The Secrets of High-ROI Campaigns with David Schloss

I’m Igor Kheifets, and this is the List Building Lifestyle, the podcast for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email list working from home, if you’d like to make six figures, travel the world and help people improve their lives in the process, this podcast is for you. I also invite you to claim a free copy of my best selling book, the List Building Lifestyle Confessions of an Email Millionaire at igorsbook.com. Get the free book plus $3,000 bonus package that includes my best capture page templates, email swipe files and traffic blueprints, visit www.igorsbook.com for details, and now it’s time to claim your List Building Lifestyle.

Igor Kheifets  0:52  

Welcome back to the List Building Lifestyle, I’m your host, Igor Kheifets, and today I’m hosting my dear friend David Schloss. David is an online entrepreneur, author, speaker and investor. He began marketing in 2007 from his college apartment, and over the years, has now helped hundreds of businesses improve their website traffic, customer acquisition and revenue using social advertising. Convert ROI now manages, which is David’s agency. Now manages close to $3 million per month in advertising on Facebook and Instagram, and has helped over 400 companies and brands worldwide. David has been rated as one of the top experts to watch by Forbes magazine. Has been featured on entrepreneur.com, Business Insider and the Huffington Post. He’s also the author of the book called The New MBA, which focuses on helping people identify the best business opportunities based on their personality, how to properly develop and grow a business, and how to budget, save and invest and maintain wealth while living a life they love. And now that I’m done with the teleprompter intro, I just wanted to add a couple of things. Dave and I go way back. At one point, we were part of a cult like group together, which is where we met and but most importantly, I know that every word in that bio is actually true, because I know many of his clients, people for whom he manages ads. I know the results they’re getting and the revenue they’re producing, but also the fact that he is truly an investor, because unlike many quote, unquote, internet marketers or agency owners who are pretty good at Digital Marketing and are probably not very good at anything else, and I’m including myself in that group, David is actually pretty skilled when it comes to investing money, and he does that on the Side quite successfully. He’s also devoted father, a husband and a health enthusiast. So today I’m just happy to chat with him, because every conversation with David is always eye opening. He’s very interesting guy to talk to. Knows a lot about a lot of things, and does a lot in the very little time that he has in in a day. So David, finally, after so many years, welcome to the List Building Lifestyle.

David  3:06  

Thank you, man. I really appreciate it. Thank you cool. Looking forward to our conversation, because it’s always full of laughs and just, I mean, we always discover some new things about each other, so let’s just get into it.

Igor Kheifets  3:18  

Yeah, yeah. Indeed. Now, so you are obviously the shit when it comes to Facebook ads. You’re the go to guy. Anytime I go to a conference and I meet a new person in like 10 minutes, I discover that they know you, they’ve been working with you, or you know they’ve been sending clients your way. So, you know, a good place to start, I’d say would be the State of the Union, right? What’s going on in the ad world, especially in the meta universe, with all the recent different changes, and how are things paying out? You spend a lot of money on Facebook ads. You manage a big budget every month, you’ve seen it all. You’ve ran all types of campaigns, all types of funnels. So, you know, 2024 midway through, 2024 What’s up in the meta space?

David  4:10  

Yeah. So, everything I say today, we know that six months from now, it’s going to be vastly different, right? So, the great thing about this is it does allow me to at least come back in, you know, the beginning of next year, and be like, Alright, here’s how things have changed again. I will say this, because we are in an election year. We know that every four years, every network goes through a massive update. They have  to prepare for political advertising, healthcare advertising, mainly with the healthcare which is interesting is when there’s a massive political shift, you notice that supplements and pharmaceuticals and things that nature also make changes. Why is that? Well, new regulations, new politicians are involved, and they always go after the big drug companies in one way, shape or form. So we start to notice that either certain Pharma companies stop advertising, or they double down on their advertising that also goes in line with who is the candidate bringing the most awareness to themselves on these platforms. So, you know, we have Democratic Party, Republican Party, they’re preparing their advertising on social quite a bit right now. 

Notice it hasn’t really kicked in yet. It all kicks in around that September, October mark, and they just blitz until the election. And that affects the entire network, not just Facebook and Instagram. It affects every network. Because they advertise on Google, they advertise on all the meta networks they go on. They’ll go on Pinterest, they’ll go on Snapchat. They do everything because they have the budget to do so. So right now, what we’re finding is every network is making compliance updates now in preparation for when all those ads go live, mainly because certain verbiage we’re allowed to say now that may not be allowed in a couple months, especially when it comes to, here’s a big awareness. If you’re in the business opportunity market, you notice in the beginning of the year, you could practically say whatever you want. You could you could create an ad that says, Make Money Online, and everything goes through. All of a sudden in the last couple weeks, you say, Make Money Online, and every ad gets rejected within five seconds. What’s the difference from back then to now, small little edits to their compliance, and what you’re allowed to say in that ad copy, all of a sudden is no longer allowed, just in the last couple months. 

And they make these subtle changes every couple months throughout an election year, up to the point where it’s Q4 where they make the most money and when, in this case, the political season really kicks in, and it happens to be at the exact same time. And so what we’re experiencing at this moment are ads that were once okay, even just six months ago, nine months ago, 12 months ago, quite a few of them are getting rejected out of nowhere, right? It’s like, hey, we I was just running this for a year. Like, Why’d it get rejected? Well, it’ll say unrealistic claims, or it’ll say something as banned substances. Substances banned words being used in the ad and banned is a new thing that they’re saying, because before there were no banned words, it was just hey, this leads to an unrealistic outcome, or this leads to something that cannot be verified by the Facebook network. So you need to make some changes to your copy. Now they’ll just blatantly say unrealistic, change your copy, Your ad creative is creating fear, change it like they don’t even give you a chance to review it. It’s just change it. You can’t click review here, and that is entirely new, not just on meta. This is happening in Google. Google will ban an entire campaign and then say, You got to redo the whole thing. 

Igor Kheifets  7:47  

Yep, that happened to me. Actually, literally happened to me with a couple of ads, ads running good for like, a year or two. All of a sudden, I wake up and there’s like, Oh, you have 187 ad groups, you know, requiring attention, yeah, and groups, and then you

David  8:02  

go in the ad group, and it’s like 589 ads. Like, you’re

Igor Kheifets  8:07  

like, why if it wasn’t for AI? I just walk away from the whole thing. Because just in March, in March, I had to use AI to recalibrate a word here and a phrase there across like a dozen of ads.

David  8:31  

If I had to re record stuff myself, man, I just that, and that’s the thing, right? Imagine if you have a video ad that’s been running for a year, and then all of a sudden they don’t ding you for your creative or your copy and creative as an image. They ding you for the whole video. They’re like, hey, what you said it second five, the very beginning of this video, where, no, we’re not cool with that anymore.

Igor Kheifets  8:50  

Well, that’s usually they don’t really tell you what. What’s the problem? Yeah, like, sometimes I have to go through like, two levels of like, representatives and get my ad, you know, what do you call them, the ad rep or the Google account? Yeah, to get a re-review, yeah, it’s like, Hey, can you help me get some clarity on this? And eventually, that’s your month of going back and forth with them. They’ll tell you, Well, you know this, when you say this income making money? Yeah, that’s you probably want to change that.

David 9:23  

 Yep, yep. And so that is happening a lot more now. That might be nothing new to people who’ve been running ads for even just a couple years, they’re like, oh, yeah, you know, compliance changes, Terms of Service changes, yeah, we get that, but it’s more of the fact that it’s happening now, not in August, not September. It’s happening. It started happening in April. It’s, you know, couple months later, and it’s already happening again. It’s going to happen another wave in July. There’ll be another wave in August. It’s going to keep happening until the election’s over. What will happen is in the election, you can, you can quote me on this, because it happens every election. I’ve been through multiple elections now running ads. You’ll have the election in November. It’ll be over, but yet the compliance won’t change. We’ll have Thanksgiving, we’ll have Black Friday, and then as soon as Black Friday is over, you notice all those compliance issues are now turned off, and then you could start running whatever you want in December, and that’s because they’re already in. They’re already past the window of like, All right, we’ve made a bunch of money for the q4 ads. Yes, we have Christmas coming up, but we make the bulk of our money during that Thanksgiving Black Friday push. And then when Christmas is rolling around, all that compliance is just magically gone, because they’re preparing for January, when all the business opportunity, fitness and wellness relationship people all pop up and they’re like, Hey, start off your next year with the best relationship the most money, and be in the best shape of your life. And that’s when they make their next wave of money is in q1 for all the people trying to have the next best year they’ve ever had. 

Igor Kheifets  10:54  

so you’re saying that if I wanted to bring back my the little blue pill business, I should do it in Q1 then.

David  11:04  

you know, hey, you know, Q1 is one of those places where it’s like, it’s gonna have this idea. Yeah, it’s like, I have an idea. I might be able to sell this thing. When’s the best time to sell it. It’s usually in Q1 that is one of the best times for impulse buying. And that’s, that’s really what advertising is. I’m in the business of getting you to impulse buy things, right? Or, in some cases, it’s, I need you to be impulsed into clicking this thing to then inquire about my service, right? Q1 is very much like Q4 it’s, I’m impulse buying grilling stuff and presents for my wife and all that. But in Q1 I’m impulse buying what’s going to help me have a better year? What’s going to help me get in the best shape? What’s going to help me I’m married, but what? What whole new year resolution? Yeah, right, that’s all it is. It’s new year resolution. And some people start that in December, and some people start that literally January 1. And so you get this gap of December. People are taking time off. Some people are preparing for Christmas. Some people are just, they’re just completely tapped out spending wise, because they just spent all their money for Thanksgiving and Black Friday. But then that’s when a lot of these networks are analyzing what just occurred from September to November, and they’re making their adjustments in preparation for January. Because all of a sudden people wake up and go, Well, I just spent a bunch of money Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Christmas paycheck just came in the week after, and I’m going to start spending again, but this time I’m spending on myself. That’s the justification. And the spending on myself is all the stuff I just mentioned. 

Igor Kheifets  12:36  

But good thing I do let me go refund a lot of that stuff I bought on Black Friday first so

David  12:41  

help me. I didn’t get six second naps, so now I’m gonna refund it and go get something else. 

Igor Kheifets  12:48  

You know, no, that’s so true, man. And you know, we are in the business of helping people make money online, and we see that. We see that every year q1 all the way until maybe March, you’ll see like, March push. March refund rate is up. The webinar attendance is lower. Ad Campaign response is worse. We’re actually, as we speak now, we’re going through somewhat of a slump, because come summer time, fewer people think about, you know, building a business or right? Everyone’s like, oh, the weather is great. I’m going to go outside, I’m going to go fish. I’m going to so all of a sudden, and I work with this partner of mine who, like, I, he helps me monetize leads. And, you know, we’ve been going back and forth, and you should see the conversation, dude, what’s going on? Oh, did the ads got turned off? What’s like? There’s panic. There’s literally panic about people not paying attention. And I think, more than anything, it’s fueled by the fact that people just distracted. I was reading this. There’s a great newsletter called The Daily scroll, where they kind of give you the Bite Size news about the market, the business, the interest rate, the stock market, whatever Trump is up to whatever is Biden’s son is up to whatever so. So in that newsletter, I think early June, they wrote that all American airports, North American airports, had the record number of people in them in the first week of June. I was like…

David  14:30  

Yeah, seasonal action taking is what I call it, yeah, right, because there’s those types of that. Like you said, there’s certain parts of the year where it’s like, massive action disappears, massive action, then it disappears and, and I’m glad you mentioned March, mid March until mid April. What is that that’s tax season? Yeah, right. And not just, that’s not just tax season for businesses, that’s tax season for regular people. So March 15, HR on Our block, and all those companies are now sending out those notices that are like, don’t forget, April 15 is when your taxes are due, and that’s when they start going through every credit card statement, every bank statement, and they start reversing transactions and chargebacks and refunds all that, and it’s for a month. Now, what happens on April 16, once everything has been submitted? Well, if you’re a non business person, you are now waiting two to four weeks for your refund. If you’re a business person, you’re filing an extension at least until September, because we all like to wait until September to pay our taxes. And so what happens? Our extension just means we’re going to keep going about our business. We might have submitted our personal returns, but our corporate returns still, we have some time. We can still finagle everything and still spend money. No problem. The average nine to Fiver, on the other hand, is like, wait until my refund comes in, because as soon as that refund comes in, aka the money I should have already made, but it wasn’t given to me because the government took it away, that all of a sudden shows up in your bank account. And what do they do with it in the month of May, they spend it, and not only do they spend it, they then start spending it on the same stuff that leads to them going to the airport in June. So you have that time period where it’s like, May. Man, just go through your Facebook feed and just scroll. 

April, everyone’s like, man, everything is slow. What’s going on May comes around. Man, business is fantastic. I don’t know what’s going on, June 1 hits, Hey, uh, are people not showing up to calls? Are your webinar attendance slow? Yeah, yeah. Because this is what happens in June. We are all on a break, in a way, whether it’s a mental break and like, I’m not doing as much as I normally would do physically in June, because my kids not in camp right now. He’s not in school, he’s not in anything. He’s just here, right? So I’m gonna go do stuff with him, right? My family are more available because even their jobs or their businesses aren’t as active right now. But I’ll tell you this, mid August, kids start going back to school at least latest Labor Day, first week of September. What happens the moment Labor Day kicks in? Oh my god, I gotta make more money, because my back to school bills are so high from the 20,000 pencils I just had to buy for my kid, and he has three backpacks now, and I had to buy all this stuff, so now I need to go make money. It’s almost like a resurgence of the biz op time period during Jan 1 when it’s like, I need to make money. This year, you start noticing in September, everybody who didn’t do anything for the last eight, nine months now wants to make more money, because they know that. In November, they gotta buy presents for their family. So you have this weird resurgence in September and October where people are just spending money, showing up to webinars, learning, taking calls, trying to sign up for services, because it’s their last chance to figure things out. And then November hits and everyone forgets that they have a business to run, and they start spending all their money. It’s ebbs and flows all year, and if you learn how to properly allocate your advertising during these ebbs and flows. You know when to scale and when to cut back. And unfortunately, businesses set budgets and go, I need to spend this amount of budget all year, right? They just keep the number the same and they just try to spend it the same all year. That’s not how this needs to be working. It really should be that when you know things are slowing down, you slow down your budget just a bit. But you should have been scaling last month when things were fantastic.

Igor Kheifets  18:26  

but you don’t like stop advertising completely. 

David  18:30  

No, you just tone it back right. Let’s use easy numbers. You are spending $10,000 a month consistently when things are working on a month where you historically, at least in your case, you know, when things are slow, maybe you don’t spend 10, you spend 6 or 7. You cut it back a bit, because you don’t want to cut it back so much that everything you’ve worked on just stops working right. You gotta have some sort of budget that keeps maintenance in play, right? You’re still optimizing, you’re still getting leads, but you’re not cutting back so much that a campaign can’t run effectively, right? If a cost per call is 100 bucks, okay, you’re not getting 100 calls. You’re getting 60, but you’re still getting enough calls to where things can keep running efficiently. That’s how it goes, right? But when you see things are going great, and your cost per call is now 60 bucks, that doesn’t mean spend $10,000 that means you should be spending 20. You should be spending 30, like you should be ramping up, because the numbers say now is the time to scale. 

Now is when people are paying attention. Now is when people are spending and unfortunately, businesses don’t react that quickly. Most of them don’t. We can, because we look at the data every day. But some of these corporations, or some of these, I’ll call them medium sized businesses. They’re making their decisions every quarter. So they’ll notice one quarter, everything’s fantastic, and they’re like, why weren’t we spending more? Oh, because you waited until three months after the quarter was over to tell me to scale things, when I could have been doing it in real time. And so we’re often times having to wait to. Make these decisions, whereas if you just do an analysis of your last 6 to 12 months, you could figure out those pockets of when things need to be pushed so that way you could be prepared ahead of time, right? And this goes for even the smallest of businesses spending $100 a month or $1,000 a month. It’s like, you know when your business is at the it’s top tier. 

You know, when you’re closing people, and if you’re brand new, you have no data, guess what? You need to be spending the figure out. But if you are someone who’s already been in business for a year, you know when you made the most money, that’s when you need to be spending. And so right now, unfortunately, if you’re starting a business in June, unless you’re in real estate or something where heat affects your business, right? Or something like that, you have to wait like you’re not going to see anything until September, right? But if you’re in home services, or you clean up houses that have been flooded, like the whole state of Florida right now, or you’re doing solar or something that’s home service, you’re not that busy, right? 

But if you’re in home service, you are busy, right? Because this is your season, and then winter rolls around and you’re like, nobody cares about me right now, right? And that’s the thing. It flip flops, right? So I have to bring that up, because it’s like, that on every network, it’s not like, oh, everything’s hot on Facebook, and then it’s not on Google. Like, no, no, when it’s hot on Facebook, it’s probably hot on Google. It’s probably hot on the other networks too, because the same people are on all the networks. It just happens to be that the habits are changing right. Social influence is going to take place this year in November. That means that YouTube, Meta as a whole and Tiktok are going to get most of the traction because it’s going to be socially influenced by conversation, whereas if you are more search based or intent off of reviews, you’re getting a lot of traffic from Google right now because people are searching on their phones or searching on their computer for a solution to something that they’re experiencing at the very moment. And I say that in the summer, because in the summer, stuff randomly breaks because it gets hot, right? And if you live in Canada, why is it cold for some reason in June, right? And it’s, you know, but… 

Igor Kheifets  22:13  

It’s the question we ask every year,

David  22:17  

What’s going on here? Why am I wearing a jacket? Um, but it, but it’s but that’s the thing. Certain businesses, you’ll notice, get picked they get picked up more in different engines of the traffic being generated based on if it’s a conversational thing, or is it that’s more intent, and right now, it’s intent. Something’s broken, there’s an emergency. I’m looking for a hotel. I’m looking for an airline. I’m not going on Facebook to look up American Airlines comments to determine if I should book with American Airlines. Most of the comments are going to say, your flights suck, right? They’re not going to say anything about the rates. Google will tell me the rates, right? And so that’s where you have to keep in mind, like, where’s the intent of your business? Right? Now, if I’m an e-commerce business, unless it’s something that’s specific to the summer swimming, you know, clothes that don’t make me feel hot, you know, like that sort of thing. At least around here, you are battling upstream like you are basically forcing people to be like, I need your stuff, right? Otherwise, just take it easy. Find your maintenance point to where you can still make some money and not feel like you’re going backwards. 

And then ramp up when people are really paying attention to your stuff again. This is actually the best time to be creating content. This is when you should be creating things that you normally are not paying attention to. When ads are scaling, you’re normally not creating as much content. So when ads aren’t scaling, you have more time to do what, create content, right? So, yeah, this is, this is the ebb and flow of the ad business. As much as this social media and organic content, it’s like, you gotta weave them all in, but like, I’m not creating as many ads as I usually do this time of the year, because people are slowing down. So what am I doing? I’m on a podcast. I’m recording stuff with my own like, I’m also having some fun, right? Because I can, but September rolls around. You don’t see me. I’m in dungeon mode. I’m on ads all day, because that’s when people are buying at a high rate, and that’s also when most people are not creating organic content because they’re too busy fulfilling, right? And so just keep that in mind, that’s where things are at this very moment, six months from now, we’re going to be hidden June, you know, sorry, January 1, and that’s where things are going to be like, hey, what do I do now to have the biggest year I could possibly have? You kind of have to do everything. You’re gonna have to create content, you’re gonna have to make ads, you’re gonna have to spend a lot of money. And hopefully all hell doesn’t break loose in November, because if it does, then your strategy may pivot a little bit in January as well. So something to keep in mind with the with the state of how things are going right now. But it’s not like the ad network is more expensive than ever. It’s as expensive as it was six months ago. It hasn’t really changed. CPMs have gone up a little bit. They will go up a lot more in November, but right now they haven’t really gone up as much as you think. 

Igor Kheifets  24:59  

Is it? Because, like all the political candidates are going to be spending 

David  25:03  

iIt’s preparing for the political cycle. I mean, why not charge more to the people who are going to be taking up 80% of the inventory? Right? Just go ahead and charge more. They know what they’re doing. I wouldn’t be surprised not stock advice. I wouldn’t be surprised if meta has a record quarter, maybe Google too. What do I know, right? But it’s one of those things I don’t know, but it’s one of those things where all the ad networks seem to be having pretty good months, from what I know. And for anyone who’s curious like me, go listen to the last quarter, uh, call for Google and for Meta and tell me whether or not they said that their advertising is lacking. Are you joking like we’re spending as much money as we’ve ever spent? They’ve had record profits. Clearly, something is working. Just because it may not be working for you doesn’t mean it’s not working for them, right? And so there’s going to be more people spending in the later part of this year than you’re seeing right now. It’s just everyone’s waiting. We’re all just waiting for the right time to strike, and unfortunately, we’re competing with the government and political figures for ad space, along with all the corporations that are going to be spending for their Q4 promotions. But that’s what it’s going to be in an election year. So prepare for that. 

Igor Kheifets  26:18  

It’s, you know, not that I’m thinking about that come November, they’re going to be kind of pushing us out. It’s not, not, doesn’t look pretty, because November is a good month, usually. But, you know, I’ve been through ebbs and flows, like you said, and there were some years there where the ebbs and flows changed, because, let’s say, during the COVID year, summer time was really solid, because everyone stayed home, no one could travel anywhere. Everyone was getting free money from the government. So without even trying very hard, we stayed steady. And looking back on those months, I’m actually thinking we kind of under performed, because if we tried a little harder, the revenue would have been so much greater. And, you know, almost feels like money was, but what do they say? Money was swimming upstream, money was being taken away, and, yeah, almost like that. And we wouldn’t really have any record breaking months or anything like that. But the solution that I found to deal with ebbs and flow, something that allows me to have a little bit more stability and control in my life. Because, you know, sometimes I can be a little paranoid about, you know, about money or income in general, given that, you know, I grew up in a very poor country, and, you know, I’ve seen we’ve actually lived through periods where we didn’t have money to put food on the table, we had to either borrow money from friends and family or actually go and get some food from people. Like that was a thing. So the list, right? Building an email list has helped me maintain a sense of security and have a sense of control over my ability to produce, uh, revenue, income, sales, and so on and so forth. Because throughout the year, as I, you know, as I drive ads, every ad goes through a landing page of some kind where I’m collecting the lead, and then, you know, I’m building an audience. And it’s like every day for many, many years. So eventually you build yourself a moat. That’s why my head says my list is my moat, because it’s, you know, sure if your ads are down and you’re not having your record breaking month, fine, but you know you’re gonna have a bare minimum of some sort just by relying on your audience.

David  28:38  

I agree. Not to mention, list building is one of the first things that anytime I talk to like a brand new business owner, maybe they’re coming from another business, maybe they sold something or they’re just starting a brand new venture, leaving from an old industry, going into something new. And they’re like, What do I do first? Yeah, you can create your content, your website and all that stuff. But it’s like at the end of the day, if you’re coming to me and we’re talking about ads, we gotta build a list, right? We have to get people to understand who you are, what you do, why you do what you do, how you do it, and why they need to buy from you. And in order to do that, we have a have to have to have a place where we can communicate with them that’s away from all the noise. So if we have them on your list, yeah, they have noise in their email list, in their email inbox, I should say, but they are on your list, so you can communicate with them when you want. You could send it at any time of the day. And if you are also getting them on a text message list, you can hit up their phone, right? And it’s like at the end of the day, they want to find someone that they know, like and trust enough to either buy something from or at least listen to, and you are going to stand out in their inbox if you’re delivering something that’s different from everyone else, period. And you obviously teach a lot of this, so I’m not going to have to go too in depth.

Igor Kheifets  29:58  

But I would love your take on one part. Of it, and that is something you might deal with. I’m assuming you deal with this. Let’s say, God forbid, your advertising account gets shut down, right? Happens to many people, happens all the time. First and foremost, you can then fall back on your list. At least in the short term, you can say, Okay, I’m not going to go broke. I’m not going to starve. There’s a list. But then you can also use your list to sort of kick start the next ad account with all the data you’re now able to produce from it.

David  30:31  

On the basic level of that, right? If you have an existing list, you are able to upload that to your ad account. And whether the account is established or new, you can create audiences from that list, right? We all know this. You can create look alikes. You can create, well, look alikes are the bare bones of it, right? You can create the most relevant audience to that list. Regardless if the list is 500 people, or if the list is 5000 people, you are able to create a look alike all the way from 1% which is most relevant, to 10% which is not as relevant to who you’ve uploaded, but it still can create a sizable enough audience to target. Now I like to call them the source audience, right? So it’s the source of characteristics and traits that you’re using to create an audience that Meta, in this case, feels is most similar to those people on your email list. That’s why it’s really important that you’re not just targeting as broad as you can in the beginning to build your list, because you’re just building a list of random people with all different traits. They’re all different ages, they all live in different places, and you don’t know how much money they make, right? Because it takes time to figure that out. So you’re just putting a bunch of randos in one place, and you’re like, hey, Facebook, go make me an audience of people similar to this. 

Sure, yeah, let’s just put a bunch more random people together and then just give them to you, right? This is where it gets tricky, because when you start to really understand your list, how much money they make. Do they have jobs? Are they business owners? Maybe they have a hybrid. Maybe they have a job and a business, right? They’re trying to figure something out along the way. You know? Maybe there are 40 plus. Maybe they’re 25 right? The more information you get around them, the better it is for you to segment what you’re creating in Facebook. Now, you and I have had these conversations before where it’s like you don’t just take all your buyers and throw them in there. You can do that and say, Hey, make me a look alike audience, of all my buyers, nothing wrong with that, but you can get granular. Give me a look alike of every buyer who’s bought two or more products, make me a look alike audience, of everyone on my list that makes six figures or more, right? Because when you have more surveyed data, then the sources can change. So the more you can make it more concrete, like everyone who’s 25 to 40, just make me a look alike of everyone similar to these people who are 25 to 40, make me a list of people who say they have $50,000 a year in income or more, right? The more you provide in that source to meta, the better that audience becomes for you. Then when you just load everybody in there, because giving them volume is fine. 

If you’re just like, I’m going to create whatever I can from this, and hopefully it works, that’s cool. But once you start to build a list and segment more efficiently, then the look alikes change the look alikes all produce different results, especially when it’s like this is a look alike of everyone who makes over six figures. This is a look alike of everyone who’s bought three or more products. For me, this is a look like of people who’ve bought high ticket stuff from me, this is a look alike of every person who’s bought a low ticket product from me, different characteristics, different mentality, different buying habits, all different audiences. This also allows you to run ads differently for each of those audiences too, because if you’re promoting a high ticket item, you’re probably not going to promote it to the look alike audience of everyone who’s bought the low ticket stuff, right? But if you want to try it, you’re not going to put the same amount of money into that audience as you would the one that is a look alike of those who buy high ticket stuff, right? So this allows you to really create a comprehensive plan of like, how does this audience react to this product? 

How does this audience react to this product? And then you really double down on how much money you make from your list, because you’re understanding how each of them are reacting to your ads, how they buy are they are longer sales cycle or a shorter sales cycle? And of course, the more detail you provide, the more detailed your ad campaigns are going to be. But this is, this is a part of the business, right? It’s like, we don’t want to just spend $100 a day. The goal is to wake up and be spending 1000s of dollars a day. That translates into 1000s of dollars a day in revenue and profit, right? So all this data that I’m talking about is stuff that comes along the way, as you were looking to build up an ad account and also make more money from not just your ads, but your list, because you’re building it and you’re selling them something. It’s that simple, but the more data you provide, the more granular you can become and essentially create your ideal audience a lot faster. But got to start somewhere, right? For anyone who doesn’t have a list more than a couple 100 people, you can’t really do much with that as a lookalike audience, I typically try to aim for at least 500 people or more before I load it as a look alike audience. So at least start there and then you can, you know, work your way out.

Igor Kheifets  35:31  

And keep in mind, like all these things that you guys are hearing right now, you know that we would call, like, geeking out over different parameters and lead types, etc. That’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Probably like if you’re if you’re like a healer, and you enjoy healing people, you’re probably not going to enjoy dealing with numbers and spreadsheets and different data. That’s where you need an experienced media buyer if you want to take your ad game to the next level, if you’re truly serious about it, that’s where it pays to have an experienced granular really, I guess, somebody who’s really passionate about watching the numbers and like analyzing all this stuff, because they’ll be pushing you to provide them with the data, With the decisions, with the targeting, with the parameters, and even, you know, if you’re if you’re bringing a great media buyer on your team, they’ll be asking you to, like, build a different funnel. They’ll be asking you be like, well, you know, our front end is converting really well, but hey, our upsell is not converting at all. We need to, like, rewrite the copy. And it’s the sort of stuff you would never do on your own, because you would, it would just not be looking at those numbers. So I guess that brings me to my next question, what should what? What should we look for in a media buyer or an agency that we choose to work with?

David  36:56  

So I’ll make that a two part, because media buyer could be someone you end up hiring internally versus an agency would be, let’s say, like a team of individuals like my team and myself, that could be running a multitude of different things for you, right? So obviously, it’s going to be dependent on how much you’re trying to scale here, right? How much you have budget available now, if you have a ad budget, less than $3,000 a month, you don’t need a giant agency to be running yourself. You don’t even need an agency. For that matter. You could find a freelance media buyer on a variety of networks or in a Facebook group that could run one network for you at the budget that you have allocated, and they can keep it in there at a cost that won’t cost you an arm and a leg, right? Because that’s only $100 a leg, $100 a day, right? It’s 100 $100 a day. But it’s not enough for an agency to do their job effectively when you are trying to scale, because here’s what I mean by that. You have $3,000 you want to spend my agency fee on that might be $2,000 and that’s not coming out of your ad budget. That’s on top of your budget. So now you have to commit $5,000 not for one month, at least for three. 

So that’s $6,000 to me and 9000 to your advertising. I have to now make sure that you’re making at least 15 back, right? That is a tough thing to do, and or guarantee, which I don’t guarantee, but it’s one of those things that I have to look at the math and go. Does that make sense for me? And does that also make sense for the client? Because I don’t want you to leave after three months. I don’t want you to talk crap about me either. And so I oftentimes tell people, if your budget’s only $100 a day, $3,000 a month, you could do it yourself, or you could find a entry level newbie advertiser. And then, by newbie, it doesn’t mean that they don’t know what they’re doing. It’s just they might only be six months to a year in but they know enough to be dangerous. They know what they’re doing, and you can have them run your stuff for $500 a month, $750 a month, and they can help you with one network and achieving that one thing right now, if you come along and you’re like, I have $10,000 a month to spend, all right, $6,000 a month to spend, okay, you can hire a boutique agency like mine. You can even go to slightly bigger agencies, maybe they have 30 employees or 50 employees, and you could work with them, most likely, if you’re at $10,000 a month or slightly below that, you could get a management fee of $1500 to $3,000 a month, and they will do your creative and your copy, and maybe even critique your funnel and things like that. And they can work their magic and truly help you out. 

I know this because we’ve done it hundreds of times, right? But people should not be hiring an agency until their offer shows promise, because you don’t want to go to an agency when things aren’t quite working yet, because I’m about to spend your money to figure out if it’s working and if it’s not truly working, you’re going to blame us. You’re not even going to look at yourself and go, I should have did more work on this offer. No, you’re going to look at the agency and go, is your fault not working? Because that’s the first thing they do, is they blame everyone else with themselves. And so I oftentimes don’t want someone to come to me when an offer is brand new. Now, if I see something in it where I’m like, man, they just don’t know what they don’t know. Like, I’ve made offers work like this before. That’s different. But how often does that happen? It’s very rare that we see an offer that’s like an automatic win just because of our experience in an industry, or maybe it’s a similar offer to someone else that we helped out, right? But that doesn’t happen very often. You know, out of 10 people, it might be 2 of them that have a very promising offer, and they just don’t know what they have in front of them. So you could start off with a entry level media buyer. You could find them on Upwork or people on Fiverr now are even good if you go to the professional section and look for like the people who do this on a month to month basis, but oftentimes you need to at least learn the basics of how to launch and or understand what’s going on with your ad campaigns. 

And you could do that when you’re spending $20 a day. You could do that at $10 a day, because if you have no idea what’s going on in the ads dashboard of any of these networks, it’s very easy for a media buyer to come back to come back to you and be like, ads look fantastic. Everything’s great. We’re getting leads. And then you go in there and you realize there’s no leads. It’s clicks, right? Or there’s just clicks, and there hasn’t been the lead in three weeks. But you didn’t know because you didn’t learn the dashboard, right? So if you’re spending less than 3k a month, do it yourself, period. Learn it. You need to learn it anyway. You need to understand your numbers. If you’re spending between 3 and 10 you are in boutique agency land. You could work with an agency. They will help you. They will write your copy and your creative and all that stuff. But then you need to be dialed in on your offer. You need to be focusing on improving your offer, making sure your customers are happy. If you don’t have customers. Where’d the money come from that you’re spending to sell the funnel essentially like, what are you doing to get this money? In that case, be prepared to spend for at least three months, right? 

So if you want to put 10k into something, do you have 30k set aside for three months? Because every agency is going to ask for at least three months, and then from there, you can work with that agency to dial in your offer week by week. Not, oh, we’ll do a month long check in. No, no, every week you need to do something that adjusts the funnel to perform at a higher rate every week, until it’s at a point of scale. Point of scale is when you’re spending, I’d say, $500 a day or more. So you’re looking at 15,000 for the month. When you start to get to that point, you’re one thing away from being able to double or triple your ad spend. And that could be, I just need more customers. It could be that you make one tweak to an ad that your lead cost drops a little bit more. Like, we don’t necessarily know, because we don’t have a actual offer example here, but it’s like you’re not far off from a point of scale, but you have to be spending at least two $300 a day to discover these things, and by then, you might have someone else doing it for you. So I would also say this from a strategic standpoint, it’s very easy to be enamored by the big words and the jargon thrown in the marketing industry at somebody, and be like, yeah. So if you use, you know, this VSL funnel with our, whatever catchy name is for this framework, and you just plug it all in, you’ll, you know, double and triple your leads. Like, no, no, just break it down in the most simplistic, dumb down way you possibly can. What is the goal here? I need X amount of clients and or customers from my funnel. Great reverse engineering. If I want 10 customers, how many leads do you need to achieve to get the 10 customers? What’s the average lead to application ratio, lead to application to close sale? Like just figure out your metrics. 

Come up with a Benchmark Number, and then see if the agency and or media buyer agrees with your math. Is it something that seems attainable? Can you actually convert 30% of your applications to a closed sale? Yes, cool, great. How many of those leads, though, turn into apps? Is it 10% is it 5% of the leads? Is it 15% if it’s 10% great. For every 100 leads, you get 10 applications. Now go back even further. How much the lead cost? Oh, my, leads cost $10 okay, cool. So for 100 leads, you need $1,000 and then for every 1000, you’re going to have at least 10 applications, $100 an app, and you’re going to close 30% so you’re going to close three cool. So it costs you 1000 bucks to get three customers, if the if you get three customers, and each one makes you 1000 bucks, you make 3000 for every 1000, the math looks fantastic. Now go run some ads, right? Don’t just go into it guns blazing and not know your math, right? These are all things a average media buyer should be doing with you. Average. Average, not even a good one, an average one. If you don’t have math before you start anything, you are wasting money. So make sure you are running the numbers with your media buyer and or agency before you do anything. And so you know, of course, you can always look for case studies and testimonials we get that. I’m not trying to give you the obvious stuff here. People are hiring agencies with case studies and testimonials, but they’re not sitting down and doing the math. And then they wonder why things aren’t working. You didn’t have anywhere to work off of. You didn’t set expectations, you didn’t set goals.

David  45:37  

And then you wonder why the numbers don’t make sense. Well, you didn’t have numbers to begin with. And so if you can just sit down, figure out your I call them the benchmark numbers right here. Here we’d like to be, you know, we’d love to spend $1 and make three. You might not be there in the beginning, but it’s, it’s a great place to look as to like, here’s what we’d like to be at some point. But if I can turn $1 into two or $1 into $1.90 or onto something. And as long as you can sit down with someone, map out what that looks like. You could see what the copy looks like that they write. You could see that their creative aligns with your brand, your color scheme. You know how you want to be represented, you’re fine. The rest is on you wanting to pay their rate to allow them to be the strategist or the media buyer you want them to truly be. Because when under, when a person’s underpaid, they’re not going to do the work period you try to save a buck. They’re going to try to save a buck. They’re not going to do all the work that you want them to do. But if they ask for something and you’re willing to pay it and sit down with them and make sure this works, they will do everything in their capacity to stay with you for six to 12 months and make this stuff work. And that’s the hidden gem. Really, like no service provider wants to be underpaid and essentially just underappreciated, right? They ask for two grand, and you believe in their ability. Give them the two grand and let them do their job. Just get out the way and let them do their job, but do the math with them, figure out where the goals and expectations are, and let them work and get out their way, and now go focus on where you’re great. Customers, take care of them, fulfill get them the results that they’re looking for. 

And as long as you keep doing that, the media buyer will make sure that they feed you the right people. I know it doesn’t seem like rocket science, because it’s not, but a lot of people hover over their over the shoulder of their service provider, and they wonder why the service provider is not doing their job. Because every time they do it for you, they feel this, this sense of like stress because you’re always hovering over them. And you wonder why they say that the higher spend accounts and the higher management fees are the accounts they put the most attention on. It’s not just because they’re getting paid more.
It’s because those people don’t bother them as much. So if you really want to allow your media buyers to strive and get you the results you want pay them what they ask for, sit down, create a plan, do the math, come up with the copy and creative with them and just let them work. And then just assess the data every week, do a monthly report on where things at. Did we hit our goals? Yes or no, and if no, what could we do to improve things in month two? And if there’s no progress after month two, move on. Go to someone else, right? But just you got to sit down and do the work with them in the beginning, and then once you’re at the point of scale, you can get out the way. Because when you’re at a point of scale, that’s when a media buyer could see what they need to do in order to help you continue to improve, period. And this is from 17 years of experience. 

Igor Kheifets  48:37  

I can tell we obviously hit a chord with that question, and we set something off there, deep inside. So, so, okay, it’s clear. You gave us some criteria on where we want to be and when is the right time to work with an agency. Unfortunately, we are out of time. So one last question I want to ask, two questions, actually. First, if somebody wanted to work with you, where should they be to be a good candidate for to partner up with you?

David  49:12  

So from a I’d say, from a spend standpoint, I already talked about how you need to have a minimum before you even start looking to talk to an agency. If you are spending at least 150 to $200 a day, we can have a conversation, right? We can have a conversation on where you are, where you want to be, what you’d like to create in your business, and where you want to go from here, right? I do offer done for you, but I also have consulting, right? So if you’re at the at the cusp of almost being at the point where an agency could take on your advertising, but you’re not quite there yet. I can at least work with you on developing the strategy to get to the point where we can eventually take over your advertising, right. Now, you can go to convertroi.com there’s a box there with my face on it. You click it, and you can inquire, and it sends me a message directly. And so you could tell me, you know who you are, what you do and what your business is, and the more information you provide, the better. 

Give me the funnel, give me the offer, tell me everything, and then I can actually help you out. Now, if you are already a good fit, because you’re like, you know what, we have another agency running our stuff, and they’re not quite up to par with what we’d like to where we’d like to be we can always do an audit of your account, see if it’s something we can possibly help you with and or take over. And then we can work something out on the done for you side same place, just go to convertroi.com and give us that information as well. But you are talking to me. You are communicating with me, and then I make sure that I put you in the position to win. If it’s something that’s not something that we can handle, maybe it’s not an industry that we’re familiar with, or maybe it’s not something we’re comfortable with. I have a fantastic network of people that I know can handle it, but we at least look at it first to make sure it’s something we know we can we can have success with, and then we just take it from there. 

Igor Kheifets  50:53  

Sweet. This brings me to my next question. You have lots of shoes behind you. What’s that about?

David  50:59  

yeah. So I guess when you’re an adult, and you get to the point where you’re like, I have adult money, what are the things that as a child or a teenager, I didn’t quite have a lot of and then you just start hoarding them, right? Whether it’s like watches or if it’s shoes or something like that, I always had some form of an obsession with basketball. So basketball for me was like, Oh, I’m going to, I want my basketball shoes. Now, of course, Jordans are the best thing. So I was like, let me get my, my Jordans. Let me get my basketball shoes. And I put the ones in these cases that I’m like, I wear them. I actually wear them, but I also like to have them on display, so I just put them behind me. Now, the other obsession I have is obviously watches. And so it’s like, I was like, well, watches are far more expensive than shoes, so let me not buy a bunch of those. But watches symbolize goals for me, because I always wanted a Rolex in certain things when I was a kid. So I hit certain goals. I buy a watch when I just want to have different colors and stuff in my office. And when I wear certain clothes, I go crazy with the shoes, and so I keep them behind me, because it’s a talking point. Apparently everyone asked me about my shoes now. So it also helps with conversations.

Igor Kheifets  52:12  

Well, if you, if you kept your watches, and like these, you know, display boxes behind you, I’d ask about the watches.

David  52:21  

It helps though. Every call I start, they’re like, tell me about the shoes, you know, over there. Tell me about the ones over there. I’m like, no problem. So then I just go into the whole thing about the shoes. It’s a marketing ploy, but it’s as much as I enjoy the shoes. I’m like, it’s gonna cause a conversation too. 

Igor Kheifets  52:36  

It’s the first ever marketing no, not the first one. I guess I do like marketing employees that you can wear? I think that’s smart. That’s killing two birds with one stone.

David  52:46  

And if I and if I’m not showing off watches, like a lot of other people do, I also have the clock. Yeah? So people are like, tell me, why do you have a Rolex fake looking clock on your wall? I’m like, well, because I like watches. And then it goes into the whole conversation around that. So, yeah.

Igor Kheifets  53:00  

nice. Well, now I have to ask, is that blue basketball? Does that mean anything?

David  53:08  

So this blue basketball you’re referencing here, so, yeah, turquoise. So a buddy of mine has a brand. It’s a clothing brand called Socially Wasted. And so his whole thing it, you know, he loves basketball. So whenever they created their apparel line, one of the unique things they did was they made a basketball that says Socially Wasted on it. And it was their way of, like, getting in front of people who like, Okay, you make a shirt or sweatpants that grabs attention to a degree, and then people forget. But when was the last time you saw a random basketball that says wasted on it, and people are like, Why does a basketball say wasted on it? Starts conversation. Oh, it represents a brand. And now all of a sudden, you’re starting to look at the clothing. So he made that and put it on display. And I was like, I need one of those, because I’ve never had a turquoise basketball before. And so then he just gave me one, and now I have it probably displayed. So, yeah.

Igor Kheifets  54:01  

Wow, damn it. I just got pulled into accidental advertising disclaimer. The Socially Wasted Inc does not sponsor this podcast.

David  54:11  

No, they don’t need it.

Igor Kheifets  54:15  

Well, David, it was a pleasure hosting. You obviously know so much about ads. It’s clear that you actually want to talk anyone who is currently at the level of, I’d say, at least $500 a day with your ads, regardless of the platform. I highly recommend talking to David, because he knows so many insider tricks, and he’s got so much experience when it comes to running campaigns, lowering ad costs, increasing ROI, he’s just a wealth of knowledge when it comes to media buying, direct response and just he understands business too, which I think is very important for a media buyer these days. I don’t think you can, you can no longer be just a media buyer. You. Can no longer just work in isolation. Looking at somebody’s ads, you absolutely have to have access to all of their numbers. You have to know what an average buyer is worth. You have to ask the question, Are these buyers regenerating? Escalating on the back end, you have to be involved in the attention to detail that David and steam bring to the table is insane. 

Again, one of the Testaments that I think, for a great media buyer or a media buying agency is the amount of time on average that a client will work with them. Because one of the biggest issues, and all the agency owners know this, one of the biggest issues for an agency owner a media buyer, is the churn, right? You get a client, the client you know, doesn’t like the results and gives up in like 30 days, or you work really, like, really hard on setting up their ad account and getting the tracking going and hooking everything up and getting the numbers and launching the first campaign and overcoming compliance issues, and then the client, you know, disappears because they got pulled into a different project. So longevity is a big tell. And many of the clients that I know who work with David, they’ve been working with him for years, not even months or weeks, for years. So if you are at a point when you’re like, Yeah, I need somebody. I need to offload my ads so I can scale. 

I think you’re in good hands when it comes to working with convertroi.com So you, I want you to go to convertroi.com go fill out the form and just have a conversation. At the very least, you’re going to learn something, because every time you talk to David, you know, he just can’t help it. He’ll just, he’ll just give away an industry secret that just how he goes. Um, yeah, so thanks again for making an appearance. It’s been a long time coming. I really appreciate of the wealth and knowledge you bring to the table. You’re really a wise head on young shoulders, as they say. So any you know what, let me ask you one final question. If you could go back in time, let’s say I had a time machine I put you in. You go back 10 years and you meet yourself 10 years ago for 60 seconds. What would you tell yourself? 

David  57:18  

Build your list immediately. I spent too much time building everyone else’s list and not my own, and back then, it was way cheaper. And so, you know, that was the heyday of the Teespring. Oh yeah, remember that? You know, Teespring customer IDs and page IDs, and all the different IDs that we were allowed to have back then, and leads were $1 $2 like, I sometimes I look back at those numbers and I’m like, I can’t believe I wasn’t spending $10,000 a day. Like, I don’t know what I was doing, but I was so focused on everybody else, and that’s an agency life for you. By the way, we care about everyone else’s business more than we care about our own, because it’s our job to make sure that you’re getting exactly what you’re paying for. And then by the time we do that, we’re like, oh yeah, we gotta run some of our own stuff too. And so I put a lot of attention in building up my name and my agency early on, but at the detriment of not building my list to the extent I should have been. So I would have told myself, hey, all that money, you’re making, half of it, you need to go build a list. And I have no idea where I’d be today, but I’m sure it’d be crazy if I was building my list that far back. So, yeah.

Igor Kheifets  58:38  

Interesting. And on that note, I think it’s the perfect time to end this episode. Thank you, David, this has been great. Guys. Thanks for tuning in, and until next time we chat, have a good one. 

Thank you for listening to the List Building Lifestyle, get access to the previous episodes, transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also remember to claim your free copy of my best selling book at www.igorsbook.com, it explains how I made millions with list building starting from scratch, plus I’ll give you $3,000 worth of free bonuses, including my best landing page templates, email swipe files and traffic blueprints. Go to www.igorsbook.com now to claim your free package.