Have you ever been burned by a digital marketing agency? Or wondered how to get the most out of your digital marketing spend?
Our guest today is Jason Fisico, and he shares with us three of the most common reasons you may have been burned by a digital marketing company.
TODAY’S WIN-WIN:
Be patient with your marketing efforts and have enough budget to get the results you want.
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Jason is the founder and CEO of Fizzi, a growth marketing team focused on helping service-based businesses overcome plateaus and grow faster than ever before. The agency is best known for our guest, Jason Fisico, who produced well over $100 million in revenue for his clients before starting the company. The team has since worked with some of the world’s biggest brands in their respective niches!
ABOUT BIG SKY FRANCHISE TEAM:
This episode is powered by Big Sky Franchise Team. If you are ready to talk about franchising your business you can schedule your free, no-obligation, franchise consultation online at: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/ or by calling Big Sky Franchise Team at: 855-824-4759.
If you are interested in being a guest on our podcast, please complete this request form or email podcast@bigskyfranchise.com and a team member will be in touch.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:01):
Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team. And as we open today, I’m wondering if you’ve ever been burned or maybe felt like you were burned by a digital marketing agency, or maybe you’ve wondered how to get the most out of your digital marketing spend. Well, our guest today is Jason Fisico and he shares with us three of the most common reasons your digital marketing company and agency may not be performing as well as you would like for it to.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:42):
Now, Jason is the founder and CEO of Fizzi, a growth marketing team focused on helping service-based businesses overcome plateaus and grow faster than ever before. The agency is best known for our guest, Jason, who’s produced well over $100 million in revenue for his clients before starting his business. The team has since worked with some of the world’s biggest brands and their respective niches. You’re going to love this interview, so let’s go ahead and jump right into it.
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (01:12):
Thank you for having me. Thank you so much. I’m Jason Fisico and I’m the founder and CEO at Fizzi.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (01:18):
One of the things that I found interesting in preparing for our discussion today is this concept about various forms of marketing agencies, PR agencies, and so on, and the thing that I’ve experienced and our clients have shared with me over the years as well is people get burned by agencies, the results aren’t there or the expectation isn’t delivered. Something happens there. So what do you see as these common areas or pitfalls that create this type of situation?
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (01:48):
For sure. So at the very beginning of Fizzi, I was the one jumping on all the calls with all these prospects coming in, and the number one objection is that, hey, I’ve been burned by another agency. What makes you different? And so that was a question that I’ve had to answer for very long before I was able to bring on salespeople that could really help with that process. And then I myself have been burned by agencies. As we were scaling up and we’re not able to find the right talent right away, we played around with, hey, maybe there’s another agency that can help us with a portion of the fulfillment. So we played with that, and so we ourselves have been burned by other agencies. So at the end of the day, what it came down to was we bring people on that do what we know is already working and they just have to learn our systems rather than the other way around, and we get another agency to do it.
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (02:47):
And so when the question comes up like, hey, I’ve been burned. What is the reason that I got burned by another agency? It comes down to really just a handful of things. Number one, that agency, if they’re doing lead generation, running your ads, doing your cold email, all of the above, when we go in the backend and diagnose what is going on, nine times out of 10, they went all in on getting the best advertisers, the best landing page builders, the best at different things. But where they lacked was their copy, their messaging. A lot of people, they hire maybe junior specialists fresh out of college or from another country who maybe didn’t have a lot of experience and they say, “Hey, go write this copy. We just need you to write all day.” And that sounds great on paper, but people really miss what is the importance of a copywriter.
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (03:41):
Copywriter is not to make fluff and make things sound great. A copywriter’s job is to research your target persona, find out what makes them tick, find out what makes them just really excited and want to buy. That’s what a copywriter does. When a copywriter can write to that, you can have ugly landing pages, ugly ads, ugly graphics, ugly videos, but you’re still going to sell like hotcakes. So that’s number one. Another reason people get burned, we’re in this era of set and forget as it comes to online marketing. A lot of agencies, they will turn on your cold email campaigns, turn on your online ads. And I can prove it when I look in the backend of these prospects coming in, that that agency didn’t touch their ads for several months or didn’t touch those cold email campaigns for weeks, months, whatever it is. And so that’s another common reason. In fact, I would say 60% of the time, that’s the reason why.
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (04:44):
And then another really big reason for why people get burned is the agency that they hired isn’t actually doing the work. And I will say this, I would guesstimate that probably 60 to 70% of competing agencies, they put 90% of their effort on getting clients and then from day one, they have a white label agency do the actual work. That is another reason. They can’t possibly tell you why things are going wrong because they’re not in the day-to-day work and they don’t know.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (05:21):
These are all great points. How would I identify an agency that I might be interested in working with?
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (05:28):
You have to ask them point-blank before you even sign a contract, okay, so are you guys filling this yourself? How do you test what is working and what is not? And then also you have to know going in, if they don’t give you access to the ad account, or even better if they don’t make you the owner of the ad account, the platforms or whatever they’re using for your marketing, that should be a red flag. I’ve had people come in and they’re like, “Oh yeah, we never had access to the ad account, or we didn’t own the ad account, the agency did.” That’s a red flag. If you don’t own the platforms that they’re going to use to get your marketing, then they’re trying to hide something from you from day one. Or just have control over your systems to where if you decide not to work with them, they can turn everything off, delete different things and make it really hard for you.
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (06:17):
Those are some things to look out for. And then also you should see, for example, Fizzi is in the online advertising space. You can see on those ad accounts, when was the last time that they edited something and who edited it? If you don’t know how to do that, you can do a quick Google Search, how do I see the last edit on this Facebook ad account? How do I see the last edit on this TikTok ad account? If you can look at that and you don’t see changes, you better run. You better run, you better get out of that contract, whatever it is. So those are some things to look for.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (06:51):
And certainly that makes a lot of sense. I would imagine that all ads over time, no matter how great those ads are, become stale at a certain point. It’s either no longer relevant or it likely will need to change as consumer preferences are adjusting over time.
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (07:07):
Exactly. Not to go too much on a tangent, but exactly what you’re saying, there’s a concept called ad fatigue where on social media platforms where you’re advertising; Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, it is common to hit what is called ad fatigue within one and a half months. And what that means is when users see that ad too often to the point that it becomes ineffective. And so that happens around one and a half months. And so when you have this ad agency that’s running these ads for you and they’re not actively either creating their own creatives or asking you, hey, do you have any other creatives? That’s a red flag because you have to be switching that out all the time in order to really maximize your potential. So I’m glad you brought that up.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (07:54):
Thinking of getting burned, part of the challenge is lack of information. People maybe making the decisions don’t know quite as much about how some of these inner detailed workings go and they rely on the experts that they’re hiring. Is there a secret sauce or some kind of magic potion to getting results in this digital space like this?
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (08:15):
So the secret sauce, as I have mentioned before, is the copywriting, the messaging. Many companies, they have this 10,000 a month budget, 20,000 a month budget, whatever it is for their marketing. They’ll probably spend 95% on everything but copywriting and probably none of that budget goes to copywriting. We call these zombie funnels, when you have these landing pages that look so ugly and you wonder why a company’s running ads to it. But the reason it works is because of their copywriting. And you’ve probably seen it too. Have you ever clicked on an offer and the landing page is so ugly and you’re like, wait, they’ve been running this for five years, why are they still using this landing page? It’s so ugly. They definitely have a budget for a better dev team, but the reason is the copy is so good.
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (09:03):
Now, I’m not saying because it’s ugly, it’s going to work. What I’m saying is whether it’s ugly or it’s pretty, the copy is what’s going to change the game. And so that is the secret sauce and why we go all in on copywriters. When people work with us, they’re like, “Wow, I think you’re doing the same thing, but for some reason it just really works with you guys.” And I’m like, “We’re not doing the same thing. Compare the messaging, our landing pages and your landing pages.”
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (09:29):
That makes a lot of sense though, right? It’s the messaging. It’s communicating the right message in the right way to the target audience that you’re pursuing. When it comes to crafting some of that quality copy for messaging, is there a strategy or a best practice that you might want to look at? Or for someone that hires an agency or a writer, what they’d be looking for?
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (09:52):
You have to think who is your target persona? And for the clients that we work with, a lot of them have high ticket packages, whether it’s a service or a product, or maybe it’s a coaching program or a course, whatever it is. A lot of them have high ticket. And their approach before they come to us is, well, we have this $5,000 package and some people have bought it, but we don’t want to focus too much on that. We’d rather get them in first with a $20 product. What ends up happening is they build this large pipeline of people who can only afford $20 rather than focusing all the time and effort on building a pipeline of people who can afford $5,000. And you’ll be surprised. The difference between selling 5,000 at volume and selling $20 at volume is your messaging. So I’ll give you an example.
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (10:54):
I had this real estate client. They sold a real estate coaching program for about $9,000, and then they have an upsell for $25,000. They had a whole line of other products, and we said, “Why don’t we just focus on the $9,000 package and then eventually upsell those people to the $25,000 package?” So what we did was their marketing, it said something along the lines of, do you want to get into real estate? Do you want to make money from real estate? And we changed the messaging to, are you still using the BRRRR method? Here’s a better way to flip houses to wholesale houses, or how are you getting leads for your wholesale business? Saying things that are very specific that only an actual investor in the game would understand. And from there, we were getting 33% close rates on live calls, and 80% of the calls were actually going live, as in the salesperson was actually able to speak to that person. Whereas before, the close rate was probably 10 to 15% on live calls, and the live calls were probably 50%.
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (12:04):
So there’s a huge, huge difference. And these are $9,000 packages versus them trying to sell, oh, a $500 item here, a $300 item there. And then here was the beauty of it too. Probably 20% of the people who bought the $9,000 package upsold to the $25,000 package. Well, maybe more like 15 to 20%, but still it was crazy. And all we did was change the messaging. We didn’t change the funnel, the landing pages, the automations. We didn’t change any of that. All we changed was the messaging. So that’s an example.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (12:41):
Wow. Well, thank you for sharing that. Well, this is a great time in the show where we always like to ask every guest the same four questions before they go. And the first question we ask is, have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it?
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (12:54):
The target audience has always been, if we put in a broad spectrum, online service-based businesses. We thought we had this great opportunity. This client wanted to pay us a good amount of money, and they were in a completely different niche. And it was not something that we’ve done before, but we felt like, well, we have a lot of transferable skills into this niche, that should be fine. And so full transparency, four weeks in, we realized we’re probably not the best fit. We’re probably not going to be able to get them results. So of course for that client, we gave them all their money back. And I think the lesson here, and I’ve seen other agencies have the same problem, the lesson here is you have to know your target persona and you have to know your team’s strengths. The moment you go beyond that, you’re stepping to a territory that is three times harder for you to get results.
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (13:46):
Whereas when you stick with what you know and what is working, you’re going to get results. And you can do that again and again and again. Because we’ve had so many clients that get their first six or seven figure a month MRR, monthly recurring revenue. And they do that by going all in on one or two products, not 10 products, not 15. It’s that simplicity factor that really gets the results.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (14:11):
Let’s talk about a make or two on the other side.
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (14:15):
We have this client and they sell an Amazon automation service, which means they will create an Amazon store for you, do all the marketing, source all the products for you. All you have to do is look at the numbers and then take a paycheck. So they have this successful service over 300 stores, and their average profit for a client after their first six months is about five to 10,000 a month, somewhere there. So they have a lot of success with this, but of course their packages are 60 to 120,000. So these are big packages. So right off the bat, we were booking them a lot of calls, but the problem is they were seeing that probably 60% of people were not showing up to calls. So we reached out to some competitors and they were saying the same thing.
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (15:06):
It’s like, oh, yeah, in this space you have to get used to it. A lot of people don’t show up to calls. Probably 50% of our users don’t show up to calls. And we’re like, “Well, there has to be a better way.” And so I was thinking, what is one thing that has always changed the game for us and it’s copy? So we were like, “Okay, why don’t we change the copy? Instead of getting them through this process and then telling them, oh yeah, you got to pay $60,000, why don’t we tell them upfront, no, you have to have $60,000 cash or we’re not even going to talk to you?” So we changed the copy to be very focused on that. No, we’re not going to talk to you. We’re not going to have a conversation if you don’t even have that in cash. We’re not looking for people to finance this. You have to have the cash or you’re not in.
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (15:50):
And this sounded like the craziest idea ever. But so we changed the funnel to be a survey funnel where they have to answer a couple of qualifying questions, and at the same time they have to check, yes, I have 60,000 cash. Right off the bat, our lead costs went from $30 to $600. And people were like, “Dude, this is crazy. This is not sustainable.” And I was like, “Wait. Just wait.” So with Google Search alone, these lead costs went down and down and down all the way down to $166 for leads that have anywhere from 60,000 to $500,000 in cash who don’t need any financing at all from day one, they can afford it. And where this took us is the amount of people that were not showing up to calls went from 60% down to maybe 17. And then on top of that, these were people who already had the cash and could afford it.
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (16:50):
And so you can imagine how we went from having a bunch of calls where people weren’t showing up to now we were selling this like hotcakes. We had a launch, we paused it, and then we relaunched with this new strategy. Upon launch, within a month and a half, we were generating a 5X return on the advertising and the retainer, and then it’s just growing and growing and growing. So we launched, it wasn’t as good. We paused it, we relaunched, and then 5X returns right off the bat right there. And again, it came down to copy. It came down to copy.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (17:30):
The next question we ask, Jason, is about a multiplier that you’ve used to maybe multiply yourself personally or professionally or maybe some businesses that you’ve helped lead and grow.
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (17:41):
When you do online advertising, it is never going to work to its full potential right off the bat when you launch an ad. It’s not a matter of, oh, you turn on this ad, you put some cool messaging, you have them go to a landing page, and then you start pumping out sales and then go to Fiji on vacation. There’s a lot of work that goes into the first 30 to 60 days of just straight testing. We have to test different messages. We have to test different ads, different variations of your landing pages, different email and SMS automations, but that’s what we’re good at. You don’t need to do that. That’s what we do. And what really helps multiply the speed at which we get from where you are now to where you want to be is how much you were willing to put into your online advertising budget.
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (18:33):
Because here’s a reality. Someone who can only spend 2,000 a month on ads is not going to see that explosive growth as someone who is willing to spend maybe five to 10,000 a month on ads. And so we always recommend that anyone who starts with us, the minimum that you should be willing to spend paying Facebook or Google directly is 5,000 a month, because that is the healthiest budget to get past that testing phase as fast as possible and to get to the point where you’re pumping out sales. Someone who can only spend maybe 500 a month or 1,000 a month, maybe 2,000 a month, we always tell them, hey, maybe a better route for you is to go with a cold email or cold outreach agency. They can go for volume, but the only downside there is that it’s not very targeted. But the volume may still help you with the budget that you have.
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (19:31):
Advertising is for those who are willing to spend a little bit more, but want that hyper targeted where their whole pipeline is millionaires. You know what I mean? So that’s the difference.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (19:42):
And Jason, the final question we ask every guest is, what does success mean to you?
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (19:47):
Success is when you have clearly outlined the kind of life you want to live, and you are able to put yourself in a position to live that life. That’s it, plain and simple. Because some people, they want to make 5,000 a month profit and then work one hour a day and then be on a beach. That’s their success. And then my success is… Because I have had businesses before where I’m netting six figures a month and it wasn’t taking too much of my time, but then I felt like there was always something missing and I love, love, love filling my time with something to do. So my success is I want to work my eight hours a day and then have my weekends, and then I feel great. You know what I mean? But if I work more than that or too much less than that, I don’t really feel too happy. So that’s my success.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (20:49):
Excellent. Well, and Jason, before we go, is there anything you were hoping to share or get across that you haven’t had a chance to yet?
Jason Fisico, Fizzi (20:55):
Sure. Yeah. So if anyone would like to get in touch, the best way to do that is to go to our website fizzimedia.com. That is F-I-Z-Z-Imedia.com. We only have one package. On the website, you’ll see everything that we offer with that package. We do everything that you need to grow your revenue without having to spend any of your time or your team’s time on the marketing. We cover it all so that you can be hands-off and focus on all the other parts of your business that are more important to you.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (21:28):
Jason, thank you so much for a fantastic interview, and let’s go ahead and jump into today’s three key takeaways. So takeaway number one is when Jason talked about how a common objection he hears is that people will tell him they’ve been burned by digital agencies in the past. And he’s gathered that there are three primary reasons why that happened. Number one, he said, is the messaging. That they may have done great in every other area, but that the message and copywriting was not where that needed to be. Number two is that they were on a set it and forget it type of marketing approach where the agency just didn’t touch or really update the marketing ads. And number three is that the agency maybe is outsourcing its actual delivery so that the agency doing the work is not the same one that’s selling the work. And so he said that those are three common areas.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (22:26):
Takeaway number two is the advice that Jason gave on the questions you should ask when you’re looking to hire an agency or maybe to ask your current agency. He said, “Number one, how are you doing this work? Number two, are you doing it yourself? Number three, do you have access as the customer to the marketing platforms or the ad accounts? And number four is, can you see the ad accounts?” He suggested you could just ask Google, how do I see the last edit on this ad account? And you’ll figure that out quickly. Takeaway number three is when he described zombie funnels. And I just thought that’s a great takeaway. I’ve never heard that phrase before. And so I thought that was a great little nugget to take away. And he said zombie funnels are those funnels that have very ugly or super ugly landing pages, but the copy is so good that it still works and converts. I thought that was great. And now it’s time for today’s win-win.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (23:26):
So today’s win-win comes from the multiplier that Jason described, and what he said is that digital marketing rarely works well in the first 90 days or so as you’re trying to figure out the right mix and marketing message and so on. I think that was a great little nugget just to have for patience there, for a win-win because that’ll help you and your agency collaborate together. And then the second part I thought was great is when he described one of the biggest mistakes he sees companies make is that they just don’t spend enough on digital marketing to produce an effective result. And he suggested that you really ought to start with a $5,000 marketing spend or greater in order for you to maximize your results. And I thought that was great advice for the many business owners and executives I’ve worked with. If you’re going to try it, at least give yourself a fair shot. I’d like his transparency and honesty on that.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (24:22):
And so that’s the episode today folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. And remember, if you or anyone might be ready to franchise their business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at bigskyfranchiseteam.com. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to having you back next week.