We’re diving again into Facebook conversion ads, paid traffic, and online marketing with one of the best in the business. His name is Rick Mulready. These are all huge topics right now, especially when people are looking for new leads to come into their business.
The lifeblood, the lifeline of your business is customers. You need to build systems to bring those customers to you, to nurture them, and to convert them.
I couldn’t think of a better person to talk about it than Rick Mulready. He has been an industry-leading authority on breaking down these complex topics into bite-sized, actionable pieces that entrepreneurs and small businesses can take in and actually implement today to get them moving.
Rick is not only out there speaking and on stages. He is also the host of a very popular podcast. It used to be called The Art of Paid Traffic. That just changed in January of 2020 to The Art of Online Business Podcast. It has over a hundred thousand downloads per month and reaches people in over 190 countries.
He has created industry-leading training courses like “The Facebook Advantage” to “Facebook Ad Manager”. He consults with entrepreneurs and businesses on their Facebook advertising and online marketing strategies.
This guy has been putting out a bunch of content, whether it’s free or his resources and courses. He brings incredible value to our discussion today.
HOW ONLINE MARKETING GENERATES BUSINESS
Brandon Birkmeyer: [00:05:34] What we’re talking about today is generating leads for your business with online marketing, which is really important.
Why is Facebook such an important online marketing tool in your arsenal and why is lead generation so important? Why is online marketing the thing that people are trying to figure out?
WITHOUT LEADS, YOU CAN’T HAVE A BUSINESS
Rick Mulready: [00:06:50] It’s something that people are always trying to figure out, especially now because of everything that’s going on on the world stage.
Leads in sales are the lifeblood of your business. If you’re not creating revenue, you don’t have a business. You’ve got to get a consistent flow of new leads coming in.
I say consistent. Some people can only take a certain amount of leads coming in at a time, and then they process them or convert them to sales. Then they’ll pick back up later.
Most businesses want that continued consistent flow of leads coming in. One of the best ways to do it (and that’s how I’ve always done it in my business) is through advertising through Facebook and Instagram ads.
ONLINE MARKETING ALLOWS FOR SPECIFIC TARGETING
The beauty of using platforms like Facebook and Instagram is targeting. You can get super specific with your targeting now.
I’m sure that for everyone listening to the show here, it’s not the case, but I just want to address it real quick. Everyone always thinks when they hear “targeting,” they think, “Oh, it’s a privacy thing.”
Look, Facebook and Instagram don’t know it’s John from Boise, Idaho. They don’t know that. It’s just based on your actions on the platforms and other information that you’re putting on there and stuff like that.
The ability to target your specific audience is awesome on the platforms. In addition, you can build retargeting audiences of people who visit your website, visit landing pages, or watch your videos. That’s why they’re such great platforms to be using to generate leads and sales for your business.
AD COSTS ARE EFFICIENT AND EFFECTIVE
The other thing too is that even though they’ve been around (Facebook obviously has been around for a lot longer than Instagram,) is just consider the ad costs. Have they been going up over the years? Absolutely.
However, the opportunity to get very cost-efficient and effective leads for your business on those platforms is awesome. Even with all the competition that has come about over the years, they’re still amazing platforms.
Now to address what’s going on right now in the world. For online businesses in general, people are thinking, “Oh, I should probably pull back on my ads or pull back on my online marketing.”
I say just the opposite. For some businesses, ad spend is going to be less than what they normally do. I get that. However, just because of what’s going on doesn’t mean that people should be pulling back in their marketing.
PEOPLE ARE LOOKING FOR INSPIRATION
I say lean in and serve your target audience right now more than ever because they’re looking for help. They’re looking for support. They’re looking for ideas. They’re looking for inspiration.
They’re looking for the leaders that we are as business owners to get the help that they’re looking for the specific challenges they’re having. We as entrepreneurs get to serve them, especially in times like now.
Lean in. When I say lean in, get your content out there. Use Facebook and Instagram advertising to get your ads in front of your target audience so that you’re able to lead with service. Lead with care, lead with love, and how you’re able to uniquely help them.
I mean that from the perspective of just getting your business in front of them. Maybe it’s through video, building your email list to a hundred percent, making offers to them. You can be doing that through selling and so forth.
Lead costs right now are as low as they’ve been in years, which is awesome because people have pulled back on the platform. There is less competition on there right now, which means lead costs are much lower.
Will they come back up? Absolutely, but right now they are still very low. I say right now, we’re recording this at the end of April. For the foreseeable future here I see that being the case. Now is an amazing time to be leaning in and serving your target audience, building that relationship with them to serve them.
PEOPLE ARE LOOKING FOR YOUR BUSINESS
Brandon Birkmeyer: [00:10:54] It seems like there are two categories. There are your warm people, the people you’ve been nurturing that are “red” who say “I need this, something to keep my business going.” You might be that thing that helps them.
Or you might have new people that didn’t need what you had until right now, and right now they need it more than ever.
I can see why you’re saying let’s push in a little bit more with your online marketing because you might have people that now more than ever are looking for something like you provide.
Rick Mulready: [00:11:32] Yeah. It’s reaching people where they’re at. You just said it perfectly, Brandon. Maybe before they didn’t need your service or maybe they needed it, but they didn’t know about you.
ONLINE MARKETING PUTS VISIBILITY ON YOU
Well, now is an amazing time to get yourself in front of them and show them how you can help them. Maybe that’s simply through a video and you’re giving them something to think about, some sort of mindset shift.
Maybe it’s a lead magnet. You’re giving them a free resource in exchange for their email. Maybe it’s an inexpensive offer. Whatever that might be, you get to lean in and help them for where they’re at right now.
Brandon Birkmeyer: [00:12:09] If nothing else, it’s a good time to look inside your business and say, what is it that could really help my audience right now?
That could be you creating something new that you haven’t thought to create before. Or you could build something for free that you used to charge for. Get people moving into systems that you have created. I think that that’s a huge opportunity, even just working within your business right now. It could be huge.
Rick Mulready: [00:12:35] One hundred percent, I agree with that. I think that I do want to caveat though. I do want to clarify something.
NOW IS A TIME FOR TEMPORARY PIVOTS
There’s a lot of talk about pivoting your business. The way that I define pivoting is a long-term change in the strategy of your business, in the long-term “why” of your business, if you will.
I don’t see that as the time right now. Like you just said, Brandon, maybe you’re changing your messaging to reflect the times. Maybe you have a new offer to reflect the times.
Those are mini pivots because that’s what we should be doing as entrepreneurs anyway, being in tune with what our audience needs. We’re there for them during whatever’s going on and whatever they need.
However, I don’t see this as a long-term pivot forever here in the business.
From a local business perspective, here in San Diego, for example, there are restaurants (I’m sure they’re doing this all over,) that are delivering the food. That’s not a long-term thing for them. That’s a temporary pivot that they’re doing right now.
It’s not a long-term pivot. It’s not a drastic change and saying, alright, I’m changing my entire business. What types of things can we do knowing who our target audience is and what they need right now? How can we come up with some ideas?
Like you just said, look inside our business, look at our customers, look at our audience that we want to serve.
What do they need right now? If it’s not something that we currently offer, but yet it makes sense for us to lean in and do, go for it.
ONLINE MARKETING CAN BE CHALLENGING
Brandon Birkmeyer: [00:14:26] I wanted to bring this up. Obviously, online marketing, paying for traffic and running Facebook ads aren’t new ideas.
Why is it so difficult, especially for someone who’s trying to figure this out themselves (or is trying to help other people with it at a starting level) why is it so difficult to execute successfully?
Rick Mulready: [00:15:03] I think the biggest thing that gets in the way is people’s mindset, honestly. When people hear that they’ll say, “Uh, Rick really? Mindset? We’re talking about advertising. Something that’s very tangible, tactical, and strategic.”
RESEARCH MUST BE ACCOMPLISHED FIRST
It’s mindset. I look at it as the base. It’s the foundation of successful ads because what happens is, most people do a couple of things. They jump right into ads. I love the get-after-it sort of thinking, but don’t jump into ads before you’ve done the work upfront.
What I mean by that is, are you clear on your target audience? Are you super clear on them? Are you clear on what kind of offer you want to test? Are you clear on the strategy? Are you clear on the types of copy? What kind of copy are you going to use to try to attract them?
Then there is the mindset around testing. You have to have a mindset of patience. I hear from so many people that say, “Wait, these didn’t work after five days. I either have no idea what I’m doing or ads don’t work.”
ONLINE MARKETING TAKES TIME
Neither one is the case. Look, five days…you have to be patient. Use the stats that you’re seeing inside of ads manager to make decisions, and then try something new. Most people just give up.
That’s what I’m talking about from a mindset perspective. You’ve got to be patient. You have to do the upfront work and the upfront work is not necessarily fun. It’s going to take you a while to do that, frankly, if you do it right.
I was in an interview with somebody yesterday and they were telling me that they have this idea of who their ideal customer is. They actually knew some of the people. They had some of their names.
What they did was they went on Facebook and they researched. They looked up the person and looked at some of the interests that they have. They wrote them down and then went through each person. It took hours to do this.
She tested that targeting out. It wasn’t in the online marketing space or Social Media Examiner. It was other interests, other hobbies. Those ads were performing really, really well. That’s the type of knowledge that you need to have, and the willingness to be able to do the work and to be able to test it.
Most people don’t want to do that. That’s why I say have the right mindset first. Ads do work, but you have to be willing to put the work in first.
CAN ONLINE MARKETING BE DIY?
Brandon Birkmeyer: [00:17:37] Do you think that people can do this on their own? What kind of training would they need to actually get this to work for them?
Rick Mulready: [00:18:02] I’ve seen hundreds of cases over the years with either people coming into work with me directly or those who have taken my course. They make it work. They figure it out. I know one hundred percent that it’s possible.
Other people say, “Well, can I just watch some videos on YouTube?” I’ll say, sure. Go for it. You absolutely can do that. Can you figure it out that way? For sure. It’s good.
Is it going to take you longer to do that? Yes, it is. If you look up a video on YouTube, for example, it’s more like a piece of ads. It’s one piece of the overall strategy on how to do something. Then another video is something, so you can piece it all together for sure.
MOST ONLINE MARKETING RESOURCES ARE NOT COMPLETE
You can go on to Facebook’s Blueprint, which is a free training that they have on there. It is a really good training. However, it’s not necessarily an A to Z how to do things from the start all the way through to okay, your ads are running now. What do you do with them? How do you read the metrics and all that stuff?
They have individual training on all the different components, which are great. Again, you want to know from A to Z. Let’s get started and how do we create campaigns that are actually going to be effective in what we’re trying to do?
If somebody is just starting out, I’d highly recommend (and of course I’m biased because I’m a course creator,) but you really should learn the basics. What I like to say is, “Learn enough to be dangerous.”
YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND ONLINE MARKETING OBJECTIVES
Brandon Birkmeyer: [00:19:27] You have figured out how to break online marketing down in a way that people understand. You drop these little nuggets of information. It’s not just for the person who’s just starting, but the people who’ve been trying to learn along the way.
For the people that have been trying online marketing, are there a few tactical things that you’ve seen people overlooking? Some actual things within the Facebook program and running ads that they aren’t doing right now?
Rick Mulready: [00:20:24] One of the simple things is a foundational thing, but yet a lot of people, (frankly) mess it up, is just having the right objective.
At the campaign level, when you start to set up your ads, one of the first things you do besides name the campaign is you choose the objective. The objective is simply telling Facebook what’s the goal of the campaign? What do you want to do with the campaign?
Most people want conversions, meaning they want to build their list or get people to register for a webinar.
When you choose conversions as your objective, you’re telling Facebook, “Alright, I’m going to have an ad that when people click on it, they’re going to go to an external landing page. My goal is I want them to opt-in.” You want to choose the right objective for what you’re trying to accomplish.
BE CLEAR WITH YOUR ONLINE MARKETING GOAL
That’s why I talk about that work upfront. They’re not clear on their goal. They’re not clear on their strategy. You have to know that upfront before you even start the campaign because it’s the first thing you set up at the campaign level.
Even for people who have been running ads for a little while and not getting the results, that is something that I check right off the bat. Are you using the right objective that aligns with what you want to do?
From there, I would say the biggest thing that I see people that are not getting the results that they want is (going back to the targeting) their targeting that they’ve set up at the ad set level is all over the place.
Logically we think, “Oh, the more targeted that we can get the better.” For example, I want to reach somebody who has an interest in whatever, and they’re also interested in this and they also read this publication.
BE SPECIFIC, BUT LET THE ALGORITHM WORK FOR YOU
We’ve taken an audience, let’s just say of a million people. By adding all those layers in what I call choking off the algorithm, you’re making it harder for the algorithm to work for you. What I would say is get specific to who you want to target, but leave it there.
Don’t keep adding in layer after layer to get down. Yes, that might be the person you really want to get to, but Facebook’s algorithm is all about simplicity now.
I’ll never forget, about five years ago, I kind of crashed Power Editor. (It used to be Power Editor and Ads Manager.) I had about 767 ad sets in a campaign because we used to break everything out. It was one ad for this audience, and it was mobile and then it was desktop, all this other stuff.
Those days are gone, right? I mean, yes, you can do advanced breaking out and stuff. I’m not saying that.
However, for most people who are running ads right now, and they’re not getting the results, my advice would be to simplify. What I mean by that is this. You’re going to have a cold campaign. You’re interest-targeting audiences. I want to target fans of Social Media Examiner and Amy Porterfield. That’s going to be that cold campaign.
Then you’re going to have maybe three to four, maybe five different ads within each ad set, and that’s it. You let Facebook’s algorithm do the work for you. When I say, “Let the algorithm do the work for you and simplify,” we’re looking for audience sizes of at least a million people per ad set, especially when we’re doing conversions as our objective.
MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ENOUGH RESEARCHED DATA
The more data that we can give to Facebook’s algorithm to get the results that we’re looking for, (those conversions,) the better off we’re going to be.
A couple of years ago, it was, “Let’s get that audience size to maybe between 200,000 and 400,000” or something like that.
If that’s all you can do, fine. However, that is one thing that’s changed over the years. If we can get that audience size larger, yet still targeted for who we want to be reaching, then we can use the ad copy in the ads themselves to speak directly to the people that we want to be reaching.
That’s really the key and that’s really what is going to change a lot of people’s campaigns for the better.
LEARN SOME SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
Brandon Birkmeyer: [00:24:32] I want to back up in terms of talking about online marketing objectives. These days, in general, people are thinking, “I want to get into this coaching space. I want to eventually create a course.”
Maybe they’re just doing the coaching right now, but they want to eventually be a Rick Mulready or Amy Porterfield, a good friend of yours. (Listen to their podcasts! Amy’s is Online Marketing Made Easy, Rick’s is The Art of Online Business.)
If someone is working towards that, and they know they have to build a list of people that are interested in the thing that they teach, where do they drive them? What’s an objective for that type of campaign?
Rick Mulready: [00:25:24] Conversions. Facebook does make this quite confusing at the campaign level. When you go to the campaign levels, that’s the first thing that you do when you’re setting up your ads campaign.
They give you about three different columns on the page there, and they’re broken up into different parts of the funnel.
FACEBOOK CONVERSIONS VS LEADS
If you want to get people to opt into your email list, you want conversions. Now the other option (which makes it confusing) is leads. Facebook says “leads” in there. People think, “Oh wait, I want leads.”
Well, leads are actually a different type of ad. It’s what they call the lead ad. The lead ad is where the entire opt-in experience is within the ad unit itself. What that means is your ad looks exactly the same way it normally does.
Say you’re scrolling through Facebook. You see an ad, but when you click the button, it populates right within the ad unit itself. You don’t leave Facebook.
You set the fields, you say, “Alright, I want to collect their first name and their email address.” Now the ad unit has your copy right there and then fields for first name and email.
It auto-populates with the email address that you have for Facebook and your first name, obviously. Then you just click submit and you’re done, it’s a lead.
FACEBOOK LEAD ADS MAY NOT BE THE BEST OPTION
Some people will think, “Well, that sounds, it’s really cool. That sounds really easy. Well, wouldn’t I want to do that?” Yes, you can build retargeting audiences of those people interacting with your lead ad and all that stuff.
I don’t want to make a general statement because for businesses like car dealerships, for example, lead ads would be great. They work really well. However, from my experience, what I’ve seen from both my business and for my students’ businesses, lead ads generally don’t work as well.
They might see a lower lead cost, but the quality of the lead is not as good. What they have to do to opt-in is two clicks. They click, it auto-populates, click again, then done.
Also, how many of us use the email address for our Facebook account that we’re actually using in our day to day life? Most people aren’t using the same email address. That’s what affects the quality of the lead.
FACEBOOK CONVERSION ADS CAN BE AN EASIER PROCESS
What you were talking about, Brandon, is I want people to click on my ad and then go to the landing page that I’ve created in Kajabi or what have you. That is conversions. That’s where the use of the Facebook Pixel comes in. I don’t want to get too technical, but conversions are my objective at the campaign level.
At the ad set level, that’s the specific conversion that I have set up. I place the Facebook pixel on the thank you page after they opt-in and I name that conversion something like “lead magnet to thank you page”.
Now I’m optimizing for that specific conversion at the ad set level. What that means is I’m telling Facebook, “All right. I want conversions. I want people to click on my ad, go to my landing page and I want you (you meaning the algorithm) to set my ads up to get me the most results of this specific conversion.”
Does that make sense?
LOWEST COST IS NOT ALWAYS BETTER
Brandon Birkmeyer: [00:28:48] It does. You’re also gaining the advantage. All these people are coming to your site. If they decide to leave, they can still be retargeted because they’ve heard of your page. Is that something lost when you stay within the lead form?
Rick Mulready: [00:29:02] Not necessarily, because you can set up a custom audience of people who are engaging with your lead-ad. I forget exactly how many or what they are.
Somebody who engages with the lead-ad, but doesn’t complete what you want them to do. You can have an audience of people who did complete that. You can build those audiences, so that’s not lost.
Brandon Birkmeyer: [00:29:25] It’s about the quality.
Rick Mulready: [00:29:32] One hundred percent. This is a good point. Actually, I would be remiss if we didn’t talk about this real quick.
People are always looking for the lowest cost per lead, right? If I can get a two-dollar cost per lead versus a six-dollar cost per lead, I’m going to take that two-dollar lead all day long.
QUALITY OVER QUANTITY
Well, maybe.
It’s about the quality of the lead. If those six-dollar leads are the ones that are actually converting into sales, and the two-dollar leads aren’t doing it at all, I’ll take the six-dollar leads all day long.
It’s about the quality of the lead in which leads are actually converting into sales, which you can track right inside of Facebook’s ads manager.
LEARN THE BASICS OF ONLINE MARKETING BEFORE YOU OUTSOURCE
Another mistake that I see people make (and I kind of alluded to it before) is in the whole “at least make yourself dangerous.” As I say, learn the basics and a little bit yourself before you outsource your ads.
I’m a big proponent of outsourcing, but before you hire an ads manager or before you hire an agency, do it yourself first. Then what happens is now you have a knowledge base to have an educated conversation with that ads manager or with that agency.
KNOW HOW TO TALK WITH AD AGENCIES
You know what the metrics mean, you know what the stats are. You have an understanding. I’ve countless stories of students who come to me who say, “Yeah, I lost $8,000 because I hired an agency. For three months they got me zero results. I had no idea how to have a conversation with them about it because I didn’t know anything about it.”
Then they take over their ads themselves and they’re saying, “Oh my God, now I’m getting results. I actually enjoy the process.”
I’ve had so many stories about that. The number of quality ad managers out there is painful. A lot of them talk a big game, but when it comes down to it, so many of them don’t know what they’re doing. However, they sell people that they know what they’re doing.
That’s why I say, look, if you want to outsource great, but do them yourself first. Get that foundational knowledge before you outsource.
RELATED: Build your personal brand with the Content Marketing Starter Guide.
WHERE TO GET HELP WITH ONLINE MARKETING
Brandon Birkmeyer: [00:32:06] That makes sense. Then you can ask the right questions. If they’re missing steps, you’re going to recognize that they’ve only gone to the surface level of it.
Tell me what’s going on in your business right now. Obviously, if people want to work with you, they can go to rickmulready.com. They can listen to your podcast, but what are you teaching these days? How are you helping people?
Rick Mulready: [00:32:33] It’s two different ways. I have my Foundations Ads course. That is for Facebook and Instagram ads, teaching you pretty much all of the stuff we’ve been talking about here today. It’s how to get your Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns to be effective, and actually working for you.
This course is for either if you’re just starting out, you’ve never done ads before. Or to that person that you mentioned before who has been doing some ads, but they’re not getting the results that they want.
This course will help you get better results. It’s the Ads course, and that’s for people who are really looking to create that predictable stream of leads coming into their business.
ADS ARE JUST ONE PIECE OF THE PUZZLE
You keep mentioning that I’ve been doing this for a long time. For the first several years of my business, I was only teaching ads.
What I realized was that obviously, they are super important. It’s how I built my business. That’s how I recommend it to people, absolutely doing ads and everything we’ve been talking about here today.
They’re just one piece of the puzzle though. To create an online business that has an impact, to increase revenue, to fulfill the deeper purpose that you have for your business, to help people, it’s just one piece of the puzzle.
For everybody who’s looking to grow an online business, once you start to get traction with your ads, it just brings up a whole new slew of opportunities (we’ll call them challenges) to actually grow a business where you’re not having to spend sixteen hours a day in your business.
LEARN TO BALANCE WORK AND LIFE
You can actually have a life. You can be an example of how to run a successful online business that has a big impact, that’s creating great revenue, but yet you have a balance there between your family life and your business life.
If you have kids, for example, I have a 16-month-old. You get to be that model for them of what’s possible. That’s really what I like to get into with my Accelerator Program. It’s a coaching/mastermind program where we dive into ads.
This is where there is more access to me. I’m more hands-on. We have coaches as well, but that’s really about taking your business that you have right now to the next level.
What I find is people gain momentum with their ads. They get going in the business and then they get stuck. They’ll say, “Alright, I’m doing, three, four, five thousand a month in my business. Now I’m not really sure what to do to take it to the next level, to scale the business.”
BEING SOLO MAY BE TOO MUCH WORK FOR YOU
Oftentimes they’re doing way too much in the business themselves. They’re doing all the things in their business. They’re starting to burn out. That transition to begin hiring for the team, starting to step back and become the actual CEO of the business, it can be a really challenging transition there.
I see a lot of people have way too many offers that they’re trying to do. They’re trying to please everybody. It’s all about how do we streamline the business and simplify it so that it is really fulfilling for you and you just fall in love with your business if you’re not already.
STREAMLINE YOUR BUSINESS
Brandon Birkmeyer: [00:36:14] Do you have any stories of the challenges that people have? Have you seen some of those stories start to come to light of people who are having breakthroughs in this program?
Rick Mulready: [00:36:43] Absolutely. One of the big things is that people don’t trust themselves in what they’re doing in the business. Oftentimes they just need an outside set of eyes just to shine a light on their blind spots.
We all have blind spots because we’re so close to our businesses that we often miss the most obvious things. That’s where a coach comes in. They get to ask, “Wait, what about this over here?” and you’ll say, “Oh yeah, of course. I didn’t even see that.”
CREATE YOUR FOUNDATIONS
That happens to everybody. A lot of times with my students it’s really streamlining their business. Number one is creating the foundation. They need leads and sales coming into the business.
That’s the foundation, but then it’s about asking, “Do you have an organic content strategy?” like you have the podcast here. Awesome, now you’re building authority. You’re building brand awareness.
You could be generating leads, for example, sending people somewhere. Do you have that sort of thing in your business as well? A lot of people don’t have that. They’re just kind of putting their stuff out there and starting to work.
This is about building a cohesive business that can have a long term impact. It’s a lot of getting that in place for them. A lot of students that come to me that have way too many offers. They have six different things and they’re speaking to six different types of audience people.
FOCUS ON WHAT IS WORKING
I’ve been there and I know what that’s like. Let’s niche that down because it’s counterintuitive. Most people think, “Oh, I need more offers. I need to speak to all these people in order to have a big business.”
That’s not the truth. The other big thing is that again, (this goes back to the first thing I said,) people just need to know that what they’re doing is good. It’s doubling down on what’s working.
I have a woman who is in the program right now. She’s been on my podcast where she came to me. She was doing about $10,000 a month in her business, so she’s doing really well. However, she wanted to triple that over the next six months.
How we started the process is finding what’s working right now to generate $10,000. Oftentimes it’s small tweaks that will have a huge impact in revenue.
What we did was we just looked at the funnel that she was running and asked, “Do you know your numbers? How much does it cost you to get a lead? How much does it cost you to get to acquire a customer now that you know your numbers?”
KNOW YOUR NUMBERS
We use that to educate how much we could be spending on ads. Everybody always asks how much I should be spending on ads. Well, the true way to answer that is how much is it costing you to get a lead? How much is it costing you to acquire a customer?
It’s all about the numbers. We optimized her funnel, and then it was just about pouring more money into it, paying for those leads. The cost to acquire the customer was better. Let’s double down on that.
From there it was thinking she’s working too much. Let’s streamline the business. Let’s get her out of this and hire a team. Ideate on what roles does she need, that sort of thing.
That’s a very common thing I see people challenged within their business.
HOW RICK PIVOTED HIS BUSINESS
Brandon Birkmeyer: [00:40:15] I appreciate that. The examples help us understand how people are actually being moved into the program towards better results.
You made some changes recently. Your show used to be called The Art of Paid Traffic, and now it’s The Art of Online Business. How did this start to happen? What got you going?
Rick Mulready: [00:40:57] It had been on my mind for a few years, actually. I’ve been doing Facebook ads for ten years now, so I’ve been doing them for a long time. I can teach ads to anybody. I don’t say that boastfully, it’s just that I’ve been doing it a long time and I do have a gift of taking something complex and simplifying it down.
WHY HE CHANGED HIS FOCUS
Frankly, I got kind of bored. I was just doing ads all the time. It really goes back to what I mentioned before Brandon, where I started realizing, you know what, I’m doing people a disservice by just talking about ads. Like we’ve been talking about, ads are just one piece of the puzzle to growing a great business.
I felt constrained, if you will, to only be talking about ads. It was just sort of an inner push to think, you know what? I want to start talking about other things in addition to ads. Not stop talking and teaching ads, but I want to talk about this other stuff.
Brandon Birkmeyer: [00:41:52] Was there a first step you took?
Rick Mulready: [00:41:53] Yeah, I started mixing in other episodes on the podcast without telling anybody. I wasn’t trying to be sneaky. I just wanted to kind of test what is the response?
Will people say, “Dude, what are you doing talking about mindset? What are you doing talking about building a team? This is the art of paid traffic.”
I started doing that in early 2019. I did that for a solid eight months(ish). The feedback was great.
I also looked at it too that if people stop listening to the podcast because they’re not interested in that stuff, they’re not my audience any longer. I’m totally cool with that. If my downloads go down, whatever. Again, this goes back to the quality of the audience that I’m speaking to and trying to attract.
VALIDATE YOUR IDEAS
It went really well. I got zero negative feedback and people didn’t even realize it was happening. Obviously, they were seeing new shows sprinkled throughout, new topics, and stuff like that, but I got great feedback from it.
I thought, cool. It was just sort of my first thing that I was doing to validate this idea that I had, in this feeling of where I want to take the business. I officially made the announcement around late fall of 2019 that I was changing the name of the podcast to The Art of Online Business.
The key thing there that I wanted people to know is that the only thing changing is the name. The topics have already been changed for the past ten months or so. The name is changing and everything else is going to continue.
We obviously changed the artwork and we changed the intro and outro and all that stuff to reflect the name and what the show is about, but that was it.
Now here we are at the end of April, I’m going through (literally right now) the more “official rebrand” of what I talk about, what I teach, how I teach it, through messaging, through positioning, and through our new website.
It’s been a process, but I just started sprinkling in new episode topics on the show without telling anybody to kind of gauge their reaction. It was great.
I still talk about ads. I don’t have a set number, like every fifth episode. I’m talking about other things too, like case studies, building your team, mindset, and copywriting, all this other stuff too that goes into building a great online business.
NEXT STEPS FOR YOUR ONLINE MARKETING
Brandon Birkmeyer: [00:44:49] How can we help people really take the next step in their business? What is something that you are talking a lot about these days that if you could speak to someone directly right now to help them, what would you say?
Rick Mulready: [00:45:34] Let’s take this two different ways. I like this question a lot because this is really tactical. You can go and do this right now.
CREATE YOUR ONLINE MARKETING SYSTEMS
If you’re somebody who’s listening right now and you don’t have consistent leads coming into your business and a way to turn them, and I don’t mean that in a negative way, but you want to convert them into a sale. You need to have that system down first.
That’s your foundation. You need leads and sales coming in. You create the leads. Get the leads going, whether that’s through ads, whatever you’re doing on the business. Make sure that you have a consistent stream of leads coming in and you have a way to nurture them and to convert them into sales.
Whether that’s a webinar, a strategy call, whatever it is, you have got what I call a sales mechanism in place. Leads and a sales mechanism that converts. If you don’t have that, your business isn’t going to go very far. Get that down first.
BUILD YOUR ONLINE MARKETING TEAM
Maybe you do have that in your business, and you’re starting to scale your business and seeing some success there. What happens at that point is a lot of people as their business is growing at that level, they’re just that one-person show.
They’re doing everything in their business. They’re doing their ads, writing their emails, doing interviews, doing their books. They know all this other stuff.
Do a time audit of where you’re spending your time. This is one of the first things that I have people do when they join my accelerator program. How do you spend your time? I would track it for three to five days. If you can do it for longer, great.
Get a good, solid overview of what you’re doing in fifteen-minute increments. What are you doing? List everything out.
One of my time-wasters, if you will, is I’ll go on ESPN and then TSN, (which is Canada’s ESPN because I’m a big hockey fan.) I’ll go to those. Put that down. I did that for eight minutes. Get granular with how you’re spending your time.
Then what you want to do is you want to add a value next to that task that you did, right? If you spend forty-five minutes editing a video, that is a $10 an hour task. You can hire somebody out very inexpensively to take that over for you.
KEEP TRACK OF YOUR TIME
What we’re doing here is number one, where are you spending your time? A lot of people don’t understand how they’re spending their time. Number two is how do you get things off of your plate so that you are only focusing on those highest value activities that are moving the business forward.
Doing podcast interviews like this, writing a sales page, copywriting a sales email, having a strategy call, doing a sales call, those types of things that are actually going to be moving your business forward. Not being bogged down by all the other things that are taking up your time and keeping you from those things.
That is one of the things that’s a game-changer. That can get a lot of people unstuck. So many people don’t even think, “Oh my God, I spend three hours a day doing these things. No wonder I don’t have any time and no wonder my business has kind of stalled.”
That can be a real game-changer in what you can do in your business.
WHERE TO FIND RICK
Website: rickmulready.com
MORE ADVICE AND INTERVIEWS
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