Ep 16: Client Spotlight! Alyssa's Journey learning Local Ads

Ever feel like you’re posting on social media but it’s just going into the void? In this episode of Hometown Advantage, you’ll hear how Alyssa, who runs marketing for a renovations and cabinetry company in Canada, turned things around with simple local ads. Her story is proof that you don’t need a massive budget or fancy strategy to get real results—like landing projects worth over $50,000 from a single visibility ad.

You’ll learn:
 ✨ Why stock photos and generic agency posts don’t move the needle for local businesses
 ✨ How even the simplest visibility ad can bring in high-value leads
 ✨ What to do if Ads Manager feels overwhelming (and how to make it easy)
 ✨ How to test, tweak, and refine your offers so your ads bring in the right clients
 ✨ Why follower ads and lead gen ads can work—if you set them up the right way

By the end, you’ll see exactly how running ads the right way can finally make your marketing efforts work instead of feeling like wasted time.

🔗 Join the Hometown Advantage program: hello.nicoleeldridgemedia.com/join

 🔗 Sign up for the free September 9th workshop, The Four Step Profitable Local Ad Formula: www.nicoleeldridgeads.com/live

🔗 Join my free Facebook group for Ad Makeover Month: comment MAKEOVER on any of my Instagram posts @nicoleeldridgeads
and I’ll send you the link

Transcript

0:00

Welcome back to Hometown Advantage, the podcast. I have got such a good conversation for you today. Because I got to sit down with my client, Alyssa, who does the marketing for a local renovations and cabinetry company up in Canada, and her story is such a perfect example of the magic and power of local ads and why my strategy works so well. We talked about so many things. Like how her company transitioned from relying on stock photos and those generic agency posts I see so often to running simple ads that actually bring in real leads, including projects worth over$50,000. That came from a visibility ad that Alyssa launched. I don't wanna give it all away, so I'm gonna stop there. One quick note before I do dive in though, is that my power actually went out right as we were wrapping up the episode. I have lived in this house for 10 months and the power has never gone out. It wasn't raining, it wasn't storming, and right as we were finishing up, the power goes out. Our recording ends. It doesn't come back on. I was in full panic for about 25 minutes that I lost the entire recording, but shout out to my recording software DS script. Oh my gosh. They have been amazing in more ways than one, but the fact that they were able to help me recover, it was such a blessing. Okay, let's get into it.

Nicole: 1:39

Okay, I think we're on. Okay. Hi, how are you?

Alyssa: 1:44

Oh, so amazing and I am so excited to be here. I'm a huge fan of your work. You've taught me so much, so I'm just really excited to be chatting with you.

Nicole: 1:54

Awesome. I'm so happy you're here. Thank you so much for doing this. I think that it's really going to help people who are thinking about joining the program or who are struggling with ads for their own business and company and things like that. It's gonna help them see like the magic of understanding how local ads actually work. So let's just start by you sharing a little bit about yourself and the work you do.

Alyssa: 2:19

Yeah, I'd be happy to. I'm actually in my early thirties, I like to say on the good side of 30. Oh good. We have that in common. I did communications in university like many of us do, and not really knowing what it meant. Even then I was kind of so new to it. I didn't even realize that it meant marketing in those days. And I just started learning about the techniques of information with the public and. got me more interested from there into marketing due to social media and we could still remember a time like before Facebook

Nicole: 2:59

Yeah. Good. Barely, but I can.

Alyssa: 3:03

Exactly, yeah, it was like middle school. But now it got so big, so fast, and especially in those days like Facebook was everything and I got really interested in it. Just the way that brands would communicate with their audience and the types of marketing that they would use, or if they would go edgy and funny, or if they would kind of go a little more like elegant and try to attract a different, I just got interested in. they were relaying their offer to people. I started in a lot of admin positions. Most of the jobs that I've had, I've actually started as an executive assistant, and from there I would take on marketing tasks in my role, then with a lot of my jobs, including this one, started as an assistant for the executive and then took on so much marketing that I became. essential in the marketing field then just kind of relayed that into managing the marketing for these companies it's been a blast.

Nicole: 4:07

Amazing. Love that. So yes, your role and kind of what you do day to day look different than what a lot of the people who come into the program how it looks for them. Like I have a lot of solo business. Owners or people who maybe are thriving in their business. They have a couple people helping them, but they need to learn as to take it to that next step. Basically, tell us about the company you work for and like your role and what your day to day looks like for them.

Alyssa: 4:37

I would love to. Yeah. I think I'm really one of the unique people in the program because it's kind of a program for business owners, and then I come in and I'm like. Hey, I actually work at a local business and I'm doing the marketing. I could use a little help learning these ads for sure. And we do renovations in custom cabinetry. So I work for Niko Renovations, NYCO. It sometimes people call it Nico because we're in Atlantic Canada, so it's a very French area. Actually, our office is based in like a French town kind of thing. So we do get a lot of. French and English versions and our cabinetry division is called Mabel Meison. It's so diverse and so fun. We're just trying to get our name out there. It's not highly competitive but there is competition. It's competitive in the sense that there are other. Renovation and cabinetry companies in our area. Now, not all of them are advertising, which I realized was a key differentiator and I see them seeing what we're doing and then they're creating their Instagrams now and they're starting to create their videos now. So I think we're having a little bit of some influence in the market that way, which is really cool. And really like, it's been a huge change once we started advertising. So felt like the content wasn't just going nowhere.

Nicole: 6:07

Yes. I love that and I think that it's such a great story to showcase with you because this is a great opportunity for people in bigger. Companies and businesses to come in and learn ads because like your story goes, a lot of them are paying agencies who aren't quite up on all of the best strategies and best ways to go about getting the cheapest results. So can you tell us a little bit about what the marketing for your company was like before you joined Hometown Advantage?

Alyssa: 6:42

I would love to. Yeah, so we work for a renovations company and then our newer branch is the custom cabinetry. They had hired an agency like you mentioned, and they were just posting to the Nyco profile, just our main like renovations profile, but their posts were just stock photos, with kind of a generic caption. And they weren't doing any, they definitely weren't doing any meta ads at the time. They were just doing a bit of Google ads and SEO. And then that's what I came into for the marketing. So I said, Hey guys, we're good on that. For the posts, I think I can probably, even with my limited capacity at the time I was like, I think I can probably do a little better just to be like something a little more organic. Real, real people, real pictures. Yeah. So I took that and I said, that's all right. We'll take over from here. And that started to work. It started to get a little bit of traction. It started to get a little bit more engagement, but I was still really limited. And for about a year, I was just posting and posting trying to keep up with trying to post, especially because we added custom cabinetry, my elison. So I had two brands to start posting for. And all of a sudden I was like, I'm not getting anywhere with this like I'm posting, but if nobody's seeing it, then what's the point? Am I just screaming at the wall? You know? So that's what I started to say, like, okay, there's gotta be something we can do to get more eyes on our page so we're not wasting time. So that we're, you know, our content's actually getting to people who might be interested in seeing it, that's when we took it to the next level.

Nicole: 8:39

Yeah. That's awesome. So when it comes to ads and you started ads, first of all, I wanna say when it comes to hiring these types of agencies to post for you, and it's, I see it so many times with so many people, the stock photos with a sentence or general two sentence in the captions. I, you know, I've gone back and forth on is it worth paying for this kind of service just to show up so that you're showing up on social media and that you have a page instead of like ghosting it or something. And I'm almost leaning towards at this point, no. Like, it's almost just worth ghosting your page because. If you can at least get yourself, get six posts up there, just leave that, even if they're old. I don't see how there can really ever be a return on your investment when you're paying for somebody to do that for you. It's honestly devaluing your brand a little bit for when they go to your page and it's just like giving nothing, right? So it's so hard. It's not that they're, I don't fault the agencies or anything. It's very hard to personalize. Content when they don't know you like and they don't know your brand, they don't know your business like you and the other people at your company do. So just my little 2 cents on that, I've worked with a lot of people who are paying. You know, and it's a pretty affordable too. It's not like outrageous, but they're paying for a service like that, and I can just tell every single time I go to their page, I'm like, I think they're all going to the same person. Or it's just all these agencies are still using these strategies that is what worked back in the day when Facebook was newer and things like that, you just had to show up. It did not matter, and it just got people so visible so fast when Facebook was first starting. So those things worked because. They went from this much visibility to this, and so it didn't really matter what they said, how they showed up, and of course

Alyssa: 10:39

Absolutely.

Nicole: 10:40

changed a lot.

Alyssa: 10:41

It's been so different. And I told them too when I got here, like if you're a client considering doing a big renovation, you're probably not gonna go with the company that's just posting stock photos of, you know, generic construction sites or something, or that doesn't even look that nice. it's just you. Yeah. It's like, why would that sell me or make me want to do business with you guys? Like you said, almost devalues the brand. It's just not enough to clinging onto as a viewer. It's a turnoff really. It really is, and I don't, like you said, I don't think it was expensive, but when I told them, Hey, like I think we just wanna take it over, they were actually like, the agency said, we're actually getting rid of this program anyway, because they're like, it's not really, we're finding, it's not really working for people. I'm like, mm-hmm. I could see that.

Nicole: 11:38

Hey, they're realizing and you know, with bigger companies it, they're slower to keep up with things, right? That's why. I just love the idea of people learning to do it themselves, someone on their team or someone that works for the company, learning to do it for them. Or even to me hiring like a freelancer is even a better route than one of those big agencies because of those exact reasons.

Alyssa: 12:04

I was listening to your podcast the other day and something that you mentioned was just like hiring a va, using the what to say workbook that you do, just giving them the content and the prompts it's like. That's amazing.

Nicole: 12:17

Yeah. The problem is that people. They don't have that base. They don't have that what to say, workbook, you know, SOP, standard Operating Procedure to hand off in the first place. And they really just wanna hand over. All of it, the strategy, the thinking, any of it. And I don't blame them'cause it's a lot. But it just doesn't work like that, unfortunately.

Alyssa: 12:40

Exactly,

Nicole: 12:41

to when you decide, okay, we gotta do ads, we gotta get visible, all of that, and I guess you found me from an ad, which most people do. What made you decide to ultimately join the program?

Alyssa: 12:55

I had been interested in your work for a while. I took the initial ad offering your lower offer to The door. It works because that's what happened to me. I took the visibility ad course and I was so excited about the opportunity that came with it, and I just loved it. I just took it and was like, all right. This is what I needed to hear to get started. For some reason, like even reels and everything, I wasn't really doing them, which is a marketer is crazy to me, but. Until you watched your video, I didn't. It was such a block in my head of how easy they could be. I thought like, oh, there's no way I could think of a creative enough idea to be worth filming. And then I watched your stuff and you're just like, just film.

Nicole: 13:46

Film something and then write something over at the top.

Alyssa: 13:49

It is not that hard and it like broke something in my brain that was like this big wall standing up and it was just like, it shattered that wall for me and I was like, oh. Why am I making this so complicated? And I just, I just did it. I started recording content and asking if I could go to the sites to record some things. If I could go to the sites and record that we had with the client, like our first consultations, things like that. And started posting those with small budgets. Like you were saying, like in Canada, we can't do a dollar a day. It's a dollar 38 per day minimum. It's fine. It's not that much more so, and I just started recording some stuff, putting it out and waiting to see what would happen. And of course, following your advice of like seeing how to know if they were successful, if they were working. really the way that I knew that it was making a difference was leads started to call in and say, oh my God, I love your Facebook. Oh my God, I love your Instagram. And that had never happened before.

Nicole: 14:56

Oh my gosh. That's amazing.

Alyssa: 14:59

That was when I was like, oh my God, is working.

Nicole: 15:03

Hallelujah.

Alyssa: 15:05

Yes. I got through to some people and we started to get clients just because they had seen us on Facebook, and it wasn't even lead generation ads at that point. It was still visibility, and they would see us and they would be like, huh, I'm kind of curious. And they would follow us or check out a little few more of our posts and then they'd be like. You know what? I have been wanting to get my place done. We had one client who she just wanted like her first floor, like fully redone. Basically. She wanted the kitchen, she wanted the bathroom. A couple of the bedrooms touched up and it was all just through a visibility ad that we got that deal. And I'm sure that deal was over like. I can't even remember now. It's probably between 50 and$80,000. Yeah. From just running visibility ads. So that's just the value of being seen your community.

Nicole: 15:56

Yes. And then for people who don't know, I'm just gonna explain really quick about the mini course because I can tell there's some people listening in their cars wherever they're listening. Like, what? Mini course, because I don't actually currently have it for sale because, no, it's coming back. It will come back, but. That was such an amazing way to bring people in and like Alyssa has explained just now, the value that people got from that course. And I saw that at several different price points, but low, quite low. Was so good and I need to bring it back. I just needed to refine some things about the way I'm funneling people in. It's working so well the way I'm funneling people into hometown Advantage. And this just goes to show how every business owner needs to constantly take the data that's happening and. Refine their ways in order to find that best way of people coming in. What I'll say, and this is just a fun behind the scenes tidbit, is when I started the ads for the mini course, it took off. It flew like hotcakes. It was amazing. But of course, just like I explained to people, when you're coming up with an offer and you're running ads to it, your offer needs to be worth the price of spending money on ads. So my point with the mini courses never to make a million dollars, it was a mini course, it was a small price. It was to funnel people into hometown advantage. So I probably basically broke even like on the mini course in ad spend, and I was funneling people into Hometown Advantage, and that's how I was making my revenue. The rate and speed at which people were funneling into hometown Advantage was much slower than I wanted it to be, and that's where the pause came. But when I tell you, so I ran those in like February, March-ish. Do you remember when you bought it, by chance? The Minicourse?

Alyssa: 17:59

It would've been in and around March, I took that and then shortly thereafter, I think it was in April, that I purchased the hometown Advantage package.

Nicole: 18:08

Okay. Yes. I think it was March, and then I was wanting it to be faster, of course, and I got impatient, turned'em off. When I tell you like May, June, the amount of people coming into Hometown Advantage that came from that course was. Insane. So it taught me two things be more patient and let's turn them back on. And so that, what, four months from now, I can see the same thing, that same big uptick. And there's tweaks I can make to help speed up the process for people on my end. But anyways, that's a little behind the scenes story on the mini course and how. It is a not available moment, but it's coming and I changed the name. It's gonna be called the first add fast track so people keep your eyes peeled, for that and

Alyssa: 18:57

a hundred percent do it. It's worth it.

Nicole: 19:00

yes. I won't say that you'll get$80,000 deal off of your dollar ads, but I'll also say that obviously possible. Here's Alyssa.

Alyssa: 19:10

Exactly like I never would've thought so either. the goal of the ads, as you know,

Nicole: 19:15

right?

Alyssa: 19:16

I just wanted people to see us a change. I was tired into the void.

Nicole: 19:21

Yes, that's exactly what it's for. So also for people who are listening, just so you know, inside Hometown Advantage, I teach people three types of ads. And that visibility ad that Alyssa's talking about is the very first type. And I package that together as its own little mini course to get you started. And that I always like to say is one of like the great parts of ads in my process is that. I, of course, want every single person to get through the whole program, and I want them to launch all the ads because your results are only gonna get better if you go through all the steps. But I do actually have several people who end up stopping, like even after the first step because they're happy with the results they're getting from that, and they're just not quite ready to keep going. So I always like to kind of. Say that to people who are like, I don't have time. Oh my gosh. Three different ads, all these things. I'm like, listen, even if you just got what up, it could make a huge difference. And you don't have to see that as a waste. Like, oh, if I joined the program and I only got one ad up, what a waste. No, if you go from here to there because of that one ad, that's amazing. That's my little caveat, but of course you joined the program and you went forward with the rest of the ads, so was there anything that surprised you about running ads once you got started with the full program?

Alyssa: 20:51

Well, like I mentioned at first, it was so much easier than I was making it out to be in my head. I had gone into the ads manager before and was just. Overwhelmed and I'm sure a lot of people feel that way'cause it's a lot of information. The second you open page and until you actually know what you're looking at, you're not really sure what to do with all of it. Right. Because we'd had a media agency before, they did test Facebook ads for us, I could see a little bit of like what they had started and I was like, oh my God. Like this is. Intense, but they hadn't been getting the results that we wanted. And then once I started going through your program, I realized just what you said earlier, the media agency that we're working with is kind of still working on a bit of a, I don't wanna say outdated, but just like they might be a playbook or two back, a step or two behind, because they were still choosing. Traffic for their goal. And we weren't getting anywhere, but they're like, we're bringing lots of people to your site. And well, that's good, but they're not becoming leads. And we're like, it's not really what we want. Like it's good, but it's not. Really what the goal is. And so we just said turn'em off. If that's all it's doing we might get a lead, but like 600 people clicked a link. What does that really matter to us? If we only got one lead then I took the program, found out the right steps to be using, found out the right goals, targets, is it goals or targets that Facebook calls it?

Nicole: 22:30

They call it objectives.

Alyssa: 22:32

Ah, wasn't either objectives, and that's what I learned like. You have to choose the right objective in order to get the results you want, which sounds very obvious in hindsight, there's so many different choices within Facebook Ads Manager that it seemed so overwhelming. I felt like there was no playbook to make it simple. And that's when I saw Nicole Eldridge ads being like. It can be easy. It doesn't need to be over complicated, and the way you do the program is you just break it down step by step, and I still revisit the steps sometimes just to make sure I'm doing it right because there are so many little areas that can, you can get caught on. It could affect your ad performance such as the Advantage plus. Situation in Facebook where it always defaults you to an advantage plus like audience or what have you, and learning through you. You're like, no matter how many times I try to sell you on the Advantage Plus, at least for right now, stick to your audience. Well, they perfect whatever they're working on with their ai and we, I launched it according to. Your rule book. And once I followed your playbook, it's so easy. Getting the content was easy, getting the ad set up was easy. And then you also had the way of running the ads to say like, how's it performing? Make sure you check and make, here's some like basic targets that you might wanna look at to hit. And that made it so easy too. So once we started running them, it was just like. Oh, this is so much simpler than I was making it out to be, and we're getting feedback. Clients like it. It's kind of, I was making it out to be such a big thing and it's easy, it's effective. It's relatively affordable for a business and why not that point? Right?

Nicole: 24:38

Yes, absolutely. And this is such a good reminder. Ooh, this is such a good reminder for me because, you know, we call it the experts curse in marketing, where a lot of times I will work with clients and I'll tell them like, I don't say dumb it down. That's not the nicest way to say it, but I say like, when we're talking about things. We have to say it in the most simplest terms that anyone would understand in, in our, you know, forward facing marketing. And I think I even, I tell clients all the time, but I even struggle with it because to me, this comes so naturally and easily that I forget that other people are like, this is so overwhelming. There's so much to think about. It's so complicated that. They just freeze and they're like, I'm just not gonna do any of it. And that totally makes sense. I feel that way about, you know, other things in my life. I always talk about like organizing my house, like I am just not an organized, physically organized person. And I struggle so much with even getting started on it'cause it feels like such a big job. And I hired a local organizer to come and organize my house and she just like. Took off and did it. She's like, this is so easy. This is so fun. I'm like, oh my gosh. Not for me. Good. So I just love the note that you said about how just seeing it broken down very simply and put very plainly do this, then do that. I love how that was helpful for you.'cause I think that a lot of people feel that way.

Alyssa: 26:14

Yeah, it's totally like demystification, right? I hear that word a lot nowadays because things can seem so complicated. And like you said, like I'm the same way. I freeze when it's way too complicated. I also may need to hire an organizer'cause my house is also like that. Like I'm like, where do I start

Nicole: 26:31

There's too many steps. Like I don't wanna get one step in and then be like, well, now I don't know what to do, so I just don't do it. So yes. Love that tidbit. So let's talk results like what have been some of your ad results besides you've given us Great. You know, things on people have called, people are saying they like it. Anything else that you wanna add to that little results pile you guys have gotten from your ads?

Alyssa: 26:58

Absolutely. We started running local follower ads. I'd recently done that. Section, step in the program. And I was like, oh, well that's great'cause I've stagnated a little bit. Like that's probably one of the areas that I struggle with is getting the growth to the page, getting eyes on the page to get it to grow. And I didn't know there was a way that you could encourage people to do that via advertising. it never even occurred to me. So then I was like, I followed that. And I was like, even in the program, you're like, I'm still kind of testing this one out. Try it and see what happens. So I was like, okay, if there's not great results, I'll just turn it off and it's no big deal. Right? Like I was gonna put a small budget just. Wait and see what happened. And I was actually really surprised, like really pleasantly surprised. I think we had like a 30% increase in followers just from running one of those ads. And in this case, it was just a basic static ad being like, I think it said something like, follow us if you wanna see how your neighbor's kitchen turned out, or something like that. It was just kinda like cheeky. And I was like, let's see what happens. Like if nothing happens, no worries. At least it was an effort. And if nothing else, it's kind of like a little bit of an extra visibility. So win-win. And I was surprised. Yeah, I think I checked earlier today. What did I say that had gotten I wrote 30% increase. So it was, anyway, it was like a, it was like at least 20 followers in. I think I just ran it for even just a couple of weeks just to would happen and I was like, oh, that actually worked.

Nicole: 28:37

Yeah. And do you think you're buying it at that minimum, like dollar 30 or whatever a day? Or do you remember what the budget was?

Alyssa: 28:45

Yeah, let me double check here because I'm pretty sure I did just run it at the bare minimum just to yeah, here it is. Yeah, it only, you know, it spent under 20 bucks.

Nicole: 28:56

Oh my gosh, under 20 bucks, 30 new followers in a couple weeks. Like when's the last time anyone's gotten 30 new followers in a couple weeks and yeah. That's amazing. Love that.

Alyssa: 29:08

I know. It was amazing. And I was like, oh, like we had stagnated for a while. Just kind of like people were relatively, they were somewhat engaged, I guess, but. was not a steady stream of attention or new followers or anything. And then as soon as I ran it, I kept getting notifications. I have them on my phone. So it was like, this person followed you from your ad, this person followed you from your ad? Like, whoa. And then I would double check. I'd be like, okay, well it's not like bots or something, is it?'cause I don't want, you know, I don't want any bots that had happened to me previously. We had an intern here. Who was like, oh, I'll just buy the page. A bunch of followers. I know. I was like, no. As soon as I found out,'cause I was like, wow, he's weirdly good at this. It is growing so fast. And then I looked and I was like, each page or each like account I could just tell was a bot. And I was like, no.

Nicole: 30:03

You're not the only one that has happened to a lot of people who like hired people and say, I'll grow your account, and they're like, okay. So you're not the only one there.

Alyssa: 30:10

And then once I actually ran this, I was like, okay, let's see if I'm just getting the same kind of thing. No, they were actually real people. Like you could tell they were real people. They were, you could tell they had a real person profile picture that you could tell was a real person and they had like their dog and it or something, and you're like, oh, that's definitely a person. And there'd be like, mom, who attended University of Calgary or something? You're like, that's a real person. So it was so exciting'cause it's like, oh my God, we're actually getting local followers that are real people. It wasn't hard. We just turned on an ad and it worked. Now I ran one for Nyco that was slightly less successful. I think we had 16% increase, so I turned that one off because I was like, okay, I think this one I might do some work on, but I think it was probably like the creative or what I had worded it as the actual post. That was my issue. I did it with MBM Maza and I knew. That it works. I'm like, well, this is a fix that I can run. Like it's not something that I need to worry about because I can rerun this with a different creative and see what that does. It's not a big deal.

Nicole: 31:24

Such good data, like I would totally wanna try like almost exactly what you wrote for the one that worked, but like, you know, reword it so it works for. The one that was a little bit slower and just like try and like duplicate it. See what happens.

Alyssa: 31:39

I think so like, and I love that now I'm starting to be able to see the data and kind of understand what it means and not panic too, which is a big difference. Like especially early data, I've learned not to go too crazy about early data, like let it flow a little bit. Let it run for a week or so before you start freaking out. But like you were saying earlier with your visibility packaged, sometimes you need to just let it run and see where she goes

Nicole: 32:08

Mm-hmm. Exactly. And I always like to say with local business ads, like they're such low stakes, right? Like you're not spending thousands and praying for the best. Like you said, Hey, I'm gonna get visible to local people. At the very least, we'll see what happens from there. So I love that about local ads, for sure.

Alyssa: 32:27

I also started to run lead gen ads and that has been really interesting. Exciting learning so much. We actually have recently decided to change our offer because we're running these Legion ads. They're effective, but we realized that we're technically promoting discount as opposed to a value add. And we're actually a lot more people price shopping, And we're like, huh? Like we're getting leads. But a lot of them are like just kind of wanting to know. Roughly like what the cost will be. They're kind of wanting an estimate, but then they're probably not ready to move forward. They're probably gonna be like, okay, let me take this and, and sit on it. I might come back, call you back next year. That's a lot of them, or some of them I should say. But we have had some sales through our Legion ads, so it's not to say that they haven't been successful, it's just to say, our offer is wrong. Like I think our offer is technically not encouraging the clientele that we're looking for. And we're more looking for people, especially for lead gen. We're more looking for people more ready. Then in that more like ready to go stage than some of the people we were getting. So we're planning to change the offer. We're just deciding right now between like, is it gonna be like a hardware, like the actual handles on your cabinets upgrade that will do for free or is it gonna be some other type? Like there's some things like kitchen pullout bins and trays that are like nice value add upgrades and we really wanna see. how is that gonna work out? How's that gonna play out? And I'm so excited to try running ads for our next promotion.

Nicole: 34:11

Such good data and such a good example of actually taking the data and. Brainstorming, what can we do with this and what can we try next? Right. And it's like you don't have to throw away the whole strategy, the whole process. Like you've got the ads, let's just repackage the offer and like talk about it differently and see if that makes change. And it probably will. I know it will actually. So that's awesome.

Alyssa: 34:38

Absolutely. And the cost. The cost was really reasonable. Like with renovations, you're kind of used to seeing a high cost per i'd say like some of our worst months have been a hundred bucks a lead, you know? Which for us, we're not in, like I said, we're not in a hugely competitive area. I've heard that in other areas, especially like in the States or maybe even in Toronto area, a hundred bucks a lead is not bad. But in our area it was just like not enough. We've run with our ad agency, I think the lowest we got to was like. 30 some per lead and that's still pretty good. We'll take it. But with the lead gen ads I was running, I was at like 22 bucks, 25 bucks a lead, which was awesome.

Nicole: 35:23

So good.

Alyssa: 35:24

Like I'll take that all day

Nicole: 35:26

Yeah. That's so good.

Alyssa: 35:28

a rental lead.

Nicole: 35:29

Yeah. And then even going forward, when you change the offer and the positioning of it and things like that, like this is even. Permission from me. And just a reminder of like, even if that cost per lead goes up a bit, that's fine. If the people are more of those ready to buy people, right? We're willing to pay more for those people because ultimately we're gonna see a higher return on ad spend, which is the biggest goal.

Alyssa: 35:57

Absolutely. Like if they come in at even 50 bucks a lead, even higher. If they're really serious, then it's worth it like all day.

Nicole: 36:06

Yeah.

Alyssa: 36:06

that deal. Yes, because you're getting so much return

Nicole: 36:10

Exactly.

Alyssa: 36:11

a$60 lead. Who purchases a$50,000 kitchen? You know what I mean?

Nicole: 36:17

absolutely. Yeah. The mathematics there, so.

Alyssa: 36:23

pretty hard.

Nicole: 36:24

Okay. I'm gonna go into like a little bit of our closing here. So I hate asking this question, but I'm gonna ask you, what would you say to other business owners who might be thinking about joining Hometown Advantage? Would you recommend it? Give us your spiel, and thank you in advance.

Alyssa: 36:41

that you hate asking that. It's so funny to me because it's like, I am so happy to share the virtues and the values that I've gotten from this program. I'll scream it from the rooftops. I'll retweet, I'll reblog. Yeah, no, for me it's like it's a no brainer. Like especially for owners, I know even just in my role, like I do the marketing here, I help a little bit with our admin just to help keep things flowing. I'm always making sure that our leads are being responded to in a good amount of time and that our clients are happy. So been a little bit of my role, but even just that takes up a ton of time and brain space. So I know that these business owners are like. I don't wanna say they're struggling. That's not fair because they are choosing to do a really rewarding, difficult job, and they're crushing it. Like business owners, you're all crushing it. But if you take this, it'll take you the next step so that all that work is actually going. Somewhere, like you're getting somewhere, you won't feel like you're spinning your tires anymore like we were feeling like you'll get some clarity and you'll know what to say. You'll be able to promote your business in a way that makes you happy. You'll have fun doing it the things that I've learned in this program have made me enjoy my job that much more. So you're gonna love your business that much more.

Nicole: 38:04

I love that so much. Just something that just came up for me. So this wasn't in my list of questions, so I'm just gonna hit you with it. But something that I was just thinking of is. What are your thoughts on if someone's sitting there thinking, okay, well Alyssa has like a marketing background and like her whole job maybe, and this might not be true, but maybe they're thinking her whole job is dedicated to this and like I have other things happening in my life and I don't have a marketing background. Do you think that the program would still be a good fit for them?

Alyssa: 38:33

Absolutely, because I don't want to overinflate my level of marketing background, really, like I feel just like a new person at this some days too. Like I really, truly, truly do. There's a lot of information out there and there's so much to sift through and it's coming at you from every direction, and you're seeing everybody else's post, and that's making you intimidated too. I get it. I so, so get it. And for this program, like you said earlier, it's not dumbing it down. It's just making it very, very clear what steps you need to do when you need to do them, how to do them

Nicole: 39:14

Oh no.

39:15

And that is where the panic set in because the power went out, but it was a great conversation. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it. If you are interested in learning more about Hometown Advantage, there's a couple places you can go. One. You can go to hello dot nicole eldridge media.com/join. That's the sales page. It's always linked at the bottom of the emails I send and in my Instagram bio too. If that's easier, I'll put it in the show notes as well. But also, I'm hosting a free workshop on September 9th at 3:00 PM Eastern. I'm gonna go through the four steps that my local business clients follow to make sure they have profitable ads every single time. And I'm gonna be talking more details about the program, answering questions. I've given you the whole spiel, and when that workshop is over, I'm actually offering a$500 discount and a bonus one-to-one strategy call for the following 10 days for anyone that joins. So there's not normally a one-to-one strategy call that comes with the program, that's normally an added fee, and I'm going to offer it. Complimentary for anyone who joins after that workshop. I'm also running a fast action bonus for the workshop where anyone who signs up will get their ad account completely set up by me. So when you sign up, you'll get directions on how to give me the correct access, and then I go in and I set up your ad account. I set up your pixel, I set up your custom audiences, and if you already have a lot of that stuff set up, I'll go in and check and make sure it's right. And then also I'll do a full ad account audit and record a video talking through your ads and your numbers and what I would do to make them more profitable. So that's just gonna be for anyone who joins the day of the workshop or the day after. So if you're not signed up already, make sure you get signed up. The link to sign up is www.nicoleeldridgeads.com/live. Also plastered all over my emails, all over my Instagram. You can comment the word four steps on any of my Instagram posts, and my bot will send you the link. So I'm super excited for that. And one last thing. Lots of fun stuff going on This month. I'm actually hosting what I'm calling ad makeover month inside my free Facebook group, and I'm taking mission from you guys. And I am recording videos, making over your ads, talking about how I would make them more profitable, how I would make them more engaging, what I would change to make sure that they're actually making money. So you should get in there. You should submit your ads for a makeover or just enjoy the videos that I'm making for everyone else. For that, you can comment the word makeover on any of my Instagram posts, and my Bible will send you the link to join there. As always, please reach out on Instagram with any questions, comments. I would love to chat with you. I've been hearing from quite a few people who have been listening to the podcast and enjoying my conversations with them, talking about their ads, talking about their clients ads, so I would love to hear from you too and have a great rest of your day.