A fun fact:
I’ve had clients who, prior to working with me, worked with a pricey FB ads mentor for a YEAR or more and didn’t get a SINGLE qualified prospect or client from it.
Then they posted ONE offer post in the Strong Method framework on their personal page and got a high-ticket client signing up and paying within a day or two (when they’d never gotten leads or clients from their profile before).
Isn’t that amazing?
Another fun fact:
I, myself, threw multiple-five-figures at FB ads, as well as ads consultants/experts, and got almost nothing back from it (I think one client in an entire year, maybe?).
And was in debt for several years, unable to pay it off.
Then I discovered/created what is now known as the Strong Method way of writing posts and growing an organic audience on my profile…
…and made so much money that I was able to pay off the ads debt in just one month. 😮
(and never go into debt again)
WOW! I mean, wow. That’s just a miracle to me.
And, of course, the total opposite of what I ever expected to happen.
I had always thought that paid ads were the holy grail of audience growth and reach, and that I could never expect to grow my business in any significant way (certainly not get 50-70 high ticket clients per year like I’ve gotten using the Strong Method) unless I were able to pay for ads.
Good thing I’m somebody who’s willing to question assumptions and take a second (or third, or fourth, or twentieth) look at things when they’re not going the way I’d like. 😉
So, what do I think is the main reason why I did so much better with organic posting than with ads (and why my clients often do, too)?
Well, there are multiple reasons, but I’ll try to sum up the most significant ones here.
First, the paid ads used a totally different way of (supposedly) attracting attention, and also a totally different way of “warming up” those who paid attention to the initial ad.
My ads experts always ran my ads to things like webinars, pdf checklists, and free challenges.
The ad copy was vague and mainly agitated the problem, didn’t give any insight as to the solution, and said that somebody had to sign up for one of those freebies in order to get the solution.
And then when I look back at those freebies I created, I realize they didn’t REALLY provide much insight as to the solution, either.
The information I gave was very, very high-level – certainly not to the level of detail where the reader/viewer could actually have an “aha” moment about where they were going wrong in their attempts to solve the problem.
I also realize now that the people who pay high-ticket fees most easily (i.e.: they have the money, and see value in hiring the best) aren’t necessarily attracted to all those freebies.
Not only do they not necessarily want to spend the time to go through them, but they don’t really have much reason to believe that the information shared will be anything special.
(Harsh, maybe, but true!)
After all, the ads for the freebies all look/sound similar to others in their niche, and the actual content of the freebies they HAVE digested all looks/sounds similar too, and most high-ticket clients are sophisticated enough to have been “around the block” more than a few times and to have already tried the high-level ideas that are being presented.
At this point they’re looking to hire someone who will be detail-oriented enough to get really specific on what didn’t work for them previously.
So these ads, and the pathway they lead to, are actually more attractive to the less sophisticated buyers – who have less experience, are looking for more of a “magic pill,” and have less money to spend and/or are less willing to part with their money.
(and in saying those things, I’m not criticizing that type of person – as I actually once WAS that type of person! so I understand where they’re coming from)
A lot of times, too, the ad copy talks about a very VAGUE problem (like “do you want more clients?”) instead of a NICHED problem (like “are you only getting about one client per month for your $5K+ offer from your Facebook group and you’d love 3-4 per month?”)
(Which one of those two problem statements do you think would attract a more sophisticated buyer? Which do you think would attract a less sophisticated buyer)
The second reason why I think I got so many more clients with my organic posting method is that the “funnel” for the potential client is shorter with my method.
My ads were always pointed at a multi-step funnel that didn’t really need to have that many steps in order for the prospect to make the decision to buy, and to actually purchase.
Like, for my webinar funnels, the webinar didn’t give much information, and then the viewer got a bunch of follow-up emails that also didn’t give much information (but did urge them to book a call), and then if/when they finally did book a call with me, I didn’t give much information either but urged them to “sign up today” and treated any questions as “objections” or signs that they weren’t committed to their goals.
And for my free challenge funnels, the person had to make it all the way through the free challenge material (which was anywhere from 5-14 days long), and which may or may not have given any real insight to what my paid program would include, AND THEN they had to be interested enough to book a call with me to hear the pitch for the program…
And for my pdf downloads, the person would have to actually read the pdf (how many pdfs that you’ve signed up for have you actually downloaded and read? Be honest), be interested in what else I would have to say, consume more emails/content from me, finally be interested enough to sign up for a call with me, and then hear what would most likely be a vague description/pitch for my program.
Then there’s also the fact that a lot of high-ticket buyers don’t necessarily want to sign up for a call when they don’t have details on our method, program, or price – and don’t want to waste our time by signing up for a call just to ask about those things because they know that we probably only want people on those calls who are likely to enroll by the end – not people who are still doing research.
It’s no wonder that I struggled to consistently sign up high-ticket clients using any of these variations of paid-ads-to-funnel.
The Strong Method of consistently attracting and enrolling high-ticket clients (a.k.a. – the method I developed, and now use) deals very effectively with all of the problems mentioned above.
The method, in a nutshell, is:
Request friends on your profile.
Make posts pitching your offer in a very clear and detailed way.
Make posts sharing the expertise and concepts behind your offer in a very clear and detailed way.
Receive DMs from people who are interested in your offer.
(And with this method, by the time they DM, they usually are MORE than just “interested” – they’re actually pretty sure that the offer is for them, and just want to know if we’d consider them a good fit. And when you ask them a few quick questions, you usually realize that they ARE a good fit and exactly the kind of person you wanted!)
Enroll them (usually without a phone call) and without any sales “tactics” such as objection-handling.
Simple, yet amazing, right?
This only works as well as it does because the posts actually include all the information and insight that someone would need in order to understand that we do have a detailed method, that it’s different from what they’ve tried before (and how), and exactly what our program includes and how it’s set up.
The posts are solely geared towards getting the inquiry for our paid program – not towards getting the person to go check out something else, like a video, free training, pdf, webinar, free challenge, etc.
This makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE in a highly distracted world, especially for people who are busy.
It also works because people are NOT being attracted into our world by means of a problem-based message.
In fact, they’re not usually attracted by a message at all – they simply connect with us via a friend request (or “connection request” on another platform) and might not know anything about us other than the fact that we have mutual friends with them.
But then, once they’re connected, they see amazing content that is thorough and detailed and shows exactly how they can get to the next stage of their journey – and doesn’t make it difficult or complicated to understand the paid offer OR to sign up.
(Another fun fact here is that some of my high-ticket clients have actually never made it onto my email list or into my Facebook group – they were convinced by the FB posts alone, and because my actual paid program was what I pitched over and over (rather than pitching joining the FB group or the email list), the paid program was what they actually inquired about. But paid ads tend to always pitch something “intermediate.”)
Is this making sense?
Obviously, I’m really excited about the Strong Method and want to see as many people as possible learn how to use it, so they can easily get a few people per month into their high-ticket program and make (and keep – because no ad expenses) a multi-six-figure income without a lot off muss/fuss (no complicated tech necessary).
If you want help to implement the Strong Method, my 30-day 1-on-1 intensive is the “whole shebang” where I help you to customize every detail of the method to your business – the direct-pitch posts, the “insight” posts, the friend-requesting method, the DM qualification/sales method, and more.
And before we get into all that, we also get uber-clear on how to articulate who your best-fit client is and what you’re solving for them (so you know how to express that “niched problem” that’s going to have them resonate with your message, as opposed to the vague problem message that’ll pull in a wider variety of people who may or may not fit.
If you want JUST the help on articulating the niched problem and best-fit client, I offer group workshops that chop off that piece from the 30-day 1-on-1 program and address it on its own.
I do a couple of workshops every month, and you can always find out when the next one(s) will be by checking this page.
Both offers include the amount of personalized attention and detail orientation that you’d expect for the price that I charge. 🙂 And both programs have received many rave reviews that you can find under the “testimonials” hashtag in my Facebook group.
If you’re interested in either offer, the next step is to send me a DM on Facebook.
I have a few precise questions that I ask to make sure that the offer is a good fit for you and will get you the help that you expect and need to get from it.
If it’s a good fit, you can pay and get started with the 1:1 30-day intensive immediately, or with the group workshop on the date advertised (with pre-work due beforehand).
More information on the 30-day intensive is available here.
More information on the group workshops is available here.
Have you run paid ads? Was your experience as disappointing as mine? Or did you get awesome results? Feel free to share any thoughts or comments here (in the comments section of the Facebook version of this post). 🙂