James: James Schramko here with Kory Basaraba from GrowFastMarketing.com. Kory, how do we get the most out of an agency, if we’re going to hire someone in, we’ll pay them a good fee to come in and spread their brilliance into our business? But I see some people wasting the opportunity a little bit.
Kory: Yeah, I think a big part of it is understanding what is it you want that agency to do, specifically? And a lot of people are kind of turning to a Facebook agency or a traffic agency and saying, can you grow our sales? I want to grow my business. So they think Facebook ads are the solution. That’s a common one.
And it’s important to realize that there’s a limitation of what that agency can actually do. And it’s more helpful to look at that agency as a piece of your entire production funnel, your production line for your marketing. The Facebook agency’s job is to make sure you have qualified people looking at your message. Now, there’s going to come a point where that agency is not going to be able to fix it if your funnel isn’t converting, so then you need to make sure you’ve got another team who’s responsible for the conversion. And it’s just about having this kind of Lego block assembly-line mentality. As an entrepreneur, you’re building a successful team to handle every piece of your marketing. So if your internal resources can’t make your funnel convert better, you got to find someone who can. But expecting your Facebook team to fix conversion problems with your funnel is just unrealistic. And it’s not what their core competency is.
And I see a lot of companies hopping from agency to agency, because they were expecting the agency to be able to work a miracle. And that’s just not what they’re designed to do. So it’s just being really clear. What do you need this agency to do, or this team member or this contractor, and how do they fit into the entire production line of your marketing?
James: Yeah, I do see that one a lot where they’re like, oh, I’ve tried this. You know, Facebook reps have come in and charged us and run campaigns, spent our budget and didn’t get a result. How much is the obligation on the Facebook agency as well to make sure that the criteria should be in place that they can do a good job?
Kory: It’s 100% on their shoulders, right? So an informed buyer, if I’ve bought a lot of cars in my life, I’m going to walk on a lot, I’m going to have a lot more sophistication, the questions I ask the sales rep. I’m not going to be able to get hoodwinked based on some fancy jargon, right? So your job as an entrepreneur is to understand enough about the mechanics to ask good questions. And your agency should be asking you the right questions about your margins, how much does it cost you to fulfill and deliver? What can you afford to acquire a customer? Because there’s a certain math equation that if it doesn’t work out, you just shouldn’t do Facebook, you might not be ready for it.
And your agency, of course, they’re in sales mode, they want to get you as a customer, they want to get your deposit and most engagements only last a few months and then they move on. So there are some agencies that are very comfortable just turning and burning through clients. So it’s important for you to understand what they’re there to do, and you should be looking for them to ask you those kinds of questions. If I’m not asking you about your acceptable cost per customer, cost per lead, what your margins are, how long are you comfortable carrying that? Do you want to get your money back on day one? Are you looking for 30 days? Those are all questions a really great agency would be asking you from the start. They would be trying to determine, are you ready for Facebook or not? That’s the first question you guys should try and get through.
James: So a lot of people that I speak to, they don’t yet have a proven offer that converts to a large extent, or they don’t know their acquisition costs, because notoriously, business owners aren’t that good with their data. It always feels like a huge gamble, if they’re going to, you know, roll the dice or not. And at what point does the agency say well, it’s a huge risk, and we don’t know?
Kory: Well, a good agency would tell you that upfront, right? The first thing I ask every client is to talk to me about your funnel. If they’re coming to me for traffic, I want to know about their funnel because that’s what ultimately is going to make or break the success. I’m confident in my ability to get good ads put together and target the right people but if that funnel doesn’t convert, right? So that’s the first conversation piece.
And so it’s hard for a lot of entrepreneurs who are excited, they’ve got their product launch, or they are getting into a new business, they want to get that traffic. And it just means you got to be prepared to gamble and risk a little bit to find out, you know, you’re buying data. That’s really the mindset when you first start on Facebook, you’re buying information that you can use to decide. Do we keep going with Facebook or do we pause now and improve our funnel? It’s a kind of a ping pong, but without the data, you don’t know. And so there’s a bit of a risk involved.
James: So with some clients, they could actually have you come in and say, okay, Kory, we don’t know our data. We’re not exactly sure how our funnel’s working. Could you look at all our data and start there and then build a funnel for us and then hook it up to traffic. Is that the order you would do it?
Kory: Yeah, fundamentally, we want to make sure that there’s a good offer. There’s a demand for what they’re trying to sell. And if they have a funnel, then we look at the numbers. And then we reverse-engineer it and say, okay, for Facebook to work, we have to be able to hit these numbers. And let us spend the least amount we have to on Facebook to see if we can hit those numbers. And if it doesn’t work, that’s fine. There’s all kinds of ways to get traffic: through affiliates, joint venture partners, or you just scale it organically. You don’t have to have Facebook to grow but you need to get those numbers set up upfront.
James: What is the most important part of the whole equation? I’ll give you an example that someone mentioned to me lately. They had a fitness site that’s sort of new to the fitness market, which it’s like, oh my god! What a market to choose! They had spent some money on design, spent some money on ads, spent some money on the side, spent some money on copy, and just not getting sales. They’re like what do I do now?
Kory: It’s a tough situation. I mean, fundamentally, you have to find out early on, do people want what you’re selling?
James: You know, I thought it was related to the offer. That’s where I would focus, the offer. Because until and unless you can compel someone to hand over their money, then all the rest is theoretical. There’s no point.
You can drive the traffic, but if you don’t make the sale, you’re going to buy plenty of data. You know, it’s great to go into a market where there are buyers, but there’s also some pretty serious competition in that sort of space as well. So I imagine you’d be looking at where someone’s position in their market and how long they’ve been going with it to get a gauge on the likelihood of success for them?
Kory: Right. And is there anything unique about what they’re selling? Or can I go get it 100 other places? So you nailed it, your advice to entrepreneurs is get an offer that converts.
James: Yeah.
Kory: That’s where it starts, right?
James: Everything.
Kory: And it doesn’t change just because you’re on the internet or you’re doing an online business. If your offer doesn’t convert, you have nothing. So go back to the drawing board and find one. Which is discouraging if you’ve worked hard but that’s part of being an experienced entrepreneur. We all have to go through our failures to learn and learn and learn. That’s how we become experienced is through those failures, but you have to throw some offers that don’t work.
And that’s the grind. If you want the payoff of being an entrepreneur, the freedom and the lifestyle, and then that price you pay is to get some hard knocks and go back and learn how to sell whatever it is you’re trying to offer.
James: It is an inevitable phase, we talked about this, you will have to crawl over broken glass in the beginning. Someone asked me yesterday on a podcast, can you have the lifestyle that I have without going through a difficult phase first? And I said, I really don’t think so. It’s really front-end loaded. It is like building a house, you’re going to have to clear the ground and put the foundation in. Like even if you pay for someone else to do all of that. You still gotta wait. You can’t just move in the day you buy the block. And if you do buy someone else’s house and move into an already built one then you’ll have to deal with some of the things that they put the door there instead of here or they didn’t allow for enough storage or it leaks when it rains.
There’s always going to be challenges as an entrepreneur. Don’t get into it unless you’re expecting that. But I think the key point today is that your offer is a great place to start. And if you get that right then you can afford a team, you can afford traffic, you can have someone come in and really help out. And if you treat your agency nicely and they stick around for a while, that could be the greatest weapon you’ve ever had in your marketing.
And if you want to lay the blame on them for your crappy offer, you’ll just keep churning through them, and you’ll never get the result that you’re hoping for. And eventually, this is a thing, customers actually get a bad reputation amongst suppliers as someone, they shouldn’t deal with because they just chew through suppliers. I’ve heard a couple of people. It’s like the bad tenants’ register. There’s a bad customer register where people get a reputation for just chewing through their suppliers and laying all the blame on them. So, great insights today. Thank you, Kory.
So that’s Kory, GrowFastMarketing.com. If you do want a seasoned hand to come in and give you a hand and check it out, Kory is the guy.
Kory: Thanks, James.
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