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Emily Hirsh is a self-taught marketing guru. Her marketing agency, Hirsh Marketing, specializes in Facebook and Instagram ads. Like many entrepreneurs, her business started out as a one-woman show. But in just two and a half years, she has grown her company to 25 employees serving over 60 clients. She is what we like to call a Facebook Ads ROCKSTAR! In this exclusive Emily Hirsh interview, we share some of her best insider secrets (even if you’re not ready to hire an agency yet) so you can get more Facebook fans, traffic, and buyers! 

Emily’s typical client has an online presence and is looking to implement a holistic approach to their marketing to improve visibility and brand awareness and generate leads and, ultimately, sales — something most new social entrepreneurs can definitely get behind.

And with a client retention rate of over 90 percent, she is clearly doing a few things right.

Not Ready to Bring on an Agency? Some Powerful Facebook Marketing Tips

You might be at a point in your entrepreneurial journey where you’re not quite ready to invest in the services of a marketing agency but you’d like to test some paid ads. If that’s where you find yourself, Emily warns that many people will get ahead of themselves and use paid ads before they have a really solid foundation.

She also emphasizes the importance of knowing exactly who your ad audience is. Ask yourself who that person is so that you can target them on Facebook. Then make sure you have a strategy that you’re confident enough to test since merely boosting posts won’t cut it — it’s critically important to have a way in which you can measure whether your efforts are successful or not. Then spend a bit of cash to get some intel on how effective your ads were.

“Marketing always works,” confides Emily, “if you are willing to:

• go through that process of creating a strategy,
• create metrics that would measure that strategy success,
• spend money testing it,
• get intel to figure out what’s wrong with it, and
• just repeat the process until it works.

Another option, if you don’t feel you’re ready to work one-on-one with a marketing agency, is to consider taking a course like the one Hirsh Marketing has developed. As a product of Emily’s realization that nothing like it existed, the course serves those people who are wanting to learn how to do it themselves and aren’t necessarily ready to hire an agency. Her team teaches part of the course which also boasts a live support component.

The Importance of Buying Data

No one likes to feel like they’re not getting anything in return for the money they’ve spent, especially when they’re just starting out in the business world. However, Emily stresses that it is common for entrepreneurs to spend money on marketing that just doesn’t work. Sometimes, your messaging just doesn’t resonate with your audience. This shouldn’t be seen as failing. Rather, Emily refers to this scenario as “buying data.” You have effectively spent money and in return, learned what doesn’t work.

This is why it’s important to choose a marketing budget that you hand handle not recouping right away. Eventually, you will — as long as you’re sticking to Emily’s recommendations for effective marketing listed above.

Business Will Decline…and That’s Okay

Emily reports that the biggest lesson she has learned in her entrepreneurial voyage is that it’s okay — and often necessary — for your business to go through a phase where growth slows or even stops altogether. 

Sometimes you have to…go through a phase in your business where you can’t take on as many new clients and you’re not in that acceleration or growth phase.

Emily advises that this downturn is a good time to look back and repair what “broke” as you grew your business. She admits that there is definitely a learning curve when it comes to this process and that she uses it to build out her employee training and expectations so that they are set up for success when they first come on board.

Looking for More Information?

If you’re new to the world of entrepreneurship and need more information to get started on some effective marketing strategies, hirshmarketing.com is a good place to start. Emily also has a podcast she releases twice weekly as well as a monthly Hirsh Marketing Report with lots of behind-the-scenes strategies and information from her team. Lastly, Emily’s book, Ignite Your Impact, which goes hand-in-hand with her course, is a great resource.

We also recommend:

• The Brand Whisperer: Social Impact Branding
• The Best Email Marketing Tools: How to Find the Right One For Your Business
• How Can You Leverage Your Data Now for Better Growth and Impact?

Transcription of Interview (Transcribed by Otter.ca; there may be errors.)

Announcer 0:00
Welcome. This is the Change Creator Podcast.

Adam Force 0:11
Hey, what’s going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator Podcast show. This is your host, Adam Force. Hope you all had a good weekend. It is Monday here as we do this. And if you missed the last episode, it was with Maddy Martin. And so great conversation. We talked about, you know, really enhancing your marketing strategy. And you know, there’s money left on the table when you’re not using the latest like AI and messenger technology. So we kind of get into all that stuff and some of the pros, the cons and different ways to go about it. But it’s a really great marketing channel to start exploring. And that could become a whole new revenue opportunity for you. So you might want to check that out with Maddy Martin when you get a chance.

Today we’re going to be talking with Emily Hirsh and she has been blowing up lately. She is a marketing expert. So she’s one of the leaders in digital marketing on Facebook right now. And so, Hirsh Marketing is her company and I’ve kind of been watching her for a while now and we’re doing some work with her, actually. So she has built a team now of 25 plus people — they might be close to about 30 people now. And they have worked on over like, I don’t know, six, seven, I forget how many like hundreds of funnels and stuff for some big players out there — major players, and their ad spend, I believe is over about 25 million, and they had a return on that spend of like 90 million plus. So they really know what they’re doing and they’ve had lots of great success hence they have been scaling pretty quickly.

So we’re excited to talk with Emily. We’re going to dig into the Facebook world and how they’re doing what they’re doing. She is going to share some tips that will help you guys out no matter where you are as early stage entrepreneurs. Last but not least, guys, we just…stop by changecreator.com; we have a lot of fresh content. If you’re into the Shopify…if you have a Shopify store, or if you’re using Magento, we recently put up a lot of content around those things to help you guys out because we’ve been hearing a need for it. And there is a program called Shogun that we…one of our writers did a deep dive on and we got access to their back end to explore the software and stuff. And it’s a Shopify page builder, that is super powerful. It also provides analytics that Shopify does not offer. So when you can start customizing your Shopify product pages and all that stuff, you can really enhance the conversions and things like that. So if you go…it’s spelled S-H-O-G-U-N, Shogun.

So when you go on our website, you could search for Shogun. We have a ton of articles that we talk about to give you guys insights on how that all works. See if it’s the right fit for you. You could start with the Shogun review, and we compare it to a bunch of other softwares and stuff like that. So really valuable stuff and for the e commerce space, so you can check that out. And we’re going to dive into this conversation now. So, one last thing I almost forgot. If you go to changecreator.com, we have…it’s not available on the site but you can get it…I’m going to tell you just through this podcast, there is the…if you want to start…we’re really into storytelling and we believe that you know, this is your number one marketing asset. And it truly, truly is. This is what makes you memorable. It’s what adds value to your products. It’s what connects with people, builds trust, all these things.

So we are helping people supercharge their marketing with storytelling, and there’s some key things we share in a free offer just to give you that first step, give you some insights and ground you in storytelling for your startup, right. It’s all about marketing and sales. And you can go to changecreator.com/storytellingroadmap, and you can grab your free copy, and check that out. I think you guys will get a lot of value out of it. And yeah, we’d love to hear your feedback about it, too. Don’t forget to stop by the App Store, leave us a review. This goes a long way and we very much appreciate it. Let’s dive into this conversation with Emily and see what she has to say.

Announcer 4:00
Okay, show me the heat!

Adam Force 4:05
Hey, Emily, welcome to the Change Creator Podcast show. How you doing today?

Emily Hirsh 4:09
Doing well. Thanks so much for having me.

Adam Force 4:12
Thanks for being here. Excited to talk to you. You know, I’ve been following your team and you for about six months now and it looks like you guys have been doing some exciting stuff. So why don’t you kick us off just letting us know what’s going on at Emily’s world these days. What’s the latest? What’s the greatest?

Emily Hirsh 4:29
Yeah, so I run a marketing agency that specializes in Facebook and Instagram ads. I’ve had my company for really about two and a half years of growing a team and growing an agency but four years in the online industry and helping people with marketing. Like most entrepreneurs, I started out just me and then have grown a team for the last two and a half, three years and now have 25 employees and we serve over 60 clients in specifically the influencer industry. So a lot of people selling digital products, but also physical products and e commerce. But they usually have an online brand, online presence and are looking to have this holistic approach to their marketing to improve that visibility and that brand awareness. And then also, of course, generate leads and sales. So that’s what my team and I do. And I have a lot of fun with the leadership piece of it. And learning how to manage a team has been…is a huge part of what I do now that I’m kind of out of the day-to-day of my business. So, yeah.

Adam Force 5:29
Awesome. I love that you got yourself out of the day to day; it gives you time to go to talk at conferences and do all that fun stuff. I’m curious though, you know, in the earlier years, obviously, we all start out with ourselves a co founder, our small team, and we have to build things up. What has been some growing pains for you, as you do expand the team? I mean, now you have 25 employees. That means you know, you’re working with a larger number of clients and you want to make sure that your values and your processes stay intact. So how did you start managing that as you grow?

Emily Hirsh 6:03
Yeah, I mean, it’s constantly I’m working on it. Honestly, I would say like, every month we have projects around improving our processes and auditing and looking at what we could do better. And I always, my mentor, Alex Charfen always says like, Your business is always broken. And so that’s something that I’ve had to embrace is like, it will never be perfect, but I always can work to be improving it. So, you know, growing a team I had…the biggest thing I learned when I started growing a team is the importance of process. And actually, the importance of slowing down to document and create really solid training materials and expectations so that you can bring somebody into your company and actually set them up for success. I really didn’t know what I was doing when I started growing a team.

Like, I knew how to hustle and grow a business myself. I’ve, like, always been an entrepreneur. I have that blood in me, but I did not know how to grow a team. I had never done it before; no one had taught me. So there’s been a lot of learning around it. And I’d say the biggest thing I learned is that importance and sometimes you have to, like slow down and actually go through a phase in your business where you maybe can’t take on as many new clients and you’re not in that acceleration and growth phase, but you’re in that like stability and “let’s fix everything that broke as we grew, you know, the last quarter or something like that.” And so that’s been a huge learning curve is like that slow down, build out the training, and also expectations for people so that when they come in, they’re set up for success.

Adam Force 7:25
Yeah, I love that. I mean, it totally makes sense. And we always say on our side, slow down to speed up because, right? So like you’re setting yourself up to move forward. And it sounds like you’ve taken all the right steps. So you said you had a mentor. So you found it to be valuable to have yourself surrounded with some people that are helping you out throughout the process.

Yeah, for sure, especially people who have done what I was trying to do and what I am trying to do, you know, finding people who have built bigger businesses or managed bigger teams or done where I’m going like that’s very helpful because they have perspective that I just don’t have. So I really found myself first mentor when it became time for me to grow a team and I kind of call it like when it became time to create a real business and like have a real foundation and real process and employees and all that. That’s when I really sought out a mentor because I didn’t know what I was doing. And so I definitely needed you know, outside coaching and support and guidance around that. And still today, like that’s what I use that mentorship for.

Yeah, it’s pretty amazing when you get into those types of relationships. You don’t realize how valuable it can be until you actually experience it. Like we work with Caitlin Bacher. I don’t know if you know her, and she’s been super awesome. And we just went to one of her like mastermind summits. And, you know, like you said, it’s people that are doing things that you do, and it’s such a significant difference in the experience and the value you get when you do that, right?

Emily Hirsh 8:50
Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree.

Adam Force 8:52
Yeah, it’s powerful. So let’s talk a little bit about you know, Facebook, I mean, that’s your primary focus, obviously Facebook, and Instagram.

Emily Hirsh 9:01
Yeah.

Adam Force 9:01
What got you into, you know, just becoming an expert in that space?

Emily Hirsh 9:06
Yeah, so my story is kind of random. I started as a virtual assistant actually, like five years ago, when my son was born. I’m young, I became a mom at 20. And so I started my company just out of like, Okay, I need to figure out some work that I can do while I take care of my baby. We didn’t want to put him in daycare and we couldn’t afford a nanny. So that was my motivation. And so I kind of fell into then this like online world and found people, you know, creating these digital businesses and courses and influencers. And so at first I was helping them with their marketing, but actually like the systems in the back end and doing more like tactical work as a virtual assistant. And then I had the opportunity to start doing Facebook ads for them.

And so I really am a lot self taught and then the experience of actually like trying something Oh, that works; that didn’t work and then continuing to improve my skills. And even today, like my team, as I’ve grown, like, it’s our experience that is our superpower because we have this like intel and experience. And in marketing, that’s how you learn with Facebook ads is like you try something and like you see if it works or not. And then you can go more that direction or less that direction. And so that’s how I started. And it was just me. You know, it was just a virtual assistant. So I had these clients who are like, “Just try it, you know, like we don’t know are doing and we can’t afford an agency.” That was really, like, the level they were at.

And so I had this opportunity to go in and like do all the ads myself and I would take courses and podcasts. And what’s cool is some of the podcasts I used to listen to to like learn Facebook ads are our clients now. So it’s like, full circle of these huge influencers that we get to work with. But that’s how I started out and then got to a point where that’s all I was doing. And I was full time I had like, 10 clients that I was managing on my own and then I had to decide, okay, do I want to stop here? Do I want to grow a team? And I decided, you know, I definitely want to grow team and keep growing and that was kind of the start of the agency.

Adam Force 10:55
Yeah, I mean, it’s a big decision, right, when you’re at that pivotal point and you decide to…because you you know, expanding into an agency format is very different. So it sounds like it’s been, it’s been pretty interesting for you, and how are you feeling about it now at this point?

Emily Hirsh 11:09
Yeah, I mean, I love it. I love where I’m at now, not in the day to day because I get to have just a different perspective. You know, we have team meetings with my whole ads team where they talk about, you know, strategies that are working and not working. And when you have 60 clients, and we manage about a million dollars a month in ad spend, it’s really cool, the intel that we get, you know, we have and I get to kind of sit at the top and be like, Oh, that’s cool. And you know, know these strategies, but I’m not necessarily like loading ads and doing that tactical work, which is fine, but you know, you can’t grow a huge company doing that.

So I really enjoy…I…my brain definitely naturally thinks in a marketing sense, and I have a very unique way of looking at a funnel or a customer journey that’s really about like relationship building and value for your audience and customizing it for your audience. And I think that’s one of the reasons my company’s done so well is that like natural ability I have to view marketing in that way. But I love it. And then the team building is a challenge. But at the same time, one of the best things I do, because it’s also the most rewarding to see a team working so well together and coming together to do great things.

Adam Force 12:18
Yeah, that’s awesome. And how do you translate what you are very good at when it comes to testing ads and the process to your team now to stay consistent?

Emily Hirsh 12:31
Yeah, so we have a really extensive training program for anyone new who comes on our team. It’s actually built like in Click Funnels, like a course that they go through. So yeah, we have a…first of all, a very extensive hiring process. They have two interviews and a test and they go through like a lot of steps to even get to be hired. So that’s like the first thing we built that was very important for us. And then we have a training program they go through. It’s like a whole course. It’s like a 30 page workbook. They spend the first couple of weeks, like just doing that training program. And then they go through a shadowing, like test exercise portion. So we have a really huge system, which I think is why I’ve been able to scale. I have almost 10 ads managers now, so, two like full ads teams. And my…the same mentor actually said to me a couple years ago, he said, like, you know, you’re in the business of marketing and serving clients, but you’re also in the business of like, creating really good ads managers. And the faster that you can do that and do that well, like the better your business will do. And that was like a really eye opening moment for me because I realized a lot of my priority actually needs to go into how do I train?

How do I bring people in, teach them my systems, and then spit them out on the end that they can go serve clients? And the faster and more efficient I can do that, the better I can grow my business and serve clients. And so that like became my focus and so we’re constantly updating our training and building it out and like, we’re actually going through a revamp of it right now. So I’d say every three to six months we have to update it and then we obviously have ongoing trainings for our existing ads managers, too. [Unintelligible] monthly, keep them up to date. And also collaboration is super important. Like I said, like these ads managers have so much intel and experience that they don’t even realize. So leadership’s job in my company is to bring them together to be like talk about it and help each other out based on what you’re doing. And so we do that weekly on the team, too. That just brings like strategy ideas.

Adam Force 14:30
Yeah, I love that and I just love the steps they’re taking in that pivotal moment of you need to build quality ads managers, that is an eye opener when you start just kind of shifting that perspective and that says so much for where the business can go, right? So the better they are, the better the business will be, right?

Emily Hirsh 14:49
Yeah, exactly.

Adam Force 14:50
Yeah, that’s pretty cool. So I guess I’m curious you know, we’re on the line and people listening are you know, in their first few years of business, and everybody starts to play with Facebook ads. I mean, at some point, when you’re ready to scale to a certain level of income and revenue, you kind of need to get into the paid ad space. And I’m just curious, you know, not everyone’s ready to bring on an agency team just like when you were VA. I’m curious, what are just some ideas of, you know, I think people get really lost in all the options out there and even just starting with like, you know, making sure like you’re targeting the right person or group of people, how many interests, and ya know, how many tests do I run on different images? How much is…do I run $50? $1,000? Like, all these things, and it just kind of like, paralyzes you.

Emily Hirsh 15:40
It’s super overwhelming, for sure. Yeah. And there’s no…and the problem too, is that there’s no like, here’s the formula and if you do this, it will work. Like it’s going to vary for a lot of businesses and then their audience and then their offer. So if you’re in that place where you’re not ready to bring on an agency, but you know the next step is to test some paid ads, I definitely have some advice, which the first one is that people always jump to that paid ads before they have like a really solid foundation. And so make sure that you’re like very clear on who you’re targeting, and not just, you know, interests like targeting on Facebook, but like, Who is that person? And do you have that idea of that person? So you can speak to them and target them on Facebook? And then do you have at least a strategy that you’re confident enough to go test? Because you don’t want to just start boosting posts, right?

And like, Okay, let me see how this works. Like you actually need to have something that you can measure if it’s successful or not. And then you can spend some money and get intel back, was it successful or not? And one thing I always say is that, you know, marketing always works if you are willing to go through that process of you know, create a strategy, create metrics that would measure that strategy success, spend money testing it and then get that intel to figure out what’s wrong with it and then just kind of repeat that until it’s working. And as far as you know, budget to start with, like and targeting, you know, there is no one…that’s the problem is there is no one size fits all advice that I can give. But I do have some…I mean, if you can get 100 people through your funnel or you can, you know, get at least some metric that’s above that even, you’ll be able to get that data and then make decisions.

And I think you also have to be okay with failing, like, you will spend money and lose it. And that’s okay. And when that happens, you have to just know like, I’m actually on the right track because I now know that that doesn’t work or that that messaging didn’t resonate with my audience that I put this out and that’s, you know, that’s actually like part of the process so don’t see it as you’re failing. See it as I’m just going through that process. And I’m trying, you know, getting to the other side.

Adam Force 17:54
Yeah, and I think that’s important. That was a tough lesson we learned, you know, a few years ago is, you know, when you have a new offer you have to pay for data. So you know, you might put in, you could end up spending several thousand dollars just to keep iterating and getting data and it sounds like you’re saying the same thing.

Emily Hirsh 18:11
Yeah, I call it buying data. Like in the first 30 days of testing and offer like you don’t know, you have to choose a budget that you’re okay if you don’t make the money back right away, basically. And then you go do that, and you see how it works. And then you go fix the holes and you do it again, and then you just keep repeating that until it’s working.

Adam Force 18:28
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, just a little feedback, something I did hear you say once. I don’t remember where I heard you say it, but it’s stuck in my brain. It is that more…it’s not a matter of if marketing will work; it’s when.

And I always loved that little tagline and I think it’s such a powerful statement because people, including myself, I’ve done this where you get you get panicked and stressed out and you get anxiety when things aren’t working for you. And just like you said, you have to look at it as you’re buying data, you just learn something. So like when you get into those panic modes, it’s like if people turn everything off, and they then they stop, right?

Emily Hirsh 18:43
Yeah.

Emily Hirsh 19:09
Yeah. Yeah. And and really just viewing it as a process instead of, I’m just throwing this out there and hoping it works like, it is a process. And if you look at marketing as those steps of like, I buy that data, I see how it works. And then I figure out what’s not working, and then I fix it, and I do it again. And you just keep doing it. It is a matter of just when will it work for you not if. It will always work as long as you’re willing to go through that process as many times as it takes to get it there.

Adam Force 19:35
Gotcha. Gotcha. Ya, I know, 100% makes sense. And I’m curious now since day one, do you know have any idea of how many clients and total that you’ve worked with over the years?

Emily Hirsh 19:45
I don’t, but I do have a metric that we’ve run traffic over 900 funnels, we do track that metric. And I think we’re at 18 million total ad spend managed and over 90 million of revenue generated so we track that monthly. But it’s definitely over 100 different clients as we have almost 60 active right now. So, over the years, probably 150 plus clients that we’ve worked with, over the last four years if you count me. But we do track the other metrics of funnels, and then ad spend managing revenue generated every month and a report that I put out.

Adam Force 20:21
Yeah, yeah. Now, tell me a little bit about you got two other exciting things going on as far as Facebook. Why did you create the course?

Emily Hirsh 20:31
Yeah, so I, obviously there’s a lot of people who are not ready to work with us yet one on one as a client with our agency. And so I wanted to for a year to create this course because I feel like we have such amazing resources, from tracking sheets to audience insights to you know, swipe files of copy. And then of course, our strategies. I knew I wanted to create something that really doesn’t exist because we’re in the trenches doing it and teaching it, you know. And there’s people who just teach it, but then they kind of lose sight of it because they’re not doing it anymore. And so I knew we could create something powerful. And I sat on it for a while, because my agency wasn’t in a place where I could put all that time and energy and attention into it, and build it and build the funnel.

And like, you know, focus is very important. So it took me a while to create it. But I wanted to have something out there that could serve those people who are more at that level of, they need to learn how to do it themselves and buy that data, and they’re not ready to hire, you know, necessarily an agency yet. And so that’s why we created the course. It’s very driven by my team and what we do every day for clients. So my team teaches part of it. There’s a live support component of it that my team, you know, goes to weekly calls to answer questions. People come and screen share their ad account to get advice on it. And so it’s just a level of support like down the step from one-on-one clients that I needed…I wanted to build because I felt like we had resources that nobody else had out there to be able to share.

Adam Force 22:03
Interesting. And are you planning on staying focused on the Facebook, Instagram space? Are you planning on trying to break through some other social media platforms?

Emily Hirsh 22:11
Yeah, I definitely want to expand, I just haven’t been able to make the decision to have the bandwidth to do it. But probably Google or YouTube at least in our agency side, I would like to expand to offering that service and building out a department that can do that. So it’s in the plan when we can do it without breaking everything.

Adam Force 22:30
Yeah, I mean, that’s, I guess it’s a pretty big step, considering what you’re doing just with Facebook. It’s like building another company.

Emily Hirsh 22:38
Yeah. I mean, it’s like it would be a whole new department. So it’s also an investment too, because you got to build out for the training and everything. And, you know, I knew how to do Facebook ads, but I’m not a Google and a YouTube ad expert. So it’s a little different experience than how I built this arm of the business because I built all the training and everything you know, so it’s on the radar. It probably will be towards the end of this year or next year, when we do it.

Adam Force 23:02
Interesting. So tell me a little bit about just strategically, again speaking for our audience here who’s kind of playing around with these things and something like your course might be really valuable for them as well. And I’m just curious, you know, if people are testing out ads and things like that, is there anything about Facebook, they should know? Meaning, like you want to give it like, several days before you really call it a test. Like what qualifies it as a statistically relevant test?

Emily Hirsh 23:31
Yeah, I mean, a few like with just an ad itself, usually 24 to 48 hours will give you a lot of data on that ad in terms of like, Is it getting clicks? Is it getting action on the actual ad? But then with a funnel, like if you’re looking at your entire strategy, I usually say at least 100 people need to go through it. So you have a webinar or something, you need 100 leads to really go through and that’s still in the lower end. That’s like minimum. But you know, if you have something that’s 1000 dollars that you sell an average sales conversion is like one to 2% of total people who sign up for your webinar. So unless you get 100 in, you’re not even gonna really know if you got a sale and if it’s converting.

So for your whole strategy, that’s usually what I say. I mean, if you can get 1000, like, that’s way better, but that usually takes a little bit; it depends what you’re running traffic to. But the more people you can get in the whole funnel, in the whole journey is actually like more important than the ads. The ads, you can tell within a couple days. Are they getting clicks, you know, what are those metrics? And what do I need to fix about the ad itself. But the funnel is actually the harder part to get that to convert.

Adam Force 24:36
Gotcha. And I mean, so people…and I like the big picture of looking at the entire funnel. But if you’re trying to figure out ads that are for you know, a lead magnet to the funnel or direct to the webinar or [unintelligible] whatever it is, I mean, is it…do you qualify something in the sense of like, I put $50 on it for two days, and I could just see if it’s being picked up or not, or do you need at least $100. I mean, I know every category and audience is different but I think people get stuck on, Right, I’m going to do a $5 tests and I’m like, I don’t know that that’s going to tell you much.

Emily Hirsh 25:07
No $5 won’t tell you much at all. I mean, I think 50 to 100 you could at least see if you’re on track like that will give you at least a cost per click. Like, is the ads getting clicks? And did it get some conversion to a lead magnet or a webinar? Your goal should be like for a lead magnet we see an average of like one to $5. It depends on the industry. And then webinar we see from like three to $8. So, a lead or a registration. So you can look for that and you know, spending 100 you should at least get some [unintelligible]. So you know if you’re at least on the right track with audiences and your ad copy, and those components.

Adam Force 25:46
Listen, you get us to $3 for a webinar registration, you’re going to be my new best friend.

Emily Hirsh 25:53
Yeah, I mean, it we’ve got some even lower but I don’t you know say it because then people think that’s the standard. It all depends on your industry.

Adam Force 26:01
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I think that entrepreneurs…I’ve noticed like some people are like, Oh, yeah, I had someone in our mastermind group. They’re like, Oh, yeah, I’m getting a 40 cent conversion on, you know, a lead magnet. It’s like for a very specific [unintelligible].

Emily Hirsh 26:17
Yeah, or a lot of times, like the health and wellness industry will convert really cheap lead magnets, but that doesn’t compare when you’re targeting business owners. It’s, it’s different. Yeah.

Adam Force 26:27
Exactly. Exactly. I mean, it gets way more expensive. I was super pumped when we were at like, $6 for lead magnet conversion.

Emily Hirsh 26:34
Yeah, no.

Adam Force 26:37
Awesome. Well, yeah, I think one of the…I had another question on the top of my mind. I just lost it. It was about where you were going with things. It might come back to me. We’ll see. So I guess right now you have this book that came out and I was just curious. I want to just hear a couple thoughts on you know, your…I’m actually curious in two things: One, just tell me a little bit about what the books about and why you created it. But two, I’m always curious when people create books in the entrepreneurship space, how long it took and what your process was like?

Emily Hirsh 27:08
Yeah, yeah, you’ll like this. So yeah, I wrote…my book is called Ignite Your Impact. It’s written for the audience that buys the course, that’s really who I wrote it for, because a lot of our higher level clients won’t read, you know, necessarily marketing books. They have it hired out. So we, I mean, some will. But it was written with that in mind, for people for the course. And it’s in depth about our…my process basically, is the core of the book, The Hirsh process, which is five steps. And I’ve always wanted to write a book, but I actually end of last year, joined a program where the goal was to write a book and it was a really cool process. So I actually wrote…the actual writing piece was two and a half days. So I wrote it all like very fast. I went to Hawaii with my friend and we both wrote our book during that time, so super fun. And the way we were able to do that was we pre planned everything.

So that was kind of the key is we had a very clear idea of like, who we were writing for. We had all the chapters planned out and the content that was going to go in them. So then you just sat down and you wrote. And you, you know, got through like three or four chapters a day, and you just had this schedule. And so I was able to get it done pretty quickly from when I decided I was going to do it to being done. And then obviously, it had to go through publishing and creating the cover. We self published so there’s a lot of steps you don’t know about, like, formatting a book and like an ISBN code, which I didn’t know what that was until, like a couple weeks ago. So you know, we added to that, but, you know, I wrote it to get my process out in another way for people to be able to consume it through reading it.

Adam Force 28:43
Yeah, I mean, that’s exciting. I see all your puzzle pieces coming together. So I hope it feels good. I mean, it looks good.

Emily Hirsh 28:51
Yeah, it does feel good. I can’t…I actually haven’t gotten a hardcover of it or a paperback of it like it’s coming. But I can’t wait to actually have that because that will be cool. It’ll be holding, you know, finally, a published book.

Adam Force 29:01
Yeah, it’ll be a feather in your cap. And so congratulations on all the progress and things that you have going on. I think one last question that people might want to hear, especially for the entrepreneurs in our audience who are, you know, six figures, and maybe they do want to hire out Facebook ads. I know I sure as hell don’t like managing Facebook ads. So the question is, you know, maybe just tell people a little bit about the process and like, how do you validate people? And are there companies that sometimes you don’t take on for any reason? Like, how do you know someone will have success with you or not? Because I’m sure you want to make sure anyone you work with that [unintelligible].

Emily Hirsh 29:40
Yeah, we…yeah, I mean, you’ve been through it. Our application and talking to our team, like we do have a pretty extensive process and of just getting people through just the application and then talking to our team about their business. We won’t take anyone on who doesn’t go through that process because like you said, we want to make sure that we can help you. And so people that you know wouldn’t be a fit is one…like the level…like if they…let’s say that they’re at a place where they’re like I can spend $1,000 a month ad spend. I mean, it doesn’t make sense to hire our agency and pay a management fee and then only spend that much like on ad spend because we can’t make you the money back, right?

So that’s one thing we’re looking at. And also, how much have they sold of their offer? Are they clear on who their audience is? Are they clear on the messaging piece, because we help with the strategy and we create great messaging. I mean, I have a creative team, but we have to… they have to have a solid idea of who they’re trying to go after and what they’re trying to sell that person to, before we can come in and do our job. We have a couple different packages. So we have like people who come in and they’ve already sold a ton and they’re at a higher level of business. And then we do have one that’s like for testing and buying data, but still done for you. So we have those options, but really they have to have a very clear offer. They have to be able to spend…the minimum is two to $3,000 a month in ad spend.

And then pay our management fee to make it worth hiring us, basically. So those are the big things that we’re looking for is like, do they have that clarity so we can do our job. We also really look for collaborative people, because our like, team takes over everything, but we’re working with influencers. And so we need you to be willing to do content and willing to show up for your audience and put out that value for our job to be the best that it can be. And so we’re looking for those people who are like, want to have a partnership and want to be collaborative and want to have like a holistic view to their marketing. And so they’re willing to show up on their organic social media, or maybe it’s like podcast or whatever. And we pair that with paid ads, and that’s when it works so well. And so we’re looking for that, too.

Adam Force 31:47
Oh, yeah, that sounds cool. I like that, too. And if you don’t mind me asking, and if you’re not comfortable answering you don’t have to, but I’m curious of…as people go through their, you know, three months or whatever the package might be that they work with you on to get the data and testing, what your retention rate is for clients these days.

Emily Hirsh 32:08
Yeah, so we track that daily. And it’s over 90% is our average every month. It fluctuates. Sometimes it’s 85, one month and 95 and other but at 90% is our average for the whole year of 2019. And we have…I’m like huge on that metric. We actually put it in our daily huddle on our team to track every day.

Adam Force 32:28
That’s awesome. Yeah, that’s a amazing number. I will let you know that when I was at the summit in California, just this last week, I was talking to Ally Ball and some others in Caitlin’s you know, mastermind program, and lots of nice things were said about Hirsh Marketing.

Emily Hirsh 32:45
Oh good. I’m glad. That’s an important piece with your…like any business, you gotta pay attention to your delivery because otherwise it catches up to you and that’s been a huge focus of mine is the actual client delivery and satisfaction and I I think that’s a huge contributing factor to my success for sure.

Adam Force 33:03
Absolutely. I could see the word of mouth doing its job. People were getting excited. Oh, really? Yeah. And you know, I’ve been following her and then they hear referrals, basically. So yeah, I’m just wanting to let you know, because I thought it was pretty powerful.

Emily Hirsh 33:15
That’s awesome. That makes me feel good.

Adam Force 33:18
Good, good. Good. So all right, listen, where I want to be respectful of your time. So we’re going to wrap up here, but I want to give you a chance to just let everyone know where do they find you? How do they learn more and see in what capacity maybe they can work with you?

Emily Hirsh 33:32
Yeah, I mean, honestly, my website is probably the best place to go: hirshmarketing.com because then you can kind of check out our agency services or check out our program or check out my book if you just want to go that route. I also have a podcast I release twice a week that sounds like yours — like short, a lot of value in it so people can consume it. And so I give away a lot of value because my ideal client is somebody who doesn’t want to necessarily do it themselves fully. So I give away a lot on that podcast, like I’m very transparent and strategic. And so yeah, that comes out every…twice a week. So that’s another option. And then we release also what I call the Hirsh Marketing Report every month, which has a lot of behind the scenes strategies and intel and data from my team, from what we’re seeing from what we do. And we release that every month in a PDF.

Adam Force 34:23
There you go, guys, you got a ton of information. I’ve listened to it. I’ve scoped it out. There’s a lot of value in there for sure. Emily, our team is sick of Facebook ads so that’s why we spoke to you guys. And we really appreciate you just taking the time here today to you know, share these ideas, share your story. It’s nice just to see how you’re developing things and the success that you’ve had. So appreciate your time.

Emily Hirsh 34:49
Thanks so much.

Announcer 34:51
That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit changecreatormag.com. We’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator Podcast.

Listen to our exclusive interview with Martin Ochwat:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify  |  iTunes  |  Stitcher  |  Soundcloud

Martin Ochwat is an expert in growth marketing. In our interview with him, he imparts some sage advice every social entrepreneur should hear and introduces us to Moop, his zero plastic waste personal care product company set to launch in January 2020.

Martin’s career in growth marketing really took off when he worked for the mobile gaming company Machine Zone, manufacturer of some top-grossing mobile apps. He found himself on the marketing team, managing close to $100 million US just on Facebook ads alone. It made them one of the largest advertisers on Facebook at the time.

This experience taught him exactly how to drive traffic on the web and how to work through the algorithms and find the optimal way to get users to whatever product the business is selling. He was immersed in the ins and outs of digital marketing. By the time he left two short years later, he was able to work with some engineers and automate most of the advertising, essentially handing the management of their huge marketing budget to a machine.

We essentially had a machine just managing tens of millions of dollars a year.

Here’s a summary of the growth marketing advice Martin shared with us:

1. Advertise on Facebook. It is still one of the most powerful advertising channels. Martin highly recommends advertising on Facebook, especially for B2C businesses, because it’s quick and easy to get started and you can build an audience and a following in no time — excellent features if you’re just getting started. He calls it a must-do.
2. Do enough testing when running ads on Facebook (or any channel). One of the biggest mistakes people make, Mark asserts, is not testing ads enough before running them. He uses his experience at Machine Zone as a comparison: They would run over 10,000 new ads per day, testing dozens of different images, videos, and new ad formats. Mark points out that you can often get really cheap traffic through a new ad format.
3. Keep in mind that when you’re just starting out, testing is a means of paying to learn. Martin assures us that it’s something we all go through. And eventually, those learnings will pay off and your ad cost will decrease or your sales will increase.
4. Use lots of videos. Regardless of the platform you’re using, the part of the ad that people look at the most is the image or video. You get far more engagement when you use video so be sure to put most of your time into testing and using lots of videos.  
5. Focus on being authentic. You’ll have fewer issues running your ads if you are more compliant and authentic since these days, Facebook is a lot stricter on their platform. Martin warns that you don’t want to get into the fake news style of advertising, especially if you’re a social entrepreneur.
6. There’s nothing wrong with looking to close the sale right away. In fact, probably 90% of businesses in ecommerce are doing just that, Martin admits. If you’re launching a new business, you certainly want to get sales in order to prove out your concept. Just remember that at some point, you need to shift your focus to long-term, sustainable revenue. This is where advertising through emails or Facebook Messenger can be very effective.
7. Build retention and lifetime value into your business model. Look for ways that you can build more value and add more value for the customer. Some examples include offering subscriptions, a loyalty program, or a special offer for customers who refer a friend. Your customers will stick around longer as a result.
8. The business with the highest lifetime value within a niche is the one that wins. This is a quote Martin heard once and it has stuck with him. Basically, you can out-market others in your space by increasing the lifetime value of your customers because you’ll be able to spend more money on marketing and on product.

Moop: The Future of No Plastic Waste

In Q1 of next year, Martin plans to launch Moop, a D2C brand featuring a zero waste toiletries kit containing deodorant, shampoo, and toothpaste. Currently, Martin and his team are making sure their products are top notch. They’re running beta tests and sending out free samples to get feedback on the product.

Since they want to build a business for the long term, Martin says they’re investing in branding, good packaging, and formulation. He acknowledges that this takes time (the brand has been in the works since January 2019), but it lets you start out with a much stronger business on day one. It results in better customer experience and better retention.

Moop is currently pre launch, but you can joint their waitlist at getmoop.com.

We also recommend:

• If You’re a Busy Person Then This One Skill Will Change Your Life
• How to Hire a Great Leader: 4 Things You Must Always Do
• Transform Your Life as a Highly-Sensitive Entrepreneur with Heather Dominick

Transcription of Interview (Transcribed by Otter.ai; there may be errors.)

Adam Force 0:00
Hey, what’s up everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. This is your host Adam Force. So if you missed last week’s episode, it was with Stephen Carl and we talked about supersizing your digital ecommerce conversions and impact, some really great nuggets in there. So check that out if you haven’t already. And this week we are going to be having a really great conversation for all of you out there trying to step up your marketing game in the ecommerce world.

Ecommerce or not, right. This is going to be very helpful and his name is Martin. And I’m not sure how to pronounce that…Ochwat. So I probably just butchered that and I’m sorry, Martin. But he’s a super cool guy and he has quite a background. So he’s a growth marketer, and a serial entrepreneur. He’s built several seven figure ecommerce businesses from the ground up. And right now, he’s working on a zero plastic waste company called Moop. And we’ll talk a little bit more about that with Martin. I mean, this guy has done…he’s managed over 100 million dollars annually with you know, Facebook marketing ads and done some incredible work. So he knows a lot about that kind of paid marketing and just getting conversions, building leads, building long term sales, right?

So we’re going to dive into all of that and see what he’s learned from all that data and experience so that you guys can benefit from it. So stay tuned and check that out. And if you haven’t already guys, swing by changecreator.com. We have a lot of new content posted up there of different kinds. So really focused on the tools that we’re trying to give you clarity on what might be best for your business, but also different guides and articles in the social impact space that will be relevant for you as entrepreneurs. And we have our download: Three Proven Skills That Every Entrepreneur Must Have to Grow an Impact Business, some really powerful nuggets in there. And you know, I mentioned it on the last podcast, but check that out, I would swing through there, it’s right on the homepage, I think you’re going to find a lot of value in it. So if you haven’t already grabbed that, definitely get your copy.

These skills rise to the top, whether it’s from based on our experience or talking to some of the biggest experts around the world, right. This is always like tried and true proven skills that you really do need to have. So you want to start focusing in on that stuff. And if you’re not following us on Facebook, stop by check us out. We do most of our focuses on Facebook, to connect through social media. And once you’re on the page, if you want to dig a little deeper, you just go to our Facebook group, there’s a button there on the page, and it’s called The Profitable Digital Impact Entrepreneur and we have a lot of good conversation going on in that group. So really good little community of people who are really focused on building profitable businesses that make a difference in the world. So yeah, check us out there. And without further ado, we are going to get this conversation rocking and rolling. So let’s see what Martin has to say.

Announcer 3:15
Okay, show me the heat.

Adam Force 3:20
Hey, Martin, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show. How you doing today?

Martin Ochwat 3:24
I’m doing awesome. Thanks for having me, Adam.

Adam Force 3:26
Yeah, absolutely. So you are a marketing and digital growth kind of guy. And, you know, I’m excited to tap into your experience. I think this is a important topic for people in our audience. You know, especially as we’re trying to scale impact, we need to actually scale the growth of the business financially and in other ways. So I would love to just hear what’s your latest project? What do you have going on? What’s going on in your world these days?

Martin Ochwat 3:53
Sure. So I’ve been a growth marketer for five plus years now — work in various roles ranging from gaming, ecommerce, you know, doing contracting consulting for other mid sized startups. And most recently, I’m working on a D2C brand called Moop. So we’re doing zero plastic waste personal care products, and really trying to reinvent products people use every day such as toothpaste, deodorant, and shampoo, but ones that are good for both your body and great for the planet.

Adam Force 4:26
Yeah, sweet. So I’ll just…I’m just going to piggyback off that real quick, because I’m super interested in that. And then we’ll get into some of the other marketing stuff. So when you approach a company like that, you know, when I think about those types of ideas, and I see someone like yourself doing it, I start thinking, well, if we’re going to start a company like that, we want zero waste products, like where does it begin to start finding out Well, how do I start manufacturing these type of products or finding out how to create these types of products so that I can build a business with this idea.

Martin Ochwat 5:00
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think it’s a one I get asked a lot. So I think when you’re starting in this space, like, obviously step one is trying to learn the market in and out. Llike if you’re going to be starting a, you know, eco friendly company, you should probably try to live a more eco friendly life yourself, whether that’s trying out different products or different ways where you can reduce your impact day to day. But then once you have an idea and you know, you want to start building products, often a big bottleneck is you know, how do you source manufacturers and build it?

The good news is I’ve — and my friends, too — there’s usually people out there that are just experts at this. You can find them on different sites like Upwork and Fiverr. Basically, if you know…say you want to make a deodorant in the United States, you can find someone on Upwork where you send them the specs. You say, hey, I want to make a natural deodorant. Has to be U.S.-based. Has to be a great formula. And for not a lot of money, they can come back to you with a list of 30 to 50 different factories along with their contact information. And at that point, you kind of just hit the phones and email and try to vet who is the best one for your brand.

Adam Force 6:17
That’s pretty interesting. I never thought really, that going through a service like Upwork would find people who have those skill sets and…What kind of a…So if you’re doing a job posting on Upwork for something like that, I mean, what do you call those people that you’re trying to reach out to, like, what category does that fall into?

Martin Ochwat 6:36
Yeah, it’s kind of a, I guess, market research category. Say, you know, looking to find list of 30 plus factories in this space. And you know, I’ve gotten searches done for as low as like $50. So it really isn’t a high cost of entry. And I think it’s something a lot of people overlook, and they just get stuck at Oh, I don’t know how to find the factories to contact. So, you know, I’ll find a different idea. But it really is accessible. You just need to know where to look and get that information.

Adam Force 7:08
Yeah, that’s interesting. And I like it because you can give specs and then obviously you don’t have to spend your own time. Say you throw a couple dollars out there and somebody can start digging around who’s good at doing that research because you know, you can get sucked into this vortex or black hole on sites like Alibaba trying to figure out what’s what and next thing you know, you’re, I don’t know, what do you do? Go fly to China and check out factories? So it’s like, you know, I think I always found that to be very overwhelming.

And, you know, we try to create, for example, swag, we have some key taglines for our audience, and we want to have swag for that like t shirts, mugs and stuff. And it’s hard to find, you know, print on demand solutions for you know, organic t shirts and different things like that. So it gets a little bit difficult. So, kind of leads me to a question on you know, what made you start this particular company? I mean, there’s the obvious cause on plastic pollution, but what got you, like amped up on that category?

Martin Ochwat 8:07
Yeah, so I think there’s kind of a few factors that lead to this. So before starting this company, I had a few other smaller ecommerce businesses — mostly drop shipping. And I spent about two years being a digital nomad, visiting up to 30 countries with my good friend and also my girlfriend. And, you know, during the time we were looking for, you know, an impactful business to start not just, you know, selling everyday products like sunglasses, for example, but we wanted something with a mission behind it. And we just kept seeing this thread come up of, you know, there’s a lot of pollution in the world.

We would see it ourselves when we visit countries like, you know, go to the islands in Philippines and you see a lot of waste and trash there. And I think another thing that really inspired us was living in Europe for a couple of months. Europe is way ahead of the United States and North America in terms of the environment and sustainability. And we saw a lot of companies and entrepreneurs starting out there in this space with really cool products. And so that kind of inspired….the combination of that inspired us to, you know, try and bring this back home to North America and really build an ecommerce brand with a mission behind it that we can get really excited about.

Adam Force 9:28
Yeah, I love that. And I hear so many times that it’s travel experience that inspires these ideas to do something and I’ve had the same experience where I’m out in these very remote areas of Costa Rica and you just feel like you know, there’s no way there would ever be any trash and then you can walk down the beach and you’ll see it’s not little shells. And sometimes it’s like little pieces of plastic that wash up from the ocean and it just drives you crazy.

It’s like, how can this be, you know? So yeah, I get that feeling of You know, you want to step up and try to do something. So it’s exciting to see that you’re taking those steps. But maybe you could take us back before this. And you know, you have experience as a growth marketer. And I’d like to hear a little bit more about that. So maybe you can rewind a bit and tell us how you got into that and some of the, you know, accomplishments or experiences you’ve had there.

Martin Ochwat 10:23
Yeah, definitely. So my career in growth marketing really started off when I got an opportunity to work in Silicon Valley. So I worked at a mobile gaming company called Machine Zone. They used to make top — or they still do but — they make top grossing mobile apps: Game of War, Mobile Strike. And at that time, I landed on the marketing team, started running Facebook ads with my boss and between the two of us we would manage close to 100 million US dollars per year just on Facebook, which made us one the largest advertisers on Facebook at the time. So it was really there where I got to learn the ins and outs of how do you drive traffic on the web at scale to both desktop and mostly mobile in our case, and then how do you work through these algorithms and, you know, find the most optimal way to get users to whatever product you’re selling. So I think that’s really what took off my career. And I learned, you know, going really deep the ins and outs of digital marketing.

Adam Force 11:29
Hmm, interesting. So I guess what were some…what are some of the…I guess you managed like Facebook ad budgets, like didn’t you have a massive Facebook ad budget that you were managing and stuff like that?

Martin Ochwat 11:42
Yeah, we managed close to 100 million a year in Facebook. And by the time I left, two years later, I actually worked with a few engineers to automate most of that. So we essentially had a machine just managing hundreds like 10s of millions of dollars a year.

Adam Force 12:00
That sounds pretty sweet. I’m all about automation, what kind of technology was that proprietary technology? Or is that something people can get their hands on?

Martin Ochwat 12:08
So the good news is a lot of the technology we worked on back in the day is now publicly available to people on Facebook. So this was back in, you know, 2014/2015. Features like, let’s say you’re running Facebook ads, one of the features they have now is split testing — if you want to split test two campaigns and see which one does better. Or if you want to just upload a you know, five different images and see which one works the best. Facebook has a lot of these features built in where they’ll just tell you, you know, hey, here’s the best performing image and it’ll automatically run it for you. Yeah, so I guess that’s the benefit now is from a lot of our learnings, I think Facebook had a lot of learnings, too, as we were one of their top clients. You get a lot of these tools for free.

Adam Force 12:54
Nice, nice and do you still find Facebook to be a powerful marketing asset?

Martin Ochwat 12:59
Yeah. Facebook is I think one of the most powerful channels still, especially for in the B2C side and a lot in the B2B I hear as well. The one challenge with Facebook today is it’s becoming more expensive as, you know, more advertisers are on it, the platform starts to saturate. But in terms of getting started, it’s super easy, super quick, and you can build an audience and a following, you know, in no time, so I’d highly recommend it. If you haven’t tried Facebook for your business, it’s a must-do.

Adam Force 13:33
Yeah, yeah, that’s where we put a lot of our energy. You know, we’re a smaller team and we can only focus on so many platforms. I found that trying to do every platform gets very distracting and I’d rather be a master of one than like, okay at many. And so I’m curious if you have any insights for people who are, you know, in the first five years of business, you know. They have smaller budgets and they’re trying to scale up their page or run their ads and get some conversions. Like, is there anything that stands out to you that might be beneficial for people to understand?

Martin Ochwat 14:07
Yeah, so I think the biggest thing I see is people are not doing enough testing when running ads on Facebook or really any channel. To give you an idea: at Machine Zone, we would run over 10,000 new ads per day. And that’s…I wouldn’t expect a small business to do that. But that goes to show how much testing we’re doing every single day with our creatives, you know, testing dozens of different images, videos, new ad formats.

Whenever a new ad format comes out, you can often get really cheap traffic through that ad format, whether it’s you know, Instagram Live or IGTV as just like an organic channel. Definitely test new formats. And then testing audiences, right? If you’re not, if you haven’t tested at least 100 audiences on Facebook, you know, you have a lot of opportunity there. So I think if you continue to take the testing mindset and just tweaking a lot of levers, you can get way, way better results that way.

Adam Force 15:09
Right. And I think a major barrier for people to get over — and this included us, I would say, two years ago as we were getting into bigger spend on a monthly basis, or even just the daily spend, right — and that was that when you have a new let’s say, product, and you’re testing to see, you know, maybe you want to get people into a sales funnel, and you have like a free offer, like a lead magnet, or you have like a webinar or whatever it is, in your testing creative and you’re testing if this funnel converts, there’s a decent amount of money spent in the testing environment where you may not be converting and getting a ton of sales, but you’re getting…you’re basically paying for data so that you can learn and then you start optimizing for sales. Is that… I mean, is that like a Is that how you guys felt about it? That sometimes you’re just paying for the data?

Martin Ochwat 15:57
Absolutely. Yes, starting out and when you’re doing testing you’re really paying to learn. And that’s something everyone goes through. I mean, a good way to look at it is if you already have some campaigns running, maybe you set aside five or 10% of your total budget. And that’s a constantly learning and testing budget. And that way, you know, once those learnings pay off, and eventually they will, you know, you could see, like, huge differences in your performance, like your ad cost might drop 25%, or you’re scaling up 30% more. And that’s only possible because of your previous testing learnings.

Adam Force 16:35
Yeah, that’s interesting. And the one challenge that we have found is that there’s so many variables to test. You can test the copy. You can test the images. You can test the audiences. You can test the, you know, the different interests that you’re aligning people to or maybe the lookalike audience or a custom audience.

And so I’m wondering with all the testing that you’ve experienced, are there certain variables that tend to have the most impact? Like, let’s say, the image you use or the copy you use? You know, if I was going to spend $1,000 testing 20 images, is that a smarter first test versus you know, 20 trying to test the copy, like, you know what I’m trying to say?

Martin Ochwat 17:17
Absolutely. So whichever platform you’re running on, you kind of have to look at it and see what, like, logically, what parts of your ad are people looking at the most, and on a Facebook or Instagram it’s definitely the image or video. So I would dedicate most of your time testing new creative content, and especially you know, in 2019 entering 2020, video is showing great results, you know. You get way more engagement, way…you have retargeting capabilities with video so if you’re not testing a lot of videos, even if they’re just scrappy, you know, slideshow style videos, you’re definitely leaving money on the table.

Adam Force 17:59
Yeah. Yeah, I love that retargeting type of funnel option that we have there. It’s pretty sweet. And to your point, like, you know, I think a lot of people have their guards up when they’re seeing yet another, you know, offer for something because you’re not necessarily on Facebook like looking for those things so it’s a little bit more passive for them. And do you find that more genuine authentic kinda like? I don’t know, it’s I’ve heard that that stuff does better for some people, but I’ve also heard that you want to make it like it’s almost like a news type thing because news gets the most attention.

Martin Ochwat 18:38
Yeah, so you really want to stand out I think and try to always be testing different angles. That’s an important part of it. Yeah. Being like these days, Facebook is a lot more strict on their platform. So being more compliant and authentic, you’ll have less issues running your ads versus you know, you don’t want to be getting into like fake news style of advertising especially if you’re like a social entrepreneur. But I like your point of testing a lot of angles, you know. You can make it seem more like, you know, eye catching wow like news style headlines and then you can try authentic headlines and see sort of what resonates with your audience.

Adam Force 19:18
Yeah and it just comes right back to the testing. Because everyone’s audiences different. I think there might be some common denominators just from a Facebook you know audience in general meaning like the kind of headspace someone’s in and just, you know, if they’re gonna…if it looks really salesy, and like that car salesman kind of feel people will probably stay away. But I think that granular testing is really the only way to find out what works best with your specific audience. That’s all really helpful feedback. And yeah, we’ve been really playing around a lot with the Facebook stuff, too. So definitely good results, but I do see it getting more expensive.

One of the questions I’d love to hear from you is you had a nice focus for a while with several ecommerce businesses, and as you’re building those businesses, you know, especially in those first few years, you know, I see a lot of people in ecommerce…it’s different than having a coaching business or selling digital courses and stuff like that. So when you have ecommerce, I go to these websites, and I’ll scout them out, and I see that they’re always trying to just make the sale. And then you go on Facebook, and it’s product promotion, product promotion, product promotion.

And you know, I’ve always found that you get a lot more value if you get somebody you know, onto your email list so you can keep talking to them because they may not buy right away, but then you can continue that conversation. What kind of strategy…I mean, does that align to how you saw a good approach? Like what was the approach from an ecommerce mindset that was helpful for you guys?

Martin Ochwat 20:48
Absolutely. So I think you’re totally right. Probably 90% of businesses I’ve seen in ecommerce are just looking to close the sale right away. And you know, that strategy starting out is not the worst strategy, right? If you’re launching a new business, you want to get sales to prove out the concept. But at some point, you need to shift your focus to how do you create long term sustainable revenue, right? It’s, yeah, if people just do one purchase and they never come back again, you know, eventually that business is not going to work. You’re just going to run out of people to sell your products to.

So capturing things like their email address, very helpful. You can continue to you know, send them emails until they unsubscribe or you just find they don’t interact anymore. Yeah, things like Facebook Messenger. I was probably one of the first advertisers on Facebook Messenger. We made a killing doing promotions through that. It’s a lot more strict now but there’s a lot of retargeting opportunities or, you know, it’s another way you can interact with customers where they have open rates of over 50% on your messages, which is still pretty insane.

And then the third thing I’d add is trying to build retention and lifetime value into your business model. So whether that’s offering subscriptions, you know, offering some sort of loyalty program for customers that have bought a few times, or even referral programs where they refer their friends, and both of them get some sort of special offer. These are all ways you can build more value, add more value for the customers, and as a result they’ll continue to stay customers for longer.

Adam Force 22:29
Yep, I love that. And that’s the thing we always talk to our audience. You know, in our program, we have a program where we do some educational stuff and coaching and we always talk about stop looking for the short term ROI and look for the long term ROI and think long term because you’re going to have new business, but then a huge part of that revenue to scale the business is the renewal business. So getting that business to repeat and grow and continue is going to be a major miss if you don’t have that renewal strategy. So that’s a big part. So it’s nice to kind of hear you back stuff up.

Martin Ochwat 23:01
Absolutely, yeah. And the other thing I’d add is I heard a good quote once. Usually the business with the highest lifetime value within a niche is the one that wins. And the reason for that is if you can increase the lifetime value of your customers, you can spend more money on marketing, you can spend more money on product and at the end of the day, you’ll be able to outmarket others in your space.

Adam Force 23:27
Exactly. That’s a great point. And, you know, having that long term strategy allows you to optimize the value of a lead. So to your point, that means you could spend more. So if you’re getting 100 people as let’s say it’s 100 leads, and you just get…there’s only one person out of 10 that’s ready to buy, instead of just selling them and you get them on your list and then you can get maybe four out of 10 to buy. So now that pool of 100 people you get more, right? You get you just quadrupled your sales for that particular spend.

Martin Ochwat 23:57
Yeah, that’s definitely the right way to look at it. So if you can focus on that, you’re going to have a great long term business.

Adam Force 24:03
Love it. Love it. So tell me now a little bit now that we’re going to…let’s just shift over to your latest zero plastic waste business. Where exactly are you in getting that off the ground? Is it up and running? So I didn’t see a link or anything like that yet?

Martin Ochwat 24:17
Yeah, so we’re pre launch right now. We have a waitlist you can join at www.getmoop.coom. We have a few thousand people on the list now. So really what we’re doing pre launch is making sure our products are top notch. We’re running beta tests, you know, just sending out free samples of products to people and getting genuine feedback. And we’re looking to launch in Q1 next year. So, yeah.

Adam Force 24:45
That’s exciting. How many products are you starting out with? Like, is he going to try to just sell one type of product to get rolling or a whole suite? What are you trying to do?

Martin Ochwat 24:54
So really, our our starting point is we’re trying to make your zero waste toiletries kit. And that starts with a deodorant, shampoo, and toothpaste. So those are our three core products. We’ll be adding other complimentary products as well down the line, but we really want to tackle products that you have to use every day like most people are using, you know, anyway, and how can we just make them less waste so that they’re both good for you and the planet?

Adam Force 25:23
Yeah, I love that man. These are like always business ideas that I historically used to think of and my skill sets were never really in this kind of ecommerce space. And I was like, man, I really just don’t know how to get these products like created, son of a bitch.

Martin Ochwat 25:39
Now you know, you know the secrets of Upwork and Fiverr.

Adam Force 25:42
Yeah, well, you know, and it just takes time, right? Like, you don’t want to rush the process. I feel like you do want to take your time to do the due diligence, take your time to get samples. You know, test the market with your stuff and prepare an actual launch of the business and, you know, that takes a while. Like how long have you been in process? Like just getting this off the ground at this point?

Martin Ochwat 26:04
Yeah, so in our case, we really started working on this in January. So it’s been almost a year now. And like you said, we want to build a business for the long term. So we’re investing in branding, good packaging, so much sampling and formulation, and just getting customer feedback. So all of that takes time. But it lets you get out the gate with a much stronger business on day one. And so that’ll give you a better customer experience and better retention.

Adam Force 26:35
Very cool. Very cool. So I’m curious…obviously, you’re going to be applying now all these strategies you have for Facebook and all that kind of stuff with your new ecommerce shop. What have you found is a good you know, we call it a high value content offer, which is you know, someone comes to your website, and if you want to start a conversation with them, you give them you know, some one step closer to solving whatever problem they’re looking to solve and that might be to buy a zero waste product. And so how do you get them on your email list?

You know, a lot of these ecommerce places will have, you know, a pop up that comes up and it’s like a discount code or free shipping and you know, things like that. You know, ecommerce again, it’s a little different than a coaching or digital courses and all that kind of stuff. So I’m curious if you have…and obviously you guys haven’t put this together just yet. But you know, in your mind, like when it comes to an ecommerce space, do you have any thoughts on you know, what might be a good idea to get people on the list?

Martin Ochwat 27:34
Yeah, so I totally agree. Most businesses just do like a pop up after 30 seconds: get 10% or 20% off for joining our list. I mean, the reason they do that is it does work but it doesn’t really build you know, a great relationship with the customer and might make…they may see you as like a more of a discount brand. I think if you build a strategy more around content where you know, a lot of customers are going to find you on social probably on Facebook or Instagram.

If you can share helpful posts and stories there to get them warmed up. Have you know a blog or podcast or video series where you have a bit more content, and you can still do that pop up on your homepage, but it doesn’t have to be a discount. If you, you know, you make it cheeky or interesting and say, Hey, we just…we’ll just give you like the best content free of charge, like live a low waste lifestyle in five easy steps. A lot of the time, that is enough to get people to sign up via email. And, you know, you don’t have to discount your brand on day one. So that’s what I’d recommend.

Adam Force 28:44
So that would be like a lifestyle checklist like five, five ways to do this. And like, you know, just simple things. And I like what you’re saying because you’re right, you have to warm them up. And if you want to build trust, you need to have a certain conversation with them. And I think that the people that become real advocates, they’re the ones that do invest in understanding like your stance on the cause or your story and all that type of information. And as they do absorb that, they become real buyers who will renew and really love what you do, right?

Martin Ochwat 29:13
Absolutely. Yeah, those are…you want to look for brand advocates, I think starting out especially. And if you can build a small community of people that just love your product, and they share it with their friends and family and stay engaged, like that’s kind of your beachhead market, and you can really expand your business from there.

Adam Force 29:32
Beautiful. Yeah, I love that. So I think we’re coming up to the end of our time here, and I just want to be respectful of your time. And I appreciate all the great stuff and I’m excited to see…so the brand name is get Moop. Right? So that’s going to be the new company name.

Martin Ochwat 29:50
Yeah, so our name is Moop. And yeah, it stands for Mindful of Our Planet.

Adam Force 29:56
Cool, cool. Cool. Well, I’m excited to see where you go with that. We’ll keep an eye out and it’s www.getmoop.com. So if you guys want to get signed up to see where that goes and be notified about the updates, you guys can just pop over there and check it out. Martin, thank you so much for your time. Very much appreciate it.

Martin Ochwat 30:16
Yeah. Thank you, Adam. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you today.

Adam Force 30:20
Awesome. We will stay in touch and talk soon.

Martin Ochwat 30:23
All right, take care.

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Transcribed by https://otter.ai