I had a really great question from a subscriber this week, and I thought it’d be a really good opportunity to share with you because what he shared and what questions he had was something that I actually answer quite frequently.
The problem is essentially this: “I’m spending $300 a month, $500 a month on Facebook, Instagram ads, and I am just not getting the sales that I want.”
This is not necessarily just an advertising problem. There are actually 5 things that you want to look into diagnose slumping sales.
So the first thing is this is, that (1) Does my product or my service absolutely fulfill a desire or solve a problem? Now we’ve all heard the term bleeding neck, right? If somebody’s got a bleeding neck, how do you fix it? You really need to take an honest look at your product and services and say, is this something people absolutely desire, or does it absolutely solve a problem? And the more extreme that is, the more sellable your product is. Now, if you’re in a market where there’s a dozen or so competitors and people can get this thing anywhere or it’s not unique enough, then you’re left competing on price and things like that.
So as you were thinking about positioning your product, positioning your service, Perry Marshall talks about a Definitive Selling Proposition. How can you frame your product in such a way that it absolutely solves a problem and it absolutely fulfills a desire that somebody has? And just be honest with yourself about that. If you can’t say, yeah, it’s really kind of not unique, then that’s maybe where your problem lies.
Now, if you really feel like you have a great product, great service, then you need to check something in regards to your offer. Your offer is how you package that product or service and present it to the marketplace. So (2) if your offer doesn’t result in a “hell yes!”, by your prospects, then you might have an issue. What you want is to be able to say, I have this product, I have this service and here is what I’m offering to you. This is how I want you to consume it. If your response from your marketplace, isn’t a hell yes, then you need to work more on your offer.
Another rabbit hole you want to go down is targeting. Now, this is really important, obviously, as you think about your advertising, (3) am I really targeting the right people? If you think about the way you position your product, the way you position your offer, then are you actually reaching the right people? So that’s another thing to check. Am I targeting the right people?
(4) Then it comes down to traffic, right? If you open a store in a part of town that doesn’t get people driving by, you’re not going to get the sales. So am I driving enough traffic? So you have to really consider how many people can I put my offer in front of for $300 a month? Do I need to spend a $1000 a month? Do I need to spend $5000 a month? You need to be thinking about traffic in terms of I need to get eyeballs in front of my offer. So if you’re not spending enough and you’re getting just a trickle of traffic, well, you really can’t evaluate whether those other things are working. You need to have traffic.
And then the fifth thing is really then diving into your ad creative. (5) Does my image, does my video, does my copy do a great job of talking about my product? Does it do a great job of talking about my service? Am I able to put a great offer in front of them? Are you putting all these pieces together? When you think about who you’re targeting, are you really targeting them in your creative?
Now, if these questions were easy, all right, people would be millionaires, right? It would be very easy.
These are hard questions. These are fundamental core questions, and you may not be able to answer them in a week, a month, or even a year. These are things that you want to work with, but you need to actively work through these things. And it’s not maybe just one at a time. Maybe you have to work on a couple at a time.
Then you really need to ask yourself if you are honestly answering these questions? Sometimes an outside opinion helps.
So if this is something that’s bothering you and you can’t figure out where to start, go ahead and book a call with us and we’ll be able to talk through it.