Laura Johns:
[00:00:00] Hey friends, Laura Johns here, founder and CEO of The Business Growers. Welcome to the Know Grow Scale podcast. At The Business Growers, we help managed services providers and IT companies grow and scale their business with an outsourced team that feels like in house. I love what I do. I love getting to talk to MSPs all the time about their business challenges and help resolve them through marketing that gets real ROI.
So really excited to be here. We’re going to do a quick, quick, podcast session about the funnel, because in the last week I have said the funnel, the funnel, the funnel, the funnel to about 10 different people. And a lot of times, I realized that when I’m talking about something that is natural to me, because it’s something that I’m living and breathing every day, it is not necessarily.
That way to everyone else. So when you talk about the funnel, there are different, you’ve got your sales and marketing funnel, you’ve got, you know, different things, you know, sales funnel might mean something different than marketing funnel. [00:01:00] I’m talking particularly about, an ad funnel today. So it’s one of the funnels we’re going to talk about.
I’m going to share my screen really quick and show you guys, what I’m talking about when I talk about the ad funnel. And it is because we have a lot of. mixed messages when we, when it comes to ads, digital ads, Google ads, pay per click, social media ads, what are we doing with ads? I want to spend money on an ad and I want to get a lead and I want to call the lead and I want them to be ready for my services.
And so, I have a whole webinar that I’m actually doing, really soon about ads and how to Amp up your strategy specifically for digital ads for managed services providers and IT companies. This slide you will probably see on that webinar. It is a very, very small piece of the whole presentation. But when I say the funnel or the ad funnel, I talk about the funnel so much because it’s really important [00:02:00] for anyone who’s spending money on ads to understand that you got to get the funnel right.
And so I think about, I like to call it the house of digital trust that we’re building. So when you built your business, you built your business on trust. You built your business on someone knowing you, shaking your hand. You’ve helped them solve a problem or two. You’ve continued to help them over the course of X number of years.
And all of a sudden you have built trust with this prospect or potential customer. And that trust is really what’s allowed you to build your business well in the same way. And again, we talk about this in more detail in the webinar, but in the same way, you have got to build that same trust when it comes to ads.
It is very rare and close to impossible to start a Google ad campaign and within 24 hours have the perfect lead that answers the phone. That’s exactly the buyer you’re looking for. even the best ad [00:03:00] experts in the world can’t guarantee that. And it’s because You have to think of ads like a relationship.
You have to think of running ads as if it is a relationship. So the customer journey, the customer is always on the journey. We know that what is that customer journey when it comes to ads? And that’s really what we’re, what the funnel is. We’re talking about the funnel. It can look a lot of different ways, but you want to.
Introduce yourself as a company, as a brand, as a leader before asking them to marry you. So I always say, when you go out on your first date, you’re not asking them to marry you. Asking them to marry you is at the bottom of the funnel. So you hear T O F U, M O F U, B O F U, that’s top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel.
Each part in the funnel serves a very specific purpose and every ad in the funnel is different for a reason. So, at this top part of the funnel, you are trying to get them to understand, just see your name. Like [00:04:00] raise their hand. I know who you are. That’s all you’re doing. That’s all you’re doing here.
You’re not trying to get anyone to buy anything. You’re not trying to get anyone to know about your product set or your pricing. We are not worried about that. We are warming them up to the idea of us. Here’s who we are, period. Here’s who we are. Just want you to know who we are. You can do this through, if you see here, video.
You can do this through, you know, if you did choose streaming television, you know, we do audio, programmatic audio. this is what display ads are good for, video ads on social media. you might do this through email, just introducing yourself, but, but when you talk about ads specifically, This is an ad that would just be maybe a quick introduction video of who you are as a business.
It might be a picture of your team. It might be something, just, just clearly stating. You know, best, MSP marketing agency in the Southeast, you know, something just to get [00:05:00] them on your radar and you on their radar. That’s all we’re trying to do. So, and just like in relationship building, you don’t usually, again, go into the depths of the worst fears of your whole life at an, in a first conversation, you’ve got to warm people up to the relationship.
And so we are serving very particular ads. For branding and awareness. Specifically to get someone to raise their hand and say, yeah, I know who you are. Okay, so then as we move them middle of funnel. So anyone who has seen us before who we know has liked a page that’s similar to 1 that we’d like that. We, you know, similar to our subject matter.
As we know that they have seen something about us before, they know who we are, they’re in a group that we’re a part of, they have attended a conference that we, you know, that we sponsored, whatever. We, we want to, from an ad [00:06:00] standpoint, move them into Consideration and intent. And this interest in research really does kind of start in the brain.
Like, who are they? Let me look them up on their website or whatever. You can also do, you know, a lot of different things, on the funnel there. But when we move them into the middle of funnel with consideration and intent, that’s where you’ve got to start saying not just, hey, we’re here, but we know what we’re doing.
So this is customer testimonials. This is more in depth white papers. This is case studies. This is, you know, maybe it’s, you know, specific information about the services that you offer that may be different from a competitor. This is really giving them the opportunity to dig in more and learn more about.
And you want this. I would say in a lot of cases. Well, these kinds of ads, especially top of funnel and the middle of funnel to get them back to your website, to give them something of value, a lead magnet, information about, you know, five best tips to, grow your revenue three X in the next [00:07:00] year, you know, whatever those things are, give them some resources, give them some information to start studying who you are.
So that, they know more about you and they feel more comfortable. So this is, you know, maybe you just met somebody that you really like when you’re out, you tell them who you are, they know about you, this consideration and intent, this is all of the text messages that you’re sending, or this is that, you know, second and third and fourth date year where you’re really getting to know.
Who they are. This is meeting the family, potentially, and this is we’re not quite to the point where we’re converting, but we’re meeting the family. We’re getting to know their friends. We’re going to the 4th of July party and having, you know, having a conversation with the people. They know this is the consideration point.
Of, of the relationship digitally. And then you’re at that stage, you’re doing more, paid advertising that is more middle of funnel appropriate and really giving them something they can chew on that gives them more [00:08:00] information about you. You also, in this stage, want to lead them to your, to your website or a resources page, or give them the opportunity to get as much information about you as they want that your YouTube channel, if you’re doing webinars or podcasts.
This is where we want to push them there. And then as we get to bottom of funnel, that’s conversion and then retaining, continuing to make them feel confident about their decision with retargeting. That’s where you are pretty much trying to get them over the finish line. I am. Losing 20 pounds if I’m in a relationship and I’m really getting ready to pop the question.
I’m making sure I’ve got that trip planned. I’m doing all the things it takes to get the conversion, which in your case is going to be a promotion, you know, first month free. It’s going to be, get cybersecurity bundle for free with, It’s going to be whatever it is. that’s really, really going to move them over the needle.
Customer testimonials are really good here too. especially if it’s a testimonial that is [00:09:00] specific to how their life has changed dramatically because of you. You know, I’ve saved this much money. I’ve gotten this many of the new leads. I’ve gotten this much, you know, our, our team is 10 times more productive now.
through that conversion retention, bottom of funnel ad, you can actually, help push someone over that threshold and get ready to click and buy now, or to set that appointment up, set that schedule at the bottom of the funnel. So this is just a really quick way to show you that all ads are not created equal ad campaigns are complex.
There’s a lot to it. And the funnel is a really, really important part of making sure that as a managed services provider and IT company, that your ad program is successful. So hope this helps. I, you know, I get questions about the funnel all the time. So this is just a really quick explanation of what this means in relation to advertising.
and again, hope that it was helpful. Thank you so much for being a part of the Know Grow Scale podcast. Make sure you subscribe to us on YouTube. If you want to listen or watch or learn more about how you can improve your managed services [00:10:00] provider and IT business and grow your revenue with the right marketing.
Thanks so much.
