Failed Launch Case Study #1

Let's call her Deanna.

Deanna came to an agency I used to work for to launch her business coaching program.

She had great photos,
.....an amazing case study,
.............had just bought some funnel software,
and was raring to go!

It was time to truly live that laptop lifestyle and launch her $2,000 program to the masses!💻

Nevermind that she hadn't installed her Facebook pixel yet, didn't have it on her website either.

But she had over 5000 likes on her Facebook business page! 🙌
......with people from Bangladesh making up the majority☹
.............and she had only 100 people on her email list.📧

🚩🚩🚩Can you say red flags?🚩🚩🚩

🙋‍♀️I raised my concerns to her and to the agency after my assessment of her digital credibility.

First of all, she wasn't having it. She knew what she was doing. She'd already run some of her own ads before (that "like" campaign to gain thousands of fans from Bangladesh that ruined her pixel data was the one ad she had run before). It wasn't so hard, and she just took this funnel challenge and knew exactly what to do.

And the agency's response: Oh well! She already paid her fees and turned in her onboarding form.

It was full steam ahead!

STOP: I didn't have much of a choice here, and I was willing to give this a go. I have had lots of success with coaches who had similar situations...but I also have had coaches who would do what I asked them to do when I could see things flailing in their campaigns. Without a backup plan, you have to move fast to fix things on the fly, and it can be super stressful. I do NOT like working that way, nor do my clients.....but off we went.

Analytical Breakdown of the Campaigns

Two lead gen campaigns and one nurture:

Lead results: $1,036 for 292 leads at $3.54 CPL and $576 for 127 leads at $4.54 per lead.

One opt-in was a download, and the other was a case study. Nurture ads only spent $13, as we didn’t have enough content to spin, nor did we have a large enough warm audience built up yet to target.

Total ad spend: $1,625
Agency fees: $2,500
Sales: $0 <<<< that is painful any way you spin it

At the beginning, CPL was $25, and the client was saying - "spend it, spend it, spend it," but I held off and made sure the ads had time to optimize before making poor allocation decisions dictated by the client.

I held firm, optimized the way ads should be with daily attention and strategic moves.

This “spend it, spend it, spend it” notion is taught by a software company that throws around Facebook ads advice when they have no clue how this works for someone just starting out.

It’s killing coaches who are starting out with digital marketing, even if they have years of experience doing what they do.

It’s the digital credibility (or lack there of) that makes all the difference.

The nurture piece was barely spent out because it was literally 3 text-only content pieces that quickly exhausted.

Even after we told the client that she needed more nurture content, more deep dives, some 3 to 5 minute videos with tips, she didn’t produce anything and went on vacation.

Even a vacation video talking through some off the cuff knowledge would have been very helpful. Also, the frequency on these posts was ridiculously high, causing fatigue with the audience, and only 3 clicks were produced to get to the sales page.

Let me repeat: Only 3 people saw the sales page...

This is the laptop lifestyle, right? We’re supposed to be able to go on vacation while our business runs for us in the background. After you figure out your own custom tested methodology, maybe this will work, but not on your very first digital launch.

What are we smoking, people? Come on!

I can still see this client's account because she never bothered to take me off, and she never paid her final bill to Facebook, so her account is now disabled.

And did she take my advice for how to optimize her Facebook business page? No, it still has the same cover on it that I told her was too much, too soon, and the call-to-action button is not gaining her any clicks.

She's bitter, and will likely not recover from this for a long time. Her ego was bruised, and her confidence in Facebook ads was shattered....for now at least.

This is the type of objection I face every single day, and it's exhausting.

This is why I am blogging and shouting about the guru methodologies.

This is why I am determined to help people because they're going about this all wrong and drinking the Koolaid of a few heavy hitters out there who have big lists and deep pockets.

Facebook ads and sales funnels absolutely work, but ads are not the magic pill. It takes strategy and analysis to know what to do.

I have 3 more of these stories. I think I'll get all of these on my blog. I hope you learned something from this one.

Sound off below!