101 On Making Meta Ads Profitable with a Sales Call Funnel

Favorite funnel to run for you?

Sales call funnel.

Why?

Because it's very easy to attribute a qualified lead in the sales call funnel. It's simply just like agree with the client on qualification, push them to book a call, and there's only so much you can optimize that funnel for the lead to book a call. And then from like, um, a tracking point of view, like if we're tracking for booked calls, then the pixel will naturally understand. It's like a loop. The pixel will understand what a booked call looks like Understand that audience, and then you end up getting more booked calls than you do form fillouts. And then as long as that form fillout is qualified, which it would be to book a call, then you end up having the sales team for the client being happy because everyone's qualified.

Would it be for every type of market, or are there some considerations where you would do like a webinar or like a low ticket, high ticket, sometimes even like a challenge funnel?

Yeah, so I, to be honest, I think sales call funnel only really works for high ticket. and it also still then depends on the high-ticket offer. Like, webinars work really well if the offer is like a new-to-market offer. So it's like an offer that like hasn't been let so-and-so like rinse and repeated. So like, let's say you work in an industry like law, right? Like, it's expensive to get a lawyer. Everyone knows that. Like, a sales call funnel is probably one of the best formats to use for that. However, if you're in an industry where you offer a particular service that's new to market, then webinar might be the best way for that because it's very easy to get webinar registrations because there is intriguing and that engagement. And then once they're on the webinar, the sales process is relatively simple. You know, it's just sell them, like, like almost like build them up and then have them buy in. So like it kind of really does depend on the nature of the offer in the business. Um, and then for like a lower ticket offer, you don't really need a sales call funnel. You're like almost overcomplicating the process. And by doing that, you actually reduce conversions. So from a, from a lower ticket offer, you kind of just almost need like an SDR to like almost handle the form fillouts. This is in an ideal situation, an SDR to handle the form fillouts. And then like that SDR can almost handle the closing process on the lower ticket offer.

Interesting. So how I like to think about it in terms of which funnel we're running is also on the type of market we're marketing to. For example, if you're service-based and you're primarily B2C and consumer market usually lack a lot of trust before purchasing anything, especially in the service-based industry. Now this of course has a lot of caveats. It doesn't necessarily apply to every single thing we're saying because like you could be watching like, well, I'm this type of industry, this doesn't apply for me. Like that definitely could be the case. We're just talking about generalities here. So on the B2C side of things, if you're kind of like in a fairly low trusted market, I think just running a webinar where you help your sales team warm those leads up by kind of like an hour-long presentation, warm them up. And then if it's high ticket enough where you have to send them over to a call, you just do that. Or if it's, let's say, a ticket price under $1,500 or even $1,000, you can just sell them on the webinar right then and there.

Yeah, but to be honest, I've even seen webinars that are like like what would come under the classification of high ticket that have been able to close on the webinar simply just because of how good the webinar is. You know, like even if like you consider like $1,500 as low ticket and then let's say like $10K as high ticket, there are people that will sign up for webinars and then because of how good the webinar is, they'll close on that webinar on $10K. Like you can still close high ticket from a webinar for sure. But it just really does depend on how good that webinar is. The thing that's really great about webinars and also really bad about webinars though is they sound really easy to do in principle because it's almost like you're doing a sales call to a potential hundreds of people. It's formatted in a way where you almost just pop a Stripe link into the chat and people just buy in on it there and then. The downside is that to get— if you've got 200 webinar registrations, if you don't do something with those registrations to reengage them, they will not turn up to the webinar. Correct. So like, it's the hardest bit about webinar funnel isn't actually getting the registrations and it isn't actually the closing process. It's actually getting them to join the webinar.

Yeah.

And that's the hardest bit. You have to hammer them with emails and SMS and it's not hammering them from a sales point of view, it's hammering them from a reminder point of view so that they actually have it embedded in their brain that at this day, on this time, I have a webinar I need to be at.

Yeah. And we've had some clients that always want kind of a cheaper cost per lead on a webinar side of things, but the cheaper cost per lead doesn't necessarily matter if you always have only like a 14% show show-up rate on a webinar. So like, if you just increase— if you just double your show rate, you don't even need kind of like a better cost per lead because you're just doubling the money you're making.

Yeah, you shouldn't— you like— it's not possible to do this, but in theory, if you're, if you're looking at your ads manager and you're bragging about the fact that your cost per webinar signup is like $4, it's like, great, okay, now tell me what your cost per webinar show-up is. Yeah, you know, because that's the figure that actually matters. And then when you look at that and then you look at your close rate, that will then tell you how good your webinar is.

Yeah. And I also think just for ads, just to kind of change the topic a little bit, for ads in general, like the business economics need to make a lot of sense too. So how important do you think the business economics in and of itself are important? And I'll give you an example as well. So let's say if somebody's running a $2K offer and their CAC can't go below $1,000, so they're profiting $1,000, but that's only after the ad spend. Now they still have, of course, their team to pay. They have some other software expenses, they have some overheads they have to pay, and they're pretty much remaining with nothing. Um, so on those side of things, I don't have an answer for this too, but I just want to know how important from your side just kind of like the business economics are.

Um, they're definitely a factor. I think that you almost kind of have to forget about the business economics at the start. And like, if a client tells you, look, my cost per acquisition has to be below this, it's like, we understand that. But when you first launch ads for a client, it's very much like, let's just get you results and then we can work on how we can reduce it, you know. But it's definitely important because from like Like, a client isn't gonna want to continue running ads unless they're seeing a profit. And ultimately, like, as media buyers and people that run ads, we want the client to see results. And we know that ads can work for their business, otherwise we wouldn't be running ads. So it's important, but it should only really become an important conversation when there is a steady influx of qualified leads coming through. And then we can focus on reducing that cost per lead so that the profit margins become higher. That's my opinion. How do you think a client should approach upsells within their offer?

So upsells basically mean they want to buy your product again. Let's just do it in a service context. So it also depends on what type of service. If it's kind of like a plumbing service, you just do a good job, there should be no reason why they just don't call you again.

Yeah.

If you're a lawyer, if you bring them a good result, customer service was good, there was no reason why they wouldn't necessarily just go with you again. If you're talking about kind of like a monthly recurring service, so kind of like content services like ours, the things we do is we want to make sure that A, they understand that the return on investment is there. That's kind of like a default setting. So that needs to be there. On top of that, some stuff that needs to make sense is, of course, the client experience. Like, do they actually like the people they're working with? Do they actually have kind of like some sort of client relationship made with our team that actually kind of like prevents them from leaving as well because the results are there, the relationship is there? And then I think another one that would be kind of like a little important as well is— And then the last one would be like, do they actually kind of like see a straightforward path of them still working with you. Because if it's one of those things where the service is becoming a little bit repetitive, chances are they might just get bored of the service or just stop using it.

Yeah.

So that's one of the things that as time passes, the service and then the things you offer and the problems you solve need to grow with that. In order for you to even get there in the first place, you need to have systems where you get that information too. So if you pretty much do all of those, you can pretty much upsell clients into things that would just allow you to solve more of their problems. Yeah, because every business has problems. And if somebody comes to me like, hey, I saw that you have this bottleneck. We do have a solution for this. We can do this, this, this, this, this. Would you like help with that? I'm like, yeah, let's do it. So of course, like I get upsold on things all the time because it's genuinely effective.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So things like those. I mean, another example would just be like if some client wants a website, instead of them going out there spending, you know, six thousand dollars with another company, they already like us. They already know how we work. If we offer them same thing, they're gonna.

Yeah, yeah, that's— yeah, very true. I think, I think it's almost like a bad connotation sometimes around like the term of upsell, like, oh, you've been upsold. It's like, well, yeah, I have, because the service was there and it solved the problem.

Yeah, I don't think there's a bad connotation, but it's just— I think you have to do—

Yeah, I think a lot of clients sometimes get confused between cold versus warm leads, and they just think of leads as like just a group of people that have an interest in their service. How would you best describe cold versus warm leads?

I mean, cold leads are pretty much people who've just heard about you, and if anything, they just like your offer, but they don't necessarily care if you live or die. That's basically a cold lead in a nutshell. A warm lead would be like they've consumed some amount of your material or have some sort of knowledge of what you do, how you do it, what your unique mechanism, whatever it is. Like they're a little bit educated, educated lead on you. So whenever you hop on, let's say a sales call and they start off with pretty much, Can you remind me of what you guys do again? That's a cold lead.

Yeah.

But if it starts off with like, yeah, I mean, I've already watched kind of like this 20-minute video you sent. I watched all of your content. I watched all of your YouTube videos. That's a warm lead. Now, of course, any person watching this can tell like which is easier to close. So of course it's going to be the warm lead. Now, like there's a caveat to this because a lot of people spend so much time on just overthinking how to turn a cold lead into warm. which is good and you should do that. But theoretically, if your offer is good enough and if you run it on paid and if you have a good enough sales process, you can easily convert a cold lead into pretty much a paying client right off the bat. But most people don't even know that they can do that.

Yeah.

The people who have done it, they don't even need to convert them into one. Theoretically, they can just close them right off the spot.

Yeah.

Or just do actually have kind of a sales process where let's say now you sat down with somebody from your team for an hour. Now they understand every single thing in depth. If you have, of course, cash collected on that first call, good for you. If it needs a follow-up, so be it. But that's also kind of like a process of warming them first.

I also think when I work with clients on paid ads, they don't necessarily understand the 9 out of 10 leads that are going to come through ads are going to be cold. Because what they're probably used to is gaining their leads through their website or people calling them. And when people search for a service and they come across a website and then they actively, um, call that company or they fill out a form on that website, they're interested in that service. They've already read about the business. They're a warm lead, right? They know who you are. The leads that come through ads and paid ads, they are going to be cold. So you need to treat them differently.

This is why organic is important too.

Yeah.

This is why, like, just posting content organically and building a brand— because most people think building a brand is this kind of like long work they don't want to go into. But most of the people that were at the event that we went to— and if you don't know, like, we went to this Cole Gordon event And the average person was making upwards of $200K per month in their business. And all of them have some sort of organic presence because there's not a single room, there's not a single person in there that just had kind of like a bad presence, maybe like 1 or 2 out of like 500 people. So if you're going to be running paid ads or if you're going to be doing any type of marketing, like I would want you to focus on something visual, something that actually can convert a cold prospect who's never heard of you into warm pretty much right off the bat like that. So even if you do start running ads, like a good lead would always want to do their homework. Yeah. Another thing you don't want to do is prevent good leads from even applying into your application or whatever type of funnel you're running in the first place, because as soon as they came into your— come into your ad and they see it's a page with like 5 followers or like 500 followers and there's no video calls, you're basically preventing good leads to even come to you.

Yeah, very true. It's definitely a balance. Organic content helps ads and ads help leads from organic content. Like it's a loop of needing to have the both of them. I just think that, yeah, business owners sometimes think that, you know, my sales process is dialed in for when someone fills out a form on my website, therefore that when I run ads, the same sales process can apply. And actually, no, your admin person on your front desk is not going to be able to handle a cold lead in the same way they're handling a warm lead who's called up. Because that warm lead who's called up your location is trying to book in a consultation. They're trying to book in a consultation. The cold lead who's come through an ad, they need education to book in a consultation. So the process has to be slightly different.

Yeah. Yeah. In those cases, like especially in B2C, that's why webinars are important too, because that hour long is pretty much you taking a cold lead, giving them something for free, which is kind of like a training or something, and then telling them all the ideas. And then basically towards the end, you pretty much pitch the implementation.

Yeah.

So that's basically you taking a cold lead, slowly getting them warm, and then as soon as they pretty much book a call, like, you know for a fact that your salespeople are getting kind of like a warm lead, quote unquote.

Yeah.

Which is another topic to get into, kind of like the salespeople getting all the warm stuff. My thing is like, if you're in sales, you should know how to close cold leads. Like, that's, that's how you're going to make the most money.

What do you think a client's mindset should be when working with an agency? But not just an agency. What should a client's mindset be when they start running ads for the first time?

So whenever, let's say, a client signs up with us, I tell them like, because we do get some of this feedback sometimes, like, yeah, I just want to try it out for a month. I was like, no. You're just going to waste money. Like if you just try it out for a month, you're guaranteed to waste money because like how ads and organic work, like nothing's going to happen within a month. Like of course, like we've generated amazing results within a month, but that's not, that's kind of like a rare case. That's not for everybody. So the main thing I pretty much tell them is like expect nothing to happen, especially for paid ads. Expect nothing to happen for 2 months straight.

Yeah.

And this is assuming they've never run paid ads before. And chances are you're going to make some money on the second month anyways, but it's always going to be, you're always going to start negative because you're spending money. Let's say this is your profit and this is your pretty much money out. So as soon as you spend, you spend, spend, spend, spend, spend. Second month, okay, you make a little bit and then you spend, spend, spend, spend, spend. Okay, third month you kind of like even out a little bit and then spend, spend, spend. And then the fourth month, you're now— it's pretty much kind of now you're closing the gap. Of course, downwards is profit. And then of course, you know, this is your money spending, this is your money making. So just understanding that concept as a whole and just training their mind of like, hey, this is not necessarily kind of like a 30-day sprint. This is something you have to commit to. Yeah, because you didn't build your business overnight either. If you build your business overnight, I can understand why you would think that way. But for marketing, a channel that's going to make you millions, like you have to give it enough time in the first place because I feel like that's where a lot of agencies got to kind of like get a bad rep. Like, yeah, we're going to do this for you in like 30 days. Yeah, 45 days guarantee. Like, this doesn't work.

Yeah, I think any agency that's guaranteeing a ridiculous amount of leads in the first 30 days is an agency you shouldn't work with. Any agency that's guaranteeing you like hundreds of leads in 30 days, chances are those leads are low quality and you just shouldn't work with that agency because the guarantee is probably unrealistic. All you've got to do is look at their reviews to probably understand that. I think that from a paid ads, um, point of view, anyone that's coming into paid ads should— well, also this actually applies to organics— anyone who's wanting to work with an agency, they should be under— on the understanding that it's going to compound over time. Organic content compounds over time. If you post a video, it does 100 views in the first week, that video is going to continue to gain views alongside all the other videos you have over a period of time. So then the amount of views you've gained in month 1 versus month 3, month 1 is going to be a lot less than month 3 just naturally because of the amount of content you have out there. And from a paid ads point of view, when you first launch paid ads, yes, you're going to have some leads coming through. And the number one thing that business owners do which really, really annoys me is they go, okay, let's turn the ads off. And it's like, well, why? Well, because I've spent $3K and I got nothing from it. It's like, yeah, you spent $3K because we've just started running paid ads.

Yeah.

You've got leads. Yeah, yeah, they're low-quality leads. Okay, the leads might not be your ideal customer type. That's why I'm here as a media buyer, to make sure they are your customer type. Now let's fix it. And the best clients that we have as an agency are the clients that actually understand and listen to the team. They trust the process and they go, okay, I'm gonna go with you here and I'm gonna listen to you and I'm gonna treat money as a vehicle to improve my business rather than getting worried about it when it's leaving my bank account.

Yeah, and there's of course a science behind it as well. Because Facebook and these ads algorithm, like they need data to even function to show your ads to the right people in the first place. And then there's other science behind it is like not every single person who's going to watch your ad for the first time is going to convert right away.

Correct.

So they need to watch your ad multiple times. The Facebook ads algorithm or any ads pretty much platform on the planet, they need time to even understand who you're trying to target to in the first place. So as ads are pretty much learning like who's disqualified, who's qualified, They build up that data to the point where they understand now, okay, this person's qualified. Show your ad to this person. Yeah, because chances are your cost per lead might be very cheap within the first 30 days, and that's because it's a shit lead. Because Facebook's still testing out who we want and who we don't want. Because if your ad is poorly set up, meaning you're allowing every single person to apply for your campaign or for your ad, then Facebook's never going to learn either. Because you're basically telling Facebook that any lead that I give you is good because this is your conversion event. But if you add in a lot more friction in there, now of course too much friction is not a good thing either. So you have to find that balance. But if you add in friction where if they don't necessarily meet XYZ criteria, they can be a good lead. But if they do meet XYZ criteria, then they can pass. And that pass triggers as kind of like a conversion checkmark where Facebook gets that feedback. And then you can pretty much scale your ads in the right way. Now most people also panic when the costs really start going up, but that's actually a good thing at times.

Yeah, I think a lot of people think that they know who to target. It's really important to understand that the average individual, including all of us sat here right now and probably watching this, we probably spend at least about 4 hours a day on our phones. The knock-on effect of that is that these platforms have, and this is a fact, at least 50,000 touch points on us as individuals.

Yeah.

So when you think you know who your audience is, I can guarantee you these ad platforms know your audience better than you, you know. So we don't— we need to give it time, and we need to make sure that we're optimizing the funnel and the ads to target your ICP in a better way so that we can utilize these 50,000 touch points to find people who need your service who didn't even know they needed your service. And that's the knock-on effect of running ads for a minimum of 3 months.

Nice. It's getting a bit cold.

Yeah.

Let's go inside.

Yeah.