Show Notes:
It has been a crazy week! With the Apple iOS 14 update, we at the JW Agency have been combing through our client list to bring them up to speed. I gave a quick but meaty rundown about this recent update in the previous episode.
Now, it’s easy to blame this recent update or even your ads for the lack of conversion and profitability in your business. It is frustrating, especially if you aren’t super tech-savvy or lack experience with Facebook Ads Manager, to begin with.
BUT… if you take a deeper look, you will see how your ads aren’t the reason why your funnel isn’t working. To bring in qualified leads, get better engagement, and of course, convert leads to actual sales, you need to make your funnel work!
Listen to this episode as I dig into understanding the purpose of your ads and the goal of your funnel so you truly look at Facebook ads for what they are, a traffic source, and finally focus your energy on fixing what isn’t working instead of blaming the wrong thing an easy target.
Share-worthy Quotes:
“I don’t try to point and blame anywhere. I’m always about looking at the data, finding the bottleneck, and saying, ‘let’s fix it!'”
“The ads are just the traffic source. It is just the fuel to the existing fire. If there’s no fire, it’s not going to do anything. It’s just going to fizzle on the ground.”
“It’s not just about the ads. It’s about the whole approach, the holistic approach.”
“You need to understand what the end goal of your funnel is. That’s what’s going to make your funnel successful.”
Get the Transcript here:
Episode 17 – Ads Aren’t The Reason Your Funnel Doesn’t Work
Hey, I’m Jess Walman, Facebook ad and digital marketing expert. Welcome to the Ad Agency Secrets Podcast, where I help you take the guesswork out of your ad spend and replace it with profitability. Now is your time, revolutionize your life and create the impact you desire all while freeing up your precious time. How? By taking a sneak peek at the exact methods our full service ad agency uses for our A-list clients while managing over $1 million per month in ad spend. Learn what is and is not working from Facebook ads to copy, to funnels into your overall marketing strategy. Implement these tips and strategies inside your business today, and get ready to explode. Grab your coffee and get ready for the Ad Agency Secrets Podcast.
Hey guys, welcome back to the Ad Agency Secrets Podcast. It is February already. Most of you guys have noticed that Facebook’s going a little wonky lately. I did an episode on the iOS Apple update however, more’s changing on a daily basis. Me and my team are literally spending hours going to client accounts, seeing new errors, seeing new things that need to happen, and it’s really unfortunate because a lot of people who just aren’t either tech savvy or just don’t have the experience we have with Facebook ad manager, that it’s just unfortunate because they’re not going to, which is going to take a lot more work, I should say. In order to implement the changes that are necessary and needed to ensure that your account isn’t totally crazy, and meaning things aren’t tracking properly. Things aren’t syncing with your domain that you just verified, pixels aren’t working because they weren’t aggregated properly. You didn’t have a page connected to certain things, and so things aren’t just working properly.
It’s definitely a headache. I feel super frustrated with Facebook, of course, at Apple too, which really bites because I’m an Apple lover. I’ve got Apple/ Mac everything, but at the end of the day, it’s just overall frustrating. That’s not what this episode is about, but I just wanted to make sure you guys know, it’s happening to all of us. We’re all in the same boat, and we’ll probably do another episode on this soon as we get more information coming in. I don’t want to give another episode too soon because there is just so much happening on a daily basis, so be on the lookout for another episode with more updates on the iOS. Changes and how you can implement them in your business, in your ads manager, in your tracking to make sure you’re getting, you can get the most success with your ads.
In this episode, though, I wanted to talk a little bit more about the true purpose of your ads, and why your ads are not the reason that your funnel doesn’t work. This is a conversation I have had with a client or two, and it’s unfortunate because it’s easy. It’s easy. It’s easy for all of us to say: You know what? Nothing’s converting, nothing’s working, and it’s just the ads. The ads aren’t doing their job and so nothing’s working.
I want you to remember this. This is really big, this is really important, facebook is a traffic source. That’s it. Facebook as a traffic source, and Facebook as a traffic source. So Facebook grabs the people, brings them to your funnel then this funnel has to do the rest. Now, does it have to be in congruence? Does the messaging have to be right? just to make sure that if they’re getting to your page that they didn’t read one thing in an ad, and then they go into the page and something else happened, for sure.
But usually when that happens, you’re not even going to get the opposite, it’s for sure that has to happen. That absolutely has to happen, but there’s too many times where I’m hearing: You know what? I’ve got all these leads in, or this is happening and nothing’s working, and it’s the ads, it’s the ads. I think we just need to break this down for a minute and I want you to, I’m going to break this down really clearly so that we can really see and understand if ads are, the ads are not the reason your funnel is not working.
So first off, you need to understand what the end goal of your funnel is. What type of funnel are you running, and do you know the purpose of that funnel? That is what’s going to make the funnel successful. So in meaning, if you are running, that’s a self-liquidating offer, so this would mean you’ve got a $27 product that you’re trying to sell, you have a sales page then from there, when someone enters their credit card information in, they can select an order bump. You have an order bump offer, maybe for 20s or for 37, or whatever it might be, or 17, after they do that, they purchase, they go to the next page, there’s an upsell for maybe $97 and so forth. Maybe even a second upsell after that.
So the goal here is to bring in qualified leads and break even, or be profitable. So self- liquidity means it’s going to pay for itself, a lot of people want it to be profitable. Either way, as long as it’s breakeven, in my opinion, that’s amazing because if you have your main offer that you’re trying to get people to, the goal of that funnel is to break even, and then bring a little bit more qualified leads to the next step because they’ve purchased something, they take an extra step, they’ve taken their credit card out to buy something from you, so that’s a big deal.
That would be the purpose of the self-liquidating offer. On top of that, now we’re going to talk about what are you tracking there? What numbers are you tracking? How do you determine your return on ad spend? The point of that funnel is for lead gen, specifically only lead gen, it’s separate from anything, when you have your high ticket offer or your 997, or a $5,000 offer, you’re going to offer later.
You’re not offering that within the self-liquidating offer, self-liquidating offers your lead gen tool, then after that you push them to something else like a webinar or a challenge, or a live event. And that’s going to then have a call to action to the main offer. Correct? So your row ads for the self-liquidating offer is just going to be based on that self-liquidating offer.
How much did I spend in my ads? What was my average cart value? Was it break even, what was my profitability, et cetera. So if you’re spending $37 for an acquisition and your average cart value is $37, then you broke even. That’s how you also calculate your ROAS. Now, if you are running, let’s say a webinar challenge, so let’s backtrack actually. So if you’re running that type of offer, you’re running a self-liquidating offer offer. Yes, that might mean: You know what? I’m not getting maybe the right people to the page. That can always be the reason, but I will tell you, 90% of the time, it’s going to be your page and your offer.
So if your ads are doing their job, your click through rates are where you want them, your goals per click is where you want it, people clicking, so those are doing great. Your CPM, CPC, CTR are doing great in the ads, and you’re getting the traffic to the page, and your page isn’t converting. What does that mean? Logically it means that the biggest reason is going to be because of the page. It’s going to be because of the page, something with the page, the messaging, the offer itself, how it’s being positioned, the layout, all of that plays a huge role. So if I’m going to bring traffic to a funnel and the click through rates are great, everyone’s loving it. There’s congruence from the ad to the offer, to the page but the page isn’t converting, I will tell you, I hear too many times, it’s the ads that aren’t working.
I’m all about the holistic approach. I don’t try to point and blame anywhere, I’m always about: You know what, it’s just looking at the data and finding the bottleneck and saying, let’s fix it. If your ads are struggling, that’s one thing. If your ads are doing pretty decent and you’re getting the people to your page, and the page isn’t converting, it’s your page and that’s okay. I think a lot of times we take this to heart and we get super frustrated and upset and we’re like: Oh my gosh, I spent some time, so much time on the page, spent money with a copywriter. It can’t be the page. It can’t be the page, but it absolutely can.
So hopefully that makes sense. That’s the self-liquidating offer, let’s go to a challenge funnel. Let’s say you have a challenge funnel and people opt into a challenge, it’s a live challenge, it’s happening in a couple of weeks. You’re like, okay great. Let’s say you have a $7.99, they opt into the challenge. Thank you page has a $7.99 or $12, or $17, $27 offer, it’s a tripwire product on the thank you page after they opt into the challenge. And then the next step is, you want them to attend the challenge, you want them to engage in the challenge, that’s the whole point of the challenge funnel.
So if we have a challenge funnel, the goal of the challenge funnel is what? Again, we talked about the goal of the self-liquidating offer. The goal of the challenge funnel is to get the leads in to then what? To offer them the product after the challenge that they buy. You brought leads into this challenge, the goal of the challenge is to get them to buy a specific offer. So when you look at your return on ad spend, you’re looking at my leads, my spend on my leads to my conversion to the main product at the end. That’s a return on ad spend, that is the truth. And maybe if you have a $27 offer or something on a thank you page after they opted in, you can include that as well, with the return on ads spend, with your revenue.
But I’ve been hearing some people say: Well, the goal of the challenge is to break even, or to be profitable and then the numbers happen on the challenge at the sales I make on the challenge are separate, and that’s not obviously the case because the goal of the challenge funnel is to bring leads in to the actual challenge and see how the challenge converts. We want to get to the point, the same with a webinar, you bring leads into a webinar, or you want to see how many sales we make on it. Could you make sales on the thank you page? Sure. And if your goal, if you want to have two goals, one goal being: I brought leads into my challenge and then I want to make sure I can be close to breaking even, if possible on this challenge, then again, your goal then is to make sure your tripwire or your order bombs, just like with your self-liquidating offer, it all needs to convert.
So if you’re bringing leads in and let’s say you have some offers in the backend, you brought the leads and they opted in super great, then you have an offer on the backend and no one’s buying, are you going to say: Man, the ads aren’t working because no one’s buying the offer, no one’s buying my tripwire. No, it’s not the case. Your goal was to bring in the challenge leads after that your funnel has to work, and your funnel has to convert, and that’s a page issue, and that’s where you need to focus your time, focus your energy, your troubleshooting, your team, all that kind of stuff.
So now you just need to understand what is the goal of your funnel, and understand that if your goal is: I need to get challenged leads into the challenge to make my sales at the end, then great. Did your ads do the job? Did the ads do the job? If your page isn’t converting for your challenge, you get people to the challenge page, and they’re not converting, the same thing. If you’re getting people to the page and no one’s converting, it means your page isn’t working. What does that mean? Is there incongruence between the ad and the page? Always check that first. If they’re congruent, what’s on the page, what does it say? What’s the positioning and what does it look like? Is it too long? Is it too short? Is the layout crazy- looking? So many pieces that go to it but I want you guys to not immediately say or put the pointing finger at ads.
I want you guys to see the holistic funnel. When you can sit back and not get super attached to it, which I know is really hard because we all just spend so much time and energy, and money and effort in trying to make sure that in our copy and our pages, and our funnels and our products, et cetera, that we get super attached to it. And I’m very data-driven, so at the end of the day, I just want to know what’s working and if it’s not working, great I’ll fix it. I’ll change it. I’ll do something because I want it to work, and whatever I think is going to work may not actually work, and maybe something completely opposite from what I think, and that’s okay.
You have to be a little attached to it, just so you can look at the data and follow the data. And if your funnel isn’t working, and you’re like: Hey, I can’t bring the leads in, or bring them in, and no one bought at the end. If they landed on the page and they didn’t opt in, it’s your page, they didn’t buy the tripwire offer. It’s your tripwire offer. If you got them to join the challenge and they didn’t buy at the end, did you do enough to get them to show up and engage during the challenge? Was your pitch on point? Did you position the offer correctly when you did it? All of those play the biggest part.
The ads are just the traffic source. We’re getting the lead, the prospects to the page from there the funnel has to do its job. The funnel has to work. Ads are just the fuel to the existing fire. If there’s no fire, it’s not going to do anything, it’s just going to fizzle on the ground. So you have to have the funnel working and then the ads just bring it to that next level? But at least when you run the ads, it’ll show you quickly where those bottlenecks are, as you can quickly change it in two seconds, say great pages an issue, let’s change the positioning here. Test it for 48 hours, see if it made a difference. Yes? No? Do we need to make more changes, and just keep going forward.
I feel like I talk fast on that one. I was maybe ranting a little bit because of a conversation I had earlier with someone I truly, truly dearly love so so much, but I think it’s something that’s commonly thought about and it’s commonly misconstrued is always trying to point the fingers at the ads, and you’ll probably hear multiple episodes from me showcasing when it is the ads, absolutely fix that. When it’s the page in the funnel, you have to fix that too. Can it be both at the same time? One hundred percent, that happens all the time. Could the ads be doing better? Sure. But also the page isn’t doing its job either? They both have to be worked on at the same time. I’m not an advocate of: We’ll just work on one or the other. You should always work on the ads and the pages.
Now when it comes to each of those, there are certain things you work on first in order. So if you’re like: Oh my PDF guide, I’m trying to get people to opt into, and then I have a tripwire on the thank you page. No one’s buying my tripwire, I need to fix that, but the first thing you look at is the opt-in page converting well, if it’s not, then you don’t worry about the second page. You only worry about the first step. Worry about the first step in the funnel, is that converting? Once that’s still converting, go to the next step and test that one, and get that one to convert.
So again, I feel like I talked fast on this one but hopefully this was super helpful. Hopefully this was just like it was an Aha moment for somebody and, or just a gentle reminder. Sometimes we just need that, we just need that reminder that I have to look at marketing holistically, I can not just look at one thing and finger point. That’s not going to get us anywhere. It really is a holistic approach, and if you have people on your side who are there to help, there to support, there to really just make this work and be successful for you, that’s amazing.
That’s what we do for our clients. It’s not just about the ads, it’s about the whole approach and we talk about all of it with our clients, and we make sure we give feedback on pages and feedback on the funnel, and let them know where things are breaking and remind them: Hey, make sure you’ve got follow-ups here because this is going to help with your show up rate. Things again, that are outside of ads, but it’s not just about the ads but it’s about the holistic approach.
Alright, that’s it guys. Thank you so much for hopping on today. I super appreciate it, I will see you guys in the next episode. Bye.
Looking to partner with a leading marketing agency to scale your ads and increase profitability? Our team of experts at the JW Agency from copy to design, to media buying to funnels, and to your overall marketing strategy, can help you cut through the noise, make your competition irrelevant and help you impact thousands of lives with your product. So if you want help navigating your marketing to increase profits then apply with us today to see if you’re a good fit at gpsmyads.com again, that’s gpsmyads.com.
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