Five Things To Do Before Paying for Traffic

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If you're good with a hammer, you think everything's a nail.

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You talk to a Google Ads guy about whether or not you should run Google

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ads, you're gonna say, yes, of course.

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Gee golly.

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Before you talk to somebody like me or somebody who looks like me,

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or somebody that is in an industry that is in endeavoring to get you

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to do one very specific strategy for customer acquisition do.

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These things, foist.

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The first and most important, and my favorite is become your customer.

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And people don't take this advice, by the way.

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it's lip service.

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It happens in, business schools and trade shows, and all these folks talk

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from stage about becoming a customer, but that nobody ever actually does.

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if you're selling car seats, go shop for car seats, go spend weeks.

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Driving around.

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Go to every retail location you can, every specialty store that you

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can, every goodwill every savers.

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Go to different cities and walk into a store and look at the

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car seat buying experience.

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I love the story about the Airbnb guy.

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Brian Chesky, he just floated around staying with different Airbnb hosts.

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He actually wasn't able to really get any traction with Airbnb.

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Airbnb was a small little startup outta New York and Brian's in Silicon Valley

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trying to raise money, and he ends up meeting with a guy who goes, dude, you

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know very little about your own business.

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You need to go to school on this.

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And Brian took that to heart.

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And so he starts floating around couch surfing with various Airbnb hosts.

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And while he's doing that, he's just listening he's hearing their,

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positives, but really their complaints and their, growth opportunities.

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And then he took that to heart, become your customer.

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Interestingly, I learn so much all the time about helping people

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with Google Ads every single time.

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My company has an issue with Google Ads.

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I'll be slacking my business partner, John, and I'm like, lead

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flow is down and we don't know why.

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Get on it.

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You know, like, why, why is the lead?

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And it's so funny because I know all of these things in intellectual.

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I talk about 'em all the time on, YouTube videos, but then when it happens to me,

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I instantly become the worst customer.

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And I, turn into, everybody that I lecture against, but I always learn something.

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As soon as I become my customer, I learn something.

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It's nerve wracking to spend money for 90 days and not know what's going to happen.

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but now that I know that, and now that I've felt that I can speak to it.

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And I can manage those expectations properly.

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Become your customer.

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If you're gonna open a daycare, go shop for daycares.

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Even if you don't have kids, that's a little creepy.

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That one's careful with that one, but you know what I'm saying.

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Become your customer first and foremost before you run

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traffic, become your customer.

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Number two, direct outreach.

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This is one that is repellent to everybody, but it's so important.

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Pound the pavement.

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Call people, cold call.

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Imagine that.

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I remember I got to hear Jesse Itzler speak a couple of times.

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He spoke most recently to an event I was at at Costa Rica.

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Amazing dude.

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Really interesting.

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he's been ultra successful in like five completely different endeavors.

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Just really, really phenomenal human being.

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And he talks about how.

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So much of a success.

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he's really animated.

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He's an old school rapper, so he does this thing, but he's like, just pick up the

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phone and man, there's something to that.

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It's shocking how accessible people are, especially if you

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approach 'em the right way.

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You've done some research, you're respectful, but picking up the phone.

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and pick up the phone as a metaphor here too.

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Pick up the phone, do LinkedIn outreach, send people an email, fill out a form,

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reach out to your prospects personally and directly make a one-on-one connection.

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I started an agency or tried to start an agency that was

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targeting cosmetic dentists.

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Me and my business partner had this really, really high performing

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cosmetic dentistry campaign.

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the doctor we were working with was putting two grand out, getting or

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two grand in, getting 50 grand out.

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It was amazing.

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so I'm like, all right, let's go build a little niche agency around this.

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First thing I do start cold calling.

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It's a Saturday, by the way, which I've, noticed is actually a really good

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time to get entrepreneurs on the phone because they're at work playing catch up.

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Cold call Dentist on a Saturday.

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Gentleman answers the phone older gentleman who is less

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than polite, but more than kind.

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If that makes sense.

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He was annoyed that I was calling, which you'll get, but you know, I'm kind of

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upbeat and chirpy and I can get over that.

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And the guy ends up giving me phenomenal advice.

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He goes he's like, dude, do you have any idea how many people are

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coming at me every single day?

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Dentists.

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And he used the, this term that I've used in, I've adopted it since as my own.

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He said, dentists are prey animals.

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I get salespeople calling, walking in, sending letters for.

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And then he, started to name it.

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He's like, people are trying to sell me.

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It's not just marketing.

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He's like, I mean, you're a drop in the hat.

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I'll get 30 of you a month.

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it's marketing, it's financial planning.

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It's medical devices and equipment.

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It's office furniture.

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I guess.

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Dentists are, , spend a lot on office furniture, like specialized, whatever

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those chairs are in the cabinetry.

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It's continued education.

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partnership offers referral requests.

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He's like, I am a prey animal.

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And what was really interesting about it is I, thought to myself, probably

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could be successful in this industry long term, but I'd rather go somewhere

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that isn't quite as saturated and target a prospect that's not quite as hunted.

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It was so helpful.

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It was so helpful.

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This one conversation gave me what I needed to make a decision.

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Now you might say, never give up, never surrender.

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You should go after it.

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Fine.

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That's probably true, especially if you have a deep, deep, deep love

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for dentists and you really feel like you're onto something short.

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I've got 200 clients, in 150 different industries.

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I have more than enough industries to go find low hanging fruit,

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which is what I've done.

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find niches that are underserved and dentistry is not underserved.

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So direct outreach.

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Before you run paid traffic, reach out to whoever it is that

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might be buying your stuff.

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One pro tip for you is go check Craigslist.

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There are people asking for, searching for things on Craigslist.

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Reach out to these people and figure out, how does this conversation go?

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Is this a human being that I could stomach being around on a recurring basis?

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Number three, before you run paid traffic, make sure you make your mistakes

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in a safe and secure environment.

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here's what I mean by that.

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Paid traffic is an open forum.

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And people are mean in the comments you just read.

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My YouTube comments are actually pretty nice, but my Instagram comments like, oh

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my goodness, I can't read 'em anymore.

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They upset me so much.

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Cause I have such a fragile ego.

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But before you make an offer, for instance develop a narrative before

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you try to sell something, it's really helpful to have your core group of.

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You can't even call 'em clients, but like trusted advisors, trusted prospects,

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let's say they need to be the people, the type of people that you sell to.

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But you know, what we do is I always like to go to the five or 10 clients

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that I'm closest with and say, Hey, if we offered, remarketing only as

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a service, would this be valuable?

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And would you pay x?

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I never say, what would you pay?

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Cuz nobody's ever gonna give you a good answer to that.

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it's, would you pay X?

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Would you pay $500 a month?

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Whatever.

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And what's really helpful is the feedback you get before you go to market.

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Make your mistakes in a safe and secure environment.

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This is really hard to do if you don't already have clients, but if you don't

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already have clients, I question whether or not you should be running paid traffic.

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I think paid traffic is a horrible way to earn your first.

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Handful of clients.

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If you can't earn them organically, how are you gonna earn 'em with paid traffic?

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Paid traffic is the worst traffic.

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It's fickle.

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It's brittle, it's mean, it's cold, it's, you know, like they don't trust you.

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So try to get your first handful of clients first.

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That way you can make mistakes in a safe and secure environment.

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and once you've done that, you have to understand your target market.

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Now this is different than understanding the individual.

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That one dentist I was on the phone with was a person.

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He's not a market.

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In order to expand, let's say that I really wanted to

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niche down into dentistry.

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I needed to go to school on the market.

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are the directories?

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What are the publications?

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What type of education do these, cosmetic dentists need?

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Who are the thought leaders that they pay attention to?

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What's the legislation surrounding dentistry?

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Specifically, what do I know about HIPAA compliance?

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what type of licensing is required?

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What's the before and after requirements of this particular it was all on

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four was the name of the procedure.

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Go to school and understand inside out, upside down the fright and

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center, understand it enough to do it.

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I should be able to perform this procedure before I'm really marketing

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to it, and I'm being facetious obviously, but understand the market.

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And then number five, and probably my most important is you have to have a scalable

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model that can support paid traffic.

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Paid traffic is a scaling system.

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this happens to me to this day and there's only so many fixes for it, but

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I can't tell you how many times clients call us and they're like, turn it off.

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there's, we can't handle the leads.

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And you think like, oh, what a good problem to have.

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No, it's not.

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You kill your campaign nine times outta 10 cuz all those starts and stops.

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Google goes, all right, why would I invest in you who can't buy all this inventory

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when, oh, here's your competitor over here and he just keeps B B B B B B.

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So they're gonna get prioritized.

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You're gonna get deprioritized and then your campaign's gonna start to stuffer.

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You need to make sure that you can actually take the

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traffic you're asking for.

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So that means that your sales pipeline, your onboarding process your fulfillment

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process, your inventory management, e-commerce stores that run outta

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product, like, oh, you're killing me.

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You're killing me.

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And then they're like, well, okay, just go sell the other thing.

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And I'm like, oh, okay.

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I just taught the trillion dollar hunting dog how to go hunt this thing.

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But.

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I'll just give a new sniff of something else, like, we've wasted all this money,

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this r and d, because we've ran out and I, you know, sometimes it's flippant

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for me to say, I understand that there's practical realities, especially with

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supply chain issues where you just can't get ahold of stuff fine, but that doesn't

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mean that it's easy to pivot away from it.

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So before you run traffic, we have to do these five things.

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Before you run traffic, become your customer.

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First and foremost.

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Know who they are.

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Shop like them.

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Get in their mind.

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Be Daniel Day Lewis studying as a character.

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Do direct outreach.

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Pick up the phone, send an email, go to a networking event.

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Go to one of their events.

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You know, there's the, the Luxe Myth thing, association of America.

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It's probably in Vegas, so you'll have some fun.

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Go to the event, figure out who they are.

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Have a controllable environment that you can make your mistakes in,

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understand your target market, really go to school on them, and then make

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sure that you're built to scale.

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If you can't do those five things, you should not run paid traffic.

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Says the paid traffic guy.

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I have no, what?

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I can't even say I have no dog in this fight.

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I have the opposite dog in this fight.

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How do you say that?

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There's not a turn of phrase that comes to mind.

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I'm speaking to you, counter to my own interests.

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But actually, you know what, it's in my interest because you're gonna try to be

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my client otherwise, and I don't want you if you haven't done these things.

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So do these things.

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I know they'll help.

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I know they'll help your business.

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It doesn't matter how long you've been in business, by the way.

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Do it right now.

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Today.

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Go cold, call somebody.

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I still do this regularly.

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I still like, if I'm interested in a specific.

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Prospect or business or whatever.

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I'll still do cold outreach regularly cuz I learned so much.

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I think it's, there's these entrepreneurial I don't

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know what to call 'em.

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It's like coaching devices that show like, oh, this is $10 an hour

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work, hundred hour an hour work.

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Thousand an hour work, 10,000 hour work, you're only supposed

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to do 10,000 hour work.

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Those cold calls in my mind, 10,000 an hour work.

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Learning those prospects, that's nobody can do that for you cuz you're gonna

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hear things nobody else can hear.

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You're gonna key in on conversations, ask questions, nobody else can do.

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We can't outsource that type of thing.

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Anyway, hope this is helpful.