00:00:00 You are listening to the Scaling to Freedom podcast and if you are an online coach or course creator, you are in the right place. I’m your host, Christina Bernhard. I’m an Ads agency owner that gets an inside look every day on what’s working and what doesn’t in the online coaching space. I’m here to share with you what we see works in our agency as well as what we see happening and changing in the industry. Stay tuned to up level your coaching business to have the freedom you want. Let’s get started.

00:00:32 Welcome to Episode 185 why Ads don’t work for some coaches. So, first I want to start out with just saying again, I’ve been saying this a little bit more recently, but all of the tools work, so it’s not really about which platform is better. I mean, yes, there are certain ways that within your strategy you might find that some platforms work better than others for you, but they all essentially work. The problem is that the messaging has to be right. It has to be the right message about the right offer to the right person at the right time.

00:01:07 So everyone always blames the platform when it’s really the formula that isn’t working. So let’s break down what this formula is. So basically the formula is that you need some sort of ongoing lead generation that it’s going to be. The first thing is you need leads. The second thing is that you need to have a good sales process that’s high converting. The third thing is that you need to have an offer that people want and are willing to pay for. So the first one, let’s talk about the sales process. So I would say that for a lot of coaches where they say ads don’t work for them, this is probably, typically this is where the break is. Now it could be the other things I’m going to go over today, but typically it’s the sales process. So this comes down to knowing your numbers because you have to know where the break is and if the conversion is too low, it does require your lead cost to be very very low.

00:02:10 And sometimes it requires it to be so low that it’s not even reasonable. Like it’s not even possible to have a lead cost that low. So leads cost what they cost through certain platforms and they are ads are getting more expensive. And so there’s a certain way that you do have to balance the cost per lead with the sales conversion rate and with the return being that balance the lead cost and the conversion rate have to balance also with the offer price. So because you have these three main variables, these three numbers that have to balance out in a way that you get a return, if your conversion rate is too low, then it requires your lead cost to be super low in order for you to make a return. If your lead cost is high and your conversion rate is low and your offer price is low, you’re definitely not going to get a return, or at least not a great one. So what we want is we want our lead cost to be reasonable, but it’s likely going to be what it costs and then your conversion rate needs to be high enough to convert those leads into whichever offer price is going to give you the return. Now, all of these things, you can’t just make up numbers, you can’t just have necessarily the sales conversion rate that you want. It has to be all within reason and what is possible or what’s reasonable.

00:03:38 Because ideally we’d want 100% conversion rates and we’d want one dollars leads and we’d want to charge thousands and thousands of dollars for an offer. Those things don’t really we’d have to kind of line those up with the market and see what’s possible. But it is a balance. And I do have a free ROAS calculator if you want, I’ll put a link in the show notes for that. It’s free. And basically it is a calculator that I created in Google Sheets and it has these different fields and I tell you what to put in each field and also how to estimate what to put in each field if you aren’t sure what your cost per lead is and things like that. And so that you can figure out what your conversion rate needs to be in order to get a return. So that’s the first thing is the sales process. So whenever I say sales process, I’m referring to whether you have sales calls. Maybe you have an email sequence.

00:04:31 Likely if you are listening to this, you probably have an email sequence because you have an online business. So if you’re a coach with an online business, you’re going to have some sort of email sequence. I do recommend doing sales calls. If you have high ticket offers, I have some podcasts about that. So if you’re interested in whether you should do sales calls or not, I have a whole entire episode about that. So that is the first thing is that the sales process, so that’s a common thing. This takes time. And it takes a lot of figuring out what that messaging is, figuring out the way to close those sales, and it takes gathering that data and that market research, which is also why I recommend doing sales calls, because you can figure out what it is that people are saying about it, the objections that they have, the problems they have. Like all those things, learning those things is how you’re going to perfect that sales process. So that’s the first thing is the sales process, which the specific metric that I’m referring to with that is going to be the conversion rate.

00:05:30 So that conversion rate and converting leads to sales is incredibly important. The second thing and I’m not putting these in a specific order but more so, well I guess I am, I’m putting these in an order of most likely to least likely issue. So the second one is your offer. So a lot of people don’t like to believe it’s their offer, but it’s fairly common. Your offer must be something that people want and they are willing to pay for. And I want to emphasize that because sometimes it is something that they want but they’re not willing to actually invest money into it. And then on top of them being willing to pay for it, they have to also be willing to pay whatever it is you are charging. So that’s going to be a huge variable there. So you have to make sure that you’re nailing those things. And whenever I say offer, because a lot of times I’ve mentioned this in the past of it’s probably the offer.

00:06:28 People might come back and say, no, I know what I’m talking about. My content is really good. This program will change someone’s life. Blah, blah, blah. All these things like, yes, I understand. The content is probably really good. Especially if you’re an expert. You know what you’re talking about. You’ve gotten results for yourself and other people. But the offer isn’t necessarily the product. So an offer is also the offer of the product also. So what I’m talking about is it could be different variables like the length of the program, different features or what it includes. The price point is part of the offer, the different levels of support. Since I’m talking to coaches, this is typically a variable and part of the offer as well. So whether that’s a one on one group, if there’s a community, if there is nothing like that, also the type of support are they zoom calls, is it boxer, Facebook groups, things like that, what does that look like? And then also what kind of bonuses there are. So all of those are different pieces of the actual offer. And so that’s going to be all variables that you have to play with. You might be offering a Facebook group for support and maybe if you added some group coaching calls or something once a month, that would be the kind of support people are looking for different things and this just takes time of trying to perfect it and optimize it. And this takes getting feedback from people so that you can learn. So if the break is your sales page, so if the break is your sales page, it could be the messaging on the sales page but a lot of times it might be the offer. When I say the break, I mean that everyone is clicking on the emails, the ads are doing really well, everyone’s staying engaged, they are engaging with your social media, all these things. People are making it to the sales page and they’re definitely interested.

00:08:31 But once they get to the sales page, nothing happens. Also, definitely if the break is the sales call, so let’s say they are booking calls but they’re not actually purchasing, then you really do have to go back and reevaluate the offer and try and optimize it and see what you can do. So the third thing is it could be their ads. So I put this last because most of the time if you are talking about whether ads are working or not, you’re typically talking about a return. And like I said, the most common things are that the conversion rate is low or the offer isn’t quite right. And the reason that those are the most common things is because those are honestly the hardest parts of the entire puzzle. Ads are not even the hardest part. It is getting those conversions, the conversion rates high, and making sure and tailoring your offer to something that people want. Sometimes people just really nail the offer like they know their ideal client really well and so it’s easy to sell their offer. So that’s why I like to also always mention the offer because once you have an offer that is in high demand that people and it’s at a price point that people are more than willing to pay, it’s so much easier to nail that sales process.

00:09:46 Like it kind of just sells itself. So that’s where I would spend most of my optimizing researching time, is figuring out those two formulas there. So the last thing I’ll say is your ads. So if someone says my ads were not working but they had a really high conversion rate and they had a good offer, a good offer price that was wanted, then it could be the ads. So you could be right about that. If the ads aren’t bringing in consistent leads, this might be the problem. So I’d say this is rare, but it’s possible. And so what are some things that could be wrong with them? They might not be stopping people in the feed. So if people are scrolling past them and it has a very low click through rates, it’s not speaking to people or it’s not getting their attention right away, then it’s not going to be bringing in those consistent leads.

00:10:42 So that can definitely be an issue. And I would say that if you have someone running your ads for you and they’re professional likely I would assume like nailing these things. But either way it’s going to be really easy to tell because you’re going to see that your link click through rate is going to be really low or your CPMs are going to be really high. So if that’s the case and people are not clicking through the ads, and maybe also check that landing page conversion rate that the ads are going to, if people are not clicking through and they’re not converting on that page, that’s where your break is. So let’s talk about how to know whether which one it is.

00:11:27 Is it going to be your ads? Is it the sales process or is it the offer? So with that, that comes down to knowing your numbers. So this is going to just tell you where the break is and where to focus. So it’s always going to be one of these three things.

00:11:41 And so what you want to do is look at your ads, look at your link, click through rate, and see if people are actually clicking through, if they’re making it to the page, look at that landing page conversion rate. If they are signing up for your list and you are getting those leads and they seem like they are good quality leads, meaning that they are engaging with you in your email sequence and they are clicking through, they are showing interest, then maybe it is your sales process. So this depends on what your sales process is as far as which metrics you’re looking at. So if you do calls, we’re going to look at how many people are actually in the funnel that book a call, and then how many people who book a call actually purchase. So figuring out what those conversion rates are and you’re basically just finding which metric you really need to focus on.

00:12:29 I would for one to three months, just focus on that one metric, depending on what it is and how difficult it is to move the needle on that metric. That’s also going to depend on how many leads you have going through. So if you have a good amount of leads going through, then you can optimize things and get results a little bit faster or get feedback a little bit faster. So that’s how you’re going to be able to tell which it is. Is it the conversion rates, the sales process?

00:12:54 Is it your offer or is it the ads? So whenever people say that ads don’t work for them, typically I’m pretty sure that it’s probably the sales process. Now, I’m not trying to paint a picture that’s never the ads. I’m not trying to say that at all. I’m just saying that if you do have a professional running your ads, that the other two components hold very heavy weights in that as far as getting a return. And also whenever people say that ads don’t work for them, that’s of course really vague. So I don’t know exactly what they’re saying, but typically people are saying that they don’t work because they’re not getting a return. Most people, when you are investing in something, you’re wanting a return. So those are the three reasons. It could be the ads, it could be the offer, or it could be the sales conversion rate.

00:13:40 And it’s going to come down to which metric is showing which one it is and where that break is. So I will put a link in the show notes for the ROAS calculator that will help you with your numbers and you can figure out specifically which metric needs to be improved in order to get that return that you want or that you need. So I will put a link in the show notes for that and that’s going to be really helpful for figuring out where the break is, where you need to put your focus. And then also on there you can also put together different scenarios so there are some blank ones and you can just put in different numbers and just see what if my conversion rate was this and what if my cost per lead was this? Can we get it to these numbers?

00:14:22 This is also something that you could give to your teams as well so that you can figure out you can give them some targets for different numbers to hit so that you can get that return. So that is what I have for you this week. I hope that you found that helpful and you have a wonderful week. Thank you for listening to the scaling to Freedom Podcast. If you are a seven figure coach looking for ads management with an agency that partners with you to get your work out into the world and amplify your impact, see if we are a good fit by applying for a spot in our agency at christinaburnhard.com/apply. Find the link in our show notes.