Easy Scaling with Jordan Schanda King

How to use Facebook Ads to scale to 7-figures quickly with Jennifer Spivak

August 17, 2022 Jordan Schanda King / Jennifer Spivak Episode 9
Easy Scaling with Jordan Schanda King
How to use Facebook Ads to scale to 7-figures quickly with Jennifer Spivak
Show Notes Transcript

Tune in as we discuss what Facebook ads can and cannot do, the importance of messaging and positioning your offer, and the impacts of scaling to seven figures quickly. We dive into the nitty gritty of funnels, the difference between DFY and DIY buyers, trends in launching, the magic of book a call funnels, and more!

For the full show notes and access to resources mentioned in this episode visit https://www.easyscaling.com/blog/episode9

In today's episode, we’re talking about what Facebook ads can and cannot do, the importance of messaging and positioning your offer, and the impacts of scaling to seven figures quickly. We dive into the nitty gritty of funnels, the difference between DFY and DIY buyers, trends in launching, the book a call funnel that got me started, and more!

Jennifer Spivak is the CEO & Founder of The Ad Girls, a female-focused Facebook & Instagram Advertising agency. Named a Top Facebook Ads Manager to Watch and called the ”Conversion Queen” by Forbes, Jennifer is on a mission to help amplify women’s voices in the world through the powerful medium of Facebook Ads. She and her team have generated over $50,000,000 for their hundreds of notable clients worldwide!

Topics discussed:

  • The role Facebook ads played in getting my business started
  • The magic of a “book a call” funnel
  • When it makes sense to spend money on FB ads
  • What ads are specifically designed to do
  • Recommended Facebook Ad spend per month
  • The difference between DFY and DIY buyers
  • Why messaging and positioning your offer is critical
  • Looking at your offer and funnel from your buyer’s perspective
  • Ego trips when scaling from 6 figures to multiple 7 figures
  • Finding the perfect middle ground of client involvement as a CEO
  • Training your team on context and principle-based decision making
  • Messaging vs audience targeting and the impact of the IOS 14 update
  • Advice for testing passive funnels with Facebook Ads
  • Looking at trends for freebies, webinars, and live launching
  • How the Ads landscape has changed and things NOT to do in your funnel
  • Making your CTAs clear and accessible 
  • Remembering what Facebook ads can and cannot do


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Ep#9 - How to use Facebook Ads to scale to 7-figures quickly with Jennifer Spivak

Jordan: All righty, in today's episode, we're talking about Facebook ads, which is obviously a super juicy topic, and we're also talking about scaling to seven figures quickly. And what that really looks like in real life. My guest is Jennifer Spivak she is the CEO and founder of the ad girls, a female focused Facebook and Instagram advertising agency.

Jennifer was named a top Facebook ads manager to watch and called the conversion queen by Forbes, which is pretty awesome. She's on a mission to help amplify women's voices in the world through the powerful medium of Facebook ads and she and her team have generated over $50 million for their hundreds of clients worldwide.

Totally amazing. She's a real deal. She's so cool. We talk a lot about my experience with Facebook ads because I actually used the ad girls when I was getting started, with this business that I have now. And I still run some of the ads that they help set up for me. And we just dive into a lot of practical, valuable tips around Facebook ads when to use them.

What matters, what doesn't. So I know that this is gonna be super helpful for everyone listening. I really hope you enjoy this conversation. 

 Welcome. Welcome everyone. Welcome Jennifer. I'm so stoked that you are here. Yay. Thanks for having me, Jordan. Yeah, totally. This is gonna be awesome. Okay. We're gonna talk about Facebook ads, which everybody, everybody wants to know how to use Facebook ads to grow. It seems like the ultimate hack.

So mm-hmm before we talk about all the things and I think a lot's gonna come up, give us some context for who you are and what you do. 

Jennifer: So, I am the CEO and founder of the ad girls. We are a female focused advertising agency. We specialize in Facebook, Instagram, and newly TikTok ads for women entrepreneurs in three different industries.

We primarily work with, high ticket coaches, course creators, and then also eCommerce businesses. obviously, you know, what we do is Facebook ads, but really we exist to put more money in the hands of more women. That is our mission and that, you know, it's sort of like the thread connecting everything it is that we do at the company.

Jordan: Yeah, I love it. And I remember so for additional context and I don't even know if you know all of this, but, Jennifer and her team, they ran my ads. So you guys like, man, you really got me started in this business and it's, it's cool because it's cool. For several reasons. One, I had never started a business where I wasn't just like totally growing organically without any kind of like upfront investment, like Hmm that's that's kind of a lie.

Let's let's 

put it this way. I had never put it. I had never invested money up front in like, uh, paid traffic. Yeah. It was always like that came later. Right? Like you stacked that on later. And so this was a very different. Approach to starting this business in that once I was like, this is the idea, this is the thing I'm going for it.

I was like, I'm gonna put money behind it because I know that this is the thing. And so I reached out to you, I think originally from a Facebook ad of course. of course, of course you had a great Facebook ad funnel. It was like a book of call funnel, which is what we ended up copying for me. Yes. But I reached out because I wanted to run ads to an evergreen webinar and then sell a course.

And you were like, actually I think we should start with this high ticket service that you're offering. Yeah. Let's run a book, a call funnel straight to that, and that will then fund the spend for the evergreen stuff. And I was like, oh, okay. Never would've thought about that. And you were the only person I met with probably 10 ads people in really?

Yeah. I met with like a ton of people in the span of like amazing a week and a half. Yeah. And you were the only person that suggested that. And I actually ran it by a couple of other people and they were like, yeah, no, I don't think so. I don't think that's gonna be a good idea. I was like, nah, Jennifer knows what's up.

Like, we're gonna do that. 

Jennifer: I mean, look it's and, and, and just like, cuz I remember the conversation the come from was in my experience anyway. a funnel that does, that is brand new and that doesn't involve any one to one touch points. Is harder to crack than a funnel that involves you getting people on the phone.

Because the thing is the funnel that is to book a call only has to be good enough to, to generate interest. Right? And then like, as you are refining the offer and the messaging, and exactly how you talk to people, you're doing that in real time while getting real time feedback on the call versus the automatic evergreen funnel that has to do all of the work and be perfect right off the bat.

And you also don't get that qualitative feedback in real time of like, okay, a person didn't buy, but you don't know what their objections were. You don't know what was going through their head. And when you can do that on a call with the offer, that's new. It is so valuable. Plus I know this is also part of the conversation.

Profitability would happen a lot more quickly with the higher ticket offer. And then we would be in a place to say, okay, if we're not making money on, you know, the evergreen funnel right off the bat, we're, we're still good. We're still like, in the clear, because we have this other thing that's bringing in these larger sales.

Jordan: Yeah. I thought it was absolutely genius to approach it in like kind of the, the tandem way where it's like, we're gonna do both. Right. But the other one's gonna take longer to get off the ground. Yeah. And to get it to be profitable and full transparency, because like, that's the whole point of the show that second funnel that we tried to set up didn't ever work out.

Like, and I actually think it had more to do with my, my, the, the structure of my webinar, the, the cell, the positioning of the content. There's a million things that could have gone wrong. And I'm pretty sure I know the couple of things that it was, and it had a hundred percent to do with me. And how I was positioning the paid product off of the webinar, like all of that.

Yeah. But, the, the other web, the other funnel did phenomenal immediately and actually allowed me to reach my client capacity within like a month. Like it was crazy. 

Jennifer: Yes. And I mean, look, that, that funnel that we duplicated for you is the funnel of my business. I mean, there's like, I don't know. Yeah. It's like, it's the thing, like, I can't like say enough words to give it, like all of the credit of all of the things, because you know, prior look, I did grow my business organically and through word of mouth and referrals for the first couple of years.

But around, I wanna say I was doing maybe three to 400 K a year give or take. That was when I was like, I wanna, I wanna figure out ads because I know that. What ads do cause we do it for our clients. Is it, you know, puts a business in control of its own growth, right? Mm-hmm it lets you say, I know the numbers, I have sort of like the cheat codes, the exact formula of spend this and then I'll get this client, spend this and I'll get this return.

And so I just got really hungry for that and I started, you know, playing around and you know, this funnel is what took us from three to 400 K to, you know, multi seven figures. Like without a doubt, it's closed millions of dollars in business. For me. 

Jordan: It's crazy. That's absolutely insane to hear. And I wanna dive into that more and yeah, like, so one thing I just wanna go back and touch on, because I think it's interesting is that this book, a call funnel, the one that I purchased from you from your book, a call funnel, that then you set up for me, right?

Like, okay. So, so meta, so meta. but actually it's, it's more just like. I knew that, that the funnel was validated. And you were like, so amazing in that you were like, here, here's my landing page. Go customize it. Cause I didn't have any of that stuff. I was brand spank and new when I signed up, I think I had just gotten my LLC maybe like a few days before I paid you.

Oh my God. Right. And so it was, it was fresh. It was new. And so it's cool. What I think is cool is to hear you talk about how you decided to go all in, on the paid traffic when you were at three to 400 K and I was like, I have zero income, but I have a great idea and I know it's gonna work. And so it can work for lots of different people.

And I think that's the case with Facebook ads, but it's very nuanced. And I wanna get into that. Uh, but what is also cool because that book a call funnel is so effective. Yeah. I turned it off. I mean, I turned it off quickly because I had reached my capacity. Right. And I was, I was like, I need to now get this structure in place.

Yeah. And the systems to serve these clients and then open up more capacity. And I was also going on maternity leave. So it didn't make sense to keep scaling that fast. and I've, since now turned them back on and I mean, I've had, I'm getting multiple leads a day. I've tweaked them a little bit. So it's actually going to an application now instead of a call, because I just don't have the capacity to take calls, but I'm getting multiple leads a day.

Like that's amazing, crazy on a high ticket service. So for sure it can be like a foundational thing that I think you can like turn on and turn off based on where you're at in your business. So absolutely. ah, man, I don't know which way to go. Like we can talk about the seven we've done. We could talk about the seven figure piece and like how you, how you've had to adjust and change structure.

But actually I think where I wanna go first, because it's really top of mind for me because so many of my clients will come to me and be like, all right, I've got this thing. I wanna do ads. And I often find myself having to be like, mm, okay. Because I have that experience of trying to launch a brand new course using ads.

I'm like, I just don't want you to waste money. So like talk me through what your typical advice is for someone on like, when it makes sense to throw down money on something that's like evergreen or new. That's not yeah. High ticket coaching. 

Jennifer: Look, I think like, just in the example, You just went in from the beginning, from zero revenue, wanting to do ads.

And I got to three to 400 K like there is no one right way. Yeah. But if you are going to go into ads, you need to understand the risks. There is risk in business and marketing everywhere. Okay. Like for some reason, you know, we, we wanna make Facebook ads as like extra scary thing. But anything that you invest in, in marketing is always going to be a risk.

And the specific risk with this type of marketing, this type of advertising is look, let's, this should be really basic. But like, I think sometimes people forget if we ship everything else away, literally all an advertisement is designed to do is you get you pay and you get eyeballs. That's it. And so if the thing that you're getting eyeballs on.

Isn't yet perfected in terms of the funnel, the offer, the positioning, the ads, spending more money or different, a strategy, or copy creative targeting hacks. Like that's not gonna do anything. That's not the needle mover. Right? Like the real needle mover is the right offer, the right positioning, the right funnel.

And so if you have money to invest and you understand that basically your first couple of months may just be paying for data to collect information and learn, then yes. There's no reason why you can't start ads earlier. It's going to likely have you scale your business much more quickly if you are not in a position to pay.

And again, this is just like a, a general number. It could be shorter. It could be longer if you're not in a position to pay, let's say three months of ad spend and agency. To get information and consistently optimized, then it just might not be wise to make that investment until you've got your offer validated.

You've got your funnel validated and you really understand who your target audience is and what it is about your offer that makes them buy when you have that information. And that is locked in the ads piece is like kind of easy. and so that's, that's just the thing that you wanna consider, right?

Like do not jump into ads thinking that like this is going to solve all of my problems and like fix my business. you need to really understand like again, what ads are designed to do and not 

Jordan: do. Right? Yeah. I mean, I think it comes down to the fact that, and like you said, it, it, this is basic, but I think it's helpful to hear sometimes that we forget throwing money at your funnel.

To like, get it to work is not the way to get it to work. Like that's not usually the problem. It's the, there's a breakdown. If, if you're not getting a ton of conversions through your funnel already, there's a breakdown somewhere in there that adds is not gonna fix. And that's not to say you're not gonna make some sales, but it's probably not gonna be a profitable thing to do, which is why we turned my evergreen funnel off.

We turned those ads off because I think I actually ended up, I didn't lose money on it. I think I broke even at the end, but those people were still on my list. And so I still sold to those people. And so I did still make money on that, but not enough of a margin for it to make sense to risk spending that money every month.

Right. Um, yes. So, so then, I mean, do you have, like, I'm trying to remember the numbers you, you gave me originally, but do you have like a recommended ad spend or something that people could kind of. Like, if they're all in and they're gonna go all in for like three to six months, what do they need to expect?

Money wise? 

Jennifer: Yeah. It's so arbitrary. So arbitrary. I'll tell you what we charge and like, there's a reason why or sorry, what, like we have as our ad spend minimum. And there's a reason why now granted, there are people who spend less and spend more, but at this point we've actually adjusted this a little bit since you and I works together.

we now have a, a monthly ad spend minimum of $5,000 a month. Wow. We've just found over time. And again, I mean, November's gonna be eight years that I've been delivering this service, which is, and we have, when we look back at our most successful clients, They were able to spend more because number one, that means more data and more learnings more quickly.

Jennifer: And this really just relates to the piece about us, you know, being an agency and having our retainer fee. if, you know, let's just say, let's do the quick numbers here, right? Let's say someone's spending $2,000 a month and they're getting a three X return on their ad spend. That's great to get a three return on their ad spend.

But if they're spending two and making six, then they're also paying us the agency fee. There's no room for profitability, right. Versus if they're paying $5,000 a month on their ad, still getting that three X return and making 15, and then all of a sudden there's more room. And so that was just a decision that we made in terms of, making sure that our clients were really just most set up for success to be truly profitable, not just on their ad.

But they're agency fee. Mm-hmm . Now with that being said, like you can, especially, if you're gonna DIY you can start with a couple thousand dollars a month. I mean, I think it's less about saying this is the exact amount that you're gonna spend every month for six months. And it's more about, you know, having a starting point that is at least I would say a couple thousand dollars a month.

So you are able to collect data and just being like, really diligent about collecting that data and learning from it and like getting as quickly as possible to a place in which you can then say, I have done all the optimizations and the little tweaks. I know that every time I spend X, I'm going to make Y and then projecting out based on your revenue goals, here's actually how much I need to spend.

So even with our clients, we say that $5,000 a month for your AGD spend is meant to just be a starting point. It gives us a lot of wiggle room to do testing, to collect data. And then from there be able to project out pool. Spending, five's gonna get you this, do you wanna do a hundred K next month? Here's what we actually have to spend 

Jordan: in your ads.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I mean, to clarify for anyone who's listening, I mean, the majority of my clients are making multiple six figures plus, right. So they, these numbers are not that frightening. I mean, they are a little bit, but it's, they're kind of on the cusp, right. Of like, okay, we're going all in because we know, like you said, this is gonna take us from mid six figures to seven figures and beyond.

And so that's absolutely, that's the time where like, these numbers are, they don't seem that scary anymore. because you know, it's gonna hopefully pay off. yeah. But that's usually what I recommend is like, people are asking me, I'm like, you need to budget at least three to five K like anything below that feels to me like dabbling.

And I think dabbling in ads is a terrible idea. 

Jennifer: I completely agree with you. And I think I talk about this sometimes. Like it. actually, there's a lot of things that can reinforce this, but one of the things that reinforces is this like kind of like victim thing that has, you know, kind of penetrated the industry about like Facebook ads just don't work.

Marcus Zuckerberg is, you know, the bad guy, the man taking my money. And it's like, I don't, I, I don't think it's wise to be disempowered by something that actually can be like such a strong vehicle in your growth. And so even just like having that be your first experience with the platform of like that total disempowerment, it'd be better to like, to not spend that money and hold it on and, you know, do whatever you can organically until you're at a place where like, as you've been saying, you can kind of go all in.

Jordan: Yeah, it's definitely, I mean, with everything, it comes back to mindset and, and I think, sure. I honestly feel like I kind of hit the jackpot on experiences with this because I don't think this is most people's experience when they are like, yeah, I'm gonna invest, you know, multiple five figures into ads right off the bat.

It doesn't always go well, but for me it did. And it went so well. And, and I think, I don't know if you instilled this in me or, or what, but I had full confidence that I'm gonna turn these off. And when I'm ready to have a massive influx in clients, again, I'm just gonna turn 'em back on. And like, it wasn't even a question to me, it wasn't like, oh man, are these gonna work?

It's like, no, I'm gonna turn these back on. And I'm gonna like scale quickly. And I think that's a totally different mindset and approach to it, you 

Jennifer: know? And, and I will say, I think that there is something unique about this particular book of call funnel that allows for that. I wouldn't say not that that can never happen, but I think with some other funnels again, where there's like more moving pieces and more complexities and more things that have to be perfect, that can be a little bit harder to do.

Totally. One of the things I love when I'm like talking about this funnel is look, it's very easy to say. And this month, this funnel did this amazing stat and look at this amazing case study from this quarter. But this funnel has been generating leads and revenue for my business for over two years. Wow.

And to have two plus years of historical data of it being, you know, really like two years long validated it is that reminder of like the, like the foundation of what it's built off. does not change as the algorithm changes does not change as, you know, society changes or competition. Like the foundation that it's built on has so much longevity.

And so you really can like rely on it at all of the stages of your business. Yeah. 

Jordan: Yeah. That's amazing. Okay. Let's, let's expand this conversation out beyond just like services, because obviously what we're selling on this book, a call funnel is services. And some people may be listening to this and be like, what the hell, hell am I gonna apply this?

So have you had people use this same funnel? Not for service? 

Jennifer: No. And I wouldn't recommend it. And, and, you know, we haven't gone into like all the details of the funnel, but, the sort of the premise of it is that. We, we don't do the traditional webinar or lead magnet. The education value add piece that comes at the front.

And the reason is that, and this is something that I really, you know, came to on my own over a couple years of testing, different ad funnels to get agency clients. I really, it just became very clear to me that done for you buyers behave differently. Yeah. So when you are marketing and selling a done for you service, having a webinar about how to run successful Facebook ads, like what they don't want to learn that.

Yeah. Like that's why they're looking for a done for you provider. Now, if you are selling a course on Facebook, a you are naturally going to call in people who want to learn, who are more DIY or done with you. And so that's why that more traditional funnel of value add and education and then call to action.

Makes sense. So we only recommend. using this funnel. That's just straight to booking a call with cold audiences. If you are providing a, a very, you know, specific done for you, high ticket 

Jordan: service. Yeah. I think that's super helpful to know. And it's funny. Okay. Let's get really real and raw here. So yeah, what I think is hysterical that I didn't realize when we did, when we created my other funnel for my course is that my messaging was kind of focused on.

uh, the pitfalls of courses. and I, so I was selling a course about how to launch a group program, which in and of itself isn't necessarily a bad thing. But the messaging approach was very like flawed in that I was kind of ripping on courses a little bit. Right. And then trying to sell people a course. And I actually had someone reach out to me and they were like, just so you know, like this doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, like as a buyer.

And I was like, yeah, duh, like total blind spot. And so I just wanna raise that. Yeah. Because thinking through, from your client's perspective, and like you said, like, what is their, what is their behavior and what are they thinking about? Yes. And trying to get into their head and not just like, oh, this is my thing.

And I know all the things about my topic. And so I'm gonna like educate people on it. That's not necessarily what they need. And so I have to kind of. Get get outside and offer an outside perspective to my clients sometimes and be like, actually, maybe that doesn't make the most sense because your clients don't want that.

Like you said, like I, I have a below zero desire to, to learn about Facebook ads. 

Jennifer: Yeah. I, and I mean, I, you know, the place that I'm at in my business, I mean, I think this isn't like a hard and fast flow across the board, but probably around like half a million mark was when I was like, I don't do anything DIY anymore.

Yeah. you know, I want everything done for me. And so I stopped. I still register for webinars even paid for the $37 offer. It was never actually, oh my God. I literally, there was a graveyard of $37. We've all got. That I will never, you know, the whole idea is like, well, if it's free people aren't committed, but if you make them pay, Nope, I will still spend that money and want it.

Heck, but 

Jordan: no, I just send to my team. That's like the shift that I've made is like, if I'm gonna buy something, it better be something that I can easily give my team access to for them to implement, because I know I'm not gonna look at it. 

Jennifer: Yeah. And I just think that, like, you know, you, you have to be a little DIY E when you're earlier in business, right?

Because like, you don't have the resources or team or finances to execute everything. And so you do, you know, take more of a role of learning. and again, this isn't exclusively about revenue, but more or less, I, and again, it was really just my experience where I got to a point of like, I just wanna hire out experts.

And so I stopped watching webinars. I stopped downloading lean magnets, and it was inside of this. Like, I was literally brainstorming for weeks. What is the type of lead magnet that my client would want, cuz I wanna set up a funnel and the more I thought about it, I was like, there, there isn't there isn't one.

Yeah. It, it just like, it doesn't, it doesn't actually fit here. And so again, it's all about like understanding. I think you had sort of mentioned this, like the psychology of the buyer and where they're at and what they actually need to be ready to move forward with you, which may or may not be education in having them, be able to do the thing themselves depending on what you're selling.

Jordan: Yeah. So genius makes so much sense. I mean, and that was me like, and, and I'll even add another layer to it because I remember you had pretty good availability on your calendar. And so if I think back to when I booked that call. and I was booking a lot because that's kind of, I think I'm probably a pretty good representation of your target market in that, like, I was like, I'm gonna go all in on Facebook ads.

I just need to find the person who's gonna do it. Like I was already sold on the idea. and so it was like, just find the right person. And so I booked a bunch of calls and I wanted to do it quick. And there were a couple people who didn't have availability for a few weeks and I booked a call and then I just canceled it.

Cause I was like, I don't have time for that. I don't have time to wait like three weeks to get on a call with somebody like, yeah, this is happening yesterday. And so yeah, even those types of things, like really understanding the, the mindset and where someone is exactly when they're looking for your service is so critical.

Jennifer: Yep. Absolutely. I mean, I know just for us personally, I actually won't accept, like my calendar only shows the next two weeks and I mean, I guess occasionally, maybe it gets completely full for the most part. There's always base there. I think that for anybody, by the way, that's doing any sort of clothes over the phone from Facebook ads, even two weeks is honestly pushing it because you just, you know, at the end of the day, all they did was see a Facebook ad.

they don't necessarily have that much of a relationship with you. And so if you let them book, you know, too far out, I think there's just higher rates of nohow cancellations and all that stuff. Yeah. 

Jordan: Or chance that they'll just find someone else again, because like, yeah. Who's got time to wait that long term.

Yeah. Move on stuff. Okay, cool. So let's, let's maybe dive into how things really changed for you after you poured gasoline on the fire of that. It was your business with Facebook ads and scaled sounds like. Fairly quickly to multiple seven figures. So what did that process actually look like? 

okay. Let me see if I can go back and sort of paint the picture.

Jennifer: So I'm trying to remember, I think if I'm not mistaken, 2019 was when I first, like towards the end of the year, started playing with that funnel. And I wanna say we finished that year at around 600 caregiver take then there's 2020, which was 20, 20 I know if know what happened then, and we had almost 100% year over year growth and finished at 1.1 million, which was our first seven figure year.

And I mean, almost exactly the revenue growth is exactly the revenue I could attribute to that funnel. Wow. So that was, was like such a large part of it. And so I think like in the beginning it was just. cool and fun that like, I would wake up every Monday morning and there were calls on my calendar and I didn't do anything like at first that was, Ugh.

I mean, it was just the greatest thing ever, right? Yeah. It was like, I no longer have to wonder, I don't have to do the spray and pray. I don't have to like show up to a networking event and like, hope that it's gonna do something. Like I could just like live my life and hang out with my cats and like, you know, go in a pool whenever there was a pool available and the machine was just running and there were just calls on my calendar and I would just wake up and, you know, look at the applications and be ready to take them.

Um, but we grew, I'm trying to like, even just remember the, the rate. I mean, it was just, so it was just so quick. And you know, prior to that, I had, I wanna say maybe a team. four, maybe, you know, it wasn't even so much like I called an agency, but honestly, more than anything, it was like me still, you know, doing the majority of the things.

I had a project manager, I had a copywriter. And so, it wasn't really a full like operational agency. And in the process of that much growth, we had to learn to like operate as an actual business . And I think that, like, that was just, that was a transition that was really difficult for me because team or not, in a way I was operating as a freelancer.

And like, there really is a big distinction between that, right. Being a freelancer versus like the CEO of a company. And even at, you know, half a million, it was still a lot of me. And I was operating as a freelancer and there really wasn't actually much of a, disconnect like me and the business were one, it was one entity there wasn't this separate entity.

And so I think 2020 was the first. Time in which it started to be this thing on its own, that existed outside of me. And, you know, we started building team and I also had like, almost like a little bit of like an identity crisis of like, if I'm not the person like doing the a and delivering the results, like I'm supposed to be a CEO, like I'm not good at that.

I'm not an expert that I'm training in that like, oh my God, like, what am I even doing? And so that was definitely a big part of, of that year of like, what is my role? Am I even important? Does anybody even need me? Because it was this thing that existed outside of me. And that was so 

Jordan: new. Yeah. It's an ego trip for sure.

oh my God. 

Jennifer: I mean, God, there's just, you know, and look, there's, there's new ego trips at every level. It's just, you know, really, uh, really fun experience. Love it. 

Jordan: so I wanna, I wanna pick at this a little bit, because obviously. I have an agency. And so as we've grown very fast, I think we've gone through a lot of those same growing pains of, oh, my role is now very different.

I can't be yeah. You know, tweaking someone's copy. like that can't be the thing that I'm doing when I'm trying to manage a team of 15 people. yep. And so what are some of the, like specific things you remember happening and like your, your shifts or your solutions or changes when it comes? I think teams specifically is probably the big thing, but like what are some things that really shifted?

Jennifer: I think, I mean the biggest shift that had to occur, which I will admittedly say didn't really fully occur until last year, but started in 2020 was, sort of, I mean, exactly what we're talking about, right? Like what is, what is my role? And, in that, like how do I get my team to like, act and think like me.

how do I actually, like, you know, not micromanage, like have like my hands off, but still oversee and have quality control. Right. Cuz there's like this weird balance. Yeah. You can't just totally step out, you know? and then there was a whole other piece of this, which was, and this was also probably an eco thing as well.

Like, but my clients want me mm that's definitely what they want. They, they want me and they clicked on Myer and they came in for me and they're here for my personal brand and how am I ever going to get my clients to be okay with, you know, talking to somebody else other than me. And so I think there was, there was a practical part of that, because those that had been with us were used to just dealing with me.

But then there also was just like me getting over myself. Mm-hmm uh, like, you know, once I was very clear with a clear boundary of like, actually like your account manager is your person for this. Like, it was so much easier than I thought it was going to be when I was just like, this is just what it is.

And everyone was like, oh. 

Jordan: Yeah, great. Cool. As long as my shit gets done, then it gets done well. Like I don't care. Yeah. Yeah. That's been, that's been a big thing for me. I think I love how you said you just need to get over myself because I I've had several times where I've been like, oh, okay. I'm not the only person whose brain works like this in the whole world.

Like, yeah, give yourself a break. Like this is not, I know, not true. Like as much as I like to think that I'm special, uh, there are other people that can do it just as well. I know, 

Jennifer: I remember there was a whole thing. Like the last thing that I let oh, was like, but I have to be on every kickoff call. How could I not be on all the kickoff calls?

Like that doesn't make sense. And like, what if, if I close the client and then they should, and it's not like they, we can't, we can't get me out of kickoff calls. And I, we were working with, uh, some coach at the time and they were basically like, well, What, if you just say on the sales call and your kickoff call will be led by your account manager and senior strategist.

And I was like, no, there's no way that, that it could be, that can't be that easy. It was like, literally like in one instant and I was out of kickoff calls and I was like, wow, I really held onto this for a whole year for no reason. Just creating like extra stress in my life and like multiple kickoff calls a week.

And it really was just as simple as being like, this is what it is. And I think that like, we for forget, I forget all the time that like, this is my business and I actually get to set the rules. Yeah. And so, especially when you're, you know, delivering a service and dealing with clients, I think that like, it's easy to forget that.

And sometimes almost feel like you work for the clients, but like, actually that's not what this is. And this is really a partnership. And, and that requires like us as the CEOs, like really actually stepping into leadership in order to establish that as the 

Jordan: relationship. Yeah. And again, like, I, it, that example really highlights the.

The importance of having someone with an outside perspective to come in and be like, look, you're holding onto this and you don't need to, because even me listening to you talk about that, I'm like, I don't even remember if you were on my kickoff call. I wouldn't have cared. Like I wouldn't have cared.

Nobody, nobody, people don't care about that. Right. But you think you like build it up in your head that this is like so important and this is like the Lynch pin to our, our customer experience. And it's just not yeah. So interesting. Yeah. 

Jennifer: And, and I mean, look, of course, right. I think there's two sides to this coin also, you know, I couldn't just step out and have that be it and have like no quality control over like how it was going.

Sure. And make sure that the team had the appropriate training. And I think that like the last couple of years of building a team has been this constant balance of those two things and. The middle ground is really challenging to find, because again, you don't wanna be too far on, on one side or the other you, you want to, right.

You're the CEO, it's not your job to be pressing buttons inside of ads manager and stepping out too far, assuming everything is all good. And like the team doesn't actually have the right context to think the way that you think and do the things that you do, you end up coming back to a fire. And so that has just been, I mean, it's just been two years of just trying to find balance yeah.

Between those, between those two things. And I will say, I think, and this is actually very recent. I I'm starting to see that it, again, it comes down to being able to train in context, right? So not just what we're doing, but like why we're doing it, how we should be thinking about things. And so again, that being able to train people.

On the way I think, and look at things has been the biggest needle mover more than any SOPs, more than any like, you know, training that I could do in terms of like, do this thing and then do this thing. But actually like here's how my brain process it. Like here's when I look at an ad and I'm deciding if it's a good or a bad ad here, like I'm just like word vomiting, right?

Like here's the things that I'm going through and being able to have the team really understand the way that I think, and look at things has been the best, the best way that we've been able to sort of up level the team, being able to deliver the same experience as 

Jordan: if it were me. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

It's it's principles based. I, I like how you said context. What did you call it? Context? 

Jennifer: Context is always just like what I training and 

Jordan: context, 

Jennifer: I think is what you said. There's the content. Yeah. There's the content, which is, you know, we create a ad campaign and these are the steps for how we do it.

And then we do the date. Like that's the content. Yeah. But the context is like the why, why we're doing it, how we're doing it, what all of this means at a higher level? I have found, or I, I think I'm still learning it real time that when people understand that, then they are better able to execute, like based on the content, but the content by itself, doesn't actually, it creates people who can like follow steps, but it doesn't actually create the type of critical thinking strategic leadership that we need to be 

Jordan: able to replace ourselves.

Yeah. A thousand percent, a thousand percent. And yeah, somebody calls this like principles based decision making or some, because it, because it is, it's all, it's, it's more, it's. it's shifting how you think about decisions and actions to being based on a principle? Not based on like a formula, not based on like a step by step thing.

It's like, well, what's the principle underlying this? Why would we make a certain decision? You know, like I see, I see people in, in other businesses and, and not like in this space, but in like the real world, when I'm going out to eat or I'm engaging with like a service provider, someone who's doing my hair, like people make bad decisions often in business.

And I think it's a lot of times because they're not trained on the principle that underlies. Why would you make a certain decision? Like why would you give a client a certain answer to their question? Or why would you give them a discount if something goes wrong? Exactly. It's because of the principle underlying it, not like this is what we do in this situation.

Jennifer: Exactly. It's the difference between telling your team what decision to make and training them, how to actually use discernment and make decisions on their own. Yeah. And accepting that it might not always be the same decision that you would make, but knowing that they still had enough context to follow the process and their decision actually makes sense.

And has merit. Yeah. Yeah, 

Jordan: for sure. And I'm gonna try to bring Tim Ferris up in every single one of my episodes so that maybe eventually he'll listen to one and we'll become best friends. I think I know 

Jennifer: exactly what you're going to 

Jordan: say. Yeah. In his book, four hour work week, he talks about this, his rule, right?

Like you need to give you, you wanna give your, team the autonomy to like make decisions under a certain dollar amount. Like if it's not gonna affect you, if it's really not gonna affect you. Like I was that the whole time we were talking, I love that you brought them up. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And I think it.

A hundred dollars or something. He's like, if you need to make a decision to give somebody a refund or do something that's gonna cost less than a hundred dollars, do not bother me. do not bother me about 

Jennifer: it. Yeah, we, yeah. We created something similar, which is, you know, in the event that there was an oversight and a credit of time to, and, you know, uh, the contract is warranted.

You can, as an account manager, extend a client's contract by up to seven days, no questions asked, oh, wow. Like that. Don't like to do it all the time. But like, if, if there was a genuine oversight, cuz look, it's a people business. Like it, it can happen. we want you guys to just be able to do that. Not only to make the decision on your own or not, not bother us, but to be able to create that Goodwill for the client, that it's actually the account manager doing that and making that decision.

We found that to be from so many directions, just like a really good policy to put in place. 

Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. That autonomy is so key in getting your, your people to be able to like really confidently do their job. Without feeling like you're the person that they have to come to for everything. and I mean, this comes up in almost every episode too, because it's just such a critical piece of like actually building a team that doesn't rely on you to make all the decisions for them, you know, or to be the final eye of quality control, like you mentioned.

So I love this, I love this. I love this. Okay. what else, anything else that, that significantly shifted in that, that growth period? Hmm. 

Jennifer: I think that, I mean, again, I did touch on this like a little bit of this thing of this, the business being its own entity, but in like prior to having a team, the way that we have a team now, of course, like my people always got paid, but like all the decisions were what served me.

and then all of a sudden you're employing 19 people and like, you can't, you can't do that. Like, those are 19, like fully fledged human beings, many with families and like their wellbeing depends on, you know, the, the business being able to do what the business is designed to do. And so it was just, again, this major contextual shift in like my whole come from of how I have run everything.

and, and really just like having to put the entity of the business first and foremost, before myself and again, not an detriment detriment to myself, just in like the way that I made decisions, because, because it was this thing that existed outside of me and because it did, you know, pay the salaries of so many people.

Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. It is, a unique. level like, like feeling of responsibility when you are like the actual person who's paying other people. It's pretty cool. Yeah. yeah. So I selfishly wanna know about your, your structure, your organizational structure and how that shifted. Yeah. And like, did things change significantly from when you were, you know, making half a million or less as far as who was dealing with clients?

Like how, the, how the chain of command went? Like how did, how did that change? 

Jennifer: Yes. So, like I said earlier, I mean, definitely for the first several years it was I'm the freelancer and I have a couple of support people. So like, it was incredibly rare that any of those support people ever spoke to clients mm-hmm I was the face of the business.

I closed the sales. I did the majority of the work with like a copywriter that would write some copy and a project manager that would make sure everything was being moved along. But I still did, did the majority of the work and I was client facing and spoke to clients on a regular basis. So that was like the first couple of years, then I would say like the next phase was, I still made it look like that.

Cuz again, I believe that clients would only want me cause I'm so special. but behind the scenes I was doing less and less and less of the work. And I would say that that was still done in a rather disorganized way. There wasn't like a whole lot of structure to it. It was, you know, okay. You're an account manager now.

And so I just have a bunch of account managers that actually like. Run the ads and, and do the work copywriter that writes the copy, but I am still primarily the person that is client facing as we grew and really became like more of an agency. and by the way, we actually haven't talked, touched on this much, but the beginning of 2021 was when I brought on Courtney as my business partner, you know, Courtney.

and so she's a part owner of the company and that is a unique experience because then you do actually have two owners. And so clients who, you know, cause some clients do have a thing of like, I want the owner and it's like, there's actually two of us. This is so great. and so that allowed me to really step out of delivery.

Jennifer: And the structure for a little while was Courtney would oversee the team of account managers and the account managers did all of the work. they were client facing, but with Courtney. And I was really stepping out and then Courtney started to basically die because , we had so many clients. Yeah. And just everything, you know, depended on her still being there.

And she also was supposed to be the COO of the company and like there's, you know, things beyond just overseeing the team. And so things got really crazy. And the last year has been a, in many cases, very challenging process of shifting over to a structure that, I mean, everything we've been talking about, right.

Shifting over to a structure that, you know, allows for quality control and strategic thinking and things to happen without either of us. But we still are, you know, like the visionaries of the company. And so what we look like now, and I would say, I mean, by far, we are in the most solid place we've ever been in.

We have our account managers who are the people that actually run the ads. They are fully client facing and they 100% own the project and the client relationship. overseeing the account. Managers are senior strategists. And so we're basically creating like two pods and eventually we'll add a third and then a fourth as we grow, but we have two senior strategists.

Currently. Each one of them can oversee up to five account managers and each of those account managers can take on up to six accounts. And so between the account manager and senior strategist, that's like, I wanna say 90% of the work, the strategy of the client communication is now for the most part able to happen completely without, without Courtney.

I, there's still a little bit of like that super high level. Like, you know, when something isn't working, right. If everything's working, if the messaging works, if it's just basic optimizations, our team has totally got it where Courtney and I still do sometimes come in, is. We've tried everything. And like, we just, like, we don't know where to go from here.

and so that really, really high level strategic leadership, we are still sometimes, you know, coming in with, but the addition of the senior strategist and then the process of really figuring out how to train them, which was a whole thing, because it's such a different role from the account manager.

Jennifer: We've really, I think, nailed it in our, like turning a corner, like as we speak of, that seeming to be the structure, that actually is something that is, you know, self-sustaining and, and autonomous, and is able to maintain, you know, the same level of quality control if as if Courtney and I were looking at everything.

Jordan: That's so cool. That's so, so cool. And very timely for me because we're going through a lot of this evolution as we speak too. Right. So the senior strategist, they're doing kind of high level strategy on like. Like, which pieces of the ad, like the messaging, like all of the pieces, everything, all of the pieces, honestly, everything 

Jennifer: that's really cool.

Like, so like I, you know, the way I think about it is, look, I think our account managers are so brilliant at running ads, you know, optimizing a funnel, optimizing ads, getting the right copy and creative, but there was this, I think like what I noticed is there were things that only I was catching mm-hmm that like, no one knew how to think in that way or look for that thing.

Yeah. Right. Like even just like, again, I can look at an ad and like, Yeah. I mean, is it, is it horrible? And of course not right. Like any normal person would be like, that's a nice ad, but like, I can literally tell you 10 reasons why I don't think this is going to be effective. And it was that high level of quality control, that high level strategic leadership when something's not working.

Yeah. That was missing. And, you know, I think like the advice from everybody was better SOPs, better SOPs, better SOPs. And we like S SOPed ourselves to death. And we were like, why is this not changing? And it was only in the last couple of months that it just became super clear that like, that, that skill set is not so pable.

Yeah, like that is actually the right people in the right seats that yes, they need that context training on how we think, but they need to have that high level, strategic brain to begin with. And then again, it's not about specifically having SOPs, but being able to teach how to think about things, how to look at things and.

you know, that has been, I mean, God, that has just been like the biggest gap closer in the business in, in a really long time to be able to have truly, truly high level people who have super impressive track records in the digital marketing space. you know, actually being able to make the kind of decisions that I, or make the kind of, recommendations that previously would only have been something that Courtney I could do.

Jennifer: Oh 

Jordan: man. Yeah, totally. I, I, there's so many parallels into the stuff that we see and. I see that all the time. And it's why people come to me burned because they've tried to hire a VA and they're like, yeah, it was just more work. Like it didn't work out. And I'm like, yeah. That's because you can't expect that person to do your strategy for you.

Like they need to exactly. They need it all. They need the so P but if you can't clearly communicate all the things that they need to do, like you have to have that in between person to partner with you to like, figure that all out and then you pass it along to someone to implement. So yeah. Makes so much sense.

So with your, with your senior strategist, how are they overseeing multiple account managers and then the account manager scene? Yes. So like, what does that, what does that look like? Like how many account managers are they overseeing and then how many clients are each account manager typically working with?

Yes. 

Jennifer: So our at capacity, we will have up to five account managers under a senior strategist right now. I think each senior strategist has three. So we are again in the process of growing and adding new team and then filling them up with clients, of course. But the plan is that each senior strategist can oversee up to five account managers and each account manager, has up to at capacity six accounts.

We kept them at six. Maybe there might be the rare exception if there's like, you know, if somebody's got a roster that they've kept for a really long time and they're in more of a flow and they have space for a seventh, we might do that. We also might go in the other direction of this account is honestly the size of two accounts.

And so we really wanna make sure that our account managers are not spread too thinly. We actually used to have a maximum. And we pulled it back to six because the high level support that we provide, it was just harder and harder to do. If our account managers were spread thinly and we found that their performance and results like dramatically increased when we cut it down from eight to 

Jordan: six.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. I remember like picking Charlotte's brain. I don't know if Charlotte's still on your team, but she was my account manager. Charlotte is, is 

Jennifer: one of our new senior strategists. Oh, she's awesome. Charlotte is like, Courtney is always like, yeah, I know. Courtney's always yelling at me. She was like, can you not make it so obvious that Charlotte is your favorite?

And I'm like, I can't actually, because she's amazing. Yeah. And honestly, I mean, in all seriousness is what we're talking about. she has been able to replicate how I think and how I look at things in a way where it's like, oh my God, like I know when she's on a project. Every, every decision every, oh, it's just like meticulous and beautiful.

And it's exactly the way that I would do it. And so she was actually just recently, elevated to, to senior strategist that's 

Jordan: so she's just, that's probably why my ads are just totally crushing it still like Charlotte, did she just turns gold funny's yeah, I think I like when we were, when I was still working with you, I think I had asked her I'm like, Charlotte, I need to know like, how many accounts are you ever?

Like, I was at that point where I was like, really starting to expand out. I was like, tell me all the things, like, how does this exactly work? How is your, how's your workload? Like, how does that feel? How many hours are you spending Berkeley? I was like, thanks Charlotte for answering my questions. Cause I'm trying to like.

Build my business over here and I don't know what I'm doing, but, yeah, that's, that's really cool. And it's super helpful. And we have kind of like a similar structure in our we're actually getting ready to hire, uh, put out a call for applications for another client relations manager and an implementation specialist, which we see as being a team that then they're actually, I would consider those two people to be like an account manager.

And then, yeah, we're gonna start bringing on people to be in kind of that senior strategist role as well. So that that's, it's validating to hear you explain that this is working really well for you. And I may that's. 

Jennifer: I mean, honestly like the senior strategist role is critical is business changing. Yeah.

It, it honestly, I mean, I, yeah, I, I don't even like fully have words for it yet. Like just. Seeing things like, even like this happened for the first time ever, we had a client who we've been working with for many months who was on month to month and she had, uh, death in the family and she, you know, was just like, I I'm thinking it makes sense to stop the ads cuz I can't really give it the attention that you guys need.

And like obviously of course it wasn't like, no don't leave us. We were, you know, wanted to approach that situation with care. But long story short, a senior strategist. So not Courtney. I was able to have a thoughtful, caring, genuine, honest, transparent conversation and get the client to actually wanna continue.

And like those types of things had never been able to happen in the business before like actual revenue generating activities or revenue securing activities without port in your eye. Like never. And we didn't even like have to be involved. Like I just was seeing the emails and I was like it happening.

We're not doing anything that's never, oh my God. That was just the greatest. Greatest greatest, greatest experience. And so just seeing more instances of that, it just, it makes me like feel, I mean, you know, obviously I, I always kind of feel like wherever point I'm at is the best I feel about the business, but like, it feels extra good right now.

because we have, you know, all of those things happening in so much autonomy, but like autonomy, that is an alignment with the way we wanna deliver the service. Yeah. 

Jordan: That's so cool. Well, I don't know if you know this, but I just started this podcast, so I could talk to like really cool smart people who are doing.

Awesome things and then like find out all their secrets and then implement them on my own business. Um, very clever. So thank you, selfishly. This has been very, you're so welcome. Very helpful for me. Hopefully it's helpful for other people who are listening. So, I'll get off of that tangent and maybe take it back a little bit more to Facebook ads and, and maybe you can, maybe I'll let you tell me what you think we need to talk about around Facebook ads.

knowing that most of the people listening are probably coaches, agency owners, service providers. so a lot of people with courses or, you know, digital products and we haven't really touched on that side of things. So maybe we can, we can dive in there a little bit. Yeah. 

Jennifer: You know, here's the thing, I mean, I think at the end of the day, it's very sexy to talk about like targeting hacks and whatever, and like videos working best right now.

But that's not to me, like the thing that actually drives results. It's the marketing 1 0 1 stuff it's boring. It's not sexy at all, but it's like, it it's all the same. Right? You need to understand the customer journey that your audience wants to go through. You need to have the right front facing offer that actually deters the wrong people.

Let's in only the right people and naturally sets up your paid offer as the next thing, like there's a, there's so much art to every little piece of the funnel. Facebook ads is just, it's just the fuel. It's just the thing that brings people in. And so when people are like, let's talk about Facebook ads, I'm like, well, why don't we talk about, you know, your messaging and your funnel and your email sequences and your positioning and all of that stuff.

That is, you know, I'm like, um, a broken record here, but like that is the needle mover. You know, there have been clients over the years that we've worked with and I joke I'm like, it's like, it's almost unfair that we get paid for this because like, everything that they have is so beautifully dialed in that like we could launch, like we could go against all best practices in Facebook and it would still convert like crazy because at the end of the day, like it's not necessarily these little algorithmic things or the technical pieces that are the needle movers.

Now, granted they support. Inside of a structure where everything does just work, but those foundational pieces, no matter what your offer is, are the, the bread and butter of your ability to be success with any 

Jordan: type of advertising. Yeah. I think, gosh, this is just such critical stuff. And I was just having a conversation with the client today about this, but as it relates to tech, I'm like, it doesn't matter where your website is.

It doesn't matter what platforms you're using. None of that matters. It's like the fancy stuff that we kind of get caught up in thinking like, oh, well, yes, I wanna make sure I choose the perfect whatever, what I'm like, it doesn't matter. Like it's distraction is a complete distraction from the stuff that actually, like you said, 

Jennifer: it's.

Yeah. I mean, it's like, I think too, like a lot of times people are like, what's, what's like the funnel that's working right now. And I'm like, I have clients with every different type of funnel that's working right now. It's not because webinars work or lead magnets work or li none of those things work or don't work on their own.

It's that there was an offer that people actually cared about positioning that, you know, was, was very clear in terms of the value proposition to the client, a really clearly defined target audience. I mean, one of the things just as a little aside that we've recently identified as a red flag, if, you know, we're deciding if we're gonna take someone out the agency is if they say something along the lines of oh, but really we can help anybody.

I'm like, okay. So , that's too broad. And actually that means you haven't like, well defined your target audience, your value proposition for them. And that's going to make ads 

Jordan: incredibly difficult. Yeah, for sure. This was a lesson I had to learn with my first business and it's not even.

It's so tough because within each niche are all of these other like smaller niches that you can target. Right. And like, I'm sure with when it comes to Facebook ads, like the more specific that you can get the better, especially with ads and with targeting and things like that. And I remember in my very first business, I was, I was helping parents and high school students.

So high school students and parents of high school students get scholarships yeah. And get into college. And that probably sounds really niche, right? Like it is. But the way that you talk to a parent of a freshman in high school, and the way that you talk to a parent of a senior in high school, different is very different.

And again, it comes all down to messaging. And if you think my, my problem and I, it took me years to learn this because I was 23 and I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I was trying to speak to every high school student and their parents, and it was confusing, everybody. It, some people were like, well, what you're saying makes me think I'm too late.

And other people were like, well, what you're saying makes me think that I'm too early. And so no one would buy. Yeah. 

Jennifer: Yep. Yeah. I mean, look, if you're trying to talk to everybody, you're talking to nobody and that's like just, you know, basic marketing 1 0 1 and we've actually, we've been playing with this concept, which I think really aligns, to how we've been doing ads, especially since the iOS 14 updates that happened.

12 to 18 months ago. but this concept of messaging is the new targeting. Mm. And by that we mean, you know, targeting has changed. I don't wanna get like too technical right now, but for anyone who's listening and does not know about the iOS 14 updates, apple and Facebook are fighting. They don't like each other.

They block each other from passing data between each other more or less. And so in that occurring, a lot of the targeting options that Facebook used to have because of all the data they were getting either disappeared or just isn't as valid as it used to be. And so in that your messaging now has essentially like twice the job that it used to have, because it actually has to not only do the regular job of messaging, but very clearly in the potentially really broad audience of who you're getting in front.

Signal. Hey, this is not for you. And Hey, this is for you. And so we actually are moving more and more towards letting messaging do the work and going more with really broad audiences or really wide lookalike audiences and letting the messaging do its job, instead of trying to create these really precise, layered audiences, which just don't seem to be as effective anymore because of that loss of data.

Mm mm-hmm 

Jordan: yeah. I keep hearing about this and I totally just block it out and I'm like, I'm just gonna keep my head down and like keep my ads on until they like stop working , 

Jennifer: which is like, honestly fine. And that's exactly what I did with my own book of call funnel ads. I was like, oh no, are things going to change?

And I was like, no, they're not cuz again. And I said this before, like the principles of that funnel are the right messaging, the right offer done for you. Buyers behave differently. We could make all the algorithm changes that we want, Facebook, apple, whatever, like those things are true or true or true.

And, you know, you get in front of the right person with a good offer and messaging that clearly says, this is for me or this isn't for me. Like the right people are gonna come through and they're gonna convert, period. It's just like, not that 

Jordan: hard. Yeah. I love it. Okay. Let's let's see if we can pull out a couple of things on like again, okay.

This is totally selfish. I'm thinking about doing some more Facebook ads. I'm thinking about it. Okay. I'm thinking about it. I haven't decided. Okay. And okay. I specifically wanna do some Facebook ads for something passive. And so what should I be thinking about? Are there some principles, are there some like different things that I need to know, you know, within the next six months, that that would be helpful as I think about what that funnel 

Jennifer: might need to be.

Yeah. Do you have an idea of what the offer is like at all? Even with 

Jordan: the, I think so. So I've got, I've got a couple of funnels that I've, uh, I have in place that I could probably just test out. One is going from a freebie that is a client onboarding SOP, and then it sells people, my onboarding templates and forms.

So it's like a 37 40 $7 product off of a freebie. Beautiful 

Jennifer: love. Was there 

Jordan: another one. Um, the other one I haven't fully validated yet, but I'm in the process of, and it, it is a free, like 90 day planning process, but I don't know what the sell is gonna be yet, so. 

Jennifer: Okay. Yeah. Got it. Okay. So for that fund, so I would actually test two things.

I would split test going because here's the thing 37 47 is, you know, that can be a self liquidating offer. I would absolutely test go D going directly to that and split test that with freebie. And then that's actually the trip wire. you're gonna get way more volume with the freebie, but sometimes there just isn't as much translation to people actually buying.

So it would be honestly just worth split testing, where you're able to get the highest volume and most profitability. And especially with the, offering just straight to 37 or $47 offer to cold audiences, I would add in an upsell. So for example, I sell a $37 mini course called everywhere AF and it talks about my messaging strategy and retargeting strategy to make it look like I'm everywhere without ever needing to create content.

Now, we sell that to totally cold audiences. It's $37. And then we have a, a one click upsell that is $197. Now, in some cases, people would say that that's too far of a jump, but I test everything right. And so we were able to bear essentially the same rate of conversion. Whether that was 97 or 1 97. And so obviously more profitability is better.

And so that just allows us to essentially say, Hey, we don't mind if we're actually just like breaking even on the 37, obviously, if we can be profitable on it. Sweet. But the cost of running Facebook as, and especially how competitive the space is, that's harder and harder. So the real profitability comes in with the percentage of people that actually go for the 1 97.

And then again, it's all totally passive. but there just is, is more room because at the end of the day, this it's so hard to give like blank statements, but more if we have to make a, you know, average across the board, like the best cost of acquisition that you're going to see, and that's basically like the cost per purchase, the cost per someone buying something these days with just how much it costs her on ads, like would be like around $25.

And so. if you're selling something 4 37 and it costs you 25. Cool. That's still a little bit of room, but if you get a handful of those people also then buying something from 1 97 or 97, that's where you can have your real profit mm-hmm . So it really is just about, split, testing, different things, figuring out the numbers.

And then of course there's like the ad testing piece of it, but it's all gonna just come down to, you know, looking at and testing different audiences and different copy and creative to find the lowest cost per click, and then optimizing the offer and the sales page to get the highest conversion rate and kind of just like manipulating each of those numbers that come together to create your overall return 

Jordan: out spend.

Yeah. Yeah, totally makes sense. That too nerdy. I 

Jennifer: just like, I black 

Jordan: out like talking about no, that was great. That was great. And so, because I think a lot of times when people, they maybe like I do have some of these funnels and offers and templates and different things that are. Validated and it, I just get kind of overwhelmed on like, okay, but which like, where do I start the ad?

So I liked your advice of like, just test it, like test it with the freebie and then the trip wire. And then totally, obviously I wasn't even thinking about it, but makes total sense to add some type of other upsell at the end. and I don't even know what that would be, and I'd love to know what yours is, but test it, test it with the freebie and then test it straight to the paid product and, and see totally.

What is yours? What is your 1 97 offer? 

Jennifer: So the 1 97 offer is actually a little bit more of like a Facebook ads, 1 0 1. So my $37 offer. Isn't like, I'm gonna teach you Facebook ad. It's like, here is my proprietary strategy. It's sort of like my IP, that is, you know, how I do Facebook retargeting and how I approach messaging.

And then on the back end, it's like, cool. That's like, if you also wanna learn how to do, you know, everything, Facebook adds from a to Z. Here is this, you know, other course that you can purchase. 

Yeah. 

Jordan: Totally makes sense. Do you, yeah. Do you see, this is gonna be the annoying question that you don't like to answer.

Do you see anything doing better? as far as like freebies versus like webinars and like live versus like evergreen, I mean, do you see any trends at all in those things? 

Jennifer: Yes. One, one trend I can definitely speak to is we are seeing the live launch model work less and less and less than less. Yeah. I've been seeing this too.

I think that has been a consistent decline over the last 12 to 18 months. Courtney and I recently did an analysis of, I think it was like our last 50 clients that we worked on. So like quite a bit of, of data. and you know, the ones that got great results, the ones that got okay. Results, the ones that didn't get the results that they wanted.

And I think like, I don't know, 75 to 80% of the clients that didn't continue with us and didn't get the return that they wanted were doing live launches. Mm-hmm . Now I will say it's not that I think the live launch model can't work anymore, but I think that you need so much more than just ads. So people used to just say, cool, I can just use ads to fill it.

And then, you know, like, that's it. But, you know what I'm hearing from a lot of people that I know who do or have done live launches and are selling coaching programs and courses, they are finding that the personal touch points are becoming so crucial, you know? Yes, there's the live launch component, but they're also selling in the DMS and doing one one-on-one emails.

And so we've had clients who wanna do live launches the way that they always have just turn on the FAU to get as many people in, deliver everything to a group and just expect people to close. So it's not that Facebook ads has changed in relation to this. It's just that specific landscape and people needing more of that one-on-one touchpoint.

So it makes the. Facebook adds part of it. Not essentially move the needle enough, if that makes sense. 

Jordan: Mm-hmm yeah, totally. And I don't know if you're seeing this too, but it just seems like I've been hearing a lot of people talking about, I'm not getting as many people signing up for my thing. Like, and people aren't, they aren't coming.

Like, you know, no one's signing up for my challenge. And then when they do sign up, they don't show up. And like those types of live launch models, generally, I feel like just aren't working as well. People, I, maybe people are just burnt out on it, 

Jennifer: but I also that's the thing though. I think another part of it is it comes back to this messaging thing, you know?

I mean, let's just say you are in the realm of you're working with entrepreneurs and you're providing some sort of program or service, or course that relates to growing your business or marketing or whatever. Right? Like we have so many people in that space. Let's forget about Facebook ads. Cuz again, it's so easy to be like with Facebook ads doesn't work for this anymore.

And it's like, let's stop doing that. Think about just how the landscape has changed in the last two to three years. It is so much more crowded. There's more skepticism everybody. And their mother is a business coach. And so you're actually dealing with things at that level, not just at the Facebook ad level in your challenge.

Sounds like everybody else's challenge. Like you actually now there may be plenty of unique things in terms of what you're actually doing, but you're using the same message and you used three years ago, and it's actually not enough to cut through the clutter stand out in general, but especially in the newsfeed.

And then with that, if you can't stand out in the newsfeed, your costs are gonna be stupid high and then there's no room for profitability. And then your mad Facebook adds again. But like actually there's, you know, bigger, bigger things 

Jordan: at play here. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So you said that like 70 to 80% of the people who didn't continue were doing live launching, so what are you seeing that's working the best?

Jennifer: I mean, if I look at like all of the, you know, the three industries that we work in e-com high ticket coaches or service providers and coaches. I'm sorry, and of courses. it's all, it's all different. I mean, we have, you know, really successful. We actually do have one client who does regular live launches, and they're really successful.

They're one of our longest running clients, but they're really niche. And so I think that's a big part of it, right? It isn't just like how to grow your business, how $10,000 months it's like specifically how to grow a jewelry business. And so it's so specific and there's less competition. We have clients that are still killing it with like the traditional webinar to sales page or webinar to book a call funnel.

we have plenty of clients who are doing really well with self-liquidating offers, assuming that they do have a really solid offer letter in the background to be able to, you know, get as much profitability as possible. obviously we still have clients who are like you, who are doing our traditional book of call funnel that is just directly to booking.

Jennifer: Trying to think a little bit of everything. I mean, again, it's that, it's the same thing of, it's not webinars work better than this, you know, anytime anyone's like, what funnel should I be using? It's like, that's the wrong question. Yeah. It's, it's about the messaging. It's about the positioning and then thinking through the right customer journey for your people.

But at the end of the day, if you have the right messaging and positioning and offer, you could do a webinar, you could do a lead magnet, you could do a quiz, you could do a lab, it's it doesn't really matter because it's the, it's the content and the offer and the positioning that's actually steering the ship.

Not so much the, you know, the specific 

Jordan: pieces more or less. Yeah, for sure. For sure. even though I hear you, I still wanna, I still, can you still gimme the answer? I still wanna know. No. but no, I, I, I think, you know, There are again, like lots of places for breakdown, right. And lots of places for optimization still within that.

And so even thinking about, like a webinar funnel there, all these tiny little pieces where you can change things, like if I run a webinar, should it be, should it be evergreen in the sense that people can go straight to the video or should it be on a thing where they have to like pick a time and then actually show up?

Like, do you see differences like that significantly impacting? Yeah, 

Jennifer: I prefer evergreen. And to be honest with you, a part of that is just based off of doing marketing with integrity. I think the false timer, like we know come. We've known. It's not live since like 2018. It's like 20, come on. Like we know it's not live.

So like stop it. and you know, we have a couple of clients that I can think of who like have just been using the same webinar model and it does work. So I I'm a fan of having it be evergreen and making cuz here's the thing, consuming the content. If we're talking about taking away again, the structure, but the traditional funnel is some sort of here's content.

And then here's a call to action consuming the content and making that as easy as possible is so incredibly crucial. Right? I mean, it seems like obvious, but if, if there is any challenge or barrier to entry that people actually consuming the content, there's a major breakdown in the entire funnel. And so I like the idea of just having.

Immediately available, super accessible, the ability to, uh, stop and start during the video, the ability to play at two X speed, things like this, make it that much easier for your audience to actually consume the content that they have the intent to consume. And you're creating fewer and fewer barriers to entry of them getting to 

Jordan: that next one.

Yeah. Well, again, I think like you mentioned, the landscape has changed, right? And the way that we are interacting with all of this information online has changed. And I. Like for me. Yeah. And I would say, arguably, I've always been this way, but more so now if you put any difficulty up, like if I can't, if I can't pause it, mm-hmm, I'm done.

Like, I don't have time for that. Like, my life is busy. There's stuff going on. If my kid's screaming, I'm not gonna keep it going. I need to be able to pause it. And same thing with like, if the page refreshes and then I've gotta watch everything, cuz I can't fast forward. Give me a break. I'm outta there.

Jennifer: Forget it. Forget it a hundred percent. Or like the one that I hate. Oh, this drives me crazy. The one where the call to action button for the next step on the webinar, doesn't actually appear until you get to a certain point. I'm like. Listen, I need five seconds of information. I am a quick decision maker.

Like sometimes I wanna buy without watching your thing. And you're literally stopping me from giving you money. Now I don't wanna buy her from you. And I think about it. So 

Jordan: it's so funny because again, people need to think about their own buying behavior. Because if I think about like webinars that I've purchased off of, I just did this like last year signed up for this gal's webinar.

I didn't go live. I went to click the replay. I didn't watch the replay. I clicked the buy button. I signed up, I paid and I emailed her. I was like, I didn't watch any of the stuff, but I'm super excited to sign up, you know? 

Jennifer: I've done it a million times. Yeah. You know, and, and again, I think everybody's buying behaviors are different, right?

There are some people who like don't behave that ever, but, and again, I mean, it should go without saying, but it's just like making it as easy as possible for people to buy from you. It should be like the number one rule. I think this, I see this also where people who are doing, you know, for example, they have a lead magnet and then a nurture email sequence.

And they're like, well, you know, the first two emails have to just be all nurture. I can't have a call to action. Like what? Nope. Don't, don't do that. Look, it could be a PS. Doesn't have to be the whole email. But like, if, cuz I've been that before too, I've downloaded a free opt-in and I'm just like, I don't know how I can work with this person.

I just like want, I want the high end offer. I want the done for you service, whatever it is. And then I can't find how to like no, no stop, stop doing that. Like make offers, make clear calls to action and have them be as accessible as possible in all the points of your customer journey. Yeah. I love 

Jordan: it. I love it.

Okay. This was awesome. And it flew by this is so helpful for me really. I do hope it's, I, I hope it's helpful for people listening, but man, was it helpful for me? So you're like, this is just for me. we will have in the show notes information about you, how people can find you, how they can connect with you, all of those things.

Is there anything else you wanna leave us with that you're just like, you gotta know this. 

Jennifer: Hmm. I feel like again, like beating a dead horse here, but it's, it's just remembering what Facebook ads can and cannot do. But the other side of that is, cause I think, I think we did spend a lot of time and I do end up talking about this quite a bit.

Right? Like when to not do Facebook ads and what to be worried about. And like, of course there's that, but the other side of it, when you do actually put in the work to, you know, have the foundation in place to understand the right messaging and the right positioning and you get a funnel converting, like it is.

It is the ability to be in complete control of your own growth. And I don't think that there's anything more valuable to a business. You know, I have two years of historical data that shows that on average, every time I spend $800, I will acquire a client. It's great ROI. Yeah. But separate from that, it's like, cool.

I'm gonna, you know, we need four new clients this month. Here's how much we're gonna spend. We wanna bring on a new account account manager in two months. That means, you know, over the next two months, we have to increase our spend to this much so that they have clients. Like it lets me plan out with not certainty, but a, but a large level of predictability, like how the business is going to, to grow it.

It's the cheap codes to growth. And so, that is what is on the other side of all of this. Like non-sex totally 

Jordan: stuff that we've been talking about. Totally. I can totally vouch for all of this and I will just add the caveat that it is not cheap. So don't act don't, don't expect that it's just gonna like magically happen.

It's an investment. Like anything else in your business? Like, are you gonna spend $25,000 on a mastermind or you wanna throw down $25,000 on ads? It's just an investment. Yep. Simple 

Jennifer: as that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, the most, the most important thing is that there is active. Whether it's you doing it yourself or working with an agency or a partner that there is active, like a feedback loop.

Right? So it isn't just blindly spending thousands and thousands of dollars and not changing anything. Right. It needs to be, spend a little analyze, make the tweaks, analyze, make the tweaks. And then that way, you know, that spend is going towards the optimizations and improvements that will get you to the place of cool.

Now I know every time I spend 

Jordan: X, I make Y yeah, for sure. I'm not an expert, but I do know that some people are like, oh, I'm just gonna like do this one ad. And I remember when I went into the ads manager and I saw the things that you guys had put in there. I mean, there. I don't know, it felt like there was like hundreds of things in there, like different tests and changes.

And I was like, whoa, this is why I did not do this myself. 

Jennifer: Nope. It's pretty involved. It's pretty involved. Yeah. 

Jordan: I love it. Well, this was seriously, so fun and so helpful and I really appreciate you. Yay. Coming on. 

Jennifer: Awesome. Thanks for having me, Jordan.