Ads Only Agencies Are DEAD! Do This Instead.

Show Notes: 

Here’s a fearless forecast: Ads-only agencies are DEAD! ☠️☠️

If you are an ads-only agency or someone who’s hired an agency to manage only your paid ads, I have bad news for you—this will NOT solve your lead & sales acquisition problem. 

Why?

Because as I’ve said, time and time again, ads are only part of the marketing equation. If you don’t have your funnel, messaging, and follow-up dialed in, then ads WILL NOT work for you. 

So what to do instead? You need an entire marketing system employed in your business to… 

🎉 attract your ideal client

🎉 get the lead

🎉 get the actual sale

How exactly? 

🎧 Listen to the new episode of Marketing on Tap and let’s deep dive into why I know ads-only agencies are out 💀

Key Takeaways:

What can a full-suite digital agency do for you that ads-only agencies can’t?

1️⃣ Strategy — Find an agency that will deep dive into who you are and what you want to achieve as a brand and a business so they can tailor-fit your ads to reflect YOU.

2️⃣ Messaging and positioning — The right agency will also look into who your audience is so you can speak to them differently from your competitors.

3️⃣ Funnel — They will help you create a funnel sequence that is designed for a positive, powerful, and profitable user experience. 

4️⃣ Nurture — They will guide you into creating continuous and relevant content to nurture your audience and finally convert them into sales.

5️⃣ Creatives — They make sure you attract your ideal client and repel the non-ideal client through creatives that aren’t clickbait-y and can beat competition on the newsfeed.

6️⃣ Ads — A full-suite digital agency will help setup, launch, optimize and completely take charge of your ad account to ensure you hit goal KPIs. 

7️⃣ Scaling — All these steps lead to scaling your business, and if this is your goal (which I think it is), a full-suite agency is what you definitely need to guide you through this journey.

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Get the Transcript here:

Ads Only Agencies Are DEAD! Do This Instead.

Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies.

Jessica Walman: Welcome back guys to the Marketing On Tap podcast. This is your host, Jessica Wallman, and I am talking today about something controversial. So if you are an agency, if you’ve hired an agency to run your paid ads, then I’ve got some, uh, not so good news for you, but also some good news. So I want you to hear me out.

I run a marketing agency. We run paid Facebook and Instagram ads for our clients, coaches, consultants, digital course creators. And here is the thing, and it’s almost scary to say out loud, but the age of hiring an agency to only handle your ads is gone. It’s dead, kapooh. Okay. Why is that? Because we know that a successful ad is not successful because of the ad alone.

The ad plays a part, but only a small part, no matter how ninja-like you are in ads manager. Okay? It’s a series of events that lead up to the ads that are vital in really businesses who want to be successful, who want a system that will sell their offers over and over again absolutely have to have more than just pretty ads.

So if, one, you’re looking for an ads only agency, stop. Okay? Just stop right now, back up and be honest with yourself and ask yourself, ” Is everything else working exactly how you want it to?” Because if the answer is no to any of the next points that I am going to discuss, then  you need more than just an ads agency.

what you need is a full suite digital marketing agency that supports you with so much more. And I’m going to dive into that in just a minute. So to reiterate, in order to have a marketing funnel and plan that works, and by works you guys, I mean, attracting your ideal client, getting the lead, and of course getting the actual sale.

Now that sounds simple, but that is what every business owner dreams of and it’s usually extremely hard to get. Okay, then you need a full suite digital marketing agency who does the following. So number one strategy, and I’m not talking about some cookie cutter strategy. I’m talking about someone who comes into your business and dives deep into your offer, into your avatar, and figures out the strategy that’s going to work best for you.

Right? So you want someone who actually has hands on experience with strategies working Now, like my agency, we work with so many clients. in, doing webinars and challenges and VSLs and slow funnels that we know the strategies that are working now, and that’s what you want someone who knows the strategies that are working now, but also takes into account.

You and your business goals, your personal goals, your unique offer so that you can create a strategy that works for you. Okay? We have clients who sell very similar things and actual same strategy. So like I’ve had a couple of real estate coaching clients who. Would both do challenges and it would work for one and not work for the other as well.

Why is that? Well, their unique personalities are different and so it attracts different people and they show up differently for that strategy. Two, their offers are slightly different, so it’s going to sell differently. And then three, they can only show up fully to the strategy if it aligns with their life goals, right? So if you really don’t wanna show up live for five days for a challenge, but you hear it’s working well for others, well if you do it, it’s not gonna work for you as well because you’re not in alignment with it, right?

You won’t be fully energetically there when you do it, and people can feel that. So the sales just won’t happen like you want, and you’re gonna burn out faster because again, it’s not aligned with your personal goals. So creating a custom strategy, utilizing current and up to date insights that we have from our current clients equals gold.

Okay, so strategy is the first one. Second is messaging and positioning. Now most people actually, kind of glaze over this because they feel like they have it down. I can promise you, after working with dozens upon dozens of clients, there’s always three or five, three to five more layers deeper you can go with the messaging and the positioning.

So deep diving into your avatar, of course, and deep diving into their pains and desires, what they truly want and why do they want that, and then why do they want that, and then why do they want that? Right, or they’re pain. why is that painful for them? And why is that painful for them?

And deep diving really. And that’s gonna help you to figure out how to really speak to them different than your competitors, right? So that you stand out in the vast sea of ads and marketing because you’re actually speaking their language and you’re speaking to them. being able to position all of your copy this way.

Not just your ads, but your sales page, your webinar content, your emails, everything gets positioned around this. You want to think outside the box. when you think outside the box guys, that’s really where you’re going to get that competitive edge with your competitors, thinking outside the box, speaking their language, and diving deep.

This is where messaging and positioning of your messaging really goes far and will make you stand out. Okay, so that’s the second one, which. Again, plays a huge role. If you’re sending out emails, are they gonna click, are they gonna convert? If you have a sales page, are they gonna click? Are they gonna convert?

is this going to just be cookie-cutter looking and going to sound like everybody else? And I know you, you don’t wanna sound like everybody else. None of us do. It’s kind of annoying when our messaging starts to sound like others and it it gets drowned out. So we help our clients at least to really position themselves differently.

So they, are not a, cookie cutter or carbon copy of somebody else. They really are unique. All right, so we’re gonna dive to the third one, which is your funnel. So being able to create a funnel sequence designed. For a positive, powerful, and profitable user experience. All right, so this is your entire funnel, journey, right?

This includes the client journey, your page structures, the messaging. client journey from A to Z, where they’re going in that process. again, you might run an ad to a webinar, but and it might get you a lead, but is it going to convert fully, is the actual. funnel and client journeys.

Set up the page structure, set up the whole process set up to really drive that lead, to turn them into a conversion. Cuz it’s one thing to get the lead, as you know, but at the end of the day, we all want the sale. We need to be able to impact lives and the only way to do that is to position our funnels and our content and our strategy.

to convert them to a sale. Okay. and then also, tracking all those numbers along the way in the funnel to pinpoint where your ideal customer is dropping off, right? Where to fix it, where to fix, rinse, and repeat until your funnel is converting exactly where you want it. Now, this also includes the content, right?

So this isn’t just your page and the client journey. This is the content. Of the webinar or the challenge or vsl, these must convert, and in order to do that, most people need support. That’s honestly where my agency will audit any client who comes to us. We audit their webinar. this is where our agency comes in.

We audit the webinar, we give you pages of feedback so you can fix rerecord and nail it out the gate so that your funnel and your webinar convert like amazing, beautiful wildfire. Well, I wouldn’t say it’s beautiful, but like wildfire. Okay, so that’s the funnel. So again, we’re gonna. To recap those first three, making sure you don’t have a cookie cutter strategy, making sure it’s super solid and unique to you, and it works and it fits with your business and lifestyle and goals.

Okay. Second is your messaging and positioning. This is huge. Being able to deep dive into this, really speak their language and think outside of the box so that you aren’t drowned out by all the competitive noise. And then third, is your funnel. Making sure that your funnel is actually designed to convert.

Yes, you might get the lead in, but how do you take that lead and turn them into a sale? This is the entire Funnel Journey, client journey page structures, messaging on those, and including the webinar itself. Okay? And then fourth is nurture. So most people, this is just the way we are kind of, I think taught when you kind of get into this digital marketing world and trying to sell online is that it’s kind of like that wham bam, like, I get the lead, I wanna get the sale right away, and that’s it, right?

Jessica Walman: I have my webinar, I I got a hundred opt-ins, I got this many sales. Cool. Let’s rinse and repeat that, or let’s make that better. And yes. You 100% should try to, increase your conversions, make that process better. But here’s the thing, you’re missing out on a huge chunk of sales because only a certain percentage of them are going to buy immediately.

So what then do you do? how do you then, take the 97%, give or take of leads that didn’t purchase from you and turn them into, avid listeners and, fans of yours and eventually potentially buyers of yours. And that’s a few different ways. So one is we run nurture ads to all of our, um, clients.

These are content pieces that go to their warm audience, whether that’s their email list, their Facebook and Instagram page, engagers or followers, video viewers, et cetera. And they’re short pieces of content, anywhere from two to five minutes long. Um, usually your audience building is shorter and your nurture can be short to long.

And these are built to nurture the audience, right? It’s let’s say you have a new show you’re watching and a new episode goes out every single week. It’s like being able to nurture that audience with new content, new episodes every week of something so that they can get value and see you as that authority and be looking forward.

Honestly to your content. And so our clients will have podcast episodes and we’ll put out Nurture content weekly on that. they might have a blog or YouTube and we’ll kind of put nurture content out to that weekly. And that’s to just build that credibility. No, like trust. That also includes emails though.

So we love ads. Like my agency loves ads. Okay. But emails are really powerful. So if you’re doing that podcast weekly, or you’re doing a blog, or you’re doing YouTube, taking that piece of content and putting it into a weekly email to your audience, right? that’s one part of the email. And then the other email piece is, Your sequences for your webinars or your challenges, your VSLs, once they opt in, being able to have a very solid email sequence to that audience is important.

If you’re like, well, Jessica, I put up three or four or five emails and no one converted, that is a problem. I want you to really think through a 10 to 15 sequence email. Or longer that is designed to take them through a journey from lead to buyer. And that might mean, they went to the webinar and now you’re pushing emails to watch the replay, to buy the offer, to downsell, to, low ticket offer to just more content in general and nurturing and going back and forth in that nurture slash pitching.

There’s very sequential ways to do this, so. Nurturing through email is also important. So we just had a client who had a five email sequence ready to go for her vsl, but we had to completely rewrite it. Because it was not formatted properly for high conversions. could we have tested them as is?

Yeah, for sure. But they would’ve performed subpar right out the gate. And our goal for our clients, just like your goal should be, is to convert as high as possible out the gate, right. So she only had a five email sequence. That’s all she wanted. We went ahead and rewrote it. and we’re suggesting to her that we really turn this into at least a minimum 15 email sequence because that is going to make, this convert long term.

Right? People again, don’t want that wham bam experience. So nurture is the fourth one, and that’s really important. That’s where a lot of people miss out. And that’s 97% you guys, of that audience that didn’t buy. Your goal since you already paid for that lead, is how can you now, either for free or few bucks, be able to nurture them and turn them into a sale later on?

Super huge, right? fifth is, I think it’s number five, is creative. So 70% of an ad success are the creatives in your ads. Okay? Soyour goal with these ads is to really make sure that you attract and repel, attract your ideal client and repel the non-ideal client. I just had a media buyer put it in.

I just heard him talking to a, client of ours in a loom video. And I love the way he put this was, it’s like you’re having, house party and you want to invite certain people to your house, but you only want certain people there. So your goal is to only talk to certain people or put out certain vibes to those that you want to bring in, but then also make sure you are putting out vibes and saying things that are gonna repel those that you really don’t want in your home, Because that’s where the whole funnel starts. So being able to create creatives that. bring in the right people. they aren’t clickbait. it’ll like inflate clicks because you’re putting out some crazy stuff to get the cliques, but really it’s not really related to maybe the offer.

It’s kind of off brand just because it’s, you know, oh, cute puppy or whatever it might be. So you don’t really want. Click Beatty things cuz it’ll get clicks, but it’ll be the wrong people. and this is why creatives so important. I just said 70% of an ad success as a creative. So everything I’m saying here is important cuz you can create a Very pretty creative, right? Awesome. And the copy’s great, but if it doesn’t do the job it’s supposed to, it’s not gonna do the job. It’s just gonna get a click. So you wanna make sure that you have creatives out there that, again, attract and repel aren’t click beatty and beat your competition in the newsfeed, right?

Everyone in their mother is putting out ads to your avatar. So how do you beat your competition in newsfeed? It’s with your creatives, Ensure when someone clicks your ad that. It, goes through to your landing page and they are qualified and they know exactly what they’re clicking through to so that the conversion rates are hopefully higher.

Now. We do that here at the agency through our creative director, who actually with each client, dives deep into their avatar. Their messaging and offer so that they can create powerful hooks and angles for the ads, which then get passed along to our graphic designers and copywriters. So you know, if you have an agency it’s just really ad focused and they’re not really doing deep diving like this into creatives, that’s a problem cuz the creatives are a huge piece of the ad portion.

of course then you have ads. Right. So I talked about not an ads only agency, but ads are still part of that, right? You still need to have the ads, they need to be run by expert media buyers, people who’ve been doing that for a decade or longer. you can be a ninja, an ads manager, great, but you also have to understand that, and this is like where my media buyers really shine, is that each account reacts differently.

And so your media buyer has to learn the account. And how to optimize that account based on how that account likes to be optimized. some of our accounts really like to have, bid caps and cost caps. and I’m not gonna explain what those are, but they really like those. And other accounts, we try those and they don’t like ’em.

Some accounts like, campaign budget optimization better than, asset budget optimization, some counts, scale quicker. you can add more budget faster. In other accounts, you can’t cause it’ll, CPL or CPL will start going crazy. So we have to learn the account, right? some accounts need to be optimized more often, others less often.

And they’re just very different. So learning this is key to like long-term growth with your ads. And also monitoring what is and is not working in your account from audiences to creatives to types of campaigns, et cetera. So again, ads I said, right? You don’t want ads only agency, but ads are a big part of that, right?

analyzing the data with in-depth reporting. You need to know on a daily, weekly, monthly basis what is working for your account, what the KPIs are, the key performance indicators are. And where you need to shift or where you need to pivot so that you can continuously progress forward. And if you don’t, you’ll know your numbers at all times.

You are missing out on potential revenue. All right, and the last one, I say seven or eight or what this is last, is scaling. Now this can only be done when you have gone through. Pretty much all the other steps. Creative testing you’ve found winning graphics and videos. You’ve found a winning copy in audiences.

You’ve tested and tweaked, proven your funnel works, and then you can start to scale your profits. Maybe you start off at $5,000 in ad spend a month and you generate $25,000 in return. That’s a 2500% return on ad spend. From there, maybe you wanna scale your ad, spend up to 10,000 a month or even 15,000 a month, and continue to increase your revenue and profits.

Month over month. Now this can only be done again when all of the above steps have been taken, have, fully been done and have been tested and proven. And this is honestly, we’re all businesses aspire to be is the scale phase. So those are really the steps that you need to have in place when you’re looking for an agency.

It is not just ads only. I think you can see why an ads-only agency is 100% dead and why you need a full suite marketing agency. So hopefully this was helpful. If you have been looking for an ads-only agency, do not contact us because that is not what we do. But if you’re looking for a partner that can help you scale your offers– we’ve taken a lot of our clients and help ‘ em with their live launches.

We’ve helped them take their proven offers and put ’em into Evergreen webinars and got those webinars working consistently with a good ROAS so that we can scale that and have that running in the background between launches. Whatever that strategy is that we decide together is really gonna work for you and your goals,

that’s what we put into place and that’s what we do with our clients is we really go through the strategy. The messaging and the positioning, the full funnel itself, we look through nurture, the creatives, we run the ads like pros, and then we help you scale your revenue and profits to the next level. So if you are looking for support in that area, please, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.

there’s a link in the show notes and you can always dam me on Instagram, Jessica underscore wallman. I will make sure it’s super easy for you to connect with me and we will see how we can take you to the next level. Whether that’s you’re making 250,000 a year and you wanna go to 500,000 a year, or you’re at 500,000 a year, you wanna go to a million, or you’re at million, you wanna go to 3 million.

And you wanna do that through your proven offers, through your webinar, through your challenge, whatever that is. And you want paid ads to be that traffic. Source for you and you want the full suite of support to make sure everything is in line, everything is working together, everything is cohesive and everything’s converting where it needs to be, not just the ads.

Then definitely reach out to us cuz we can help. All right guys, hopefully this episode is helpful for you and I will see you guys in the next episode. Peace.