Case 2 (Hidden)
Ryan has a PhD in music and he’s an expert at what he does. Keyword here is EXPERT.
He loves playing piano and teaching people, but he didn’t want to do 1-1’s so he created a course that teaches people how to play piano using images.
“Word is that the next Beethoven will go through his program.” - Ben
At the time of joining our coaching program, he was still working as a teacher even if he was making 30k per month from his course (the power of the info course business).
Once Ryan got inside the program, (smart move) the first thing we did was audited the business.
Our coaches wanted to see exactly what they are working with so they can give customized feedback & instructions on how to move forward, not some generic BS advice that doesn’t work.
When analyzing the business, here’s what our digital strategists discovered:
- The ad account was completely disorganized with no clear structure.
- There was no retargeting campaign running.
- There were no systems followed for testing new creatives & audiences.
With our strategists guiding Ryan every step of the way, w implemented a new account structure that was more organized and more efficient.
Top of the funnel for cold traffic, middle of the funnel for warm traffic and bottom of the funnel for hot traffic.
We took it a step further by using proper exclusions for each stage of the funnel, this way we ensured ad spend wasn’t randomly wasted.
A good example here would be with the cold traffic campaign. We call it cold because it’s advertising to people that NEVER heard of the brand. You’d be surprised how many people forget or don’t think about excluding past customers here.
With a clear account structure moving forward, everything was easier to understand and see exactly what worked and didn’t work.
Pretty obvious here, turn off underperforming ads while increasing spend on the good ones.
Some people like to do this using automated rules, we don’t encourage people to do it like that because if you do, you will no longer be able to understand what happened. The analysis part is CRUCIAL to understand what works and what doesn’t.
While re-structuring his ad account, we also created his retargeting campaign.
The market responded very well to his offer and because of that, the moment he started with the retargeting campaigns, the account saw a HUGE increase.
Some people are obsessed with retargeting campaigns, and I can understand why but it’s crucial you don’t neglect your top of the funnel because your middle & bottom is fuelled by the traffic from your TOF campaign.
With a good account structure & profitable campaigns, it was time for us to scale Ryans ad account.
The strategist working with him started to test in a systematic way multiple creatives & audiences.
Once the account had a few winning creatives & audiences, the account started to take off, big time. More specifically, from $30k per month to $150k per month in just 60 days.
Re-cap:
- Be an expert in your niche
- Have a good product - market fit
- Use a good account structure to cut wasted spend & increase efficiency
- Don’t use automated rules so you force yourself to understand what works and what doesn’t work
- Use retargeting campaigns (MOF / BOF) but make sure you don’t neglect your TOF campaign
HERE IS WHERE THE FUN PART STARTS.
Ryan was obviously happy with his results and decided that he wanted to have us in his corner for the long-term (smart).
A few months after he was consistently bringing in $150k per month, his offer started to decay. Besides that, Ryan really wanted the revenue to be more predictable. He didn’t want to start each month from zero.
We helped him restructure his entire funnel / business into a subscription model.
When he was doing $150k per month, we were running ads to the sales page and had two back-end offers.
One was the order bump and the other one was a one time upsell.
He started working on a monthly subscription and changed his upsell to be a $1 trial for two weeks and $37 per month after that.
Just because of that change, Ryan changed his business drastically.
Instead of starting from zero each month, all he had to do was to acquire new customers so he could convert them into paying subscribers. Because he was still sending traffic to his hook offer, subscribers would compound month over month.
He dedicated a lot of time into the subscription to make sure the customers are being taken care of and to increase the lifetime value.
As a result of that, his current cost per subscriber is around $50 and his average lifetime value is around $222.
The good news is that before, he had to profit immediately and now he can wait for the profits to come in.
He gets to decide how many subscribers he gets each month.
If he wants to remain at the same level of revenue per month, realistically speaking, the only thing he needs to do is to spend the equivalent amount of dollars on ads to make up for his churn rate.
Example:
Let’s say churn rate = 20% and the number of subscribers is 4000.
With a 20% churn rate, naturally, each month 800 customers stop paying you so you have to get new ones.
Remember the cost per new subscriber? $50.
$50 x 800 = $40,000 invested to remain at $148,000 MRR.
PS: Ryan is also focused on improving the community so he can reduce the churn rate.
PS: Ryan is also focused on improving the community so he can reduce the churn rate.
Takeaway: Turn your business into a subscription model as fast as possible and start thinking long term. Lifetime value is what matters most.