This Facebook Ad Has Run Since 2013 and Still Converts, Here’s How ft. Steven Williams

I have an ad that's ran on Facebook since 2013. I've just had to refresh it sometimes.

What does that ad say?

It says I've helped my clients repair their credit and increase their credit scores. Click. Learn more. That's all it said. When you run your ads, don't do bait and switch. I don't even offer a free ebook or anything. We don't buy anything from people that we don't know like and trust. Don't be afraid to try anything when it comes to business. I love that legal.

Hey, credit heroes. If Stephen Williams looks familiar, that's because he's back for part two. His episode was so packed with gold, we couldn't fit it all into one show. He told us how he turned a huge debt lawsuit into a system that has helped thousands of people to fight back and win. And today we're bringing you the rest of that incredible conversation. Stephen's going to reveal how he scaled that success in into a million dollar business. How he built marketing that runs on autopilot, and how he created freedom through systems that keep working while he sleeps. So let's jump right back in with Steven William.

Let's take some time to talk about actual credit repair work.

Okay.

Of all the credit repair strategies that you've learned over the years, what's one that's been a real game changer that you use again and again and again, Furnisher dispute included.

With my company, if you go to my website, I call it my eight point validation process. From day one, we've always tackled credit repair from both angles with the bureaus and with the furnishers. And that's been a game changer. It either got a discussion started or it helped get the get the job done over a shorter period of time. So that would be the game changer was what made the biggest difference was that no matter when they come in as a client, we're going to start that way from day one for them.

Can you walk us through what that is?

So if you separate what credit reporting is from actual. The actual account, See, they want us to focus on the account. Like this is your credit card account, this is the amount you owe, and this is a charge off. But it's more than that. It's data about you. That's what that credit reporting actually is. And so that data has to be accurate. And there is a section in the Fair Credit Reporting act about the, the character of an individual, about misrepresentation of the character that's in there too. And so what we do. And it's, it's been, it was, you know, it took some work to get to a process that would, that would garner good results. But utilizing that process by getting that furniture to answer to what's that eight point validation process of what's required of them to even put that information on the credit reports, regardless if the account is that person or not. Because it's about the data. It's about the data. We hear it all the time. When they have a data breach, they don't say we had a credit breach, credit report breach, we had a data breach and the data is our information and it must be placed on there in an accurate way. Contracts, legible contracts, you know, we've had where they sent the contract and you couldn't read the contract. That's not, that's not something that they're allowed to do. So if you had an account that's a charge off, it's still with the original creditor, you request all of the documents and they send you a smeared document that cannot, that information can't stay on your credit reports. And these are the little things that when we look, start to really go step by step on what's required as a furnisher, you can start picking away with things that they do have, don't have or that they submitted back to the consumer the wrong way. And that's a biggie there with the contract. That's actually helped also with lawsuits. When I started the credit repair shop, my main goal because I had my other businesses was to make money while I sleep. So that means no phone calls, no nothing. Go to my website, see what we had to offer, sign up. And from putting together a follow up process, generating leads, I was able to achieve that in 2013 where my first customer signed up. Just going and reading about what we had to offer and you know, we've never charged up front so there was no problem with that. But we had, I had actually did it. And that feels good, that feels good to have people sign up, you know, that way.

Incredible. I'd love to I guess switch gears a little bit then on the marketing side of things because you're one of our biggest customers. You've said you've serviced 10,000 people and over the lifetime of your business, you have one of our biggest accounts, I would say in like the top 10. What do you, what are you doing today to bring in customers? I see even to this day in your business you have tons and tons of customers coming in. What's working right now for marketing Advertising.

I've always been big with advertising and I'm always clear, like no bait and switch. My ad that runs on, I have an ad that's ran on Facebook for the same ad since 2013. I've just had to refresh it. Sometimes I just do a straight up lead generation ad and then I put them into my email follow up process, letting them know how I've helped people and how I can help them. But it's, it's just mainly running an ad, generating leads and then with email follow up.

What does that ad say?

Here, here we go. The big, the big one. It says I've helped my clients repair their credit and increase their credit scores. Click learn more. That's, that's all it said. When they click learn more it a form pops up, put their info in, goes into my email follow up and then that does its work. And if, if, when you do that, this is something that I learned that I didn't even expect. You know, we don't buy anything from people that we don't know like and trust. When I put that email follow up in place, the craziest thing happened was when that person signed up, they felt like I was speaking to them. Even though the emails were automated. And they were like, I like you. I was like, so you, you know, I started asking and I was like, okay. At that time I only had seven emails. They would go out every three days. One email every three days. So the first one, when they opted in three days later, another one, another one, another one. Once that customer told me that when we spoke to them, I made to this day now, after all of these years, I have 63 emails that go out every, so it's every three days. And once they become a client, they come off of that list and go onto a buyer's list. But it's very important. It's incredible because sometimes people think that a person has to either see you face to face or maybe on video where you're talking to them to know like and trust them. That's not true any. When you're receiving information and that person opted in to get help for what you had to offer. That's why it's very important when you run your ads. Don't do bait and switch. I didn't even, I don't even offer a free ebook or anything. I just tell them what I do and then the follow up shows them that I've done it for other people and that I can do it, you know, help them out. And that gets people to Know like and trust me and a lot of.

People don't realize most people go to your site. If you're a credit repair company, most people will visit and not sign up right then and there. Yeah, it, the, the money really is in the follow up.

In the follow up? Yes sir, it's in the follow up. And it's very hard for a person to really just go 100% and believe in that because we, we think that when we see these commercials, direct response, we think that that's like it's, it's easy. You just, they need credit repair. You put it in their face, they're going to sign up. Or the other mindset is if you send a hundred people there, 1% is going to do it or 2% or 10%. It doesn't work that way that those are very specialized copywriters that could do that. The way to do it is to just write out simple emails and let that follow up and you will see that that will actually do the work for you. It's amazing when they, when you get the first sale that way it feels very good. Like middle of the night, you know, they're like who's going to be buying in the middle? People do this stuff in the middle of the night. And if you had that follow up and you, hey, click through to my website and you can sign up right there. People will do it. They will do it.

I'd love to kind of hear what ads you're currently running are working the best.

Would you like me to show you or we are family.

Right?

This one here. So when they click this ad, when they click this ad, it'll captures their name, email, phone number and then it automatically pushes them over to be in my follow up email follow up. Now I built, I'm looking at clouds. I built mine, you know, before it was offered and I'm going be working on switching because I think that having it all integrated and what you, I've looked at what you've done, very good job. It actually does exactly what the system that I'm utilizing. So it'll save me some money also when I do the switch.

Absolutely. And it ties in with the database in credit repair cloud. But this is so cool. I'm fascinated that you're doing webinars. How did you learn this part of the marketing?

Yeah. If a person feels like they want to do a webinar they have nothing to fear because if you know your business inside and out, all you do is you just go on the webinar and you Let people know what you can do, what type of work you do, and then you just open it up to have them ask questions. And from them asking questions, I'm pretty sure it's going to help other people that were not secure in asking that question. But the background part is that people get to know like and trust you. That's the whole big deal, is that when they get to hear that real person that's speaking to them, they're going to say, okay, I like this. I believe because they can't get the result of credit repair, you know, when they sign up, they're actually buying you as the person if you're the face of your company.

You mentioned kind of a couple strategies, Stephen, that you're running. Are you getting a majority of your clients through your webinars or through kind of your email follow up sequence? Because you have kind of different strategies going.

I just launched a webinar today.

So we're seeing it for the first.

Yeah.

See some of the very first people seeing it.

Yeah, so I just did that today. But if you go down, I don't know if it has the date when I launched. So you can see this ad here was refreshed what, December 2004. So that I run my ads. Holidays, it doesn't matter, 365 days a year, I'm generating leads. I just started the webinars recently and that I've had some people that said, why don't you do webinars now? Here's my big thing though is that the webinar for now is recorded. It is recorded because I just want to make sure that 100% compliant with everything. So it's just, it's still just a recorded webinar that'll just keep, you know, on a loop.

But it's, it's cool to see that once you have a winning ad, you can keep it running because you've been, you've been running at least this exact same ad for, since the beginning of the year and it's all the way in September. So it's been, it's been the same ads been running for like about 10 months.

Yeah, I'll just, what I'll do is I'll just refresh it because it'll have like, you know, four or five thousand comments. And so I'll just refresh it and start new. But yeah, it's if one secret, if someone is looking at advertising on Facebook, if your ad is not a bait and switch where you're just speaking to exactly what you're Offering you will not run into what they call a fatigue ad. My ads, I've never with credit repair and with summons master now ever had a fatigue warning. A fatigue warning means that hey, we're going to start charging you more until you shut this ad down. That's what they'll do. And in some cases they will just turn the ad off automatically. So by being direct, you will avoid any of those issues with having fatigue. And then make sure if you do run your ads on Facebook that you choose the credit feature so you can remain compliant. You, you'll be, everything will be okay if you stay compliant with that. And another secret is you don't even really have to target anymore on Facebook. They target for you based off of the words that are in your advertisement and in your video.

I didn't know that.

They will find people. That's a big secret. Yeah, they will find the people for you. You know they know everything about us, right? Sure.

You get a lead here. So I imagine you're using Facebook's native lead capture where someone types in their name and email and phone number in Facebook and then are you just emailing people? Are you emailing and texting people as a follow up? What does that look like?

I use an email autoresponder and then it has a text feature and it's just, you know, letting them know that we can, that we can help them. One of the applications that I use has an AI feature and I, I think cloud is, has something similar where you can actually make it conversational. So if I'll give you an example, someone becomes a lead and it, it'll text them, hey, I saw that. You saw my ad. Tell me what's going on on your credit, with your credit. And then they'll text back. And then I anticipated all of the potential answers and then it'll answer back. So they think, they're thinking that they're texting back with someone and then it leads them through, it'll end up with a link. Hey, we would love to help you. And it has the link that goes to the sign up page to sign up. But, and I know that that's a lot, I would what I tell people when you're first doing this, the minimum, just do the email follow up and then grow it from there so you don't overwhelm yourself.

And what you're recommending is all built into Credit for Cloud too. So yes, if you're using the CRC Marketing Hub, if you activate that feature in Credit for Cloud, it has an email Sequence that automatically follows up with leads every few days to get them sold. And Steven, what do you say on this ad? I'm just curious what makes this ad so compelling.

This one here, I took an approach of, because there's a lot of competition out there. So I took the approach in this ad of. So I went into the mind of what they could be thinking. So I think I went more towards. There's a lot of choices out there that you can make with credit repair a lot of confusion, misconceptions. And then I kind of pivoted over to showing the people who had signed up with the. That's going to get the book sent out to them. And I send that book out free. I pay the shipping, no charge. And so I laid that out and that gives them the mind, the thought process of I'm not the only one that's doing it. Because that's. Sometimes people, they won't sign up for something because they think that they're the only one who's going to do it. They don't want to look, you know, look crazy doing it. And so I did that and then I ended it with, I think that you should look at testimonials of the people that we've helped and then click the learn more button. And I put a video there showing some testimonials. But. But once they fill in the form and submit it, it kicks them over to the testimonial page on my website and it's just full of testimonials and full of, you know, showing documents of stuff that we've helped people get stuff deleted. And so that builds in their mind, okay, possibly they could possibly do it. And then they see videos and pictures of other people that we've helped and they kind of might relate to one of those individuals. So when they opt in, take some straight to the testimonial page. And those are some. Some of the people that we've helped that felt worthy of us getting pictures. And then you can see the get start now button. Yeah, click that. This video here. So, number one, we talk about the tsr. You let them know, you know. And in this video, a good thing for credit repair business owners to consider is when a person gives you their money or when they sign up for something, it doesn't matter when they sign up for something, even not paying anything, they want to know what's going to happen next. And for me, you know, talking to clients and asking those questions, I learned that they want to know what happens after I sign up. And this video here tells them what's going to happen after you sign up. So now that takes another doubt out of their mind because now when they know what's going to happen, they feel more comfortable. And then if you hit the sign up for credit repair service, this is our sales page. Now if someone's in my sales funnel getting the emails or the text, it's taking them to this page all the time to sign up. But when they're getting introduced, they're going to the testimonial. And this here is just telling more and showing more about what we can do and what we've done. And then if you scroll, well, as you scroll all the way to the bottom or you can hit the blue button and people will say, why do you got so much here? We have so much. Because when a person is deciding to do something, each person has their own thought process of how much they need to know before they sign up for something. Some people need very little, some people need to know it all. So when you build your sales pages, you should think of the person who really needs to know it all. Because if you do that, you're going to get the skimmers that just skim through stuff. So you can see here, whichever program they choose, it's zero to start and they're going to get their free book. I got a stack of them over here ready to go. A stack of them. And this here, it's not about how to repair credit. It tells them once you get your credit repaired how the credit system works so you don't get into that situation again.

What do most people sign up for here? Because you have a lot of different options. There's a lot of ways for people to be upsold or get into different plans. I'm curious.

The plans are all the same except the couples. We give a discount and military we give a discount. But they have an option of splitting the individual plan. They could split it into 14 day payments instead of monthly. That's the only difference. But the, the prices are basically the same except for there's a discount for the couples when they come together.

And Steven, how much do you spend on ads a month to be able to grow your business sustainably?

When I started credit repair shop ad in 2013 on Facebook, it was $25 a day. And the average lead is about, you know, it's like the stock market. Some days it could be higher, some days it could be lower, but on average about $1.50 to 2,50 per lead. And that's very that's very good. And when you're getting that lead that they knew exactly what you're offering, that even that makes that lead even more valuable. And the longer you run your ad on Facebook or any platform, you get rewarded because you know you're continuing. So with my ads that I have here, for each one of them, I'm only spending $50 a day for each. So I have the ads here and then I have a group of ads on Summons Master. I have a different account for Summons Master.

Incredible. And then those ads you're running for Summons Master, those are also cross selling.

Into credit repair to no, we only if asked. Only if once we do the summons and take care of that business, if they ask, that's the only time we don't approach them about it. Nothing. If you go, Summons Master is just like it's its own separate company. Started the webinar ads for Summons Master today. But you can see the other ads that have been running. So you can see these are very direct. We don't want to get people thinking they're getting something that they're not getting. So yeah, in this here, except for the webinar, these are lead generation into the autoresponder and the text messaging back and forth. Leads for Summons Master coming in on some days under $1.

Wow.

On some. Yeah. That's why I knew that there was a huge spike with, with on with that because it was like more and more people are opting in. That means there's more traffic for people that's looking for that solution. And the same with these ads here. No fatigue. No fatigue. Even with this long video. I've, I've had some people say, why did you put that video there? That, that video that's right There is about 20 something minutes long for an ad. But so many people feel that they are like I needed to reach out and get help because they're sitting there watching. Remember, they're emotional and I'm like that help that's reaching out and they're just sitting there watching, watching. And then they click and opt in. Once they opt in, they're in our funnel. With Summons Master, we have several different ways that we bring in the clients. First is go to Summons Master, do everything yourself. Or they can send their summons for what we call a case review where we'll look at it or if they need help with the PDF, when we create the PDF, send it back and they upload it themselves.

Amazing. You're so good with this techie stuff. Hey, now you've seen the credit repair industry evolve a lot since 2006. What has changed, what's better now and what's gotten harder?

I would just say the only thing that's gotten harder is that it's easy to get into business. This is for all business, but we'll keep it with credit repair is that the mindset right now is that you can get into a business and because there's millions of clients that need the service, that you're going to be an automatic success. And you can become an automatic success if you do the front end work to get yourself in the position. The great. I'm very serious when I say this. When I saw that you added the other stuff, the other features with the follow up, I was like, this is a game changer because if people could just buckle down and just do that front end part to get set up and then you get your ad set up, continue doing your work that you normally do, but allow this to grow and you will start to see that that'll happen. But with credit repair itself, for me, I feel that stuff is kind of just the same. Like it's. It seemed like it's going full circle where there's not organizations like the CFPB that's going to be there, you know, to help. But like it's. For me, it's like when I first started CFPV didn't exist when I started the credit repair shop. So we were butting heads with collection agencies, butting heads with, you know, doing the work that needed to be done with challenging the furnishers.

And you were coming out of the big housing crisis and the economic meltdown. And I think we're actually about to. Yeah, it's all happening again. And I think it's going to be a big boom for credit repair people. I think it's going to be a big boom for Summons Master.

I agree with you.

And it's harder and harder out there.

If people could just dig in and just say, I'm going to keep the mindset of helping people and I'm going to keep educating myself and learning about the credit repair industry. What could be done? Do read one or two pages of the reporting Act. You know, you don't have to read the whole thing. Just look at, look at what's, what they have to do. And when that wave hits, because it's going to be a tidal wave when it hits, you're going to be in position.

Yeah.

Hope it's not as bad as that one. That was very scary. So many people I know Lost their houses. I was like barely hanging on. That was. Those were the years I was building credit repair cloud. It was exactly 2008 to 2013, which those were really, really ugly years. And that whole time I kept thinking, if I finish this, if I finish this building this, maybe I'll be in the right place at the right time.

So you were you. So you had that mindset, like, I just got to continue. Just let me continue. Yeah, that's that. That's that faith where a person, if you just, you. You don't know success, it's like around the corner, you can't see it. And you just keep going. You keep going and you keep going. And then all of a sudden when it. And the crazy thing is when it happens, you're going to be so much doing your work that you won't even really know. Like, there's just so many people that run into this credit problem because the education is. Is just not where it needs to be with, with teaching us about how to handle credit.

I agree. Hey, let's talk about credit repair cloud for a moment. You mentioned in your notes desk that it played a role in your growth. How's it changed the way you run your business and what features are most important to you?

For me, because I don't get into the. The credit repair work itself, my customer service, I get to look at the team on what they're doing. I get to. My wife demands that I take that we take a vacation every month. And so you would. We're going on 36 years now. And so. Yeah, so I like, I could peek in and look at the work that's being done. I could look at the clients being onboarded. I can look at the messages making sure that they're getting answered. It made it. I mean, it made my life a lot easier. I mean, you can see from the investment I make every month, I believe fully in it. Fully. And for me, I had to transition from another to do this. And it was a lot of work and everybody was. Had to do a lot of stuff to pull people over. But when I saw what you had back then, it was enough for me. And then now, Now. But when you give up the right people and they care about their business like you care about yours, they're not going to just leave stuff the same way they want to. Still you. You want to make it easier for us. And that's what I could see happening with the new features.

Cool. What do you think is the most important thing a credit repair specialist should have to Expand their business, customer service.

This is what I did. Because with a thousand customers, you cannot answer the phone, you know, for it could be a couple of hundred a day. And then when the customer service team get on the phone and another person calls in. So this is what I did to manage it. And customer service is going to be the key to maintaining and keeping customers happy, getting referrals and, you know, keeping your business going. And you can't satisfy everybody, but that's. If you push hard with that, you're going to do very well. So what we instituted was a voice. We have a voicemail. All calls for all customer service phones goes to the voicemail. It transcribes, the voicemail goes to the team leader of customer service, Hassan, and then he divvies them out. And when they get on the phone with that client, they can full attention to them. No phone is going to ring, no, nothing is going to be 100% taking care of them. When we did that, customer service calls went down. It went down because we were able to spend that time with them. And once you get that client comfortable, secure with your company, they're not going to continue calling over and over and over. And then with what they can look at in cloud for what's being done for them, it's taken care of. You've knocked it out of the park if you do it that way. So customer service, answering the phone, calling people back, that's key. That's key.

And if someone's just starting in credit repair, what's the one thing they need to focus on mastering first before anything else?

Lead generation. I tell all business owners, the first company that you're in, the first business that you're in, is finding people to want what you had to offer, because you could have the best of everything. But if you don't bring in leads, a constant flow of leads, it's going to be very difficult for you to run your business.

I think we should switch gears now. Okay, I'm going to ask you a few rapid questions. Answer with the first thing that pops into your head.

Okay? Okay.

What's your business superpower?

Helping people.

What's your business? Kryptonite. Meaning the area you had to work the hardest to improve.

Customer service.

What does business ownership mean? Mean to you?

Freedom.

What drives and motivates you?

Create. Creating things.

What's your definition of success?

Helping people, helping the community.

And if you could go back in time and tell yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?

Don't be afraid to try anything when it comes to business. Legal.

Yeah, of course. And do you have any other advice for someone just starting out with a credit repair business?

Yes. People are looking for you to help them stay true to yourself. You don't have to get every customer to sign up with you. That becomes a lead. Stay above board and honest. Tell them the truth, even if it's. If they don't want to continue doing work with you. Focus on customer service early rather than later. Have a system in place on imagining if you did have a hundred clients or 200 clients, have some forethought on how you would manage them. And then you could be early instead of coming like me, late on getting that process in place.

And what's next for you? What's the next big goal?

Taking Summons Master to the next level. That's truly my big goal.

Oh, and I forgot to ask earlier about Summons Master. Can CROs be an affiliate?

Yes.

Okay, good.

Yes, we can get that link over.

Okay, awesome. So again, for anybody interested in Summons Master, it's summonsmaster.com. we're going to put the link also down in the show notes. And I want to thank you so much for your time today, Steven. This was a lot of fun. I learned a lot. You're amazing.

Thank you. Both of you. Keenan, Daniel, thank you for having me. I mean, I dreamed about this interview. Truly, I dreamed about it.

Well, this interview has been a dream. This has been great.

Wow. Stephen dropped so many gems on credit repair, automation and business growth.

And if you missed part one, you.

Better go back and watch it right now. And if you'd like to start your very own credit repair business or learn how to earn extra income repairing credit for others, check out my brand new Start Repairing Credit Challenge. So sign up right now@startrepairingcredit.com and keep changing lives.