If you’re using cost per lead as your metric for success, there’s a big chance your paid ads are going to fail.

This is super important as a business owner to know so media buying agencies can’t pull a fast one on you (since most don’t actually know this).

Here’s why:

Cost per lead is a great vanity metric.

“Wow, our leads are so cheap!” you say.

But how’s the quality of those leads?

What’s their lifetime value?

How much does it cost to acquire the sale from those leads?

You could be netting $5 leads...

But if you’re selling a high-ticket program for say, $5K...

And your cost per acquisition (or cost per sale) is $4K...

You’re not really left with much profit to pay team, taxes, Stripe fees, and accounting for the fact that that’s REVENUE not CASH COLLECTED.

So you’re in the red when acquiring each client.

Now, that’s fine if you’re READY for and AWARE of that.

But most people aren’t.

So they’re burning cash (womp womp).

So a back-end ascension to another high-ticket program or affiliate or referral partner is super important there.

I digress.

Going back to the previous example of $5 leads for a $5K program and you’re spending $4K on each sale.

Let’s say you optimize for cost per sale instead of cost per lead.

Your leads are $50 each!

But that’s way out of KPI!

Not so fast.

If you look at cost per sale, it’s $3K.

So even though your leads are more expensive...

Your cost per sale is lower.

It costs $1000 less to acquire each client in this example.

That’s enough wiggle room to actually scale an offer.

Or to scale an already winning offer far more aggressively.

Because you or your media buying team won’t turn off potential winning campaign out the gate simply because “the leads are too expensive”.

Looking at cost per sale as your primary metric simplifies the crap out of the scaling process.

Then only use what I call “diagnostic metrics” to make sure things are within KPI and working the way they should.

So if an offer isn’t scaling as well as it should...

We can use these “diagnostic metrics” to optimize the funnel.

Whether that’s landing page opt-in rate, call booking rate, show up rate, click through rate, cost per lead, etc.

We can measure them up against what they should be and we can quickly diagnose why a funnel or offer isn’t working like it should.

Maybe the opt-in rate is lower than industry standard.

Ok, so that means it’s one (or more) of a few options:

1. It’s a messaging problem

2. The offer sucks

3. The copy isn’t as punchy as it could

4. There’s an incongruence between what’s promised on the ad vs what’s shown on the landing page

Then you can figure out which of those it’s most likely to be.

Make those tweaks.

And watch your funnel fly.

Yeehaw.

Ed “Cost Per Lead Hater” Reay

Top Marketing Tips

Tip #1 - Easy Tweak To Boost AOV

One of the easiest ways to boost your AOV without writing any copy...

Tweaking your order bump...

Or touching your upsell...

Is to split test the price of your front end product.

In split tests with clients, we've found that sometimes you can increase the price of your product without losing any conversions...

And sometimes testing a lower price actually increases conversions so much so that your AOV increases!

So you get free AOV for doing next to nothing.

Tip #2 - Why Scaling Isn’t Always The Answer

My offer isn’t scalable, and I don’t want it to be.

No shade to people who want to scale, but it seems like a mind fuck considering everyone is shoving scaling down your throat.

That used to be my goal.

Scaled big.

Made money.

My life sucked and I didn’t like myself nor the work I was doing.

I love working intimately with business owners.

I love not working more than 1-3 hours a day, with weekends and some full days of zero calls.

I love getting to spend all my time hanging with my friends, family, or reading books or dancing.

Wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Let’s stop shaming people who don’t wanna scale.

It’s not always the answer.

And it’s never the answer to fill that void in your heart.

I promise you it’s elsewhere ❤️

Tip #3 - Struggling To Make Your Offer Stand Out? Read This

Your offer needs to be positioned differently than everything else out there.

You can be in the same category as your competitors.

But during the buying process you don’t want your prospect to consider any offer but yours.

This can usually be accomplished by:

- Highlighting parts of your program that may be in the dark or not front facing

- Changing how you explain what you do to be simpler

- Including why they’ve failed at achieving the desired result and how you can overcome that fault

It’s usually about taking what you already have and bringing certain features and promises and parts to the forefront.

When you’re in the weeds of your offer it’s hard to see or know what these things are.

Get an outside perspective on your positioning.

Tip #4 - The Easy Way To Get Clients (has nothing to do with copy, messaging, offers, or funnels)

Getting clients is easy when you:

- Do cool stuff

- Are a cool person

- Know what you’re talking about

- Have a life going on outside of work

Tip #5 - Do Business The Way YOU Want To (F Cold Outreach, Respectfully)

Never gotten a single client from cold outreach.

Cold email.

Or cold call.

Clients come to me and hit me in the DMs.

It’s been that way for 8 years.

80-90% sold on working together.

They tell me they’ve been wanting to work with me for a while but just needed to find a way to make it happen.

So it’s usually just talking about logistics and answering questions.

They pay in full and ask about the highest tier of working together to get the most amount of support.

Never understood the hustle grindset of outreach.

Never worked for me.

Upgrade Your Mind

The Secret Emotions Holding You Back From Being Happier

When my grandma passed away I never took the time to mourn her death.

Or to truly feel the unconditional love she gave me.

For all my life, I’d felt like I’d had to earn people’s love.

Do something.

Be something.

But with her she loved me as I was.

Flaws and all.

She was patient, loving, gracious, kind, and had a great sense of humor.

And I realized I never truly allowed myself to feel the love she had for me.

When I realized this a lot of feelings came up.

Anger that I didn’t put in more effort to call her back or take the first step to spend time together.

Tears of gratitude that she loved me so deeply and laughing at some of the memories we had together traveling and how she taught me so much about spirituality and self development from a young age.

Shame that when she was in hospice, I was hoping it would “be over sooner” so I could get back to working on my business (that was my coping mechanism to not have to deal with uncomfortable emotions).

I sat and allowed myself to feel these emotions for some time.

Let the anger, gratitude, shame, love, and the human stew of emotions come to a boil, and finally cool.

I felt a release.

My vision looked brighter.

Colors were richer.

My vision was sharper.

I felt physically lighter.

I felt more love in my heart for my grandma than I ever have.

And I carry that with me forward today.

There’s been quite a few events in my life I haven’t processed yet.

And things I have.

Childhood stuff.

Being let down by authority figures and people I trusted.

And each time I sit down and look at the event, and allow myself to feel those uncomfortable emotions that I’ve been suppressing, I’m able to let go of the past and embrace the future.

It’s like your consciousness is a bunch of balloons floating through the sky horizontally.

And those balloons are tied to a bundle of rocks, pebbles, and boulders of different sizes.

As you release those rocks, pebbles, and boulders you’re able to ascend to higher levels of consciousness as your “baseline”.

Meaning...

Your base mood or emotion gets raised.

Because your body no longer is holding onto that suppressed emotion.

So it allows you to naturally elevate your default mood and feeling.

This brings about a more joyous, happy life.

One with less skepticism.

Less fear.

Less doubt.

And things look a little brighter, sharper, and more beautiful.

Genuinely.

It’s not even an expression, I’ve experienced that before.

But sometimes life events will happen to you.

Or you’ll start to go down a negative thought loop.

This adds pebbles, rocks, or boulders to your bundle of balloons.

Which weighs down your overall altitude, lowering your default emotional level.

Lowering your chances of great things happening to you (or appreciating the great things that do happen to you).

And just making life not as beautiful.

So please.

Take some time to look at some of the life events that have happened to you or that have a lot of emotional charge around them.

Pick the strongest one and sit on it.

Stew on the situation and try to force those emotions to come up.

Allow yourself to feel whatever you feel.

And allow yourself to express those feelings.

Maybe you’ll want to cry.

Maybe you’ll want to shout.

Maybe you’ll want to curl up in a ball and hate yourself.

Who knows.

Allow it all.

Don’t judge it.

And eventually because you’ve allowed these emotions to pass...

They will no longer subconsciously haunt you as much as they have in the past.

And you’ll start to notice your default mood is higher.

Bit more joy.

Bit more happiness.

Bit more positive outlook.

And life will just seem easier.

It’s been that way for me.

I pray it’ll be the same for you.

Hope this helps.

Ed

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