EP56: Pssst - Where's the Beef?
Another week has slipped on by.
Thanks for showing up!
When we left off last week, we spoke about identifying your skills.
This is needed for a few reasons.
First of all, imposter syndrome is real and inhabits most people. It causes a lot of discomforts, and can, if allowed, derail a career before it even starts.
Ever been there before?
Nobody wants that.
I don’t!
I assume you don’t!
So - last week - we talked about how to stop it in its tracks.
It involved looking within.
This is where we have to look at the skills that are already present.
No matter what it is that we want to do, we have two main choices available to us.
We either have the skills, or we do not.
If we don’t have the skills – you know – the ones we want to share, of course, we would have to train ourselves to learn them.
That may seem like the worst thing, but in reality, it does something beneficial.
Let me tell you a story.
Years ago – while in the US Navy – I was selected to deliver training to my coworkers. It was very technical. It involved training on cleaning the focal lenses within periscopes for submarines.
As you may imagine, it would be difficult to do, if you did not have the knowledge already. Which was the case for me. And I was not even an Opticalman. I was an Electronics Technician.
But the military does this quite often. They assign untrained members of a team to deliver the training.
Why?
Because it forces them to learn so much more about the system they will be training on, they quickly become a productive member of the team.
Of course – their supervisors do offer assistance – if it becomes too difficult. But by and large, there are already technical bulletins and instruction manuals that provide most of the training needed.
I mention this because if you do lack the knowledge or skills needed to accomplish your goals, just learn it. [There is a TON of knowledge already out there.]
I had to, and so can you … if you need it.
The alternative is to borrow the knowledge from others.
Which is OK if you want to write a blog post or an article.
But for me – and a lot of people - I believe if you want to sell your knowledge and truly help others, you need to possess the knowledge to do that - yourself.
In this world we occupy, we see all sorts of people trying to pass on other people's knowledge, don’t we?
This is fine for those who have to do it that way.
But we are not like that.
Right?
You and I care about those we serve.
We share the knowledge they need to overcome problems.
The problems, or struggles they want to overcome.
To do that, we MUST have a way to reach THEM.
Makes sense, doesn’t it?
But…
Before we can reach them – we need to know who THEY are.
That makes sense too!
But to a vast number of entrepreneurs out there, frolicking around on the internet, they don’t seem to care.
They create FB Ads that target a wide group of individuals, because, they were taught, or better yet, brainwashed into thinking more eyes equals more money.
They believe that if you just get your Ad in front of a LOT of people – and I mean A LOT OF PEOPLE – then the odds are in their favor of getting traction.
And you know what?
They are probably right.
They MAY get more people to click on an Ad – or like a post – or even randomly buy their tripwire product.
But is that what they should be doing?
Is it what they need to be doing to be successful?
Is it the right thing to do?
OR
Is there a better way?
Is there a less expensive way?
Is there a faster way?
The answer is YES – YES – and Maybe.
YES – there is a better way.
YES – there is a less expensive way.
And – there may be a faster way.
First off:
The Better Way – is also the less expensive way.
When you purchase Ads, you are paying to get yourself, your product, or your service in front of people.
I mean if you already had an email list you would just be contacting them right?
So – you must be low on leads.
However, to just target everyone, or at least a huge group of people, is not the way to do it.
Why?
Because it costs YOU money.
It costs money for every click, or every thousand impressions – depending on your strategy.
If you have to pay for interest, don’t you think it should be presented to those that MIGHT just be INTERESTED in what you have?
By doing that – by targeting interest – you automatically reduce those you will be presented to – and that means you have a greater chance of getting more clicks of interested ones.
A really good AD campaign usually gets about 1-2 percent clicks. So if you target wide interest – to say 100,000, 500,000 or 1,000,000 people, and you get 1-2% clicks, that equals; 1,000-2,000 clicks, 5,000-10,000 clicks, and 10,000-20,000 click respectively.
You are paying for each and every one of those that do click.
If you did great – and I mean GREAT - and only paid $1 dollar per click, well, you can easily see how expensive it was going to be.
For just 100,000 views, with a 1% click-through, you’re looking at a $1,000 dollar bill. That is before anyone purchases anything.
Note to the other guy: You are targeting just about anything that moves, so – they are most definitely NOT your warm market. They are your cold market, and to be honest, you will not be getting the percentages that you would like. You will be getting far less. But giving you the benefit of the doubt, at 1% you're still spending $1000 for clicks of people that probably will just bounce, give a fake email address for your lead magnet, and most likely never read your emails, and if they purchased, you’re more likely to receive refund requests.
However, if instead, - THE BETTER WAY - you were to niche down and target YOUR people – you know – the ones that need what you have, and would benefit greatly from it – your audience may decrease to 3,000 or 5,000 people. [It could be more or even less, but absolutely much less than the other guy.]
1% of 3,000 equals 30 clicks. But they are targeted clicks that are worth much more. Because they already have an interest in you, your product, or your service, you may get 20-30% of those that clicked through to read enough of your sales page to take action.
Let’s say 20% of 30, or 6 people decide to follow through with your offer, and they purchase your product – costing – let’s say $47, then you made sales of $282.
Let’s also assume that you had to pay $3 per click – that’s 3x more than the other guy, right - and it could also be a whole lot less too – that means it costs you $90 to make $282.
Maybe that doesn’t sound great.
So instead let’s do the numbers for the other guy.
He got 1,000 clicks, but because no one really knows him, his product, or his service, he may only get 2-3% interest in his product. [Maybe]
At 2% that equals only 20 people purchasing a product. If it was $47 as well, he only made $940. He lost $60 because he paid $1,000 for 1,000 clicks.
You cannot keep the lights on with only a $60 profit, right?
[Pssst … remember the high refund rate? There goes that profit with just 2 refunds.]
I know this was just an over-simplification of Ad Theory, but it is all the time we have. [More coming later]
Either way, I hope you can see that a $192 profit can keep the lights on. In fact, if it were a side-hustle income, $192 is probably more than some regular folks make.
At $10 an hour, for 40 hours, equals only $400 a week, minus taxes. So with just 15% federal tax and your Social Security, the take-home pay is less than $310. I’m sorry for those making $10 an hour.
At $15 an hour, for 40 hours, equals only $600 a week, minus taxes. So with just 15% federal tax and Social Security, the take-home pay is less than $465.
Remember $15 an hour is what America WANTS to be the minimum wage. Wake up Congress - it cannot feed a family of 2. Can't we do better?
NOW…
Making a $192 profit does not sound so bad, right?
I mean – REALLY - $192 a day or every 3 days, is a huge deal when it is a side-hustle.
Making an EXTRA $192 every 3 days ends up bringing in a whopping $1920 over the course of a month.
Not too shabby, right?
Right!
So what do you think about doing marketing the smarter way?
Something to think about!
I’ll leave you to it.
I’m calling it.
This ends another podcast episode.
I’ll see you next week.
Until then, my friends.
Be safe, be happy, be you!

James "beefing up" Brown
P.S. - In the event, you DO find that once an episode has been produced and posted, that YOU really would like more information, just let me know. Use the Podcast Questions link, click on the link here. Or you can just leave a voice message here.