Paid ads stop working?

A handful of things can cause a person to wake up sweaty, with bulging eyes and a racing heart in the middle of the night.

- nightmares
- a robber
- an alien abduction..

Recently 1000’s of advertisers have added paid traffic to that list.

They’re experiencing things like

- high cac
- low show %
- losing salespeople
- high lead and call cost
- team complaining about lead quality

And the inability to fix it no matter who or what they turn to.

“It’s due to the fact that there are thousands of people in your feed selling their new funnel strategy, advanced targeting strategy, AI thing, or software. They all have some compelling angle on how it will solve your problem.”

This is usually when I receive an “S.O.S.” signal.

It originally comes from “save our ship” or “save our souls.”

I’ve helped 100’s of companies solve this issue using a different kind of S.O.S.

In my experience, the solution simply comes down to a concept mentioned during a speech at Caltech delivered by the late great Charlie Munger.

He speaks about gold mining, math..

And the difference between placer mining and finding big nuggets of gold,

Comparing it to how he’s become successful by consistently doing simple and obvious things, while others succumb to the failure and misery of over complication.

Placer mining involves hours of sifting through sand and rock hoping to find tiny little pieces of gold.

This is how most businesses solve things and operate on a daily basis.

It’s not because they’re dumb people, either.

It’s due to the fact that there are thousands of people in your feed selling their new funnel strategy, advanced targeting strategy, AI thing, or software.

They all have some compelling angle on how it will solve your problem.

Nearly all of them involve a significant amount of money and time investment into something incredibly complicated we don’t understand fully, compared to what works today for a business that’s already over the 500k mark from paid ads.

Solutions that are usually the “placer mining” of paid advertising and business.

“Your friend in a mastermind with you knows a guy with a low ticket funnel strategy that has 5 upsells, an ai setter, brand new crm and tech stack. That’s what I mean by convenient but not obvious.”

Now, I’m not saying that all of these methods, tactics or strategies being preached in the marketplace are bogus.

Or that none of them work.

In gold mining,

Placer mining itself for example works for finding gold.

As I stated it’s just incredibly more difficult and complicated, especially at “scale.”

Imagine the big operation you’d need to find a tiny bit of gold.

When it comes to marketing, advertising and selling,

Nearly everything that someone says doesn’t work?

I can show you someone it’s working for really well. 

The same is true for everything people claim works the best– I’ve seen where that very thing didn’t just NOT work, but went terribly wrong and cost someone thousands or even millions.

If you want to find the gold in business that will help you grow, scale, and stick, you’ve got to look in one of the rarest places in the world: S.O.S. - Stupid Obvious Solutions.

It’s where nobody looks.

“In fact, the things I look at first are so simple most people not only dismiss them, but they argue that it can’t be the answer.”

Most focus on what’s popular, complicated and feels convenient (but is actually not).

It may even seem like everyone is doing these things.

But you don’t know what the real net results for all of them are or what else they were doing that contributed.

There’s also a vast majority of people who say things work before they’ve even had time to get results with yet.

People do this because they’re drinking the koolaid and they’re excited.

Your friend in a mastermind with you knows a guy with a low ticket funnel strategy that has 5 upsells, an ai setter, brand new crm and tech stack.

That’s what I mean by convenient but not obvious.

Here are some of the ways I help my clients find the obvious:

• Ask the question “what’s the worst thing we can do to solve this problem” and go down the list. Then invert (opposite) the answers.

• Put 10% of the budget into testing headlines, hooks, concepts and creatives always. Do it in a controlled manner with control variables using incubation testing. You should see a boost in lead quality and decrease in cost if done right.

• Do a competitor analysis of the top direct and indirect competitors. Shop them. Look at the very stupid obvious discrepancies between their sales process and yours. Their ads and yours. There are ALWAYS competitors crushing when everyone else says the sky is falling and I rarely find they do anything confusing or complicated to get there.

• Using a TTO, you can tell the AI exactly who you want. A Trifecta Targeting Offer is basically like holding up a cardboard sign with a 1-2 word problem on it in a sea of people. Is the problem you’re solving going to attract unideal prospects? If so, narrow it down to one only your perfect customer has, that the others don’t.

• Conduct daily sales meetings, cover your sales reps’ goals (and why), and do call breakdowns for training.

• Most businesses are simply wasting resources solving the wrong problem. Look at your target financial model vs actual daily. Work on the one piece that contributes to all of the other pieces being off track. Get more granular on that one piece to solve your real issue.

• If your campaign was with in KPI for a period of time (minimum 10 days) then duplicate it and shut the old one off. Run it exactly the same but change fonts and colors on your creatives. This is called “content stretching.” If you see a lead quality increase it means the platform is showing your ads to the “bottom of the barrel” due to creative fatigue or AI bias. (see bullet 2)

There’s actually a whole list I go through with my clients.

None of it is complicated.

In fact, the things I look at first are so simple most people not only dismiss them, but they argue that it can’t be the answer.

Write it down on your hand, notepad or a sticky note.. S.O.S.

Stupid Obvious Solutions.

Come up with some of your own.

If you stop trying so hard for a moment and go through the list I shared, you’ll think of some.

Systematize the things that can be made recurring or can be put in a playbook.

It hasn’t failed me or my many clients yet.

- Lance