As a fractional chief revenue officer, Jeremias Smith helps companies grow by creating and managing the deployment of an effective marketing strategy that helps you achieve your immediate and long-term growth goals.
Hernan Vasquez is an investor, marketing advisor, co-founder and consultant. He helps small to medium-size businesses increase their online client acquisition through marketing campaigns, email marketing, paid media, retargeting and strategic partnerships.
Listen to this informative Publish. Promote. Profit. episode with Hernan Vazquez and Jeremias Smith about helping companies grow with effective marketing strategies.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How you can use a book funnel to acquire customers and then upsell them.
– Why you should be monetizing the people who are ordering your book.
– How having the power of a good brand behind you can help you sell books and upsell to your customers.
– Why you need a powerful hook or angle to get people to purchase your book.
– How there are three main pillars that help drive traffic to your funnel and what they are.
Connect with Hernan and Jeremias:
Links Mentioned:
scaledriven.com
scaledriven.com/framework
Guest Contact Info:
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/company/scale-driven
Rob Kosberg:
Hey, welcome everybody. I’m Rob Kosberg and I have two amazing guests for our Publish Promote Profit podcast today. I have Hernan Vasquez and Jeremias Smith. They are partners in Scale Driven, which is an incredible digital marketing agency. We’re going to spend a good bit of time talking about book funnels. Hernan is a direct response expert. He manages millions of dollars in profitable social media ad spend every single month. He’s built several amazing digital agencies worked with some of the greats in our industry. Frank Kern, Grant Cardone, Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi, Agora publishing. I mean, that’s the like the A list entrepreneurs that he has worked with to do their digital marketing, run their book funnels, et cetera. Jeremiah is partnered with Hernan, 25 years of marketing and sales experience, which is hard to believe because he looks so much younger than me and I’m sure he is. Since 2000 he’s led several marketing initiatives, which have resulted in millions of dollars in sales volume for both digital companies, as well as brick and mortar businesses. So guys, thank you so much for being on the podcast today and for being a part of my new book funnel secrets book that it will be coming out probably in four to six months. So great to spend some time with you both.
Hernan Vazquez:
Yeah, for sure. Thank you for having us super excited for that.
Rob Kosberg:
Hernan’s coming in from Buenos Aires and Jeremiah from Northern California of course in beautiful St. Augustine, Florida. So very, very, very cool. We’re we’ve got a good bit of the world here covered between the three of us. So love it. Let’s dive right in. And I want to make this free flowing, because I know you both have a ton of experience, both present experience in running book funnels for people as well as the past experience for some of the amazing people that you’ve worked with. So let’s talk about the past first Tony Dean Grant, Agora. Talk to me about a general experience of what you had with those guys and the book funnels they ran and the results that they got from their book funnels and you can start anywhere you like there and either one of you and then we’ll kind of go, dive in a little deeper from there.
Hernan Vazquez:
I think that all these big names, they understand the power of having one or several for Grant Cardone will ran at any given point anywhere between three to five book funnels in at the same time with his many books that he has. So, they understand the value and the power that’s that this mechanism of acquiring customers and then upselling them into something higher ticket can have for their business. So, when I was working with, with Grant Cardone, I worked with him for a year and a half. I helped him with bill his agency and one of the, and his agency was built on the backbone of one of his many book funnels, so we were able to run advertising, social media advertising for the most part for one or two of his book funnels. And then the sales guys will just reach out to everyone that would come through that book funnel.
Rob Kosberg:
Was that cold outreach? Was that just outbound dialing that they did?
Hernan Vazquez:
They did a little bit of an outbound dialing, but mostly we were working with warm leads and warm buyers, people that have gone through any of Grant’s programs for the most part and retargeting on Facebook, that was a big deal as well. You know? And so it was mostly since he has established brand, we didn’t necessarily have the need to spend a lot of budget on cold audiences, right. Prospecting and whatnot. So we were actually working on his, his book buyers and pretty much everyone that has bought from him and that allowed us to go from, I think we started with 30 clients, this was pre pandemic. So we started up 30 clients and we ended up with over 250 agency clients in the span of eight months.
Something like that. Yeah. The growth was super, super big and it was built as a way of monetizing all of these buyers that he was getting through the book, another example of that. So he was all about free plus shipping books. Right. We know that model, the free plus shipping methodology, but then what I tested when I was working with Frank Kern, I was his main CMO marketing guy slash main media buyer. And at that point he was selling his book 2.0.
And mind you, this was a book, this was a digital copy. So it wasn’t a free plus shipping book, but it was a digital copy of the book. And we saw kind of the same results. I understand why people would do the free plus shipping when you charge a little bit more versus the digital copy. The digital copy is just easier, it’s just send the digital copy and whatnot.
Rob Kosberg:
No fulfillment cost. I mean.
Hernan Vazquez:
No book costs and whatnot and no delay on getting the book and whatnot. So, I think there’s value on both. Right. But we didn’t see a lot of drop-offs in conversions. We had to charge a little bit less because it was a digital copy, but he used that to build his continuity program at that point was the network that was a $400 a month continuity program.
Rob Kosberg:
I was in it.
Hernan Vazquez:
Everyone I know was in that program and it was built on, as an upsell, he had an upsell to try that program and then on the back, and it was all about selling that continuity program with different hooks and angles. And I think that at its peak, it had anywhere between 1200 to 1500 paying members. So, if you do the math, that’s quite a chunk of change that’s coming.
Just from that continuity program alone. So I think that helping these guys to launch acquisition funnels, actually showing you how they can afford to advertise because they never stop advertising at all. Right. How they can afford to keep on advertising, how they can afford to keep on acquiring customers because they build this machine, on the back of book funnels. So I think that they prove the point that they work.
Rob Kosberg:
Jeremias, thoughts on that?
Jeremias Smith:
I agree. And I think one of the main things too, with the book funnels, that’s also important to mention is the backend process, as far as follow up. Too often, one of the things that we see is a lack of follow up or a lack of backend offers with the book funnels and whether you’re going to be selling a continuity program, like in this example, or you’re going to have a sales team on the backend. I think it’s important to make sure that a follow up process is also in place. So a book funnel can perform that much better and use it as a customer acquisition system.
Rob Kosberg:
I do want to dive into like some of the stuff you’re seeing right now, what’s fresh right now, but maybe one more kind of general question about these guys about Tony, Dean Graziosi, Grant Cardone, Frank Kern is, one thing that I do and I’ll be offering it as a bonus in my next book funnel is every time I see a book funnel, I go through it and I buy everything. So, and I record everything and I keep, I have an entire Vimeo stock of all of that stuff. And so I’ve been through, I bought convert 2.02 or three times for his various offers because Frank keeps compiling them in different ways and reusing them.
And I went through Grant Cardone’s one of his book funnels, I don’t remember which one, but it was unique in that the only upsell was like this $10,000 thing, which I thought was, and I didn’t buy that, but it just seemed so, I don’t know if you recall that. I’m sharing this, this story because what I’d like to hear from you is what kind of unique things have you seen work with book funnels? Because selling that $10,000 thing, that was his only upsell did that actually work? I always wondered, did that dude make any sales of 10,000?
It’s a book from five bucks to $10,000. I was like, holy crap. And it was like push a button and put your credit card in. So,
Hernan Vazquez:
Right.
Rob Kosberg:
So, talk to me about the uniqueness. Tell me about that. And was there anything else unique that you saw that was maybe worth talking through?
Jeremias Smith:
I think one of the main unique things and then I’ll let Hernan chime in but with what you mentioned, Rob, is that Grant has the power of his brand behind him. Which is why he can offer a book for five, six, $7. And then a $10,000 upsell.
Hernan Vazquez:
Yeah. I agree with that. Yeah. I agree with that. One of the tests, because there’s always some tests running. Right. That’s why I think it’s a good move to go through the book funnel several times. Right. As you see, just go through that because there might be some additional stuff on the backend. So one of the things that we did test it with Frank that worked really well was to offer a third upsell for $997.
So, the third upsell so, you have the proverbial $5, $6 book, then you have an offer for 30, 40, 50 bucks. And then you have maybe an upsell for 197 down sell for three payments 297, those type of price points. But we did test it at $997, third upsell we only got, I think it was a half of our percentage take rate on that third upsell right. It was low if you compare it with seven to 10% on the other upsells. But it increased the average cart value, like crazy.
So that one person, maybe you have, I don’t know, 10,000 book buyers, but maybe one or two people will go ahead. And get that $10,000 offer. Boom. Now you can acquire as many customers as you want. Right. So, I think it’s a matter of, and I know for a fact that third upsell increased the average cart value, like by a hundred bucks per buyer. So now you can go back and acquire a lot more customers. So I think that made, it makes sense in my mind why he would offer a $10,000 offer or package a product right there.
Rob Kosberg:
I agree with what you said, Jeremias. I mean, being Grant Cardone, being Frank Kern, it does give you the leeway to do that kind of thing. But did it work Hernan? Did he actually make sales from that? Do you remember?
Hernan Vazquez:
He got a couple. Yeah. He got a couple from time to time, he got a couple from time to time. It was crazy. And, but he did on that $10,000 offer, but then he would charge, he would try that we would run that test for like a week or so. Then and some other stuff, but I, yeah, he got a couple sales, he got a couple sales and the same with the $997 offer, so.
Rob Kosberg:
Well, let’s pivot a little, if we can. I want to talk about like what’s working right now. You guys are running traffic, two book funnels right now on Facebook, Instagram as well I assume. It’s hard to make YouTube traffic work with book funnels. I’ve not seen anybody do that because the cost of acquisition is so high, but you guys are making it work right now. Can you, and obviously we want to protect the privacy of your clients and that sort of thing. Can you talk about like what industries right now you’re seeing it work in and just give me if you have a couple of case studies, I’d love to hear a little bit about it and some details about what’s working right now.
Hernan Vazquez:
So, most of the stuff of that we do, if not all the stuff that we do is business to business related. Right. So we target either other entrepreneurs, business owners, so it’s, everything is B2B, which is funny when people say that you cannot target B2B on social.
And that’s not the case. So there’s a couple things that we’re seeing both on the traffic side of things and on the funnel side of things that are working right now. Now I need to preface this by saying that the cost to acquire a customer has been going up right across the board, especially on Facebook after iOS 14, last year, that’s why tracking becomes really, really important. In fact, I think it was Dan Kennedy speaking at FHL Funnel Hacking Live 2021. We were there. He was saying advertising cost to acquire a customer on social media. They’re getting closer to real life or real world advertising.
Rob Kosberg:
Real ad for Dan it’s real advertising.
Hernan Vazquez:
So it was that, and I was like, yeah, he’s right. Because the cost acquire customer is getting higher. So of course there’s a couple of things that you can do to remediate that one of them being charging more money, usually on the upsells, right. There’s a roof as to how much money you can charge for a book. But on the upsell of course there’s some price elasticity, if you would, so that, so you need to acquire, or you need to achieve higher average card values for you to scale your ads.
Like right now on the entrepreneurial space and yeah. On the entrepreneurial space, business owners, leaders, agency owners, people that are in the business world, we are seeing that our costs to acquire a customer is anywhere between 50 to 60 to $70 give or take.
Which is not bad. Especially when you have a book funnel and performing, let’s say at either 80 to 90, to a hundred dollars, which is the average cart value that we want to see. We always want to have, from the average cart value, we want to have a 30% margin. So if we have a hundred dollars average cart value, then we want to be acquiring customers for $70 or less, because that allows us to scale, right. As you know, the more we scale the advertising, the higher cost to acquire customer. So, we want to be there. So that’s what we’re seeing. Now, funny enough, we’re running ads for this one client. His book was already a bestseller when he came to us. Right. But, the reality is that he has a lot of clout in the industry has a lot of authority in the industry. He is in the productivity space for business owners and team leaders and whatnot. He focuses a lot on, on helping insurance agents, realtors and whatnot.
So, it’s strictly B2B and the book has such a powerful positioning or framing, or hook that on an industry that we would be paying anywhere between 50 to 70 bucks. We’re acquiring customer for $20. And we’ve been working with him for a couple months now, we’ve been split testing his solar bonds, his sub success and whether, to get to increase the average cart value. But the average cart value compared to other book funnels that we run it’s actually pretty low, but he’s able to pull that off because the hook, the value proposition of that book is so powerful. Right. So he went from selling just a handful of books based on referrals, word of mouth and whatnot. And he, speaking on stage, to selling a couple Dawsons, I think that we’re on 20, 30, 40 books per day right now, you know? And then we’re helping him develop the backend because again.
The clout that he has built on the front, on his business throughout the years. But I think that’s really powerful. Of course, you can, it’s more expensive.
Rob Kosberg:
That guy must love you guys.
Hernan Vazquez:
Yeah. He’s pretty happy
Rob Kosberg:
If does, I mean, he is missing out. It’s like an ATM machine.
Hernan Vazquez:
Correct.
Rob Kosberg:
To acquire customers at a profit is the holy grail.
Hernan Vazquez:
It is. And the most surprising thing to us is that again, the book positioning is so good. The hook, the angle that he uses for the book is so powerful that people just want it. So, it makes our lives super easy when it comes to marketing. Yeah. We need to develop his backend a little bit, but I think that those two things increase customer acquire customers and actually having really good positioning of the book in the marketplace, writing good ads, which we can go in a little bit into, but I think those two things are, are pretty critical right now.
Rob Kosberg:
Thoughts on that, Jeremias, anything to add there?
Jeremias Smith:
I mean, when it comes to the traffic piece, I would say that there are three main pillars that are important, especially with Facebook advertising and most of the traffic for this funnel is going through Facebook. Number one is the targeting. For targeting one of the secret sauce pieces that we use is third party data. This is data that in the United States comes from Equifax, TransUnion, Experian, as well as visa and MasterCard. So if it’s a B2B style, campaign, or even for B2C, we can specifically target people who might be interested in the topic. Not because they say they’re interested on Facebook, but because they’ve actually made a purchase. For example, in, for B2B, if they’re a business owner in a specific industry, who’s actively purchasing this type of information, we can find that data and we can position ads specifically in front of those people.
So that’s probably number one. Number two, like Hernan touched on, I’m sure you’ll go into it, is creatives. The creative piece is really important. One of the things that we’re doing is refreshing ad creatives every single day.
Rob Kosberg:
Wow. Every day, not every week, but every day.
Jeremias Smith:
I’m sorry. Not every week, not every day, sometimes a couple, a few times a week, few times a day or a few times a week, couple times, every couple days or so. And then the third and final piece is the tracking piece, especially with iOS updates, we use third party tracking software that essentially overcomes the seven-day attribution window. That Facebook has.
Rob Kosberg:
Do you use high rows?
Jeremias Smith:
With some, we’re using more any track.
Rob Kosberg:
Any track?
Jeremias Smith:
Any track is a different tool that we’re using right now? One of the key differences between high rows and any track is that any track uses click ID tracking and high rows uses email ID tracking.
Hernan Vazquez:
So, if a client will come with high rows, we’ll use it. But I think that the tracking, it’s really important because usually on a book funnel, you might have somebody that might come in, they might bounce, but usually over the first seven days of seeing the offer for the most part they can buy. Right. The thing happens when you’re trying to have a backend process attached to that. Right.
So, you know what happens when, especially on the B2B space, most transactions most meaningful transactions happen after the seven-day period. So Facebook goes completely blind, not to mention after that seven day period, not to mention all of the iOS tracking issues. So you could say, I don’t know, 60% of the traffic that’s running in the US right now, Facebook has no access to that. So historically Facebook used to over report right on the ads manager versus what we could see on the funnels. But now Facebook is heavily under reporting. So it needs a little bit of help. And the way we use third party tracking software is not only to feed the actual amount of purchase, people know got an upsell, got a down sell all those things, but feed data 30, 60, 90 days after that happens, when your backend process starts kicking in.
Rob Kosberg:
When the high-ticket sale takes place and that kind of thing.
Hernan Vazquez:
So, what we do is we send that data back to the pixel so that we can see, okay, over 90 days, this campaign has a super high row. Even if it might not be super profitable on the front end, over 90 days, we’re able to see that return on ad spend.
Jeremias Smith:
And that’s the point, I would say that where we throw gas on the fire. That’s when we could start.
Rob Kosberg:
After about 90 days of really tracking and looking and seeing what’s working when it comes to the high-ticket piece of it.
Hernan Vazquez:
Correct. In fact, for one client, we were able to, once we installed high rows, they realized that most of the high ticket sales they had an acquisition funnel with a book. And then they had programs in the backend, from $5,000 all the way up to $50,000. And we realized that the way that we would scale, they were actually spending anywhere between, I think they were spending 30 to $50,000 a month on ads on social media ads. And we were able to scale all the way up to 1.5 million dollars a month on ad spend. Because we were focusing on the backend.
Rob Kosberg:
And that was with a book funnel?
Hernan Vazquez:
That was with a book funnel.
Rob Kosberg:
Oh, let’s talk about that. Could we? Was that B2B as well? Or was that B2C?
Hernan Vazquez:
It was kind of a hybrid offer because it was a business-related offer, but it was positioned so that everyone could start their business. So it was the way I like to call it’s like every men’s offer. Right. So it’s not specifically to a niche, but the way that we were able to scale that much.
Rob Kosberg:
I think I know which one it is. Probably someone with us in Brunson’s inner circle, but at any rate, I think I know it doesn’t matter, but tell me more about it because that’s very exciting. We’re talking about somebody that was really able to scale it in significant ways and just using that book to massively grow their business. So, tell me a little bit about the upsells and down sells. Tell me a little bit about, I guess you were losing money on the front end, but that’s because the back end was so profitable and you were able to track all that. So give me some details. What was the cost of acquisition, approximately? What was the average, what were you’re losing per book sale, et cetera.
Hernan Vazquez:
So of course, at that scale, the only way that you can realistically scale to that amount of money per month, and when we’re talking about Facebook, they were also running another 1.5 million on YouTube. It was a lot of volume coming in, right. A lot of volume company and they were ready to lose some money. And at that point we compare cost to acquire customer on Facebook versus cost to acquire customer on YouTube. YouTube was way higher, but it also translated a little bit better on a slight higher lifetime value.
But also, they were trying to like, they were massing. They wanted everyone in the funnel right. They didn’t mind. So, yeah. It was the typical proverbial book funnel, it was a $5 60 cents PDF. Like it wasn’t even free plus shipping. Upsell one we tested like crazy, at that point with so much data we could test every day we split, tested, like crazy. And so at it speak, it was a first upsell 97 bucks, it was an order bound for 30 something first upsell 97, second upsell 297. So, nothing out of the ordinary, they had a down sell for the first upsell for $47. And then they had a down sell for the second upsell, which was three payments of 97, something like that, four payments of 97. So proverbial typical book funnel.
When we started, when we grabbed the campaign, the cost to acquire a customer, since we were like targeting broad audiences, and this was only in the US, this was only US because they didn’t have funding capabilities on other countries for their backend program. So we were only targeting US.
So, this was only US when we started the campaign, our customer was around 60 bucks, anywhere between 40 to 60 bucks, their average order value was around $97, 90 to a hundred dollars. That was their average order value. So they had a nice gap. As we started scaling, of course they were losing money on the front end, at its peak we were spending anywhere between a hundred and seventy to $180 to acquire a customer.
And we were able to squeeze as much juice out of that funnel so that it would give us around 110 to 120 average car value. So they were literally spending anywhere between 30 to $50 per buyer. They were floating. On the front end. But the main point that we were using, we were using high rows at that point, we were using high rows to scale based on backend data. So, they knew that in 90 days they would get a six sec ROI on their ads.
Because of how their backend was working. So at that point, the question was, okay, let’s scale as much as possible. They wanted everyone. Then what happens with, at that scale, what happens with an offer, that’s that good? Is it has a shelf life. So at the same time, and then at that point we parted ways because they started building an internal team with makes a lot of sense at that volume, right. To have an internal team of people.
But they were starting to experience not only creative fatigue, but also over fatigue. So, what we’re seeing is that every, at scale, we’re talking anywhere between 300 to $600,000 a month on ads, the offer has a shelf life of anywhere between 12 to 18 months give or take.
Rob Kosberg:
I mean, that’s, that’s a pretty good ride, isn’t it?
Hernan Vazquez:
It’s a great ride. So that was a great experience in terms of split testing in terms of and we were split testing, everything, follow up sequences. They were getting, since they had a two-step two, an abandoned cart sequence, they were getting anywhere between five to 7,000 abandoned carts per day. And then, and yeah, so it was insane.
Rob Kosberg:
Crazy volumes.
Hernan Vazquez:
It was a lot of volume.
Jeremias Smith:
Do you remember that conversion rate on that sequence?
Hernan Vazquez:
The email sequences?
Jeremias Smith:
Yeah. That cart abandoned.
Hernan Vazquez:
The cart abandon when it started, it was around 27 to 30%, then it lowered to 15 or something. A cart abandon sequence should be working at, in our experience around 30%. So 30% of people that abandoned the cart should come back and buy through retargeting or emails. So.
Rob Kosberg:
I’d love to hear maybe not so much more about that because some of those numbers, you say there’s not many people that might be listening that can relate including myself. I mean, when you’re talking about spending $600,000 a month or a million bucks a month on advertising, it’s like, holy cow, that’s quite a machine not to mention what it would to deliver results, which meant there must have been a software there’s an element that allows for the scalability of the delivery of the result. Talk to me a little bit more about what you’re seeing right now in your, are you doing, this is selfish question for me, but are you running any traffic for service type, done for you service type offers with a book funnel on the front end or? I mean, typically, or some other high ticket could be a coaching offer or something like that. Talk me through those offers and what you’re seeing working with those offers right now.
Hernan Vazquez:
You for sure. So, and that’s why we need to have a conversation because we have an acquisition fund it’s not a book funder for our own agency. So you can say, okay, we have that going. But this claim that I was telling you earlier about he has a good acquisition price because of the hook of the of the funnel, right and the book. He’s selling high ticket coaching on the backend.
So, he has two main high ticket offers. One is a group coaching program for $3,000 a pop, something like that. And then he also offers, well, now we’re helping him develop a mastermind. So he has the three price point array. So he have $3,000. He has a five to $7,000 one on one coaching program. And then he’s also developing a mastermind for anywhere between 32, $35,000. So that’s still in the works. But the process is basically all the same. It’s like they have, they send people from the book funnel to a 20 to 40 minute presentation.
Rob Kosberg:
Once they buy any upsell or down sell, then the last kind of thank you page is a presentation.
Hernan Vazquez:
It’s a presentation. Yeah. It’s a presentation. It’s a 20, 40 minute presentation. We can actually track who goes through that presentation or just bounces. If they bounce, we send them to register for that presentation and whatnot. And the reality is that the presentation is just pitching a phone call with their team. So it’s a consultative approach, which is like, okay, talk to us to see how we can help you get better at this thing. Right. And then they helping the call with somebody and then that’s that person, they go through an application process, they helping the call with somebody. And then that person, depending on the conversation and their goals and the application, they are able to offer from $3,000 from $5,000 all the way up to $35,000, which is basically the same approach if you think about it, that was the same approach that we use, or that the guys that were spending seven figures a month, use with their sales team.
It’s like a consultative approach, which is like, here’s how we can help you, depending on where you’re at right now. So a done for you, let’s build a book for you, right. Or let’s write the book or done for you, offer could work extremely well. We do recommend having three price points at that point. It’s like here’s a high level course, which can be sell for three to 5k. Here’s it done with you program, which can be a coaching or one on one, and here’s it done for you experience? Right. Like in that, in data. And that’s something that I learned from Frank Kern, it’s like value that you can deliver on the backend.
Rob Kosberg:
And all those options are offered or delivered during the consultative call.
Hernan Vazquez:
Correct.
Rob Kosberg:
Basically, you’re asking questions, you’re listening and deciding, hey, I think based on your budget and what you’ve said, this would be the best fit for your kind of thing.
Hernan Vazquez:
Correct.
Jeremias Smith:
And the sales process with those types of offers is usually a two-pronged approach where we have a setter who qualifies the customer. And then a closer to close the deal.
Rob Kosberg:
Jeremias, other examples, anything to add there about that funnel or other examples of other book funnels that you’re running that are leading either to high ticket service, high ticket coaching or something along those lines that you’re seeing.
Jeremias Smith:
One thing that might be interesting that we also wanted to bring up is when a book funnel doesn’t work, when the offer doesn’t work and Hernan can provide more details, but we had a particular client where it’s not that the offer didn’t really work is that it wasn’t profitable. It wasn’t profitable on the front end, and it wasn’t profitable on the back end. So, what would you say the main reason with that one funnel that I’m thinking about Hernan was the reason why it didn’t work?
Hernan Vazquez:
I think it was the funnel value. The book value proposition. I think it was that, I think it was that, I think that there’s basically two things, or basically we divide the whole book funnel or acquisition processing into three main areas. Right. Whenever we are going through a funnel, that’s not working is we like to ask ourselves, okay, is it the ad? Or is, are the ads that are not working, what’s going on there? Is it the book funnel that’s not working? Or is it the backend? Right. Like what’s going on. So that kind of simplifies the whole thing.
And we do have our own metrics. So one of the metrics that we use to decide was it the ads on that case was what is our, there’s one metric that really decides if the ads are going to work or not, which is the unique outbound CTR, or click through rate. It’s a metric that you can add as a column. On the Facebook ads manager. And that basically signals to you if people are interested in what you have to offer based on if they’re clicking on the ad, if you show the ad, are they clicking on it?
Rob Kosberg:
And what click through rate are you looking, what’s your standard that you’re looking for there?
Hernan Vazquez:
So, anything about 1% is good. Anything about 2% is pretty good. Everything about 3% is great.
Rob Kosberg:
Then you know it’s not the ad. It’s not the offer of the ad. Right?
Hernan Vazquez:
Exactly. Yeah. So, we’re always, because what happens when book funnels don’t work, right. They’re broken or they’re not profitable, or they’re not there is that it’s almost always sexier to go and tinker with the ads. Right. Let’s launch.
Let’s rewrite the copy. Let’s do this thing, instead of just rewriting the whole sales letter. Right. Or positioning the whole thing again, so.
Jeremias Smith:
That’s the hard part.
Hernan Vazquez:
That’s the hard part. So, having a 1% unique CTR, let’s you forget about the ads don’t touch the ads. It’s not about them.
Jeremias Smith:
Right. It’s not the problem. Yeah.
Hernan Vazquez:
It’s not the problem. Then we want to take a look at the metrics of the funnel. Right. We want to look at, at least anywhere between five to 7% unique hits to book buyers, sometimes 10%, depending on the niche, then we want to make sure that that’s being hit. If that’s not being hit, then we need to reward the sales page, right. From unique clicks to book buyers we want to have anywhere between five to 7%, then the order bump, right. The order bump needs to convert at 25 to 35%. Right?
Jeremias Smith:
Yeah.
Hernan Vazquez:
Then the first offer needs to convert at 10% or 7%. So, we have those metrics, so we’re ticking. And then we know exactly what to work on. And then if people are at that point, there or average cart value numbers are taking average cart values, not there, we need to increase prices.
And then we look at the backend. I think the main point is that the problem were not the ads. The ads were having at least 1% unique bound CTR. So I told our media buyers, hey, let’s keep the ads stable. And then we reworked the book a couple times and the client knew that the book positioning in the hook was not ticking for people. Right. People were not understanding. So that made that people, it was costing us more than it was making us to acquire book buyers.
Rob Kosberg:
Before you finish, what is your definition of the book positioning in the hook? Cause that means one thing to me, but I want to make sure that’s what we’re defining.
Hernan Vazquez:
I think it’s the title.
Rob Kosberg:
I love when I have a conversation and I’m learning something and I’m thinking about something new. So I have a couple questions for you, but I want to let you finish your thought. So keep going with, with where you’re going. And then I want to come back to this.
Hernan Vazquez:
Yeah, for sure. So, yeah. So I think that was the main reason why the book funnel didn’t work. It was because of the title, the hook. Like what’s the value proposition of the book. So, what I think what’s the main issue is that the title, the hook, the value proposition was too generic, right? It was too generic. So, it wasn’t getting a pinpoint on the audience. So that’s why we were, we tried a bunch of different copy angles and different landing page designs and whatnot to do that. But it, within, because people were not buying the book on its own, if we put it in a shell, will people buy it? That’s the question.
Rob Kosberg:
So, here’s my question. And I’ve never thought of this before. What would stop you and I’m the publisher guy, right? So we’ve done 1200 books and we love our books and we love our clients books. And I mean, the thing that we spend the most time on is nicheing down for our client and developing a great hook, but there’s certainly occasions where people choose to go broad for one purpose. What would stop you or that individual, or me from putting a whole new skin on the book, a whole new title. Right. Basically a new cover, new title and testing that completely, I mean, because published pro profits, a wall street journal, bestseller, a USA, a bestseller. But in one sense I don’t care. I mean it sells every day as it is. Why couldn’t I, without changing the honesty of this is what the book is about. The book is about writing books, marketing books, making money with books. Why couldn’t we just re-skin or could they have just done that? So, I’m assuming yes but tell me.
Jeremias Smith:
Ego, ego, ego
Rob Kosberg:
Ah man ego is the killer.
Hernan Vazquez:
It was their baby.
Jeremias Smith:
That’s the number one reason.
Hernan Vazquez:
It was their baby, the book. They had a lot, they have a whole brand built around this and whatnot. And I think that they built the brand and it makes a lot of sense what you’re saying, Rob, it’s like, let’s risk in this. Let’s figure it out. It’s really easy to test on Facebook, you don’t have to spend a lot of money. Right?
Rob Kosberg:
No.
Hernan Vazquez:
You can send traffic to five different landing pages. You can even do lead generation ads if you want to test something. Hooks, see what the other results are. But yeah, it was, I would say it’s that.
Rob Kosberg:
We’re going to do some business together. I’m really looking forward to it. This is kind of fun. So awesome. I mean, we’ve been going a long time. I don’t want to monopolize your time. Anything else that you think would be valuable for those that are listening? And then of course I want you guys to give some links and connections and let people know how to best reach you.
Hernan Vazquez:
Yeah, for sure. So, one last thing that I wanted to say, which I don’t think we touched based on was what type of creatives are working on Facebook? What do you show people? And right now, what we’re seeing that are working well in terms of delivery of the ad in terms of what Facebook likes. Because if you do what Facebook likes, then Facebook will reward you with lower costs to acquire a customer, basically lower, higher CTRs, lower CPMs, which is how much we’re paying to advertise on Facebook. So something Facebook is really liking are Facebook and Instagram means social networks you want the ads to be really social, right? So we’re testing. When we test for clients, we test with a slew of different ad styles, ad types and whatnot.
And these keep on winning, which are super short videos, 1, 2 minutes long or recorded with your phone, selfie style like this, right, where you’re giving a quick tip or a little bit of value, right. To your audience based on what’s in the book, right? So you can grab a chapter. You can talk a little bit about that. It has to be two minutes long so that you can both run it on Facebook and Instagram. And then you run that as an ad. And the culture actually is simply, hey, if you like this, you want to learn more about this, go get the book, right?
Those videos are, are getting the most amount of love right now from Facebook because they’re social, people are on Facebook not to buy anything, but they’re scrolling around. They’re seeing what’s up with their families and whatnot. So those type of video, selfie style do not go crazy with editing, do not go crazy with lightning. It’s just pull out your phone, record five of those and run those to your ideal audience and just tell them to get the book if they want to learn more. So keeping it super simple.
Jeremias Smith:
And then besides that, besides the direct call to action with those videos too, one of the main things that it does for us too, is build an engagement audience.
Rob Kosberg:
To retarget back to.
Jeremias Smith:
We use that a lot for remarketing.
Rob Kosberg:
I mean, I know for many people listening, we went into some deep waters, but what you guys shared was gold today. So thank you. You guys are true experts at your craft. It’s an honor to have you on today. Where can people reach you guys? Where can they learn more about Scale Driven marketing and your work?
Hernan Vazquez:
For sure. So, if you go to scaledriven.com, there’s a little bit of a message there. People can check it out. We have a couple case studies. We’ve been focusing on social media ads, Facebook, Instagram for the past six, seven years. And running traffic to book funnels is one of our favorites things ever to do. So if that’s something that resonates with you can head over to scaledriven.com. And we also have our, the framework that we use to write and put together really good ads that, those are the ads that we use to generate a lot of results for guys like Frank and Grant and whatnot. And if you go to scaledriven.com/framework, because we put together a framework, we put together a formula, how we are putting together those ads. So if you go to scaledriven.com/framework, you will be able to see a message there and you can get access to the way we write ads for clients to get them the results that we’re getting.
Rob Kosberg:
Anything to add there, Jeremias?
Jeremias Smith:
No, that’s all I got. I’m pretty active on LinkedIn, Hernan doesn’t use LinkedIn that much. So if anybody wants to reach out to me on LinkedIn, they’re more than welcome to.
Rob Kosberg:
One last link. I went through your acquisition funnel and bought a bunch of your stuff, which was really good. And of course I recorded at all, but I don’t remember what that link was. Let’s give that link as well. Because if somebody wants to go through and see like this stuff in living action, you guys have a beautiful funnel. So what’s the link for that.
Hernan Vazquez:
Yeah, for sure. It’s scaledriven.com/framework.
Rob Kosberg:
Hernan, Jeremias. Thank you. Thanks for your time. Thanks for your generosity and sharing. Super glad to have you on the podcast and excited to have you guys as a cool case study and example in the book as well. So thank you again.
Hernan Vazquez:
Thank you, Rob. Awesome. Super excited for your launch. Super excited. Thank you.
Jeremias Smith:
Thanks Rob.
