If you’ve ever wondered whether ads can sell a book, Justin Moore’s funnel will get your attention fast.
- Grab your copy of Justin Moore’s Sponsor Magnet book
- Secure Paid Partnerships and Grow your Revenue with Justin Moore
- Learn How to Make 6 Figures Teaching Creators to Get Sponsorships with Justin Moore
I talk with Justin about the $100,000 webinar ads lesson that only broke even, why he kept going, and how his $1 audiobook funnel now brings in qualified coaching leads. We talk about why his book became the front door to his business and what course creators can learn from that.
Listen now and see how Justin built an ads funnel that actually fits his business.
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- Connect with Justin on Instagram
- Check out on Justin’s Website
Why Hire An Ads Agency
SPEAKER_00
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to have a Facebook and Instagram ads agency run your ads and why you would do so in the first place, my guest today, Justin Moore, he does have an agency running his ads, and he’s going to share with you an ad funnel that’s working. And he’ll also share with you a hundred thousand dollar brutal learning mistake that was having ads run to a webinar funnel. The good news is that he has a funnel that’s working and it’s for his book. So I should share that with you now. Justin Moore is a sponsorship coach who has generated over 5 million in brand partnerships. As both a full-time creator since 2014 and a former influencer marketing agency owner, he brings a unique insider knowledge of how brands evaluate and select their ideal partners. Through his school, community, and latest book, Sponsor Magnet, Justin shares proven frameworks for attracting, pricing, and executing lucrative brand deals. With a mission to help creators big and small land 1 million paid sponsorships. And small known fact, but Justin, you helped me when I was actually reaching out to someone for a sponsorship, and the advice was so good. And your book, as we can see in your background, I’ve heard lots of people say great things about the book. And I’ve seen you all last year as you were going on a book tour. Welcome to the episode, Justin.
SPEAKER_01
Thanks, man. I’m I’m so stoked to be here. Uh repeat guest, right? I I could say, I could say I’ve got the honors of that. And so I feel privileged, man. I’m excited to chat through uh what’s working and and also what hasn’t.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, exactly. And uh those two episodes are gonna be linked in below, but your last time you were here, you talked about secure like how to secure paid partnerships and grow your revenue. And it was like a a double feature because you also in a separate episode talked about uh well, it was called Making Six Figures,
How A Book Reaches New Buyers
SPEAKER_00
Teaching Creators How to Get Sponsorships. And both of those episodes were a delight.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, man. It uh it’s definitely been a journey. And um, you know, it’s uh like you said, I was on the book tour last year, and this year I’ve slowed down a little bit uh because it’s actually interesting, and maybe we could talk about this a bit, that like the power of writing a book has allowed me to get into a lot of different pockets of kind of this industry that maybe were not accessible to me before. And so rather than having to go travel everywhere and be at every conference and speak on every stage, uh, the book has uh done that for me to a to a large degree. So that’s that’s kind of interesting.
SPEAKER_00
Really?
SPEAKER_01
You wanna you wanna just share a little more about that now now that you’ve sparked my curiosity before you know, I I think that for a long time I thought all of this amazing free content that I was creating on the internet would do that job, right? The free YouTube videos, the free podcast episodes, the free newsletters, the blog posts, all that stuff. Um, but what I what I actually found was that a lot of the potential clients that I could that I felt as though I could serve um were not watching my YouTube videos. They were not on my newsletter, they were not really interested in sponsorships in that way. They were more interested in just kind of growing their business, growing their audience. But like sponsorships was just always this kind of tangential thing that they never really gave much thought to. Um, but interestingly, those people were very interested in like picking up this content format, which was a book, whether it’s, you know, listening to it on the audiobook or just picking it up on vacation or or and reading it on the beach or something like that. Um, the con the content format of reading a book for some reason was was really what allowed me to kind of break through into that audience. And and largely it was the type of creator or or entrepreneur who um wouldn’t call themselves an influencer, actually. Because if you think about influencers, like you know, YouTubers, TikTokers, Instagramers, whatever, like brand deals is a big part of like a primary revenue stream for them. That’s like, oh yeah, of course, I’ll do brand deals on my social media. But if you are a coach or you’re an author or you’re a course creator or you run a community or you have an in-person event or something like that, um, you’re making money in other ways. You’re selling things directly to your clients, your customers, et cetera. And so sponsorships is always kind of like a secondary or tertiary revenue, revenue stream. And so um, those are the folks who I can really help a lot, you know. And so again, they wouldn’t call themselves an influencer, and so sponsorships wasn’t top of mind. And so the book uh had a really interesting impact in that regard.
SPEAKER_00
It’s interesting you say that because it’s absolutely true sitting in circles and having, at least at the time of the recording of this, just returned from uh Kit’s conference in Boise. I would say, yeah, so many coaches and myself included, as a service provider, people with podcasts, if you will, YouTube channels that are running an online business, we don’t necessarily think, oh, I’m going to monetize the podcast. Maybe we think of it as like an attraction vehicle or a vehicle to spread our knowledge and warm up clients, but monetize, monetize the email list?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it’s a it’s a new thought for many of us, I feel like. Right. Totally, totally. Why can’t you double dip? That’s my that’s my philosophy. Why not? Why not?
SPEAKER_00
I don’t know. I just thought of uh that ice cream brand, dip in dots, because I got two young kids and they love they love this ice cream brand, which can you even call it ice cream? I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s a crowd favorite, that’s for sure. Yeah. So we’re gonna talk about your ads before we go into your successful funnel because you had mentioned before we hit record that you were excited about that. Oh, I’m loving the podcast voice that I have going on now after I traveled all day yesterday and I’m a bit tired. It’s like that deep, raspy voice. Oh, yeah. Hopefully, the mic is picking it up. But you were excited because you have an ads funnel that’s working quite well to sell your book, right?
SPEAKER_01
I do, I do.
SPEAKER_00
So I want to cover that, but first, let’s talk about your mindset around ads. Specifically, why would you even choose to explore running ads for your business? Like what kind of thoughts um and fears and hopes went into that? And then and then we’ll talk about your hundred thousand dollar learning process that you said was brutal when you were running ads to a webinar, and finally we’ll land on the book
Ads As Outbound Marketing
SPEAKER_00
ads funnel that you’re doing now that is working.
SPEAKER_01
You know, I I think the the reason. So I didn’t run paid ads for a long time. So, first of all, my wife and I have been creators for all 16, 17 years. Started a YouTube, my wife started her first YouTube channel in 2009. So, like we’ve been doing this a really long time, but it wasn’t until, let’s say, you know, about six years ago that I started educating people and doing what I call sponsorship coaching. And even for the first, let’s say, three or four years of that, I didn’t do any paid ads. It was all organic, it was all through my newsletter, YouTube channel, and all that. Uh, so it was everything was kind of like inbound. Um, but really my philosophy when it comes to teaching creators how to get brand partnerships, um, it’s hey, you can’t sit on your hands and wait for brands to come to you. You have to be out there, you know, doing outreach, supplementing your inbound opportunities with outbound. Uh, any good business uh owner knows, let’s pretend you’re like a brick and mortar shop, right? Like you can’t just rely on the people walking by your physical location. You have to advertise, you have to market, you have to write, you know, you gotta go put put your ad in the in the penny saver or put it on billboards and bus benches in your local metro or something, right? Uh and so it’s the same philosophy uh with my business. And I and I think I I ultimately realize like I can’t, yeah, it’s great to rely on inbound, but at the same time, as we talked about at the top of the episode, like there’s lots of people who I feel like I can impact and serve, but they’re again, they’re just not stumbling down the rabbit hole or coming across my content. Um uh, and so paid advertising is a is a method for me to to reach them. And so that was the reason why I decided to even go down this this road. But like you, you, you know, one of the reasons why I decided to hire uh a consultant or an outside agency to help me in this regard is because I have no idea what I’m doing. Right. I like I, you know, I didn’t want to, I wanted to, I’m always of the philosophy that if I can shortcut the path to really, you know, uh, you know, have an impact and and and um you know get to the outcome that I’m hoping for. Much rather, I would hire someone who’s who’s been there done that. And so um I from the beginning, I was like, uh I was never interested in like learning it to do it myself, to be honest.
SPEAKER_00
This makes me think of the reasons why we absolutely should cherish and value reading a book, specifically your book. It’s leveraging your 17 years of experience all into one book that we could consume in one week and learn from your wisdom. And like you said, it’s a shortcut. It really is a shortcut past all the mistakes that I would make by myself, and also having that compressed, uh, let’s say, at roadmap to success, it’s it’s a huge shortcut. And ads is the same way when you’re hiring somebody to do it for you.
SPEAKER_01
100%, dude. Um, and uh, you know, my first foray into paid ads, uh, as you mentioned, was doing trying these well, let’s take a step back. So, one of the reasons I was hesitant to do paid ads to begin with because I didn’t know what I would run ads for. I had a live cohort-based course that I was teaching for many years that I would teach three times a year. And I was like, you know, basically like I had an open cart for basically 10 days each time I would, you know, run that cohort. And so I was like, how am I gonna like run paid ads just for these like 10 days? That feels really hard. Like, I don’t again, like I don’t, so I’m only gonna be running paid ads for 30 days out of the year. Like that doesn’t seem like worthwhile to even invest in a strategy like that. But when I ultimately what what happened was
The $100K Evergreen Webinar Lesson
SPEAKER_01
that I actually had a student of my of my course go through it completely on her own. She had her own kind of newsletter business that she wanted to get sponsorships for, but she basically approached me after uh after the um cohort was over and she said, Hey, you know, this was really good. I feel like you could have a much larger impact um on people if you were able to turn this into an on-demand course rather than doing this live every time. And I was like, you know what, let’s talk. And so she was the first one who really helped me see the light of like how I could turn this live course into something on demand. And so that was what what ultimately led me down the path of like, okay, well, like let’s let’s have an evergreen webinar, let’s run ads to the webinar, let’s sell this kind of on-demand version of the course. Um and uh I really credit her for being able to turn the course into something uh uh evergreen. However, the the paid ads funnel from the get-go was really, really tough, man. It was um, you know, I did the webinar live, you know, to kind of prove out the offer and prove out the kind of the pitch uh five or six times. And then once we got to a place of the webinar that we felt like it was a good, it was good, you know, turned it into some something recorded. Um, and like it kind of worked. Let’s say that it kind of worked. It I basically broke even. I spent $100,000 or maybe a bit more over about a year doing this strategy. And I basically broke even over that time. Um, and the the learning uh at the end of it was that it was just really hard to consistently find enough pockets of interested, of the right persona um uh who would who was interested in this offer. And, you know, there’s a lot of learnings. Like the price point maybe wasn’t uh was a bit too difficult for cold audiences. Um we later lowered it and found some success. But like at the end of the day, I just I kind of washed my hands of it and and decided that like I just don’t think this is this is not gonna be the you know three, four, five X ROAS outcome that I was hoping it would to kind of you know print basically. Um and so decided it basically just abandoned it after about a year and a half.
SPEAKER_00
Really? And that funnel was ads to a registration for an Evergreen webinar. Correct. Or live webinar, sorry.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it was to an Evergreen, well, it was initially was to a live webinar to plant to you know test out the offer and the positioning, and then ultimately it was it was recorded.
The Book Pitch And Who It Helps
SPEAKER_00
We’ll get back to the episode in a moment, but listener, I would be doing you a disservice if I did not let Justin talk to you himself about his book. I’ve looked at it, you should definitely read it, Justin.
SPEAKER_01
Well, if you’ve if you’re someone who has grown an audience, maybe you have a podcast or a YouTube or a newsletter, and you’re primarily trying to market your own products, your own coaching, your own courses, your own communities, your own books, whatever. And you’ve never really thought, hey, maybe I could actually monetize this. I could double dip. It would be sweet to be able to get some sponsorship, some brand deals on these assets where I could talk about uh other tools, other products, or other software programs, uh, in addition to serving my clients. Uh, well, then I definitely think you would find a lot of value from my new book, Sponsor Magnet. Um, you know, if you’ve listened to this episode, we’ve really just kind of we’re just scratching the surface of how I help you learn how to attract, price, and execute your dream brand partnership. So you can pick it up at sponsormagnet.com.
SPEAKER_00
All right. Thanks, Justin. And back to the episode. You know, 100K aside, which one does not easily just brush 100K aside. Um, at least you’re saying that you you did break even. I did want to touch upon though something that is super important that I see with my clients too, which is okay, you broke even. It wasn’t the 5x, as your words were, uh, return on the ad spend that you were hoping for, but how many people did you add to your email list?
SPEAKER_01
Well, I mean, it’s a great
Break Even Ads And List Growth
SPEAKER_01
point. Like, you know, uh, probably over that time, uh, close to 10,000, probably, um, and you know, people to the list. And so, like, yeah, you could say I acquired those for free, technically, uh, right, because uh I basically broke even on the uh on the whole funnel. Um the the other really, I think important uh outcome of this process was that it helped me clarify uh my offer stack, my offer ladder, basically. Because you know, one of the reasons why I ultimately wrote the book, um, and this is probably a whole uh we could do a whole episode in this probably, is that I saw the impending AI, the proliferation of all these LLMs. And you know, my philosophy is like over time information is gonna be free. And so I think courses in general, uh, I I know a lot of people in the course space that like courses, the kind of course enrollments, course uh registrations, purchases has been on the steady decline over the last, you know, five years or so. And so I decided to basically open source the course in the book by writing the book. And so I basically took all the good stuff from the course and I put it in the book. And so I decided that like actually my business model, which I think is going to be the most effective way I could serve clients, um uh is uh coaching. Yeah, I mean, I’m basically I decided to, I guess, kind of cannibalize my own uh uh course business by writing the book, knowing that my coaching program was going to become the signature offer. And so again, I think with anything in business and entrepreneurship, like the place that you arrive is never gonna be the end state or you know, the the journey is constantly evolving. Um, and so uh this is what ultimately led me to the business I have today.
SPEAKER_00
You know, it’s interesting that you point out the arrival of AI and it’s always improving and how you made a calculated decision uh looking into your crystal ball and also asking people and seeing that course sales would decline because knowledge would just become proliferated and free. Um, and you decided to have a book, even though knowing that that would kind of cannibalize your course sales, I see the same thing happening. Right now, at least in the ad space, though, although all the LLMs can connect to Meta and people can manage their ads and even ask AI for insight, so far it’s just absolutely destroying people’s ads, you know, minus minus the highlight videos that you’ll see on YouTube, which I wonder what those people aren’t sharing who say, like, I made 10x ROAS with Claude and Meta, you know. But um, that is something that is always on our minds. I wanted to circle back to you did add 10,000 people to your email list, and it’s something that I usually say to clients. Usually we’re talking about expectations of what it would be like to work with me. But I say, like, even if we or they don’t have like a low-ticket offer funnel that is actively generating return on ad spend because they’re selling something on that first initial touch point with ads, they are growing their email list if they’ll take my advice and run ads to grow their email list. And a healthy business normally pays for leads because the business can turn those leads profitably into sales further down the line after nurturing them on the email list. And so what would you say about that?
SPEAKER_01
100% agree. I mean, I I think that I have a very robust email or newsletter strategy. I think the people who don’t like that advice, I think, is people who only email their list when there’s a launch, right? I’ve always been super conscious of like nurturing, you know, I send out an email twice a week and I have for almost six years now, haven’t missed a week. Um, and so like it’s it’s something I’m consistently doing all the time because I I, you know, it’s that whole Gary Vee thing. I’m like just like constantly jab, jab, jab, jab, jab over many, many, many years. Um, and I think that that’s an important part of the nurturing process. So, like, yeah, growing the list is really not, maybe is not going to be super effective if you’re not doing that level of nurturing. Um, but if you are, then you should be equally tickled about getting, you know, getting 10,000 people on your list, knowing that, I mean, I I think I had someone join my coaching program recently that’s been on my list for like four years. So it was just like, you know, it was just the right time and they finally jumped in. And so uh 100% agree. Like that that was a huge, beautiful outcome of this, of this as well.
SPEAKER_00
Were there any benefits to like let’s say improving your messaging over that time that you were running the ads to the webinar funnel? Uh for sure.
SPEAKER_01
I mean, again, like every the place that I am today is the result of hundreds of iterative messaging decisions that I’ve made, not just for the ads, but for the clarifying the offer, uh just like the business overall, how I’m talking about the business, how I’m talking about our offer stack. Everything is like borne out from uh, you know, uh trying to just improve the efficiency of these ads and and conversions and all that. And so um, man, if I if I look at, you know, when I first started the the ads to like where I am today, I know so much more about the you know, persona, the uh, about what what hooks are resonating. Um, and and this has also improved my organic content too. Because if I know what’s performing well in ads, then I can, you know, uh be better informed about what you know types of podcast episodes I’m choosing, what people want to hear about and learn about. And so I think the the marriage of both the organic and ads from informing your content strategy is huge. Yep.
SPEAKER_00
There’s nothing like paid cold traffic to test out and prove like what messaging is resonating the most and is working. Um disclaimer though, you’re listening to this podcast right now, and I don’t want you to say Quaju said run ads to test my messaging. Please do not. Please do not do that. Figure out your messaging organically and then run ads because using ads can test messaging really well, but it’s going to cost you quite a bit of money.
SPEAKER_01
I I’ll actually talk about that when I talk about the paid uh book funnel because we actually did run ads to test messaging in a very interesting way. So I’ll uh I’ll I’ll share share a bit more about that, a little teaser for later in the episode.
A Clear Warning About Ads
SPEAKER_00
All right. Well, I feel like we could naturally transition into the book funnel now, but I need to share just a very quick, a quick disclaimer that I always share on these episodes, or at least I’m trying to share, which is that Facebook and Instagram ads is not guaranteed money from heaven. It’s not a get rich quick scheme. In fact, the only thing I can guarantee is that you’ll spend money and you’ll learn as long as you understand that failure happens. And if you learn from the failure and continue to test, it’s through that iteration and that testing that eventually you can make money. But this is just for educational purposes or entertainment purposes, if you will. Although I am an ads manager with experience, I am not your ads manager, and everything that you hear from Justin and me should be filtered through the lens of what’s working for your business, your own messaging, your own funnels. And just be aware that knowledge applied is how you learn. But knowledge applied has to be with wisdom. It doesn’t, it’s not just blindly applied to anyone’s business, including yours. So, with that being said, I am now curious to dive into your working funnel, which is a book for funnel and it sells sponsor magnet. Can you tell us the goal of the funnel first before you dive into the nitty gritty of the funnel?
The $1 Audiobook Book Funnel
SPEAKER_01
So um let me get let’s get let’s uh set up some context. So I’ve sold close to 10,000. Copies of the book organically. Um like to today. Thank you. Thank you. I self-published the book or kind of hybrid published it. Um and so uh super happy with the outcome just from an organic perspective. And and I, you know, we we’ve talked about that on prior episodes about kind of what that whole process looked like. Um, but like I have a lot of social proof that the book is very effective, right? Uh this is social proof on Amazon. This is social proof I have hundreds of videos of people sharing on Instagram stories about their outcomes of the book and people DMing me. And so um, you know, what one of the reasons why I decided to like kind of go down this path of trying out a book funnel is that on easily 80 or 90% of our sales calls for my coaching program over the last like let’s say year, um people, when people have said, How did you find out about Justin? They say the book. 80 or 90% of people on the on the sales calls. And so I thought to myself, like, okay, clearly people are reading this book, which, which, which actually, frankly, has the entire playbook, right? You could do it yourself. And lots and lots of people have done it myself, but they read the book and they think, okay, this is either too overwhelming and I just need someone in my corner to help me implement this. Uh, or they run up into a tricky negotiation and they think, okay, I was doing this fine myself, but now I’m out of my league. I don’t know how to navigate, or it’s a very high-stakes deal. It’s like, you know, five figures, six figures, this type of thing. Um and I need someone in my corner. And so um, my thought process was like, okay, clearly the book is doing something right in terms of attracting the ideal clients that we want to actually support in the coaching program. And so, what can I do to juice that? How can I put my thumb on the scale to get the book in more hands? And so this is ultimately what why I decided to pursue this. Um, from the beginning, um, I didn’t want to give the book away though for free. Um, because there are versions of the book funnel where it’s like you get the free, you know, book, you pay for shipping and handling or whatever, uh, for the paperback. Um, but I’ve done some other various kind of low ticket challenges uh over the years. And every time I do like a free version of that versus like a paid version of that, the quality of the people who participate, just the like engagement rate, the show-up rates, like it’s just like way worse when it’s when people are just getting a free ticket to join something. Not that it can’t work, but I don’t know. I haven’t had found much success with doing the free, free challenge thing, free workshop thing. Um, and so I decided that I I wanted to charge at least something for the book. And so the current version of the funnel that we’re running, which is is seeming to be very successful, is it’s a one dollar. You pay one dollar to get access to the audiobook. And if you want to, there’s a basically a one-click upsell to add the ebook and the paperback on the on the squeeze page, basically. Um, and then the moment that someone purchases, the next page is a basically an application. It’s like, uh, hey, like click here to see if you’re eligible for a free strategy session with my team. And it basically asks questions to qualify the lead, like, you know, have you done brand deals before? Have you negotiated a brand deal in the last 30 days? Have you, you know, uh, what’s your, you know, 12 last 12 month sponsorship revenue, last 12 months overall revenue, and just like ask some questions about their experience, you know, their their following, their level experience, all that. Um, and then we have a logic on the back end, depending on what how they answer, to either immediately show a calendar page to book a call with my with my team, or we say, hey, we need a bit more time to review your your answers, and then we’ll get back to you. And then we like kind of manually review certain certain applications. Um, and the leads, the, the, the, the funnel so far is crushing right now, dude. Like way more leads than we were expecting and at a way lower price than we were cost than we were expecting. Um and um to to what I was alluding to earlier, um, we ran, uh, I want to give a shout out to Stacy on my team, who who
Copy Testing And Testimonial Creatives
SPEAKER_01
I partnered with to do this strategy. Um, we ran a bunch of ads testing headlines first. Uh, very low cost. Uh I can’t remember. It was a couple hundred ads to test which things were resonating based on a lot of customer research that we’ve done over the years. Uh, and then we found a bunch of winners um based on based on those uh those ads that we ran. And then we we um used a lot of that copy for the uh for the landing page, basically. Um and we tried several different types of creative, we tried image ads, we tried video ads, but the the ads that are working really, really well right now are testimonial ads. These are just I I’ve been collecting these videos of people saying how the book has helped them over the years, and we kind of edited them together into a supercut, and that’s that’s what’s performing really well, really well right now.
SPEAKER_00
Nice, nice. Of course, being the ads manager I am, I’m a little curious uh to go back through this funnel. So you said it’s the landing page is one dollar to buy the audiobook. That’s first, right? Correct. And then there’s a one-click upsell. So that would be after they pay a dollar.
SPEAKER_01
No, it’s it’s before they pay a dollar. It’s on the checkout page that there’s like a one-click, hey, if you want to add the paper back and the ebook, uh, it’s not like a separate page, it’s like on the checkout page.
SPEAKER_00
Ah, gotcha. So more like a an order bump, if you will.
SPEAKER_01
Order bump. Did I say upsell? Yeah, order bump, exactly. Pre-purchase.
SPEAKER_00
Oh, it’s I mean what? You don’t live and breathe. Yeah, yeah, sorry. Yeah. It’s okay. Um, so one click order bump to buy the ebook and the what was that? Uh the the paperback. And the paperback. Okay. So what is the price on that order bump? Uh $14.95. I am curious. And this might have to be for a later after we stop like recording. Um, if the number isn’t in front of you, because I didn’t prep you for this, but I wonder what percentage of people that get the $1 audiobook also get the ebook and the paper back.
SPEAKER_01
I could tell, I mean, I anecdotally, I was running the numbers right. It’s almost 50% right now. 55-0.
SPEAKER_00
That’s really good. 5-0. Yeah. That’s really good. I so I usually, for context here, is um, although we’re talking more, I guess, high-level and mindset around ads, there is something that I routinely see on low-ticket offer funnels, which I’m going to generalize and call yours a low-ticket offer funnel too, uh, where we’re running ads directly to something that’s, let’s say, costs less than $37, is that you have to absolutely have to have an order bump to be breaking even. And you do want to see at least uh 20% uptake on that order bump to know that it’s pretty healthy. So you have 50% of the people go ahead and like getting that order bump. That’s actually really good.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, I I think it’s like the um, I don’t know. I think the copy on the page is kind of funny too. It’s like very, it’s very much my personality. Like I basically say say on there, I’m like, I could get I could give this to you for free, but if I give it to you for free, you’re not gonna read this. So I’m charging you a dollar. Like, like stuff like that, you know, it’s like very much my personality. And so I have other kind of jokes on the page about why you’d want to like, you know, pick up the pick up the other formats and stuff. And so I don’t know. I’m just trying to like lean into my own personality a bit too. Um and uh again, like the other the other thing I think that’s interesting about this is that um I do have a pretty robust organic brand. So like when people are seeing this ad in their feed, oftentimes, I mean, what do you do when you see an ad in your feed? You click the handle. You click the handle, you look at the profile, like, oh, is this person legit? Uh and I’m posting stuff every single day on Instagram and Facebook and all that. And so I think another part of this is that like people can see that I’m legit, right? They go on my profile, they see the videos I’m posting, and they’re like, Okay, this guy’s legit. He I see him in other posts holding up his book and stuff. So yeah, if I like, you know, do this order bump, like I’m I’m actually gonna get the book in my hands. This is a real thing, you know?
SPEAKER_00
Funny, funny little side story.
Trust Signals And Low Polish Wins
SPEAKER_00
I just for the month of May, so we just got back. Uh, my family and I were in China. We kind of returned there, we were visiting friends, visiting the school we used to go to, the church we used to go to, everything, but it was the first time that my kids had been it’s just the first time we all had been back to China since we got stuck out of China on that vacation that happened to have happened two weeks before COVID started. And then we’ve been here in Mexico the whole time, right? The guy that we stayed with, his family, he vibe coded a product um called recall grid that helps you, it’s like Chinese flashcards, basically, flashcards to learn Mandarin Chinese. Justin get this. He was running ads to this thing and getting like almost three X row ads. But when I looked at it, because the context is he was like, Hey, Quajo, you’re staying with me. Could you help me look at these ads, right? And I’m like, sure, why not? First of all, he was selling it for like $80-ish dollars, right? Second of all, he had no Instagram profile created, and the only thing that he had was a Facebook business page, but he did nothing to the business page. So when you would look at the business page, there wasn’t even a header at the top, it was just a black, empty space at the top of his Facebook business page. He had zero posts of the page at all. So the only thing that it actually shows, and I didn’t know this, but like when you don’t do anything with your business page and it’s just completely blank, it will show like somebody who follows you. And the one little profile picture of one person, like out of like 60 that followed his page, was like this dude who just looked sketch. And I’m like, and he’s running ads at 3x ROAS. Um, I think actually it was like at 3.4 X ROAS. Um, which just goes to show if you have a strong offer, yeah, yeah, right. People will buy it because his ads are running, and the ads were they were um they were of lower production value. Let’s just say that.
SPEAKER_01
Um right, right. Well, I mean, that’s another funny thing is that um I’m always someone who’s like my my organic content brain, I want things to be super high quality. And um Stacy was I was joking about this because you know she kind of threw together some some creative that like I probably wouldn’t have I would have wanted a little bit more polish on that, but it’s working, so who cares, right? It’s like you know, it’s it’s uh it’s just funny, like you know, it doesn’t have to be super super high quality to actually uh you know generate results.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah. And and to that end, like it really as long as your personality is coming through, and maybe right now it’s playing to your advantage that the creative in your own words is not super high quality because what I’m seeing is organic filling creative works, and you know, there’s like a few brands that have very, very, very polished uh creative, but in general, at least for my clients, we when we run video ads, it we’re trying to make it look like it’s like they posted an Instagram real, it’s not perfect. There are even little mistakes in there. Um so tell me then, because I have never heard of this, but on the purchase confirmation page, if you will,
Strategy Call Applications And Qualification
SPEAKER_00
there is a I was taking notes actually furiously because this is this is a really intriguing funnel. But on the purchase confirmation page, I wrote down that it has an application for a strategy call. What do you call that call? And is it free or is it paid?
SPEAKER_01
It was free. So it’s called a free sponsorship strategy session, I think is what we call it. Okay. And it’s uh basically it’s like, you know, it’s like what uh how a how an upsell page kind of generally looks. You’ve got the progress bar, like step two of three or whatever. Um, and uh, and then it’s got the strategy sessions here. So it you know it confirms that you, you know, your order was successful, and then you know, fill out a few questions to see if you’re eligible for a free strategy call essentially. Okay.
SPEAKER_00
But when you say strategy call, like I know you’re showing up and giving strategy, but it’s strategy plus um vetting or sales call for coaching, yeah? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Nice. All right. So then that’s a very typical once a qualified person hops on the call, you’re giving them some value, but then you also, because of the questions that they filled out and whatever else you’re saying on the call, you know that they could benefit from coaching. And so you’re gonna tell them about your coaching, right? Exactly. All right, I like this. Selling is serving. I don’t think that I had heard about having a questionnaire there and not saying that anyone could hop on the call, but it totally makes sense because your time is valuable and you don’t just want anybody to hop on the call, you want the people who it would truly benefit to be on a call with you.
SPEAKER_01
The interesting stat uh about the data that we’re seeing come through so far is that about 70% of the leads are qualified for one of the two offers that we have, uh, and 30% are not at all. So um, you know, for the 30% that aren’t, they don’t see the calendar, but the other 70% do. And so um it’s very interesting at least to see that, like at least in the early data, that such a large percentage of the leads are actually a good fit for something.
SPEAKER_00
And you know, at the beginning of this episode, you talked about how the mindset around ads is that is just like with sponsorships, you need outbound marketing. Um, I remember the first time I somebody really drove this home. They’re like, What is your maybe it was several years ago, and I forget who or where I heard it, but they’re asking, like, well, what’s your primary job as the business owner? And people were giving all sorts of questions, like, you know, deliver, deliver a great product, you know, or deliver a great coaching experience, or help this or that. And they’re like, No, no, no, your primary job is to sell and to sell and to
Letting A Team Take Sales Calls
SPEAKER_00
sell, and your secondary job is to sell. So when I see you doing this, I’m guessing you’re spending a good amount of time on calls. Like, how many how many hours a week would you say you’re on calls with folks?
SPEAKER_01
So I’m not on calls at all right now. I have uh I have uh folks taking calls for me. Um, so that is very nice. Um because I yeah. So I so I’ve taken some calls, I did take calls in the beginning, but it very quickly devolved into very long free coaching sessions, and that felt would began getting pretty exhausting. And so I decided that um I needed a separation between like, you know, who is actually facilitating these discovery sessions and um and you know, my team uh actually doing the coaching.
SPEAKER_00
Wow. And so I’m sure all the issues happened, or let’s say limiting mindset or limiting belief happened when you were about to make the jump from you not being on the call to your team, like uh if it’s not me, are people actually going to sign up and buy? And who can deliver this call strategy and sales as good as me? And what other issues did you have? And and uh, or let’s say limiting beliefs did you have around that?
SPEAKER_01
And what happened? Well, the the first limiting belief came when I when I started hiring other coaches. That was the first jump. Before I even did paid ads and all this, like I did bring other sponsorship coaches and train them onto my team to do coaching on my behalf. That was the first limiting belief, is like, can other people do coaching in the same way that I do? Um and uh so that was the biggest hurdle. And then yes, this next jump is like having someone else take calls on my behalf. The reality is that it actually was way better. It was way better to have someone else do it because you know, when people would would delve into the territory on these sessions asking for very specific advice of like, what do I do in this situation, whatever? Uh the person taking the call would say, Hey, you know what? I’m not a coach. That’s exactly the right, that’s exactly the type of question that our coaches can help you with in our program. And so it’s it’s it’s it’s way better to have someone that that line of separation between the person doing the discovery session and you know, the people actually doing the facilitation.
SPEAKER_00
That makes so much sense. That makes so much sense. That’s speaking from personal experience, when I because I hop on my own discovery calls or sales calls, if you would, like the temptation is right there because we want to serve and help people. And then they’ll ask a question, and it’s so easy just to give give some advice right there on the call instead of saying this is exactly what we cover during ads management or coaching in your case.
SPEAKER_01
Okay, right, right. And and again, like hiring the right person to take your calls, you can still you can still serve them on the call. It’s not like you’re not being like, oh no, I can’t help you. Like, you can’t answer that. Um, but it’s more about how the depth that you’re going, right? You can answer some kind of surface level questions to kind of give people some direction. Uh, and they may never choose to join the program, and that’s fine. They’ll still get value out of those out of those calls. Um, but again, for the people that want to go deeper, you know, and actually need ongoing support. So it’s not just about solving a problem that they acutely have right there, it’s also helping them understand that, like, hey, a brand could like pop in your inbox tomorrow, and you’re gonna need support on that. It’s not just about the issues that you’re handling right now.
SPEAKER_00
Right on. Right on.
Staying In The Game With Ads
SPEAKER_00
So this is where I ask you what is something that you would tell somebody who is running their own ads successfully. Maybe they’re spending around $2,000 a month in ad spend and it’s working for their business, either that they’re growing their email list, you know, and then having an upcoming launch that’s converting well, or they happen to be selling a lower ticket offer, you know, under $37 profitably, but they’re they’re looking for the next step. They’re looking, they’re looking to grow. Um, what’s something that you would say after all of your experience with Facebook and Instagram ads?
SPEAKER_01
This entire thing is a process. It could be working now, but in a couple of months it may not work. But that doesn’t mean that ads don’t work. Um, I think that I’m really proud of myself for like continuing to just like keep trying this because I knew like ads work, right? It’s it’s a matter of the combination of the offer, the creative, the positioning, the timing, the, the, you know, the targeting. Um, it’s just like a matter of figuring out, putting all the puzzle pieces together. Um, and so I think there’s this temptation to just like throw up your hands and say paid ads don’t work for me, or they they’ll they’re, you know, I’m never gonna be able to do them scalable, uh, you know, in a scalable way. Um, and I think the jury’s still out on even if this is scalable for me. Um, but the you can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Like paid ads do work. It’s just a matter of like, can you have the tenacity and the long-term vision to see it out over a long time span uh to know that like there’s gonna be ebbs and flows with the effectiveness of the strategy. Um and um things are going to break when you scale, right? Just like when I scaled my coaching programs, things break. I went from like just serving my own clients to like now having a team of coaches and have and serving a much larger pool, just things start breaking. And so um I think you know, if you’re if you’re someone who things are kind of working right now and you start to try to scale and things break, that doesn’t mean that you can’t scale for like you’re never gonna be able to scale. It’s just a matter of like you need to figure out the root cause at that next level.
SPEAKER_00
Okay, all right, all right. What kept you in the game, so to speak? Because you said a hundred thousand dollars spent on a webinar funnel, and that was brutal. And you did break even, but obviously uh uh your time went into that, and then all of the message testing, like yeah, what kept you coming back? Like, what was it? And maybe this was a conversation between I don’t know how you do your business like decisions. Like, was your wife involved in the decision too? But you’re now running a successful ad funnel. What made you want to try again? Irrational optimism.
SPEAKER_01
Uh honestly, I I don’t, I’m I’m I constantly all right, I constantly have to remind myself that like I’m not the only person who has ever had challenges with something like this. Well, any business problem. Like, I’m not the first person that has ever had challenges with paid ads or something. I’m not the first person that has ever grown a coaching program and and had like, you know, challenges associated with growing the team and you know, challenging clients. And like I’m not the first person ever to experience that. And so um, this is a solvable problem. That was always my mindset is like this can be solved. I just haven’t yet figured out the right like pieces to put together. Um, sometimes it’s like bringing the right people onto the team. Sometimes it’s having the right offer. Like I finally decided like the book is the offer. The book is the thing that people clearly, it’s the reason why they’re like asking to get on a call organically about the coaching program. And so, why am I messing around with all this other stuff? The low ticket challenges and the boot camps and like the all the evergreen webinars and all this. Like, I’ve got the book now. This is a great asset. And the other thing too, um is it’s a it’s a very good prop in creative, interestingly, right? So, like you think about it like being able to like hold this up and be like, this is the thing, and like, you know, it’s a physical thing that you can like acquire, um, not just for me, but also for other people in these like kind of testimonial style ads. I don’t know. I think there’s something special about the effectiveness of an ad um when when you can actually point to something like, hey, you can buy this thing right here versus. Is this like amorphous like digital good, you know?
SPEAKER_00
Okay, agreed, agreed. Nice. Well, again, the link to sponsor magnet is in the show notes below. Can you quickly share what sorts of things are sponsorable that the listener might not
What Can Be Sponsored Beyond Posts
SPEAKER_00
have known that, oh, they could actually look for somebody to sponsor this. And then what words of encouragement would you share about those?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, great, great point. Um, so real quickly, uh, you mentioned the book URLs available uh in the description. I have the same funnel, this book funnel set up for the organic book. So if you want to pick it up at sponsormagnet.com, you will also go through a similar funnel if you actually want to see it in action. Um and so I just wanted to mention that. Um, but yeah, in terms of like what things are sponsorable, uh as I mentioned at the top, like a lot of people think that it’s like, oh, a sponsored Instagram post or YouTube video or podcast episode, those are all kind of like the normal things that you could sponsor. Um, but so many of my clients have in-person events or they have communities, online communities, or they have courses. People are getting modules within their courses sponsored, right? Because if again, think about it, if you are someone who’s giving actual advice about, let’s say, you know, uh how to grow your business or something, in the nature of teaching people, you’re probably saying, hey, you should pick up, you know, lead pages or unbounce, or you should pick up XYZ, or you should pick up whatever this tool X, you know, here. Why not go to those brands and say, hey, I’m already recommending your tool. Let’s figure out some sort of incentive that we can offer to my course students or my community or whatever. Bring your VP of RD or marketing to do a guest session in my community to expose the full, my full audience to you and actually ask questions about how to use your tool. Um, like that is a sponsorable thing, right? And so I always say like you’re only limited by your own creativity uh when it comes to getting sponsorships. Look, dude, I’m I am working right now on getting my book sponsored. Think about getting a custom version of this book where it says the you know, the brand logo version of sponsor magnet that they can give away uh at trade shows, at events, their like high value leads to customers as a retention holiday gift package or whatever, put this version of the book in that care package. And so again, like you’re only limited by your own creativity, I think.
SPEAKER_00
I love it. I love it when you start getting going. It’s like all these ideas and clearly they work. And you’ve seen it work in in with clients, you’ve seen it work for yourself over the years. Like it’s just cool hearing somebody who has the skill, the expertise, and the passion talk about what they’re truly passionate about.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I appreciate
Links And Closing Thoughts
SPEAKER_01
it, man. I I definitely I could nerd out uh uh over this topic forever.
SPEAKER_00
Justin, it’s really appreciated by the listeners and me that you shared not only your mindset around the ads, but also let us kind of peer behind the curtain of a current successful ads funnel that you’re running. Like I know it helped my knowledge because I don’t specialize in book funnels yet, and it also helped the listeners. So I just want to thank you for being on this episode.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, man, it was it was great. Uh, I love sharing the messy middle, uh, and it was a blast.
SPEAKER_00
Very cool, very cool. Well, you know what to do, listener. Click down into the uh descriptions below. And if you want to see either of those previous episodes that Justin was on because you’re interested in this topic, they are called Secured Paid Partnerships and Grow Your Revenue with Justin Moore. And you can learn more about him in the episode Making Six Figures, Teaching Creators How to Get Sponsorships featuring him, Justin Moore. Until the next time that you hear from me or see me, be blessed. Take care, and we’ll see you in the next one. Bye.
