Continue the journey with Jason Hornung as he demonstrates the critical role that satisfied customers play in your ongoing success–and how it ultimately reinforces the bottom line. In Episode 2, Jason highlights success stories to show what’s possible when your business uses effective advertising practices.
Confessions of a Digital Ad Man with Jason Hornung
The Fallacy of “Creating Demand” Through Advertising
Episode 2 Segment A
[0:00]- [0:51]
Jason begins this episode lamenting his early struggles with online marketing from creating an offer to building his marketing funnel to putting together “ads to create demand.” Stating that each time “it would fail miserably,” leaving him “frustrated and unhappy.”
[0:52]-[2:40]
Jason tells how in 2012, he found a book, Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz. The author was a “famous copywriter” from “back in the day” who sold millions dollars of books and other products back in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. Schwartz believed that you couldn’t create a demand for a product or service but rather you need to craft your offer to be “the ultimate fulfillment of that demand that is already in the marketplace.”
Accepting this premise was “a revolutionary shift” for Jason who changed his focus to first determining “what people really wanted, (and what) the market wants at that particular time.” Then, designing his offer to “give them what they are looking for in their life,” and “then, channel that demand upon our product.”
[2:40]- [4:50]
Jason will share with us in this video, “three powerful strategies” that his company developed which have had a “profound impact” on the “profitability and success” of their ads.
1. Survey People in Your Market
This can easily be done if you already have a business with a customer or a subscriber list. Just ask them “open ended questions” about “what’s going on in their life.” What are “the pains, problems and frustrations that they are experiencing?” And “what are their goals that they have.” He notes that if you ask they will tell you which “eliminates the guessing game.”
Jason tells a quick story of how one of his agency clients asked him what products they should market. He applied this strategy and responded that they should survey their clients to let them request the products they needed.
If your business doesn’t have “an existing customer base,” doing the survey can be hard. But it can be done by creating “marketing funnels” that survey “paid traffic” through the marketing process itself. To survey this way, Jason recommends the book, Ask by Ryan Levesque which is available on Amazon.
2. Review Different Blogs of Your Competitors
Read the comments on these blogs’ articles to learn about people’s problems and frustrations or “what they are looking.” Jason consider this method a bit of a “shortcut” compared to the surveys, but says you’ll get “more candid responses” than you will in a survey. He also encourages checking out their fan pages to gain similar insight. Plus he highly recommends incorporating both methods, blog research and surveying when identifying your customers’ needs and wants in your market space.
3. Simply Ask People
Talking to people when you are making sales calls is a “great place to start.” You can talk to people in different groups on Facebook that are similar to the people you are trying to advertise to. “Just ask questions and survey” right on Facebook.
[6:35] – [9:25]
Schwartz also talks about how “the market shifts over time.” What is “top of consciousness” and the “demands you can channel onto your product” can change tomorrow or any time in the future. So, you need to constantly be utilizing these methods to adjust “your advertising and your messaging” if you “want to continue to create sales at a large profit.”
Jason illustrates this method by telling the story of how his marketing funnel drives people into a webinar that offers customers a free training class. On the Thank You page he surveys them by asking them, “what is their single most important question about doing profitable Facebook ads.”
He searches the responses to find those with the most “acute pain’ or “urgency” from those already advertising online unsuccessfully. Then, he determines the “most common one” and creates his messaging around “that particular problem.”
Then, he shows how his product can help. Noting that “the market” is constantly telling him how to “position his product” through his advertising.
He summarizes by restating that “creating demand is a fallacy (and) that all you can do is channel that demand.” He credits this approach as the key to his success in “selling hundreds of millions of dollars” in his clients and his own products since 2012.
[9:25] – [12:58]
Once you’ve learned how to “channel demand,” there still more skills and knowledge needed to produce effective, profitable ads “especially in the Facebook platform.” Questions like:
- “How do I write my copy to make people interested?”
- “How do I target buyers with my ads?”
- “How do I scale my ads without losing profitability?”
Jason offers a free hour and half training session with links provided before and after the video. The next one starts today just go to the registration page to access the training.
He promises “something that has never been done before,” a large agency “opening up the back end of a campaign and showing all the details.”
His client, Mike Dillard, has “given him permission” to share the entirety of a campaign they “are currently running.” Jason has “done a study from January 31, 2017 to March 31, 2017” of this campaign that “during that time we generated 2.2 million dollars in revenue at about 3 to 1 return over ads spent.” The campaign makes “about $15,000 a day” while spending “about $4000 a day.”
As proof of this, the training will “open up the back end of Mike’s account.” Jason will then show the “ad that is running right now” and:
- “How he put together the copy.”
- “Why it works.”
- “How it allows us to stay compliant with Facebook.”
Then, he will show how to target buyers to produce these results including their targeting templates plus his 3D Profit Scaling which “allows us to take our campaigns from 0 to up to 4000 dollars a day” in spending while maintaining profitability.
Full disclosure, there will be an optional offer at the end of training to work with Jason and his team to help “put your campaigns together and navigate unique situations that will come up.” There is no obligation, even if you don’t take us up on our offer, you’ll still get valuable information plus “a whole bunch of freebies” including “tracking spreadsheets” and “flow charts.”
Thousands who have already seen this training have attested to its value. Jason looks forward to you registering and seeing him on the free training.
Confessions of a Digital Ad Man with Jason Hornung
How to Get Better Customers Who Love You and Buy Over and Over
Episode 2 Segment B
[0:00]- [1:56]
Jason begins this segment by explaining the problems you can create by trying to create demand through advertising rather than channeling an existing demand.
He points out that when trying to advertise to create a demand, “you have to strong arm people into buying,” which yields “the worst possible customers” because “you have to put on a big, huge sales job” and “convince people that they need something that they don’t really feel that they already want.” Asserting that this is what happens “when you try to create demand rather than channeling an existing demand.”
Jason cautions that when you do convince them to buy, those customers “resent you” and that leads to multiple negative outcomes:
- “Higher refund rates”
- “Customers that complain more.”
- With customers who expect “some kind of obscene, unrealistic results even if you didn’t set those expectations.”
He warns that “people usually hate these kinds of ads” because they require using all of this hyped up, “over the top” language while making “unrealistic, inflated type claims to get attention.” Alerting to us to the fact that Facebook has a way for viewers to register their dislike for these types of ad by clicking on “an arrow in the upper right hand corner.” Informing us that Facebook “is shutting down ad accounts entirely” that get “a certain number” of these negative “I don’t want to see this ad” responses. Ultimately, these ads could be “sabotaging your business” if Facebook takes this action against your advertising on their site especially if your marketing relies on Facebook advertising.
[1:57] – [2:59]
This hype driven advertising makes “your market” view you “as an opponent instead of a friend because you’re fighting with them to try to create customers instead of working with them to really help them.” Jason continues that in this “social media day and age” that “if you are oppositional to your customers,” they will spread “it all over the web” and you’ll get a “reputation as a bad business to work with.” He emphasizes that “once your reputation is bad, your business is done for.”
Jason wants to avoid that “guessing game” of “not knowing what people want, when they want it, and how to deliver it to them.” He advises to quit “wasting time, effort, energy and money” by constantly creating things that you don’t need to help sell your product or service.
[3:00] – [4:18]
“When you channel that existing demand onto your product or service, you get the best customers because you’re helping them and working with them!” This approach transitions you from a “salesperson trying make money” to “somebody who is providing a real service that’s really helping people.” Customers will “recognize” this difference and “really want to work with you.”
“People are gonna love your ads and they’ll let Facebook know!” Facebook “rewards you when people like your ads” with “better quality traffic and less expensive traffic.” You’ll find this fact in Facebook’s own documentation where they talk about “relevant score and how they price their auctions.”
[4:19] – [5:10]
“You’re gonna be seen as a beacon light inside of a kind of a dark world.” When you “start working on helping people” rather trying to “force” a product or service on them, their instinct is to “want to come work with you.”
Plus you’ll “always know exactly what the market is looking for.” “Need to create a new offer, just tap into your surveys, you’re already doing.” “Need to create a new ad, start asking your customers or look their emails that they’re sending you.” “They’ll tell you.”
[5:11] – [12:06]
Jason chats with one of his clients, Matt Peshock who took his class in November 2016. A month later, he left his corporate job and started his own agency. He’s been very successful. This concept of “channeling demand” has had “a huge impact on the ads that he’s created for himself and his clients.”
Matt’s initial idea was simply to find the “coolest images” and combine them with “the most compelling headline,” then “watch the cash flow in.” He found “that works less than 1% of the time.”
Instead, he learned that “it’s about understanding what’s going to make this image resonant with the key prospect, what’s gonna make this headline compelling to the prospect.” Matt says that what Jason’s course taught him was that it’s important to understand “the psychology behind your core prospect.”
This revelation changed how he begins the process with any new client. Instead of initially asking for cool images of the product, he spends the first week or two, just getting an understanding of the psychology of their core prospect. He researches their competitors to see “what they’re doing” and what makes their “message different from what’s happening out there.”
Matt didn’t really like being a “research guy” or “looking at data” before taking Jason’s course but “now he’s changed because he saw the importance of it.” While it may take more time to launch the product, Matt has seen that the time invested is “worth it.” Learning the “average age” or “average income” of a client’s prospect now excites Matt, because “he’s seen the power of it.”
Jason summarizes their interview by saying, “the bottom line is that if you really want to be successful with advertising, you gotta know what’s going on with the ideal customer with who you’re trying to sell to.” He emphasizes that you need to know “what they’re thinking inside of their mind.” “What kind of problems, pains, frustrations, hopes, dreams and desires that they want to have out of life.” Then, “channel that demand” by figuring out how our product does that for them.
[12:07] – [13:42]
Jason lets his viewers know that if they “want to learn more about how to run successful ads,” he has a “free training.” There will be links above the video, at the end of video and also below it that will take you to a registration page. This 90 minute training starts today and will cover:
- “Prepping for ads”
- “Preparing copy”
- “Figuring out our targeting”
- “Scaling campaigns”
At the end of the training, there is “a completely optional” offer to take the course that Matt did. It’s “a special deal.” If you don’t choose to take the course, you’ll still get a “ton of great information.”
The offer is just to get to “work more closely” with Jason and his team “to get some more help on your campaigns” and learn the “nuances inside of Facebook and Direct Response Advertising.” Just click the link if you’d like this opportunity.
To sign up for the Free Training, go here:
Jasonhornung.com/webinar
Confessions of a Digital Ad Man with Jason Hornung
The Ever Present Threat to Your Business' Survival
Episode 2 Segment C
[0:00] – [2:15]
“There is an ever present threat to your business’ survival and it’s something really simple, it’s complacency.” Jason continues that “in the online space if you’re not growing, you’re dying.” He even points out that this principle also applies to “legacy businesses” using Blockbuster Video as an example.
Jason suggests that “the best way to stay ahead of the curve is through mentorship,” while mentioning that he spends six figures each year on his own personal growth.
Jason also serves as a mentor to help others grow their business by looking at “the entire package” both their personal and professional life.
He introduces Rory Stern, one of his mentoring clients and to discuss “how his mentorship has impacted” Rory’s business and life.
And Jason references a link above the video, at the end of video, and also below it where you can learn about and if interested, apply for this mentorship program with Jason. To apply for the mentorship program, go here:
Jasonhornung.com/mentorship
[2:16] – [9:03]
The one on one interview starts with Rory describing “his paid traffic agency” that “helps business owners take existing or brand new funnels and make them work for cold traffic.” Rory reaches “a lot people all over the world” while working for his “amazing clients.”
Rory once interviewed with Jason to work in his agency before applying and being accepted into Jason’s mentorship program. Rory credits that relationship for changing his career path from “a jack of all trades” freelancer to a successful agency owner.
Rory praises Jason as the best of many previous mentoring relationships he’s had with “business owners, marketers, mentors, and thought leaders.” Saying he is biased toward Jason because from the start of Rory working with Jason’s agency “almost on a daily basis,” everything has been a positive, growing, and learning experience. He highlights “the way you worked with me one on one, the way you taught me skills, the way you introduced me to things, the way you broke it down, the way you lead the agency” as reasons for Rory holding Jason in the highest esteem as a mentor.
Rory tells how his agency got started by taking what Jason taught him and “applying it to Facebook ads” for one of his own companies. He quickly “penetrated or infiltrated a market” growing revenue from 20,000 a month to a 100,000 a month. When the business continued to grow but in a direction that Rory felt was not well-suited for his life, he reached out to Jason to become a Facebook marketer.
Rory states that he had no trouble finding clients, while mentioning that his prices were low due to some self-doubt in matching Jason’s expertise. So, he sought Jason out and enrolled in his mentoring program.
It was a big investment. Rory tells the story of how his wife questioned the expense and asked if he couldn’t do it himself with “what Jason had already taught him.” Though he characterizes the money as “more than the 20% down payment he put on a house in Boston,” Rory is unequivocal in his belief that his five months working with Jason has changed his business and his life.
[9:04] – [11:36]
His results did include some early struggles and doubts in the first few months of his agency business before Jason reinforced his own instinct to be an “information gatherer.” For Rory, “mind set was everything.”
Financially, Rory states he “made his money back within 30 days. My investment more than paid for itself in 30 days.” Once Rory committed, Jason told him they’d make his money back inside of 30 days. Not only did Rory recoup his investment, he “doubled or tripled it,” turning his investment “into an immediate ROI.”
Rory currently has “a “six figure a month agency” that “more than pays for itself with the clients that we’ve gotten leads for.” He credits Jason with giving him “the confidence to be a professional media buyer, to run a business, to run an agency. You handed me six figures a month.” Closing with “anybody not willing to work with you that has the chance is an idiot.”
[11:37] – [14:25]
Jason laughs, and asks how this change has “impacted his life outside of business.”
Rory responds by recounting how last night he saw Paul McCartney live and had “premo” seats he never could have imagined affording before. Plus he paid not only for his wife’s and his ticket but also his parents. He talks about the “stupid money” he now can spend on “once in a lifetime events,” while remembering his 10 year struggle as freelancer to build to this agency he now has.
Rory talks about “removing a layer of stress” not only for him but for his wife now that she knows that the bills will get paid. Even Rory’s view of his own bank account has changed. Now, a balance below 10,000 dollars concerns him where it used $500 because of how tight financially things were before working with Jason. If only he could “eat better and exercise” to which Jason replies “we’re working on that one.”
[14:26] – [20:10]
Jason then asks Rory, who he thinks would benefit most from a mentorship program like this one?
Rory answers “anyone who’s serious about being business.” Specifically, he targets “the action takers” who are “willing to play outside their comfort zone.”
Rory then recounts how Jason on one their first calls got him to raise the monthly fee he charges from $2000/month to $5000/month.
Additionally, Rory says that to be successful in this mentorship, you need “to sacrifice everything you know.” This is not “an overnight success,” you have to be really ready to work hard and trust Jason’s input. Pointing out that while “get rich quick, overnight success” is possible, Jason’s “mindset” is “all about long term sustainability, working hard, (and) providing tremendous value to our clients.”
Jason clarifies that we’re about “working hard in a short amount of time during the day, so that we’ve got the time to do all that other fun stuff. That’s the life that ultimately that everyone wants to have.” He notes that’s why people start their own business, “to have that freedom, that ability to do what they want to do.”
According to Jason, his program is about “how to get processes and systems in place, how to automate things, how to bring people into place, and build a team so that they can do the work.” Thus, allowing you to “grow your revenue, and make more money while pulling back strategically over time.”
Jason remembers his 15 hour days when staring his agency, he no longer encourages that work rate. Instead he show his clients how to achieve success with a 5 to 8 hour work day. Now, he claims he works 2 hours a week. Rory responds he’s still working 8 to 12 hour days because he likes the work and has big goals for the future.
Beyond helping Rory “structure” his agency, “hand him clients,” and pay for the mentorship program, Jason also gave Rory, “his sales call strategy,” not just the sales script but the “psychology” behind it and they even did some calls together.
Plus Rory likes that Jason does what he teaches. “You’re not a guy running a Facebook course and not running Facebook ads for other people.”
[20:11] – [24:05]
When asked by Jason what he would change about the mentorship program, Rory responds by listing of all the goals he set coming in and successfully accomplished. Rory is unbelievably happy with his investment in Jason’s mentorship program, and ready to re-up right now for next year. He jokingly asks Jason to stop sharing his knowledge and creating more competition.
In closing, Rory thanks Jason for changing “his life on so many different levels.”
To learn more about the mentorship program Rory Stern is part of, go here:
Jasonhornung.com/mentorship
Confessions of a Digital Ad Man with Jason Hornung
How a Few Small Changes to an Offer Made It Go From $0 Sales To Over $3 Million in 12 Months
Episode 2 Segment D
[0:00] – [2:32]
“One of the areas with advertising that trips up a lot of people, is what to do when things go wrong.” Jason starts with this statement, then he outlines what he “most commonly sees” when advertising fails. “People will put up ads. They’ll run some traffic to a marketing funnel to their offer. Then, it doesn’t produce any sales.”
Their first thought according to Jason is to blame the ads. Next, they begin to question the advertising and the mechanics of their marketing funnels. What they tend to overlook from Jason’s educated perspective “is the offer component of this.” His thinking is that they fail to do the research “to find out, what is the existing demand that’s going on in the marketplace and how to channel that existing demand onto their product or service as the fulfillment of that demand.”
“Famous marketing guru, and copywriting expert, Dan Kennedy has a saying” about this phenomenon, “it’s the offer, stupid.” Jason notes that Kennedy applies this blunt analysis when an offer is “not profitable at all or they don’t make any sales at all.”
For Jason, it can be more than just the offer. Sometimes, it’s how you position and deliver the offer in your sales presentation.
[2:33] – [6:42]
To illustrate, Jason tells the story of Grace Lever, who along will her husband, Adam, owns a training company in Adelaide, Australia. The couple approached Jason in June of 2016 after attending one of Jason’s “three day private workshops,” to have his company serve as their agency and “run their ads for them.”
The Levers were selling a course they called “The Identity Project” for $497 at live workshops all across Australia because they thought “that’s what their market would buy.” Doing the events every month was “burning them out.”
Jason’s first suggestion was to increase the price to $997 to improve profitability. Past experience suggested that price would work.
Next, he changed the sales strategy from selling the product live on stage to a webinar funnel strategy. The approach started with an “Opt in Webinar Page” to an “Automated Webinar Selling the $997 Course” followed by an “Order Form” and ending with a “Thank You Page.” The webinar was the live workshop revamped into a proven webinar template, “Russell Brunson’s Perfect Webinar Formula.”
The campaign started June 17. The campaign was paused on July 12 after spending $2300 to generate 278 leads and produce no sales. At this point, Jason sends Adam a message that he’d like look at “funnel optimization.” The reason was the “ads were working on the front end.” The campaign was creating interest, “getting them to click,” and “opt in for the webinar” at “the cost we were looking for.”
“When we’re hitting our front end metrics,” it can be a technical problem with the funnel. After eliminating the tech issues, Jason “knew it was either a problem with the offer or the offer positioning.”
[6:43] – [13:05]
The client was concerned the price increase was hindering sales, Jason convinced them otherwise. The research and feedback supported the offer as on target for this market.
Further analysis let Jason determine that they had failed to show for each component in the webinar, “the value it’s going to bring (to) that person individually.” By not presenting “the results it’s going to bring in their life,” or the “problems, pains, frustration, it’s going to end for them,” was a critical omission that needed to be addressed.
Plus limiting access to the product for just one year for $997 was an offer obstacle that needed to be changed. The customers wanted lifetime access.
Additionally, they were lacking “trial closes,” which are attempts throughout the webinar to close the sale and visually Grace looked tired in her delivery. After making these adjustments and having Grace redo the webinar with more energy, the campaign was relaunched on August 1.
The first sale came on August 4th. By the end of August, $107,000 in revenue was produced with a spend of $42,600. These number told Jason that they had “a winner.”
Jason points out that the offer didn’t change instead they built the value, changed the offer positioning, added some closing elements, plus increased the presentation’s energy. This campaign has continued to run non-stop for almost one full year and has generated revenue of 2.6 million dollars after just these few adjustments.
[13:06] – [17:33]
If you want to learn more about how to create offers, how to create advertising for those offer, Jason has a “free online training.” One of his clients, Mike Dillard is doing an unheard of thing and allowing a look into “the back end of a 2.2 million dollar revenue generating advertising campaign.” For “almost two years,” this campaign has produced “on average $15,000 a day in revenue” on “about $4000 a day in ad spend.” The ROI is a little more than 3 to 1 on ad spend.
On this training, Jason will show “the back end of Mike’s account,” his ad, how they “put together the creative,” how they “knew what the market was looking for,” their targeting template, and their “3D Profit Scaling System.”
The next training starts today and lasts 90 minutes. There will be links above the video, on the video and also below it that will take you to a registration page.
At the end of the training, there will be an optional offer to work more closely with Jason and his team to help you “avoid certain pitfalls.” There is no obligation. The training itself is packed with information and a bunch of free handouts.
Click on the link below to sign up for the Free Online Training:
Jasonhornung.com/webinar
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