Write This Down with Maddy Birdcage
Write This Down is the podcast for entrepreneurs, creatives, and ambitious minds who’ve done business by the book—and realised the book wasn’t written for them.
Hosted by Maddy Birdcage, Psychology-Informed Strategist and founder of Birdcage Marketing™, Birdcage School™, Birdcage Studios & Birdcage Ocean Voyages™ this show dives into the marketing strategy, mindset rewrites, and brand direction you need to build more than a business—you’re here to build an iconic life.
Write This Down with Maddy Birdcage
How to Control your Marketing with Psychology & Systems - PART 1
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Hey, it’s Maddy Birdcage and welcome back to Write This Down. I’ve got something really powerful for you today. You’re about to hear the first part of a live webinar I hosted last week called How to Control Your Marketing with Psychology and Systems. We had some incredible feedback from the session
Clare said: "So many lightbulbs going off all around my head"
Toni decided he's going to be our next "Future success story!"
and Kryshla, even dialling in from another timezone made sure I knew she was "Awake and loving everything"
So I've very excited to be sharing it today with podcast listeners.
Now, here’s the thing: most people think they have a content problem. They don’t. They have a control problem. Their pipeline feels unpredictable, their posts don’t convert, and their ads turn into rescue missions. Does this Sound familiar? That's ok! Because this episode is going to change how you see everything.
Over 2 parts, this week and next, I’m going to walk you through the five controls we focus on that will put you back in charge of your marketing. This week we’re covering the first three: how to create demand on purpose with your content, how to turn your opinions into offers, and why paid ads should amplify, not rescue. And what to do instead.
And as always, here's my promise: very practical steps you can start using right now in your business. If you want the slides to follow along, DM us at @birdcageangeladvisors and we’ll send them to you. Or if you’d rather watch the full webinar with visuals, you’ll find it over on YouTube.
Alright, let’s get into part one. Grab a pen, because this is going to rewire the way you think about marketing.
To work with us, book your client assessment call at https://www.birdcageangeladvisors.com/hire-an-angel/
Welcome to Write This Down
Speaker 1Welcome to Write this Down with Maddie Birdcage. As a global marketing advisory founder, a business educator and psychology-informed strategist with a full family life and an addiction to luxury travel, I am here to let you into the inner workings of my businesses, my family life and my mind to show you how to live the good life. Each episode I promise to give you practical takeaways you can take action on right away to get you closer to being that calm, growth-focused CEO in control of your business, your marketing and your life. So make sure you write this down. Hey, it's Maddie Birdcage, and welcome back to Write this Down. I have something really powerful for you. Today you are about to hear the first part of a live webinar that I hosted last week called how to control your marketing with psychology and systems Exactly how we do it inside our advisory for our clients, and we had some incredible feedback from this session. Claire said so many light bulbs going off all around my head right now. Tony decided he's going to be our next future success story, and Krishla, even dialing in from a completely different time zone, made sure I knew she was awake and loving everything. So today I'm very excited to be sharing this exact webinar with our podcast listeners.
Introduction to Marketing Control
Speaker 1Now here is the thing most people they think they have a content problem or a marketing problem. They don't. They actually have a control problem. Their pipeline feels unpredictable, their posts don't work and their ads they treat them as rescue missions. Does this sound familiar? That's okay, because this episode is going to change how you see everything. Now, over two parts this week and next I'm going to walk you through the five controls that we focus on. That will put you back in charge of your marketing and of your sales pipeline. So this week we're going to be covering the first three controllers how to create demand on purpose with your content, how to turn your opinions into offers and why paid ads should amplify, not rescue, your marketing. And, of course, what you should be doing instead. And, as always, here is my promise to you with this podcast very practical steps you can start using right now in your business. And if you want to follow the slides along, just send us a DM on Instagram at Birdcage Angel Advisors and we'll get them right over to you. Or if you'd rather watch the full webinar with visuals alongside, you will find this episode on YouTube. Just hit the link in our Angel Advisors Instagram, and it will take you there.
Speaker 1All right, let's get into part one. Grab a pen, because this is going to rewire how you think about your marketing. This is for service-based brands, coaches and also e-commerce, so it's from any stage, from pre-launch to well-established. It's not for creator-led brands, though, which, where your only thing that you're doing is producing content, you actually need to have a product or a service or an offer that you are selling. So if you are purely creator, then it's probably not the best place for you, but if you are selling a product or a service, then that's what we're going to be talking about today. I also want to make it really clear that this is not a get-rich-quick scheme. This is not for people that don't really care about what they're doing. They're just here to dropship some products or whatever. That's fine if you want to do that, but that's not who we help. We help people that are genuinely wanting to help other people through their passion and through their genius, so if that is you, then you are certainly in the right place.
Speaker 1I want to start this off with a bit of a hot take, which is that your content it's not bad, your marketing it's not wrong and your business isn't broken, even if at times you might like awake in bed and question every decision you've ever made. To that point, you're not truly in business, unless that is what runs through your mind sometimes. The problem that you are probably facing is that you are simply not in control, and the biggest problem that I see is that a lot of you are not trusting what you know. I had a strategy session with a client yesterday and she was really doubting the answers that she was giving me to the questions. But I had to remind her you know your business, you know your audience, you know these, you know what's right. You just haven't had a system that's been able to pull all of this out of your mind into a plan, into a system to then become a tangible marketing strategy. So let me know if you can resonate with that, if you feel like I feel like I have the answers, they're all up in my head but I just haven't been able to put them onto paper or if they're on paper it's a 65 page document and it's just not clear and it's not useful. Let me know if you can resonate with that at all. No, everyone's very clear. Come on guys. Yes, bethany, yep, okay.
Speaker 1So I want to first start just by giving a little backstory as to where it came, where all of this came from, because I think that really matters. But I started Birdcage in 2015. You can see here, this was my first little office desk in a converted cupboard in my, in my one of my first houses. We were a talented team. Yes, we grew quite quickly, we were busy, and yet the problem that we always had was that our pipeline was super unpredictable and I felt like I was constantly on the marketing hamster wheel. We were just coming up with more ideas, more posts, more offers, and it just led to a whole lot more stress, because everything I like to call it the Frankenstein business or the Frankenstein marketing, where it feels like you're just kind of adding on random limbs and legs and body parts just because you're trying to fill a gap and you're trying to move forward.
Speaker 1The other thing that we were doing was throwing ads to rescue weak messaging, and I want to be honest with that. Yes, we were marketers, but to write your own strategy without a clear system is often very difficult, and that's why I'm saying like, you have a 65-page document about all the great things about your business, but it's often very hard to make that a clear, tangible plan when you know so much about your business. I even struggle with it today and that's why I actually get my team to help me write my own strategies. What I found was that things would work for a week or so if they worked at all and then things would fall over. So it's like a classic short-term sugar hit situation, and it was all okay until around 2020, when we had our biggest team size yet of a team of 14. We had really high overheads. We still had no systems, still no deep understanding of how to attract audiences, build trust and make sales inevitable.
Speaker 1And what I believe is that it's very easy to be successful in business when all you have to do is just show up and say what you do. When, back in the day, when ad platforms had a lot more I mean, it was privacy violations, really the tracking that could be done was kind of scary and it was a lot easier to get ad results back then and when your customers and your clients actually had excess dollars to throw around. But we know, I don't know what it's like overseas, but I feel like in Australia people are a lot more when your customers and your clients actually had excess dollars to throw around. But we know I don't know what it's like overseas, but I feel like in Australia people are a lot more tight on the purse strings at the moment. People aren't just throwing money at anything. You really have to work for the sale that's coming through. Are you guys feeling that's the same?
Speaker 1For those of you who've been in business pre-2020, do you feel like there has definitely been a shift with how willing people are to go out and spend money? Obviously, I mean, we had COVID and recessions and all those kind of things, but yeah, there's definitely been a big shift and that's something we noticed as well. And it's crazy that I would admit this because, as a marketer like I should know right, I should know how to get results predictably, especially if that was the service and pre-2021, we were getting solid results for our clients and for ourselves because of what I mentioned that ads were a lot easier, people were willing to spend a lot more money and social media just wasn't as saturated back then. There weren't as many platforms, the algorithms that were chronological, we didn't have to fight with the algo so much and it was just a lot easier to get results right. So I really had two options.
From Debt to Success: Maddie's Story
Speaker 1At one point, my business was like 120K in debt, which is crazy to admit, but I either had to walk away from this business, tail between my legs, or I had to figure it out. And what I'm wondering is have you guys faced a similar problem? Maybe you're going through it now, maybe it's somewhere that you've been. Is that something that you guys have experienced before? You might not want to admit it on chat that's okay, but I know for a fact, working with so many brands, that's something that we all go through. Obviously, I figured it out, and it was one day in November in 2021, that I knew that I had figured it out, and what I want to show you is everything that I've learned since that time. That has allowed not only my brands to survive, but also allow my brands to thrive, even in the toughest economic environments, in the most competitive fields, and we are now running a smaller team than ever.
Speaker 1And so what the turning point was for us? It came when I stopped treating marketing like just a platform problem and stopped treating it like a band-aid problem and started treating it like a behavior problem. So I went back to psychology, human psychology, and we rebuilt our approach so it was built around how people actually make decisions. We were able to productize our point of view, so it's sold on its own. And then, once we figured all that out, that's when we started layering quite simple systems that have since evolved into some really incredible systems. That removed the decision fatigue. It removed the need for everything to rely on me and how I was feeling that day as the founder to make everything run smoother repeatable content, formats, weekly rhythms and automation where it made sense. So that month we not only paid off our 120K tax debt, but we also posted a 90K profit. And that was exactly 12 months to the month after. I promised myself I would figure it out, and what the result was? It was control. It wasn't perfection. It's not about being perfect with your marketing. It is about control. And we've since used the same method with thousands of brands, from founder-led startups to established teams all over the world, because what we really figured out was that when you control demand and decisions your growth, it really stops feeling so random and you actually know exactly what button to push, what lever to pull to make the sales go up or if you're at capacity to collect those leads so that you can use them for a later point.
Speaker 1Okay, so why listen to me? So I know there's some fresh faces in here. I know we've actually got some clients on the call as well, which is super exciting. I love that. But I'll give you a little overview of who I am. But I basically worked across the business and marketing ecosystem for almost two decades. I know I look so young. How could that be possible? That's the Botox, my friends. I have formal training, I have real world delivery and I've been lucky enough to partner with brands like TikTok, directly with Adobe, with HP, as well as working with thousands and thousands of small businesses as well, which is actually what I'm super passionate about. And I also am a business growth mentor for the Queensland government and I lecture to MBA students. All of those things.
Speaker 1I really love sharing my knowledge and that's why I really love doing these webinars as well. So what I really want to make clear is that I'm not just sharing theory, which I have that backing, but I'm actually sharing what happens in the wild, what we do every single day with our advisory clients. And, most importantly, I want to say that I'm very passionate and stubborn and I'm creative enough that I think I managed to figure something 99% of marketers have not, which is predictable results, which I mean as a marketing advisory. That's very important, but the reality in marketing land is that that's not such a common occurrence. These are just some places we've been featured. We're partners with all the major partners and these are some of our notable clients, but, as I mentioned, small business really has my heart, okay.
Speaker 1So what I want to ask yourself? I want you guys to ask yourself, and I do really want to get feedback in the comment section, just so I know exactly where you guys are at and I can tailor this to where you're at right now. But are you publishing on hope? So do you ever just post and you're just like I hope this works, works, but you don't really know and I'm gonna, I'm gonna pause and you're gonna have to answer me in the chat. Tony, yes, bethany, yes, marie, post and pray too often. Ash, yeah, sonia, yeah, yeah, we all do it. We all do it, because what is the other alternative unless you know how to do it differently? Right?
Speaker 1Have any of you I spoke rescue wrong, I think have any of you turned to paid ads to rescue your marketing or rescue your business. Have you dropped a bundle on paid ads because some agency dude or lady told you that, yeah, we can get you 50 leads if you spend $10,000 with us. Maybe not even that much, but I know for me that when times are when times have been tough, it's always it feels like a really easy solution. I'm sorry to hear that you guys have experienced that, but it is really really common. The reason why agencies always suggest ads is because it's easy for them to do. They don't need to film content with you, they don't need to work with you on your messaging. They just click some buttons, run some things and then pretend they have the magic formula. And then it comes back when you're three months in and you're like, why am I not getting results? Oh well, your website probably needs to be updated. Oh, we probably need some better ad creative Story. You guys have probably heard.
Speaker 1I'm sorry to say Okay, so do you guys have plenty of ideas? So something that I've noticed I used to think that a lot of our clients and our students they lacked the initial ideas, but what I actually found that a lot of brands that we work with. They have plenty of ideas about their content, but then there's no actual go live system, there's no way to get them out of your head, get them onto your computer, onto a piece of paper even, and get a process going so that those ideas become reality. Is that something you guys experience, so that those ideas become reality. Is that something you guys experience? Yeah, now this is a deeper question.
Speaker 1Do you feel like your point of view, how you think about your business, your industry? Do you feel like that's really clear and that your audience could repeat that? So, if people like, if people come to me, that's really clear and that your audience could repeat that? So if people like, if people come to me, they're oh, maddy, you talk about psychology and funnels and systems Like that's my point of view, right, but do you think your audience has that from you? Yeah, and then, have you posted for more than 14 days and not gotten leads? Because within 14 days, new accounts might be tend to be a little trickier. But if you have an established account, if you're posting for more than 14 days consistently, if you're not getting leads, then there is something up. You should at least get one lead, one nibble, if you're fishing for 14 days straight, you should catch a fish, right, okay? So you guys are all definitely in the right place. You're all exactly where all of our clients and our students have been in the past. So that's great, because I know how to fix that.
Control 1: Creating Demand with Psychology
Speaker 1So what I'm going to do today, I'm going to show you how to create demand on purpose, turn your opinions into offers, use paid to amplify what's working not as a rescue, not as a band-aid systematize and automate and then use psychology as a tool and, of course, doing it ethically. I think people get afraid to use marketing or sales psychology because it feels manipulative and, yes, sure it could be, and you've probably been on the other end of what feels like a very manipulative piece of content or sales pitch. That's not how we do it. We believe that selling is a service. We believe that if you're attracting the right people that you can help best, then it is your job to work with the human mind to get them over their fear, their obstacles, and I'll take you through that in more detail, okay, so what we're going to do, I'm going to do the live teaching and some client examples thrown in there. There will be some action steps for you to take this week. As I said, this will be sent out via email to you after as well. There is going to be I always want to be really transparent about this there is an optional next step for people that want to continue to learn more about this, which is obviously going to be a paid offering into what we do. But this training stands on its own, and then we're going to have the live Q&A as well.
Speaker 1Okay, so let's get into it Now. This is a really behind. This is a brand new webinar presentation, so I might be a little bit rusty on it, but this is a behind the scenes view of how we get our brands, as an advisory or as program students, to take control. So, with each control, I'm going to be giving you the starting questions to get you going, to get you thinking in the right way and to be able to make decisions that will make all of the difference. So the first thing that I want to talk about is how to create demand, not just content.
Speaker 1Now, there is a big difference between viral reach, which is just random views, which, unfortunately, the platforms they're already messing with our minds. They're getting us to chase those views. They're getting us to wake up in the morning and to say, oh, did that video finally pop off? Like they're getting us to come back again and again and again because that's their prerogative. They want to get more views on their platform right, but what as a business? And yeah, if you're a content creator, sure, that's how you get paid through views, but if you're a business, we want viral resonance, and what that means is we want to go deeper with the people that will become paying customers of ours, which may generally mean less views, but you're more memorable because of it.
Speaker 1Now I want to show you some examples, and the screenshots are bloody awful, but I want to show you some examples from my own account. You can go onto my account and go and have a look at my best performing post. It is this one here. It's had 3.3 million views. Did I get any sales from it? Zero, in fact. I actually think that video going viral put me back because I had so much engagement, so many comments clogging up my feed that I couldn't actually pinpoint and keep up with all of the comments from people on better perform, on different videos that are actually asking genuine questions and that I can build a relationship with. So I truly believe that going viral, getting numbers on your videos, sure it helps, it can help, but it can actually be detrimental, especially if you're a one man, one woman show or a small team where you can't actually keep up with that demand.
Speaker 1Now I want to show you these two other videos. Yes, this one's almost at a million views. It's a little older, but these two videos have made me hundreds and thousands of dollars inside of my business and you might think, oh yeah, well, it's because it's almost got a million views, or 228,000 views. But I also want to show you these videos because these videos have also brought through a ton of leads for me, tens of thousands of dollars worth of client work and students, and the reason that. I know that. I know that we can't track organic as well, but because people typically, first of all, if I post, I'm intentional about what I post, and then I can see the calendar bookings coming in or I can see the purchases happening, and I know that came directly because I spoke about that. But a lot of the time on my client assessment calls, people will say to me oh, I saw that video that you wrote about, that you made about funnels or whatever it may have been in the last week, and that's what got me to book the call, so I can literally track which videos are making me money. And that's what will happen to you when you start posting for viral resonance rather than just for viral reach, so to create demand.
Speaker 1So how do we actually do all of this? We need to actually speak to the minds of our audience, not just play to the algorithm, and that is what so many marketing programs are teaching you. It's like posting times and hooks and all Like yes, a hook is very important, but if the content that follows the hook is rubbish, there's no point. Who cares if you get 5 million views if no one's actually going to turn into a paying customer. Do you guys want 5 million views just for fun? It's actually very stressful, I will tell you. So how do we do this? How do we speak to the minds? You guys all still there? Hello, wake up. I need to know that you guys are here with me. It keeps me going. So how do we actually get into the minds of our audience? Right Now?
Speaker 1There is a psychological shortcut that I kind of discovered through my own therapy sessions with a psychologist, which ended up just literally being us nerding out about psychology in the end. So I mean that was great, but it's something called schemas, and schema therapy is actually a type of therapy that a psychologist is anyone a psychologist, by the way that psychologists can use in how they treat their patients, where you really go back to understanding. You know what was imprinted on you as a child, like. What lessons were you learned? What trauma big T trauma, little t trauma? What spectrum? What did you experience as a child that helped shape your view of the world?
Speaker 1What we have basically done is taken those nine psychological schemas and reworked them to become just five, for the purposes of marketing, for the purposes of grouping our audiences into one of five schemas so that we can speak to their deeper desires, because most profiling from if you're lucky that a market is doing a strategy at all most profiling stops at demographics or psychographics, so who they are and how they think or what their lifestyle looks like. But the real power, that is a layer deeper. That is these schemas, and they are as I said. They're just the emotional patterns that formed early in life in all of us that quietly shapes every decision that we make, every reaction that we make. It's why someone will react badly to something you've said versus why someone else will react positively to something you've said. And you may have said the exact same thing to those two people, but because of the schema that's running, the programming that's running in our minds, they take it differently.
Speaker 1Every audience is driven by one dominant schema. If you get it right, that is how you people become obsessed with you, and so I want to show you our schema archetype matrix. So this is security and trust, community and connection, self-acceptance and growth, safety and well-being and empowerment and achievement. Now you can then see this is what we teach in our programs and to our clients. It's aligned with one of the nine psychological schemas. It talks about what the audience is seeking an example, marketing message, the desired traits that they want of the brand, and then the archetype the brand archetype, and that's just like your brand personality, and this is actually a really quick way to know that your marketing is off.
Speaker 1If you have, like, a security and trust schema but your archetype is presenting as the magician, that's not going to work. Why do you think that is Because if you have a security and trust schema, it means that you want to see all details of the process. You don't want to be surprised you hate surprise parties. You want to know that you have a caregiver, someone who is there to take you every step of the way, not a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat and who knows what they're going to do next, and it's not safe and I can't trust what's about to happen.
Understanding Schemas in Marketing
Speaker 1Is this landing for you guys? Because this is pretty deep stuff and I've just kind of like dropped it on you in the first control. Yeah, it makes sense, right, it makes a lot of sense. Great, I hope you guys. Would you only choose one? It's hard. Yes, so, people, you can have a dominant and supporting schema. We always recommend going with a dominant schema. And, um bethany, actually I'm going to be really transparent here. We're working on your strategy at the moment and maria and I had like a 90 minute powwow about which schema your audience is, because there were two that could very well be the schema of your audiences.
Speaker 1But we have to get this right because, if you don't, it shapes all of your marketing messages and we we ended up coming to a very clear agreement and a very clear way forward, but you really have to workshop it and in and if you're doing this by yourself, we actually have a quiz through our programs that you can do. And we also have additional support platforms like our chat, gvt, custom chat, gvt and our help center, and you also have support tickets you can raise. Because schemas is probably the biggest thing people get stuck on. It's also the first thing that you do with us, because it shapes everything else, but when you get it like, this is the hardest part. It's also the first thing that you do with us, because it shapes everything else, but when, when you get it like, this is the hardest part, everything else becomes so so much easier.
Speaker 1Um, I also wanted to show you an example. So this is how much the schemas matter. Because these are two examples of, um, how audiences respond, how we should speak to our audiences. If you have a connection and community schema, we list out, like the key emotional need, how they decide things, how to win them, what turns them off, and then we give you examples. So like, for example, we have the empowerment and achievement schema. That's all about success and failure and it's all about people like you see a lot of like, that's actually our advisory schema. It's that they want. These are people that want to be successful, so you guys probably fit into this schema right here.
Speaker 1Um, but it's like what the way that we need to speak to our audiences? We know they don't want to dwell on the pain points. They don't want to dwell on like, oh it's so hard and this doesn't work, and all they actually want to focus on what the opportunities are and all the great things that they can do. And so when I write like the canva, when I do up my social media posts and I automatically my marketer brain switches into talking about the pain points have to be like no, stop, focus on the schema. They want to focus on the positives. The opportunities don to focus on the positives. The opportunities Don't dwell on the negatives and the hard things. Let's focus on everything that's available to them. Is this starting to land, guys? Nope, have I frightened you off already? Okay, so, as I said, your schemas need to filter through all of your marketing content. It also needs to become and I will talk about funnels very shortly, but it needs to be most of your top of funnel content. And top of funnel content is all about purely getting attention. It's not about driving sales, it's just to get people to know that you exist in the first place.
Speaker 1Now I want to show you a clear client example. This is from one of our students. Actually, she is an interior designer in New Zealand. This was the type of content she was posting before she joined our programs Typical interior design stuff. Typical stuff like, if you think you're an interior designer and I need to post content, I'm going to post about different types of subway tiles, or here's a design concept, or here's some art deco inspired kitchen stuff, right, like that's what you would think is an interior designer would post. Right, she wasn't getting anywhere. She literally bought our program with our last dollar and you're actually going to hear um, that from her own voice later on.
Speaker 1But when she did our program, so by changing her messaging to align with her schema, she actually increased her sales conversion rate to 100%. So that means that every single person that booked a call with her through a website became a customer. And this is what I mean. It's like hey, her sales calls. I'm not sure on that data. That number may have actually dropped off. She may have actually gotten less calls booked in her calendar. I don't think she did. But even if you get less calls in your calendar, great, less time on the phone with people that aren't going to spend money with you. And if you're converting 100% of people that book calls, you're going to love showing up for sales calls. And it's because, like she posted this video here, we're still not talking big numbers, guys.
Control 2: Turning Opinions into Offers
Speaker 1Look at this, mums, when school pickup undoes six hours of cleaning in six minutes, like, that's kind of like a funny, like top of funnel wildcard piece of content that's really relating to that audience scheme, which is very clear on who her audience is right. And here's another one I love the real reason behind after school chaos. You can just tell, like, if you let me know, if you guys can see it, this gets me really excited. You can see that this is like broad and bland and you'd probably scroll past it, right, this stuff. You're like, if you're a mom that deals with after school chaos, you're like hell, yeah, yeah, okay. So this is something that this is going to be part of the questions we send you. Don't feel like you need to answer them now. You can screenshot them if you want, but I'm going to send you them in an email anyway, but these are the questions that I want you to answer in order for you to start moving towards posting like we do, posting like our clients and our students do. We've got a late comer, emma. I'm going to have to give you detention for coming late. That's okay, okay. So let's go to our second control, which is turning your opinions into offers, and I know this is something that probably scares a lot of you, but it's the key. It's going to unlock everything.
Speaker 1People don't choose customers because of. Most people think customers choose them because of what they sell, but it is absolutely not true. People actually choose you because of how you do what you do and then who they, as the customer, become when they work with you. It's all about the customer, and that's what people say. It's all about the customer. They're right, but they're kind of missing the point. It's all about who the customer becomes, and I'm going to explain this to you. The problem is that 99% of brands they don't make this clear, and even the 1% that figure it out, they don't realize why it's working.
Speaker 1What you need, what every brand needs, is a signature approach and a brand revolution. Your signature approach. That's quite self-explanatory, right? Like you need a custom way of doing things, your brand revolution. That's you drawing a line in the sand. That's why, in our strategies, we have an audience but we also have an anti-audience. So, like, who are we really not wanting to attract? You want to draw a line in the sand. I saw an ad recently on a billboard that said, like people love to fight and yeah, they do but it's like let's not look at it from a negative perspective. It's like people love to fight for what they believe in. So you need to actually stand for something. You have to stand for something you can't. Let me just show you the examples.
Speaker 1Okay, so this is Louise. She is a social media marketer from the UK that has been in our programs. When she, before she joined us, she was posting things like this, like content ideas for a business coach, or the first step to business success, or talking about herself as a social media manager. Again, makes sense if that's what you do. That they're the kind of posts that you see flopping around and you're like, oh, I'm going to post that, but after doing our program, she had more leads and clients in three months than she did all of the 12 months prior to enrolling with us and, again, look at these numbers.
Speaker 1I want to make it really clear. It doesn't. You don't need 90,000 followers, like I do. You don't need like 1,000 followers. Imagine 1,000 people following your brand along and listening to what you have to say. I doubt you guys could even cater to a thousand clients, right? You can maybe not even a hundred clients. If only 10 clients signed on to you this week, you'd probably be overwhelmed.
Speaker 1But this is the type of stuff she really stepped out of her shell. Advice I'd give if I wasn't hurting your feelings. Social media advice, I think, is bullshit. What if they judge you? The truth hurts. People-pleasing posts are turning people off faster than a dry salad at a barbecue. You can really see her personality coming through. It's really clear what her anti-audience is. It's really clear that she's actually standing for something and that translated into sales.
Speaker 1So what I want you to ask yourself in these questions here? Stuff like what do you believe about your industry that most of us get wrong? I'm not going to go through it because we have a lot still to cover, but again, these are the questions that will get you moving, get you on the right path. Okay, how are we feeling? Are our brains exploding yet or are we still good Tony's doing good More? Please Do we have two Tonys? How funny, okay.
Control 3: Using Paid Ads to Amplify
Speaker 1So using paid ads to amplify, not rescue? Now the way that I see ads they don't rescue weak content, they actually just make the problem bigger. Like it's the same with this idea of money. It's like the more money someone makes, it doesn't make them a better person, it actually amplifies who they already are. So if you've got like some mother Teresa who's all of a sudden become a billionaire overnight, she's probably going to be an even better person. But if you've already got a mean, nasty person when they're broke, they're probably not going to really change. If they make a lot of money and it's the same for ads they make the problem bigger. If it's not working, they don't fix anything. If nobody's listening to you when you're speaking to 100 people for free, paying to shout at 100,000 of them is not going to change that.
Speaker 1It's why we always want to prove the message first, prove the content first. And if it works small, if it works in an organic setting, then the ads can make them work bigger. And so that's why we say use paid ads to amplify, not to rescue. So the way that I want you to think about it is to use organic content as your testing ground, and that also takes the pressure off. So it's like every single post doesn't need to work. You'll notice on our accounts we've got plenty of posts that flop. But you know what we're doing. We're trying things out, we're testing and then all of a sudden some posts go really well and we're like bingo, more of that. Put that in an ad, send an email with that subject line, make more content like that, and that is how you win at this game.
Speaker 1Of course, you need a system to be able to measure all of that, and I'm going to tell you what metrics to look for. Look at your posts, look at your emails, look at your videos. They are all experiments, okay, and when it does work small, that's your signal. That's when ads make sense, because you're not guessing, you're actually scaling stuff that works. So I will go through the funnel, but just keep this in mind At your top of funnel, all you want to do is get attention and you want to know that people are watching. So saves, shares, likes and yes, views matter at this point. At your middle of funnel. That's where we're building trust and we're getting people to start moving closer to you as a brand. So that's where we want DMs and that's where we want opt-ins to your free lead magnets or your low-cost offers right. And then your bottom of funnel. That's all about getting the sales. So clearly, sales is the metrics that we are looking for. Now I want to show you what a difference this can make. This is actually results that we only just heard about last week, so I figured I might as well put these in there timely.
Speaker 1This is an advisory client. She's only a small business, a small, super small fashion business. She's a mom. She works from home. This was her ads before her rowers. So for every dollar she was spending, that's how much the ads were returning. They were not profitable, they were not working right. She wasn't spending a huge amount Like profitable, they were not working right. She wasn't spending a huge amount Like I think her budget's probably 50 bucks a day, but they were literally costing her money and that's not the purpose of ads. If we then look at, she had an advisory session with Maria, her advisor, and literally that next week that's what her results were looking like. We more than doubled her ROAS. So now for every dollar she's spending on ads. This is what she's returning, and you have to remember, if you're not paying an ad agency crazy exorbitant fees to manage your ads, this is good enough. This is making money. You've turned a dollar into $1.35, right?
Speaker 1Obviously, this is just the starting point. We still have a long way to go, but it we four extra sales in one week, and so how did we do that? What we did? This is what this is a really clean ad structure that everyone can use. We took her best performing organic post, something that worked really well, got great engagement, great comments, decent amount of views. We made it a top of funnel ad, so we sent that ad out to cold audiences who've never heard or interacted with her brand ever before. The actual post didn't sell anything, though, but what we then did? We retargeted the audience. So we told Meta show this next ad to everyone that's watched this video, with a product-focused ad that then goes and buys. Does that make sense to people? Super simple, and it's kind of like huh, that actually makes a lot of sense, me just going, oh, buy my shit, and sending it out to a broad audience. That's why it didn't work. You have to capture the audience first, before you then start, and that's a really simple mini funnel that anyone can use.