You may not know this, but I’m the founder of a growth consulting company called Adstra.

And we hate cold outreach. We focus purely on paid acquisition.

Why?

Because we know how to reliably generate leads at scale through effective media buying.

There is simply nothing that compares (in my experience) to the dramatic effect that strong advertising can have on businesses looking to book out their calendar and get more leads into the door.

Having spent millions on paid media, we’ve had the pleasure of experimenting with many strategies so you don’t have to make the same costly mistakes we’ve made.

In this short story, I want to share the insights from our countless variable tests and give it to you straight.

I want to show you exactly what you need to do to knock paid ads out of the park so you can sleep like a Siberian bear at night.

So you can finally predictable grow and scale your operations.

All without:

• Wrestling prospects in your email inbox
• Begging for referrals
• Robbing your prospects LinkedIn inboxes with salesy messaging
• Feeling like you want to throw your Macbook off the balcony

Keeping with that theme, I am happy to announce that Adstra has now launched our own ads internally. And I want to break that down today for you.

Just so we can say: we’re putting our money where our mouth is.

Let’s get started, shall we?

Know Your Customers Better Than They Know Themselves

Please, don’t take this section lightly.

This is where the gold is mined. I assure you.

How the hell can you advertise and present offers to your audience if you don’t know what they want, what they care about, and what they are fearful of?

Spoiler alert: you can’t.

So here’s how we dive deep under the fingernails of our prospects so they feel inclined to speak with us.

Step 1: Hear it directly from your prospects

You don’t want to just find flimsy research from external sources.

Discover the problems your prospects have from the prospects themselves.

Here’s a few ways to do that:

1. Answerthepublic.com: Use this semi-free tool to discover what your prospects are searching online. From there, you can ascertain what kind of thoughts they are wrestling with and find common themes.

1. Head to Reddit and venture into relevant subgroups. Here, you will find anonymous, unfiltered conversations between your ideal prospects. The value of these conversations cannot be overestimated. I’ve often used quotes from Reddit exactly as they are said in our ads.

I then collect 20 or so of these conversations and format them in the following way:

Step 2: Ethically ‘steal’ from your competition

By using the following tools: FB & IG ad library, Google ad library, Linkedin Ad Library ,Twitter ad library, Pinterest ad library, Tiktok ad library, and Reddit Ad library, you can swipe any of your competitors’ ads.

Here’s the important part about this:

Find their best ads and landing pages. Don’t just swipe everything.

“But how do I know which ones are the best ones?”

The ads that are running longer than 1 month and have high engagement are their winners.

Next thing to remember. Don’t just steal them straight up.

Not cool.

Take 100+ great ads, mash all of them together and the strategy associated, THEN make your own.

That way, you can gather inspiration from everyone, not just a few of your competitors.

“Why is this so important?”

Unlike cold outreach, your paid media can easily be seen by your competition. Additionally, the metrics associated with your ad campaigns success rely on how successful your competitors are.

It’s likely that your CPCs, CTR, CAC, etc, will be similar to your competitors. That is because when you purchase media, it’s an auction with others that are bidding for the same person’s eye balls and attention.

If you do not do your homework first, you’re throwing darts blindfolded.

Give Away Your Best Stuff

I’ve talked about this many times before in previous articles, so I’ll keep this short.

You want to hone in on the most dramatic problem your prospects face, develop a solution for it, and give it away for free.

“But why would they need what I’m selling anymore?

Because even if they knew what to do to solve their problems, most would still pay you to solve it for them.

The free item should be so good that if someone really wanted to, they could take that and solve their own problems.

In reality, 99% of them won’t do that.

Also, 99% of your competitors won’t be doing this. Therefore, you’re immediately a trusted, reliable source of information.

Here’s how we’re doing it with our new ad campaign we launched just a few days ago from writing this piece.

Now, we work with more than just SaaS companies. We also engage with companies that sell valuable stuff over the phone or a Zoom call. But, take this as another lesson. You must segment your solution to a particular person.

In this case, SaaS companies generally refer to their sales calls as “demos”.

Therefore, we made a report that showcases top to bottom how to book in 100+ of these bad boys month over month.

The results?

We’ve spent a bit less than $100, got 14 leads, and 1 booked call.

Not too shabby for a few days of testing.

We anticipate with the back-end follow-up sequence that we can book in 3–4 more of these leads. To our surprise, they are mostly qualified. Which is excellent news.

Want to see more examples? Check it out:

Notice a trend?

That’s because we always replicate what works. Keep it simple!

Lastly..

Have Fun With It

Most people believe paid media is complex, stressful, and guaranteed to give you early onset balding. Not the case.

But if you let it, it will be the case.

“So, how can this crazy hard stuff be fun to you?”

Simple. Let your creativity flow and enjoy the ride.

Personally, I love to write. So, while my team did all the technical work, I was in the lab setting my keyboard on fire making sure the copy was eclectic and captured attention.

Have a look:

I mean come on.

This was FUN for me to write.

And remember, business should be fun, not stressful.

My goal is to make this lead-getting stuff simple for you so you can focus on what you enjoy.

And if you’re like me (unlucky you), you enjoy this stuff (you lunatic).

Anyways..

I plan on making periodic updates on the performance of our ad campaign. Showcasing not only the creatives that we’re using but everything involved. The good, the bad and the ugly. Only available to our newsletter subs (more on that shortly).

All of this to be able to say:

STOP SENDING COLD DMs AND COLD EMAILS!

It’s a waste of time, sweetheart.

Here are two ways I can help you moving forward:

1. Check out our free training video that dives MUCH deeper into this 100+ monthly sales call protocol that requires no manual follow-up or cold outreach. Ever. Click here to see it.
2. If you don’t care for valuable video trainings and just want to get the updates on our ad campaigns, join the newsletter here.

As always, thanks for joining me today.