So if someone tells you do it this way and it will work, they are grossly mistaken. And I promise you, I have so many clients that come to us on discovery calls saying, “I was working with an agency and they said do this and it’ll work. And my expectations were just plummeted because it didn’t work.”
We never truly know what’s going to work until we test, right. Testing is King. We actually have clients right now in the same niche with very similar offerings. And one funnel is working for one client, but it doesn’t really work well for the other client. So just because you see a competitor doing something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to work for you, right? It’s all about testing, but here’s the thing. Here’s the silver lining, knowing what is and is not working will help you get to a winning strategy that much quicker and test and tweak faster so that you can reach your goals in less time. Right? But you still need to test. That’s always important.
I also really wanted to preface this entire podcast, that this is a longterm play. So if you are here specifically looking for quick profits, a wham bam, gone approach, this is not for you. All right. So if you’re looking though to build an empire that will be generating wealth for years to come, then you’ve come to the right place. That means, I know some of you are probably a little guilty of this, no live launching and then crickets for two to three months and then live launching again. You know why? Here’s a really honest truth behind that your audience wants to hear from you. They do, they want to learn from you and they’re needing, needing your expertise. And if you ghost them, well, they’re going to lose interest really fast and they’re going to follow the person that is continuing to show up in their newsfeed day in and day out. Okay.
So I really wanted to start off the first few episodes of this podcast, deep diving into what we call at the JWA Agency, the GPS method. So it has a couple of meanings. It stands for grow profit and scale. This is our signature process we use with all of our agency clients. Okay. But GPS for us really means knowing where we are at, at all times with our campaigns and then knowing exactly where we are going. Make sense GPS. Got it? All right. So this is what allows us in the agency to set up our clients for success like clockwork, because well, we have a process and a system in place. And of course when customized, because again, testing is King and everything should be customized. It works every single time. Some times it happens quicker than others, but it works every time.
So that being said, let’s start with phase one of the GPS method, which is strategy. Each new client we onboard at the JW Agency gets a strategy call where we map out what the overall funnel and campaign strategy will look like. So what does this include? Well, it includes how we build an audience and attract your ideal client to how we turn them into an avid follower and eventually a buyer. It also includes mapping out your goals. So knowing your strategy and goals is really like having a roadmap to your destination. And I don’t know about you, but I like my phone GPS and knowing what turn to take next. So get it, GPS. I’m going to throw the GPS thing in here a whole bunch of times, just wait for it.
So for example, what is our revenue goal for month one or even quarter one? How many sales are needed to hit that number? How many leads? What does the cost per lead need to be? And so on. As with everything, strategy can shift and pivot along the way, but most people don’t even take the time to properly go through the step at the beginning. And I hear it all the time. They just throw $50 here and there at their ads and wonder why it’s not working. Hey, Jess, I threw $50 on the ads. It’s not working what’s wrong. They don’t really know though, if it’s working, right? If you don’t have a strategy or goal in place, you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve. You don’t even know what that $50 did for you, just because you didn’t get a sale, doesn’t mean it’s not working for you. So this phase is pivotal to setting yourself up for success before ever turning on a single ad.
All right. So that’s phase one, phase two, three, and four of the GPS method are the three Cs connect, convert and close. So let’s start with the connect phase. So the connect phase is your visibility plan, guys. This is when you nurture and build credibility with your audience. So are you not an expert with a gazillion followers on social media? No way, no problem, guys, really this phase is actually going to help you build an audience from scratch, if need be, and then continue to build a relationship day in and day out by providing relevant content to your audience consistently so that your audience starts to trust you as the authority.
How does trust build? Right? It builds over time. It builds over consistency. In this phase we normally hone in on your customer, avatar and targeting. So that we bring the right people on the top of funnel into your world. We also focus on using the right type of content here because yes, not all content is created equal, so choosing the right content is important. And this phase, most people spend the least amount of time on whether they don’t understand the importance of it, or they don’t have time to create content or they feel like video is the only way. And I know a lot of people are scared of video, but I can guarantee you this phase is the key to longterm growth and momentum in your business. Our clients doing this phase consistently are the ones seeing a three X return on ad spend or more every single month.
So keep showing up and I promise momentum will happen. For instance, do you have a podcast? Fantastic. Start sending it out to your audience. Do you create weekly videos on your Facebook business page or YouTube videos? Great. Send traffic there. Do you want someone to show up to your webinar? Of course, you do. Then send them a webinar reminder ad, reminding them to show up. Here’s what I want you to remember guys. Okay. Only a small percentage of people are ready to buy from me right now, the rest need time. Time to get to know you, time to trust you and time to see you as the authority. So show up. Does this mean you need to spend like dozens of hours a week creating content? No. And if you know me, I won’t do that myself, but you do need to show up consistently.
All right, so we’re going to move to phase three, which is the convert phase part of the three Cs. This is the lead generation phase. So this phase is where you can finally take your audience off of Facebook and Instagram and move them into your email list so that you can, well, number one, own them. That’s a good one. And then number two, start nurturing them through email. So lead gen can be a simple PDF guide, a webinar case study, video series, challenge, et cetera. And in this phase we focus a lot on compelling ad copy an eye-catching images here, because it’s all about AB testing and always bringing new hooks and angles, so that you never have the ad fatigue and your ads never go stale. Because here’s the thing, you spend the bulk of your budget in this phase, sometimes up to 80% of your budget.
So choosing the right creative, choosing the right lead gen option and testing thoroughly is key here. Plus knowing your numbers and having a really warm audience before getting to this phase is really helpful. So if you follow phases, one through three properly, this phase will convert much easier and higher for you because you put the work in first, and you know exactly what to look for in order for the campaigns in the convert phase to be successful. Now, after you’ve built your list, it’s time to turn your followers into ka-ching buyers guys in the close phase. So phase four is your sales ads. This is where the money is, this is where you can directly re-target your warm audience with your product who may have attended a webinar or joined your challenge. So this is the way you can remind them that your offer is available and how this will impact their lives if they take action right now.
And guys, just to show you how powerful this phase actually is, you can get really creative, sometimes a little creepy. So just make sure you’re on the cusp of not being creepy, by retargeting them based on where they’re at in the client journey. So for instance, like we’ll do with our clients retargeting ads to those who just watched a webinar. So it’ll say something like, Hey, I saw you just registered or just saw our webinar. You can re-target people based on if they went to a checkout page, if they watched a specific video of yours. So you can set up super specific retargeting ads, again, make sure you’re not on the verge of being creepy based on where they’re at in their client journey right now. And the reason why that’s important is because it will resonate with them on a more personal level, versus sounding like you’re speaking to the masses. Right?
And the really cool part about this phase that I liked the most is that you can usually have a pretty low spend, but it usually has the highest reward. And meaning, this is where you normally hear people boasting on social media saying that they had a 20 X return on ad spend, where 95% of the time they’re talking about this phase right here. So guys doing this the right way is imperative. And then we’re going to go right into the last phase guys, which is optimizing and scaling the shit out of your ads. Again, famous phrase here. Knowing what numbers to look for in your ads manager, which I know sounds really scary to people, but knowing what numbers to look for, what they mean, how to troubleshoot them and how to maintain your goal number, your goal KPI. For those who don’t know what KPI is, it’s trust your key performance indicators.
So whether that KPI or goal is a $5 lead or a $30 CPA, cost per acquisition, this is how you go big in your account, guys, being able to optimize and scale property. So this includes knowing your landing page, to add to cart percentage, your average cart value. If you’re running a webinar, knowing what the show up rate needs to be, and then what your purchase conversion rate needs to be from that webinar. So we have a full suite of optimization strategies internally at the agency and processes surrounding them, to ensure that we’re consistently hitting our client goals, or at least knowing what to look for. So we know if we need to pivot quickly. From there, once we have winning audiences and winning creative, we then start to scale, right? Scaling though, I can tell you, you probably heard can be really tricky and really difficult.
And a lot of people who try to scale, will usually fall flat and meaning their goal lead cost or goal CPA starts to increase either steadily or really, really fast like it skyrockets. And then they have to lower back down their spend. So thankfully my team and I, though have mastered scaling and are scaling our client accounts from some of our accounts from zero to 60K in 30 days. Some of our accounts from a thousand dollars a day to $10,000 a day in just a week. So if you are looking to scale your campaigns, be on the lookout for future episodes on scaling the shit out of your ads. And that’s it guys, those are the five phases of the GPS method. I hope you enjoy the very first episode of the Ad Agency Secrets podcast.
In episode two, we are diving into phase one, which is strategy, and we’re going to go over exactly how we run our internal agency strategy calls with our clients. How we create their strategy and how we forecast their first 30, 60, and 90 day goals. And I’m actually going to provide you with some really simple formulas that you can walk away from the episode with and know your next 30 days, like have your next 30 days of ads actually mapped out with your budget forecasted. So you know exactly what your goals are, the number of leads needed and the budget that you’re going to need to allocate. So hopefully that got you excited. Thanks again, everyone for joining me for episode one of the Ad Agency Secrets podcast, and I will see you on the next episode.
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