We booked 16 calls within 9 days of launching our first ad campaign, here’s how we did it.

Just a few days ago, I decided to put my money where my mouth is.

We have run ads for 100+ appointment-based businesses but we’ve never run our own ads, until now.

What kept me from doing it for so long was analysis paralysis. I’m a perfectionist. I really wanted to make our campaigns perfect. So of course, I overthought every aspect of our campaign:

• The research
• The copy
• The creatives
• The targeting
• The back-end

You name it, I wanted it to be perfect.

However, let me be clear. It never will be. You just got to run the damn ad.

So, I got over myself, built a free training page, and started running traffic to it.

The results after a mere 9 days were ridiculous, to say the least.

1. 114 leads
2. 16 qualified booked calls
3. ~$899 in ad spend
4. ~$57 CPBC

All in less than 10 days.

This should go down in the books as a miracle. Paid ads seldom work this way. However, there were underlying theories that led to the success of this campaign. A lot of it had to do with the data we already had.

Today, I want to do my best to help you not burn money with your paid media campaigns so you can reliably book meetings quickly after launching, just like we did.

Quick note here, these leads are incredibly qualified.

Have a look:

I know what you were probably thinking before checking out these screenshots.

“There’s no way high-quality leads come from ads!”

That couldn’t be farther from the truth. They are even more qualified than the leads that come through content.

So, let’s not waste any time. Let me show you exactly how I was able to get this campaign cranking in less than two weeks in order to book out my sales team’s calendar for the next week.

Know Your Prospects True Pain

You must hook your customer in with your copy and your creative. The few primary ways you can do that are as follows:

1. Mentioning a shared problem
2. Mentioning a shared desire
3. Calling them out directly (by archetype, revenue, etc.)
4. Mentioning a shared obstacle

I’ve had hundreds of calls with my ideal customer and I have always taken notes on them. Additionally, I’ve posted many pieces of content associated with the problems related to my target audience. After an in-depth review of their situation, they all struggle with getting attention and booking meetings. However, that won’t be a good enough hook.

Want more sales calls in your calendar?

Lame.

You must ask yourself “why” repeatedly until you get to the root of the problem and what they are facing. After taking a peak at all the articles I’ve ever posted, a glaring theme emerged.

All these folks have tried cold outreach and they have a deep disdain towards it.

Whether they hired someone and they didn’t work out or they tried it themselves. Either way, I knew all motivated business owners who want to grow have looked into or even tried cold outreach. The data on my articles/content and in the calls I’ve taken empirically proves this hypothesis.

I did not just assume this about them. I heard it from them, themselves.

Please, don’t shoot in the dark when coming up with your big idea. Find it from your customers themselves.

For me, it was obvious after reviewing the data.

So here’s a few ads I came up with:

What you say is far more important than how it’s being said.

Let me be brutally clear with you. These ads are cranking. They immediately worked.

Why?

Because 80% of the work was on finding the big idea. Then, it took me 90 seconds to create the image in Canva and another 20 minutes to write the copy.

Here’s what I’d do if I were you

• Find empirical data that showcases the main problems behind your target audience
• Use the storytelling arc in your copy (image below)
• Dig into that pain as much as possible and create an enemy out of it
• Have your solution be “new” and a “unique” way to solve the problem without ever having to deal with “pain” again
• Give them a logical argument as to why they should inquire

Storytelling arc for copywriting

Nab: Hook

Ground zero: Set the environment, the characters, the story, the current state

Doom: Salt in the wound

Escalate: Throw some lemon juice in the wound for good measure

Solution: The logical path forward (your offer or lead magnet)

Invitation: Next steps

Let It Ride (“Let Them Cook”)

Now that your ads are going, you’re going to want to let them accrue some data for about 3 days or so.

You’re going to want to edit, tweak, test, etc.

You’re probably going to be refreshing the ad manager every few moments.

Don’t.

Please, by all means, let them ride. Keep this in mind: running ads is a tax write-off and investment into your business growth. If you are spending $100/day, (my recommendation to start) you will be spending $3,000 per month.

You should always spend 20% of your topline on marketing. Therefore, if you’re making $15,000/mo, $3,000 is perfect.

Even if you aren’t making that amount, $100/day is fine because you will end up editing the budget, getting leads, getting calls, and making a return on it either way (when done well).

The bottom line is that, if you’re making less than 100k/mo, you shouldn’t focus on much of anything else besides advertising.

And up to $1m/mo you should be focusing on just one channel. And from what we’ve seen, paid ads are the best way to get there.

So please, don’t stress that Zuckerberg is taking your money. Take a deep breath, relax, and let the ads rock. Have faith that you too, can make paid ads work eventually. You got this!

Follow-Up And Tests

Now we’re getting data, iterating, turning off some ads, making new ones, and trying our best to get to a solid number, it’s time to review what changes to make.

Here is the SOP I give my team to monitor what part of your funnel needs support:

You should focus 80% of your time on making your ads exceptional.

Why?

Because an increase of CTR from 2% to 8% is doable. And, it just so happens that means 4x more traffic will funnel into your landing page or lead form. Without spending any more money on ads.

So once you’re getting hundreds and thousands of visitors to your landing page, now you’re looking for a 10% or more opt-in. I’d suggest trying to get to 25% — 40%. It’s possible because we do this often.

Luckily, the pages we made for Adstra were good out of the gate (which usually doesn’t happen).

Check out our results:

Please see the SOP above to know what to test there.

The last step is to get those meetings, here’s what you need to make sure you do:

1. Have a solid email storytelling sequence (look up Russell Brunson’s Soap Opera sequence for more information on this)
2. Integrate SMS follow-up
3. Call all your leads or have someone on your team do it (this sucks but it does work enough to make it worth it)
4. Make edits to your VSL page headline, the video, and the button. This is the page that they get redirected to directly after they opt-in as a lead

Have a look at the funnel we use and the same one we create for us and our clients:

This funnel is responsible for:

• 3000+ leads generated monthly
• 500–750 qualified booked meetings monthly
• 50% reduction in CAC
• 22% increase in sales cycle speed
• 82% increase in booking rates
• Many, many hours are saved due to automated trust-building

This funnel may be complicated for most. It’s certainly too complicated to write here about it. If you want more information on how this funnel can work for your business…

Click here to book a free strategy session with my team.

That’s it for today. As always, thanks for reading.