Has your Meta ads performance stalled? We can help you redesign your messaging and creatives for sustained growth. Talk to us at: https://www.tiereleven.com/apply
Here’s something growing brands don’t realize until growth stalls: the messaging that built your business will eventually run out of steam, even while your offer keeps converting. So why does that happen, and what do you do about it?
On today’s show, I’m breaking down a real client case study: an eight-figure SaaS-powered lead generation and coaching business that’s been stuck at a revenue plateau for nearly two years. We dig into why their original messaging saturated the market, how a growth diagnostic uncovered an entire untapped audience they’d been ignoring, and why the fix isn’t adding new ad platforms.
I’ll walk you through the exact messaging extraction process we use to turn customer interviews, support calls, and event transcripts into content pillars that actually move the algorithm. If you’re only running one or two creative angles right now, this episode shows you exactly what you’re leaving on the table, and how to expand your market without blowing up your budget.
In this episode:
- Why proven ad messaging eventually stalls growth
- How Meta’s Andromeda algorithm builds individual funnels
- The real reason CPMs rise and cost to acquire a customer flattens
- Why creative diversification matters more than adding new ad platforms
- How to uncover untapped audience segments through a growth diagnostic
- The messaging extraction process for capturing authentic customer language
- Customer support calls and live event interviews as creative gold mines
- How to build a 10-variation content matrix around a single theme
- Using hook rate, hold rate, and link click-through rate in creative testing
- Why volume alone will not scale your Meta ads account
- How top-of-funnel creative shows up in branded search and MER
- Three questions to audit your creative strategy before your next brief
Mentioned in the Episode:
Wicked Reports Attribution Software: https://www.wickedreports.com/
Jim Collins’ Book, Good to Great: https://a.co/d/068eKQng
Listen to this episode on your favorite podcast channel:
Follow and listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/perpetual-traffic/id1022441491
Follow and listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/59lhtIWHw1XXsRmT5HBAuK
Subscribe and watch on YouTube:
Connect with Ralph Burns:
Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to Perpetual Traffic?
Have some feedback you’d like to share? Connect with us on Apple Podcasts and leave us a review!
READ THE TRANSCRIPT:
They Grew to $10M+ on Angles That Worked…Here’s What Scales Them to $100M
00:00:00:00 – 00:00:05:14
Ralph Burns
This brand’s original messaging built the entire business to an eight figure level from virtually nothing.
00:00:05:14 – 00:00:09:17
Ralph Burns
And by the way, it’s still converts. But they can’t grow. They can’t expand,
00:00:09:17 – 00:00:16:16
Ralph Burns
and they can’t scale because they haven’t kept up with some of the algorithmic changes that we talk about on the show here today.
00:00:16:18 – 00:00:18:21
Ralph Burns
And this is now become a
00:00:18:21 – 00:00:20:14
Ralph Burns
creative strategy problem,
00:00:20:14 – 00:00:24:11
Ralph Burns
not a platform or adding platform problem.
00:00:24:11 – 00:00:28:00
Ralph Burns
And we’re going to get into the five steps and how we solve it. On today’s show.
00:00:29:22 – 00:00:38:08
Ralph Burns
Hello and welcome to Perpetual Traffic. This is your host, Ralph Burns Burns, founder and CEO of tier 11. And here is something that growing brands
00:00:38:08 – 00:00:44:22
Ralph Burns
don’t realize until their growth stalls. It’s that the messaging and the concepts and how they’ve sold
00:00:44:22 – 00:00:45:15
Ralph Burns
to their
00:00:45:15 – 00:00:47:06
Ralph Burns
original clientele.
00:00:47:06 – 00:00:50:17
Ralph Burns
at some point in time, starts to run out of steam.
00:00:50:17 – 00:01:19:09
Ralph Burns
but their offer actually is still converting really well. The problem is that everyone who they’re targeting and all their messaging has already seen their message and already determined that this isn’t for them. So how do you solve it? How do you expand the market? How do you go from a narrow market where you just focused on the same people that have maybe seen your message many, many times, and you can see this by frequency, by reach frequency impressions right inside your ad platforms.
00:01:19:15 – 00:01:28:06
Ralph Burns
How do you expand outside of that? How do you grow that market and actually create a brand at the same time? Well, we’re going to talk about it on today’s show
00:01:28:06 – 00:01:35:00
Ralph Burns
And it starts with a creative strategy, believe it or not. And it’s not just a matter of just expanding to channels.
00:01:35:00 – 00:02:04:00
Ralph Burns
Hey, I’m using meta now. I’m going to go to TikTok and then I’m going to go to LinkedIn, and then I’m going to go to Snapchat, and then I’m going to do this and that. Okay. Expand over to YouTube. Now the most important thing, in order to create awareness for new clients, new prospects who don’t know anything about what you do are in that 80% zone of indifference that we’ve talked about here on many episodes is to target them with a different messaging, a different pillar, a different creative.
00:02:04:02 – 00:02:09:19
Ralph Burns
And that is the problem with most businesses that we see right now, especially in the digital space.
00:02:09:19 – 00:02:22:22
Ralph Burns
And then platforms are sort of secondary to that. Then you just add on as many platforms once you dial in that scale, because the meta platform right now is where we’re seeing most of the scale and most of the growth for the companies that we work with.
00:02:22:22 – 00:02:30:05
Ralph Burns
All right. Let’s talk about this brand. This is a SaaS powered lead generation and coaching in the education
00:02:30:05 – 00:02:45:22
Ralph Burns
business. A lot of stuff going on here, but they’re selling a SAS product that actually supports their educational programs. But most importantly, it starts with lead generation. So if you are a service based business, if you are a multi-location
00:02:45:22 – 00:02:49:21
Ralph Burns
surgical center, for example, this would directly apply to you.
00:02:49:21 – 00:03:14:02
Ralph Burns
This is the strategy that we’re seeing right now. If you’re a national franchise, this is exactly the same strategy. If you’re an e-commerce brand, this is exactly the same strategy. If you’re a digital products company, it’s the exact same strategy because this is what we’re seeing working right now. And we’ve done this on over 27, businesses spending nearly $50 million, some of which is our own money, some of which is our clients money here.
00:03:14:08 – 00:03:39:23
Ralph Burns
And we’ve tested it. And what we found is every single time, every time it works. And I always say it always works because it always works. And that’s the reason why we do it. So, this is sort of a typical brand. Like I say, you know, they’ve got a subscription business, they’ve got a SAS implementation here, very mission driven, really in a great space where the founders started, this company with one goal in mind is to help other people.
00:03:40:00 – 00:04:01:04
Ralph Burns
It’s obviously to make money, be profitable, but no profits, no people. So you got to be able to acquire customers and do that in a profitable way. So that was their main goal, and we have certainly done that. We’ve been working with them for, going on five years now and really scaled that business from below. Seven figures, around seven figures, upwards of eight figures.
00:04:01:06 – 00:04:02:23
Ralph Burns
However, they hit this wall,
00:04:02:23 – 00:04:20:22
Ralph Burns
but, a year and a half, two years ago, and we’ve been trying different things, but now it’s the time for us to layer in some of the strategies that we’ve talked about here in perpetual traffic many times, which is creative diversification, obviously. But also a deep dive analysis on how to expand the market.
00:04:20:22 – 00:04:42:03
Ralph Burns
So a little bit of background, some of the assets that they have right now, they’ve got some tremendous assets. They have a Facebook group that is a free group that has 30,000 members, which is an untapped resource unto itself, which is if we can get to it in today’s show, certainly talk about how to tap into that. They also do live events where they have a tremendous amount of engagement.
00:04:42:05 – 00:05:07:23
Ralph Burns
Once again, they’ve got dozens and dozens of folks who are real brand advocates for them, who have made at least $1 million in their own business, helping these types of individuals in this space. And the SAS powers all of it. So it’s a really good business. There’s a lot of things going on here, like I said there, but the revenue plateau is, you know, upwards of that eight figure range, just about eight figure on an error basis.
00:05:07:23 – 00:05:30:18
Ralph Burns
And their goal is to get to that next stage. And so when I met with them and their office, the big goals that I had for them is to figure out, okay, where do you want to go? And I think this is really the question that a lot of CEOs and directors of marketing don’t answer and don’t talk with their agency or even their team about as being really transparent about where we are today, where we ultimately want to go.
00:05:30:20 – 00:05:52:06
Ralph Burns
And so their stated goal is a pretty lofty goal, let’s say nine figure revenue goal in a ten year period, but it’s also affecting in the multiple millions. I’m not going to say specifically what it is in case some of the competition’s listening multiple millions of people in this space to help them with this particular problem that they have.
00:05:52:06 – 00:05:58:06
Ralph Burns
And it’s the problem is related to credit. So really purpose driven,
00:05:58:06 – 00:06:14:09
Ralph Burns
both of the owners, both the co-owners and the founder is really is is passionate about this particular space might be autobiographical to a certain degree, but the point is this is that they’ve reached that level where they’ve been very successful, but they want to get to that next stage.
00:06:14:11 – 00:06:15:05
Ralph Burns
So.
00:06:15:11 – 00:06:47:13
Ralph Burns
The biggest thing that’s changed is what we see is that the original messaging isn’t quite enough anymore. They have really built the business on 3 or 4 different pillars, which is we’ve talked about pillars here on this show. Pillars are really sort of individual messaging. Well, we call them pillars, but themes, those individual themes. Now it could be stated that the theme for all of this is to, you know, for some of our clients in the health care space, for example, is to give them hope.
00:06:47:15 – 00:06:58:03
Ralph Burns
So you might have a major theme above all of this stuff we’re going to be talking about here today. But you have to get very, very clear on what you want in your business, what do you want to achieve.
00:06:58:03 – 00:07:03:04
Ralph Burns
and that feeds all of the strategies that we’re going to discuss today.
00:07:03:04 – 00:07:26:07
Ralph Burns
Without that big goal, that big hairy audacious goal, if you’re a CEO and you’re listening to this, you need to inform your folks and talk to your marketing people about what is your vision as a CEO? What is your vision? Where do you want to go? And a great book by Jim Collins obviously is Good to Great, which we refer to many times here.
00:07:26:12 – 00:07:49:08
Ralph Burns
Also, a couple of his other books talk about this idea of a big, hairy, audacious goal, which is something that just seems so impossible and so far off in the future, but it’s almost like it’s the horizon that all of your people are driving towards you. You never really reach the horizon if you ever notice that. But the big oftentimes and the big vision of the company is that big goal.
00:07:49:08 – 00:08:05:07
Ralph Burns
And so I think one of the most important parts to our meeting is articulating that goal. And then how do we then figure out sort of do the math backwards in order to get there? And if they want to go from eight figures to nine figures in revenue, for example,
00:08:05:07 – 00:08:16:14
Ralph Burns
and over a 1010 year period, there’s a lot of small steps, a lot of small one year, three year, five year goals that need to be achieved in that period of time in order to get to the big goal.
00:08:16:14 – 00:08:39:08
Ralph Burns
So but understanding what the big goal is, is very, very important because at the end of the day, marketing and everything that we talk about here on professional traffic is just a means to an end to achieve the goal of the business. So and usually that includes cost to acquire a customer, acquiring new customers, making sure customers retain, which is a huge part of software business like we’re going to be talking about here today.
00:08:39:08 – 00:09:01:12
Ralph Burns
You want to acquire new customers and you want them to stay on, and you want them to use the product, and you want them to obviously advocate for your business to other people, spread word of mouth, and that increases lifetime value and increases you standing, increases all of your Google reviews, everything else that is just additive to ultimately achieving the big goal for the business.
00:09:01:16 – 00:09:28:10
Ralph Burns
So the original messaging for this was sort of, become a millionaire side hustle, help your community help people in this space. And those messages really did work well originally. However, at a certain point, you’re going to saturate the market for those types of messaging. We call that themes. We call that pillars. We call that angles.
00:09:28:12 – 00:09:45:15
Ralph Burns
And ultimately it comes down to what you’re going to hook in a new audience. How are you going to intrigue an audience that has no idea who you are, and get them to engage with your brand to ultimately make a decision to sign up for a webinar or
00:09:45:15 – 00:09:51:23
Ralph Burns
to fill in an application to get on a sales call with one of your salespeople, or to purchase your product.
00:09:51:23 – 00:10:29:18
Ralph Burns
So all of those things revolve around different themes, because not everyone is hardwired the same way. All of us humans have different needs, desires, fears, all of that. So the idea is to be able to hit enough of these themes overall, and then let the algorithm start to do the work in the algorithms on meta Google specifically, probably more so on YouTube, as well as on all of the programmatic platforms we find are the places to find that blue ocean, places to find that 80% to expand the market.
00:10:29:20 – 00:10:58:00
Ralph Burns
So if you are relying on just one or 2 or 3 themes in your advertising and in your messaging, this is the reason why you see multiple themes for insurance ads that you might be watching. When you’re watching football on a Sunday or a baseball you see all the time. This is something that the big brands do that oftentimes the small brands forget about, and then it’s a matter of just creating hundreds of different variations of that in order to scale.
00:10:58:02 – 00:11:34:23
Ralph Burns
And the big brands spend and create hundreds of ads, hundreds of these, the smaller brands just stay with maybe a handful, and that’s why they start small. So today’s show is really is all about that. So, one of the big parts of this is that we really see with Meta’s Andromeda update. This is fundamentally changed how content and how creative gets distributed, because the algorithm is so good at showing one ad and then another ad and then maybe a different ad, and then maybe one more ad and two ads and all of these sort of work together.
00:11:34:23 – 00:11:57:17
Ralph Burns
And then there’s a Google search and then they go search on Amazon, you know, especially if you’re an e-commerce brand and they all lead to the ultimate conversion. But they’re all hitting that prospect on different levels was slightly different messaging. And we call that creative diversification. So multiple distinct angles, formats, hooks, you name it to find those new audiences.
00:11:57:19 – 00:12:21:17
Ralph Burns
So these guys were really relying on a single sort of pillar of messaging. And it ran its course. They built the business to a certain degree, but now CPMs are starting to rise. Their cost to acquire a customer is relatively flat. They’re not really growing. And the next step is for us to dive deeper into this whole methodology and ultimately leverage the algorithms to get them to where they want to be.
00:12:21:17 – 00:12:34:16
Ralph Burns
Another part to this is, the three angles of 3 or 4 different angles that they were using weren’t really tapping into other markets. And they want to keep in mind they’ve built an eight figure business here. So
00:12:34:16 – 00:12:38:05
Ralph Burns
What our diagnostic found was that these angles and themes were
00:12:38:05 – 00:13:01:00
Ralph Burns
overplayed, but they were missing lots of other demographics. So for example, 60% of their clients are actually women. All of the ads that they have, the virtually most of their ads are men. So having maybe not the founder do a lot of the video content. Having this being done by other people that are on staff will be a very effective way to go.
00:13:01:02 – 00:13:03:21
Ralph Burns
Once we start to dig deeper into the diagnostic here.
00:13:03:21 – 00:13:16:10
Ralph Burns
So keep in mind these aren’t failures of the original themes in the original ads. These are just untapped themes that we found in our growth diagnostic to help them fund that next stage of growth.
00:13:16:10 – 00:13:42:00
Ralph Burns
Another thing they found is because they do live events. They found that a lot of the motivations of why people bought from them were slightly different than what was being portrayed in their marketing. So for a lot of the individuals who were interviewed by some of the executives in the organization, they got into the business to help their community, not just for themselves.
00:13:42:02 – 00:13:54:15
Ralph Burns
So this was a completely different and new content pillar that we could almost, carve out from their original content pillar. So women, diverse ethnicities,
00:13:54:15 – 00:14:09:10
Ralph Burns
lots of different stories. 60% of the customer base was in this demographic, and we really weren’t tapping into it in their regular advertising, their regular marketing. So that’s an entire different angle, entirely.
00:14:09:10 – 00:14:17:02
Ralph Burns
And they, the founders actually knew this. And this will come out in the growth diagnostic once we actually do a lot of the things that we’re going to be talking about here
00:14:17:02 – 00:14:40:16
Ralph Burns
So now that we determine where they are in that first step, now it’s about why creative is the strategic requirement. And this is where we see everything going right now. And it’s absolutely true. And you see this with $100 million brands. You see them doing a tremendous amount of creative diversification, tremendous amount of creative, tremendous amount of volume.
00:14:40:18 – 00:14:59:04
Ralph Burns
However, volume alone is not the key to success here. It is doing the work and understanding exactly what the intrinsic motivations of your prospective client are. And we do that through something that we call messaging extraction.
00:14:59:08 – 00:15:27:16
Ralph Burns
So this is a little bit of a background here. I know we’ve covered this on many shows here. Andromeda’s system right now on meta specifically evaluates sort of a large pool of that candidates and then shows them different types of creative based upon their previous behavior. So it’s almost like for each individual user on the platform, meta creates its own individual funnel, which is crazy to think about how smart this platform has become.
00:15:27:18 – 00:15:50:17
Ralph Burns
And I’ve been doing this for 15 years now. I’ve never seen it as good as it is right now. So the system itself offers up distinct creatives, which you have to supply. So and each one of those creatives has a different hook, maybe has a different format. There’s a different emotional angle, different persona, different person in the actual ad itself.
00:15:50:17 – 00:16:25:18
Ralph Burns
And the majority of this is it was talking to our VP of operations yesterday. It’s literally it’s about 80, 90% video right now. So there is some work that needs to go into this. That does not mean you should just go out and just start shooting video willy nilly. There is a process here that we want to go through running to make sure that you do it in the right way, but volume is the key, especially if you want to scale from high seven figures, ten figures to that nine figure level, or if you’re stuck even at nine figures to get to that next multi nine figure level, we’re seeing that as well with some
00:16:25:18 – 00:16:26:19
Ralph Burns
of our larger brands.
00:16:26:19 – 00:16:54:03
Ralph Burns
So what the algorithm will do is they will find a single content pillar, a single sort of theme, and then continue to show more and more of those creatives in that scene to that person. So if I add scrolling in my newsfeed and I stop for a particular ad, I don’t know, I’m being exposed to a certain theme, but the smart advertiser will say, okay, I’m going to create lots of different themes here through this message extraction, which we’ll get to in just a second.
00:16:54:03 – 00:17:12:02
Ralph Burns
Here, and then meta will then automatically show more ads related to that theme, maybe one that’s outside of that theme every now and then, just to sort of test the waters and see if I hang and I watch the video, if I get hooked in hook rate just the first three seconds of the video,
00:17:12:02 – 00:17:16:09
Ralph Burns
what percentage of people stay between three seconds in the end of the video?
00:17:16:09 – 00:17:40:00
Ralph Burns
That’s called your hold rate. And then last but not least, a key metric is link click through rates, which are really, really important as well, which show that’s the real determining factor. That is, after all, the exposure on the video to say, okay, that person is really interested in what we’re saying. So the algorithm is so smart, it will be able to read your video, understand the content of that video, which is incredible.
00:17:40:00 – 00:18:09:17
Ralph Burns
And this stuff that’s been being worked on since 2010, by the way, by both Google and Meta. But it’s gotten to the point now where, yes, the platform itself can understand the specific individual user behavior and show them more of that type of content, that theme, and then slowly roll in other themes, see if those work, and then ultimately continue to show them creative and advertising until they’re ultimately purchased.
00:18:09:18 – 00:18:11:21
Ralph Burns
And that’s how the whole thing works.
00:18:11:21 – 00:18:17:17
Ralph Burns
So what we’re finding is all of these themes usually have about ten different
00:18:17:17 – 00:18:41:22
Ralph Burns
content, like a content matrix. It’s really it’s what we call creative diversification. So each individual theme might have ten variations, very diverse type of content that are all revolving around this theme. Now, we might not use all ten in all of our campaigns, but what we find is there is about ten, so they can be anything from user generated content, from existing customers.
00:18:41:22 – 00:19:02:06
Ralph Burns
They could be a founder story of how the business was actually created. We talked pretty extensively with this client exactly about that because they have a great founder story, face to camera videos, kind of like what we’re doing right now. So we’re talking about the product to self, maybe from multiple team members, maybe from different folks within the organization.
00:19:02:07 – 00:19:26:14
Ralph Burns
Customer testimonials, competitive comparisons, product demos especially see this a lot, especially with creator content. Now, on the e-commerce side feature and benefit type of videos. So each one of these is wrapped around an individual theme of the product itself or the service. And this is how you create this diversification. This is really where we’re seeing all of the brands going.
00:19:26:14 – 00:19:52:04
Ralph Burns
Like I said, you know, 27 plus brands. We’ve now done this with, with incredible success. And it doesn’t matter what industry it is, with the exception of maybe B2B businesses, we haven’t done it quite as much. Like if you’re selling a semiconductor, you know, or a semi like $1 million semiconductor machine to another company. I haven’t gone on that level yet.
00:19:52:04 – 00:20:15:07
Ralph Burns
But, suffice to say, we’re selling $25,000 kitchens. We’re selling $30,000, saunas. We’re doing all of this with very, very high consideration purchases, because all of the convincing, all of the persuasion is done in the video content before they even click. And that is a beautiful thing.
00:20:15:07 – 00:20:38:01
Ralph Burns
So once again, themes are based upon all of those different types of creative but different links. They might be 15 seconds, 30s 45 seconds, three minutes, maybe upwards. We usually will target anywhere between 30 to 50 active ads, in most cases, sometimes less, sometimes more. We actually have a client right now who is on one of our up to 30 creatives program.
00:20:38:01 – 00:20:43:23
Ralph Burns
We actually don’t need all of those 30 creatives because we’re getting extraordinary results
00:20:43:23 – 00:20:57:12
Ralph Burns
with this marketing strategy with less creatives. So it really does depend on the business, and it depends on the quality of your creative. And it depends on your audience. So there’s a lot of it depends in there, which is two of the most famous words in marketing.
00:20:57:12 – 00:21:14:23
Ralph Burns
So step number three here is what we’re doing right now. So this is what we call messaging extraction. And this is the non-negotiable first step in this entire process. We sort of set up sort of the background. We talked about how the algorithms really work, seeing the success with some of the other clients that we use for this.
00:21:15:01 – 00:21:15:20
Ralph Burns
So
00:21:15:20 – 00:21:43:21
Ralph Burns
lot of creative is important. However, if it’s junk and it’s not related to how your client or customer actually buys and what their motivations are, then all of that creative will not work with this algorithmic change. Now, you won’t be able to get the results that we’re talking about here. So you can’t get from 10 million to 100 million by just throwing a bunch of crap against the wall and hoping it sticks.
00:21:43:21 – 00:22:02:13
Ralph Burns
So you need a strategy ahead of time. So this is where we go into we do a couple of different steps. Messaging extraction is the big step that we use, sort of after our onboarding with all our new clients and then in this case, it’s sort of an add on after a certain level of scale is reached and we need to sort of get to that next level.
00:22:02:17 – 00:22:05:14
Ralph Burns
all of these creative angles, the themes,
00:22:05:14 – 00:22:19:07
Ralph Burns
the content pillars depend on authentic customer language. And authentic customer language typically comes from the folks in your organization who are closest to the customer itself.
00:22:19:07 – 00:22:45:21
Ralph Burns
We did this for one of our medical clients. We interviewed the nurses and the therapists who actually interact with the clients. Tell us exactly what they are saying to you. This is the best way of getting messaging extraction here. If anything, your customer success people, the people that are talking to your clients and your customers all the time, your salespeople.
00:22:45:23 – 00:23:21:05
Ralph Burns
We did this internally inside tier 11. We had our sales team actually come in and talk about this specifically. So before you start doing any sort of writing of scripts for storyboarding or thinking of all these different ways in which to use creative diversification, which we’re really talking about here on this leveraging the Andromeda algorithm, you need to extract the human emotional angles of why your clients buy from you, what is it that they are seeking and all of that comes from interviews and discussing.
00:23:21:05 – 00:23:39:02
Ralph Burns
And if you have a database and actually in this case, the founders actually have a database of if taken from calls that they’ve had on clients support tickets, and they’ve created a database of all the pain points and all the keywords that are used by their clients and the reasons why they actually started
00:23:39:02 – 00:23:43:00
Ralph Burns
using their product. That stuff is absolute gold.
00:23:43:02 – 00:23:46:01
Ralph Burns
So as David Ogilvy said,
00:23:46:01 – 00:23:49:02
Ralph Burns
the key to great advertising is research.
00:23:49:02 – 00:24:08:04
Ralph Burns
And I always sort of bring this back to the fact that when he won the Mercedes-Benz account, he went to Stuttgart, Germany, for three weeks to dive deep into every aspect of the cars that he was ultimately going to start writing ads for. You don’t have to go to Stuttgart for three weeks now.
00:24:08:04 – 00:24:15:21
Ralph Burns
You can do this by just a quick zoom call with the people who are face to face with your clients and with your customers,
00:24:15:21 – 00:24:26:04
Ralph Burns
pulling that transcript, pouring it into any one of the AI tools you can use, Claude, is our preference. You can use Gemini, you can use, obviously ChatGPT for this.
00:24:26:08 – 00:24:45:16
Ralph Burns
You can create skills inside of Claude. All of this is so important. And a lot of this will self write because the words that are coming from your clients, the words that are coming from your customers, are the exact types of words that you should be using, and the themes and the emotions that you should be instilling in your creative.
00:24:45:16 – 00:24:47:17
Ralph Burns
For this whole strategy to work.
00:24:47:17 – 00:25:23:00
Ralph Burns
So like I said, I bought interviews from new customers explaining why they bought this was one of the things that one of the founders said that they actually have recorded. Support team calls with transcripts, absolute gold. They actually have a live event or an expo where they can pull speaker notes and interviews with people that were actually at the event success team video calls, for example, for your onboarding, you can pull all these transcripts into a master database, and you can start creating this messaging extraction on your own.
00:25:23:02 – 00:25:46:21
Ralph Burns
Of course, the gold is really is embedded in all of that. So what I find is that a lot of business owners think way higher level and don’t ever get right down into the nitty gritty. And that’s really where the gold exists, because the point is, is that somewhere in your business, all of this exists. And the problem is that none of it has systematically been turned into creative.
00:25:46:22 – 00:26:09:16
Ralph Burns
So what we do is we have all of these folks come on a call. We do it all together, led by one of our growth strategists or by our chief strategist, John Moran. And we extract all of this, record the call, transcribe it, and then all of that raw data is then turned into specific scenes, content pillars that ultimately will turn into advertising will turn into scripts for videos.
00:26:09:21 – 00:26:11:01
Ralph Burns
In most cases,
00:26:11:01 – 00:26:26:07
Ralph Burns
all of those transcriptions, all of those recordings from all of those calls are then the raw materials that then create the storyboards and the scripts for all of our videos, or they become the foundation for scripting.
00:26:26:08 – 00:26:37:17
Ralph Burns
If we do like an AI generated video, or if we create an actual storyboard, actual script for a content creator, or maybe somebody who’s on staff at the client’s office.
00:26:37:17 – 00:26:54:15
Ralph Burns
So video scripts and storyboards are derived directly from the customer voice. That then creates distinct content pillars. And that’s the raw materials to start creating the storyboards for all of these different segments. And then this one, this was something that came up in our conversations.
00:26:54:15 – 00:27:24:05
Ralph Burns
Is that something we’ve never explored and never actually advertised? Is moms in difficult situation personas? That was one of the big scenes and the the founders said, okay, that’s something we’ve never talked about in any of our advertising, but it’s one of the big things that we found when we were at our expo. So remember, like, your job is not to create messaging around what you think your product does for your client or your prospect.
00:27:24:07 – 00:28:01:16
Ralph Burns
Your job is to find out what it actually does for your client or your prospect. And oftentimes it’s not the guy who’s in charge. I know this first hand, for example. It’s really it’s what’s happening when there’s the client interaction. Now, thankfully, I actually do client interaction quite a bit. So I sort of know these things, but for a lot of executives and for a lot of folks that maybe are listening to this show, that’s a hard thing for them to understand is that the best advertising really comes from the mouth of your customer itself, because they are going to supply you with their intrinsic motivations, their desires, their fears, why they bought their product.
00:28:01:21 – 00:28:13:13
Ralph Burns
And that’s what messaging Extraction aims to do, is pull that out and then create themes around it. That then is the basis and the foundation for all of your advertising, for all of your marketing.
00:28:13:18 – 00:28:35:18
Ralph Burns
So step four of this whole thing is, once we dial all of this in, meta is usually the platform that we will start with on this. However, once we establish a base of skill, a base of success, we then look at the other platforms and the other platforms. First and foremost, YouTube is obviously is a great platform for all of this.
00:28:35:22 – 00:28:55:00
Ralph Burns
Secondary to that is native advertising, programmatic advertising, or connected TV. If you don’t know what those things are, native advertising is taboola and outbrain. So all those little ads that you see inside some of the web pages that you might visit, and then programmatic advertising is all the programmatic, all the display advertising that you have no idea what it is.
00:28:55:00 – 00:29:21:11
Ralph Burns
It’s outside of sort of the Google AdSense and Google Display network. And then last but not least, is connected TV, which is things that you probably see every time you turn on your connected TV. There’s advertising that is embedded inside your Amazon, inside your fubo TV, inside your tube, all of that. And so those are sort of the next layer of, of success that we see, especially when we’re sort of launching step by step.
00:29:21:13 – 00:29:38:20
Ralph Burns
What we find is a lot of folks want to want us to do it all at once, which is great. We can obviously do that as well to reach massive scale in a very short period of time. However, the best place to at least test this out for the first month or two is on the meta platform, because you’re going to get such immediate feedback.
00:29:38:22 – 00:29:42:20
Ralph Burns
And with the tier 11 data suite, you’re going to get near 100% tracking.
00:29:42:20 – 00:30:01:01
Ralph Burns
But I wouldn’t focus on platforms where we really focus on is the most important part of this whole equation is the messaging itself. And with the idea that if you’re only using 10 or 12 different ads or maybe five ads in your advertising and you want to scale,
00:30:01:01 – 00:30:05:00
Ralph Burns
the problem is not necessarily that you have five ads and you need 50 ads.
00:30:05:00 – 00:30:20:15
Ralph Burns
What you need is you need five x, the number of themes and content pillars around what your client really wants, what their desires are, and why they bought from you in the first place. So volume is not the key here.
00:30:20:15 – 00:30:28:14
Ralph Burns
Volume multiplied by multiple angles. Multiple scenes in multiple formats. That’s the key to success here.
00:30:28:21 – 00:30:56:17
Ralph Burns
And of course, you need an attribution platform. You need a way in which to pull all of this in. Obviously we use Wicked reports because it’s the best that’s out there. As far as getting real click data, not model data by any stretch into making good decisions. So we also pair that with, an edge server, which makes the tier 11 data suite, which allows us to get near 100% tracking for all of the clicks that occur here.
00:30:56:17 – 00:31:23:11
Ralph Burns
Now, a lot of your ad spend is not going to be clickbait. It’s going to be just view based. So you’re going to have to have some kind of way in which to determine how you’re spending and how all the channels work together. And they do work together, because if you start spending more on meta, but your last click data, your last click attribution, your last click conversions coming through Google branded search, meta isn’t going to look all that great inside your platform.
00:31:23:11 – 00:31:43:01
Ralph Burns
However, because you can fluctuate that ad spend up and down, you can actually see on the other end how many clients, how many customers, how many leads come out through those bottom of funnel channels. So that’s why it’s so important to have an attribution software platform that allows you to be able to balance all the platforms. I’m not just talking about paid platforms.
00:31:43:01 – 00:32:16:05
Ralph Burns
I’m also talking about email and SMS and your affiliates, which is paid basically SEO. So all of that works together, and you can even measure through the AI platforms themselves, through ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, you can track all of those clicks as to where people find out about you. But for all of this to work really well, you do need a system that brings it all together so you understand how all the channels coexist and how they blend together to ultimately get you to your goals.
00:32:16:05 – 00:32:28:01
Ralph Burns
So the takeaways here are running a narrow range of angles and themes for your business. You will get to a certain level of success. Absolutely. But you will be getting most of those folks.
00:32:28:01 – 00:32:34:12
Ralph Burns
You’ll be targeting the people that are in-market, the people that are considering your product and or service.
00:32:34:14 – 00:32:57:18
Ralph Burns
However, as soon as you start to diversify your content, diversify your creative through these content pillars using messaging extraction here, then all of a sudden you start seeing your costs go down because you’re not going to the in-market, you’re not targeting the in-market audiences, which are the most expensive on all the platforms, and you’re also creating a brand at the same time.
00:32:57:18 – 00:33:28:18
Ralph Burns
And what you’ll see when you use this strategy. And we started to see this already with this particular client, is that their branded search starts to increase. And when you see the branded search start to increase, or the SEO channels start to increase over time, that means your top of funnel creative is doing its job. So that top funnel creative might not necessarily be getting that last click attribution, because oftentimes it’s just a view in many cases.
00:33:28:20 – 00:33:59:20
Ralph Burns
But if the entirety of all of your media starts to increase and we measure that through media efficiency ratio, that’s when you know, these strategies are starting to work. So it’s never overnight. I have never seen this where we started a campaign and literally a week later, it’s absolutely crushing it. It takes two, three, four weeks oftentimes, but it takes a diligent person at the helm to understand how all the channels are interacting and how this strategy really is designed to scale and grow businesses.
00:33:59:20 – 00:34:09:07
Ralph Burns
So the three questions I have for you before you do your next creative brief, number one, is your current creative built around a single content pillar, or maybe 2 or 3.
00:34:09:09 – 00:34:10:01
Ralph Burns
And
00:34:10:01 – 00:34:31:13
Ralph Burns
look at all of your marketing. Are you talking about the same thing over and over again? People are tired of it. Result of people being tired of it. Is that your CPMs increase cost to acquire a customer either stays flat or starts to increase, and you’re not growing as a business. So that’s thing one. Thing two what are your exit surveys tell you?
00:34:31:13 – 00:34:54:12
Ralph Burns
What are your people saying? What is your client success managers say about their interactions with your clients? What is your customer support? Say interview them, take their transcripts, pull all that out for the last week or two, like what are our clients saying about us? What are their problems? What are the things that we solve for them? Why did they buy from us to start with, pull that out.
00:34:54:12 – 00:35:16:06
Ralph Burns
Put that into any one of the AI programs. This is super easy to do. You can get somebody on staff to do this and then start creating scenes around your marketing. And that should not only guide your paid advertising, your paid marketing. This is also your social content marketing as well. So this is a strategy that works in not just paid channels.
00:35:16:06 – 00:35:18:12
Ralph Burns
It works in all of your social channels as well.
00:35:18:12 – 00:35:41:19
Ralph Burns
And last but not least, number three, how many distinct emotional angles, personas, content pillars do you have active right now? And if that number is just 1 or 2, then you’re not leveraging the algorithm. You’re not leveraging the ability to be able to scale by using these platforms the way that they’re intended to be. They’re so smart right now.
00:35:41:21 – 00:36:04:20
Ralph Burns
And this is what we’re seeing that’s working so well with so many of our clients, is this creative diversification strategy mixed with messaging extraction and really understanding the keys to why people buy from you. And that you can do that together and then you can scale that out. You will be able to scale from 7 or 8 figures, up to nine figures.
00:36:04:20 – 00:36:07:15
Ralph Burns
And that’s the journey that we’re on right now with this client.
00:36:07:15 – 00:36:28:18
Ralph Burns
So if your meta performance is suffering right now and you need our help, you need our help on the creative side, we’re here for you, for that, of course, you can check us out over at tier 11, Dicom or although you can take this podcast and just send it to your marketing team if you do everything in-house or if you need our help, on the consulting side, we can assist you with any and all of this.
00:36:28:18 – 00:36:38:09
Ralph Burns
And we’ve like I said, we’ve tested this reason why we do this show is to show you how to do the things that we’ve already learned how to do. We’ve just done it. And maybe a more massive scale.
00:36:38:09 – 00:36:56:19
Ralph Burns
so all the resources that I mentioned here in today’s show are over a perpetual traffic kgw.com. Check that out in our show notes and wherever you listen to podcasts, leave us a rating and review really does help us get this out to a larger audience and help people do this thing the right way through metrics that matter and growth that scales.
00:36:56:22 – 00:36:59:17
Ralph Burns
So until next show everyone. See you.