To: Agency Owners & Freelancers; A BIG Opportunity Lay Ahead For You With Facebook Ads In 2021…
Facebook is under fire.
Millions of advertisers are struggling.
Small and medium sized businesses.
Yet hundreds of thousands are still scaling and growing with Facebook advertising.
Can I help you increase profit and results for your clients AND earn you back free time and cashflow without worrying about the next Facebook ads meltdown?
If that’s a yes, then read on for these 5 tips to use right now…
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From: Depesh Mandalia (Agency Owner)
Dated: October 02, 2021
To: The Person Responsible For Client Results
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Hey there,
If I told you that Facebook advertising was about to get even harder – I could be writing that in January of 2018, 2019 or 2020 and it would be true.
However, this is 2021.
And this year, MORE clients than ever before will NEED agencies, freelancers and contractors that know what they’re doing to fill their own knowledge gaps.
Facebook advertising has ALREADY become harder.
Adapt or die.
It took us 18 months to build the perfect system in our agency.
A system that could allow us to support our clients’ spend of $2M per month, with a very small team and high efficiency.
From clients starting with ZERO spend to taking on clients spending $100k/m or more already.
In fact 6 of those months included big failures, a further 6 months in understanding why those failures occurred whilst documenting everything, and then 6 months putting the new processes and ideas into practice.
Towards the end of last year we finalized our business plans for growth yet I realised this year would require something more than we’d done before.
You see, right now, we’re heading into a new digital marketing world, where consumer privacy comes first, consumer choice is front and center and where the luxury that companies like Facebook and Google have enjoyed for over a decade with almost limitless access to user data is coming to an end.
It matters not what we think, as business owners, entrepreneurs, marketers and hustlers.
Right or wrong, governments are changing the way we advertise online, forever.
Here are my tips and biggest pieces of advice for you as someone in the client services industry, because I believe we/you are to be most impacted by this.
Not because Facebook advertising might change for us, but because we are the ones helping those that need the help the most: business owners that require our help to serve their clients.
We are the glue, we are the cog and we are the link between each business owner with a dream and their ability to succeed with generating clicks and conversions.
We have the ability to impact and change the lives of millions and this is why I’m sharing this with you today to show you what difference you and I can make.
What If You Could Add An Extra 5K, 10k or 100k Per Month To Your Client Services Business By Tapping Into The Blue Ocean Of Businesses In 2021 That Need You?
1) There are more clients in need, than there are agencies/freelancers available to service them
Apple has triggered the first big impact move for 2021 with their changes to iOS14. With less tracking and data from users on iOS14 devices, the way you run your advertising and how you manage your campaigns has changed, forever.
By 2022, more than 25,000 businesses will have closed down that used to rely on Facebook ads.
Why?
Not because they can’t afford to run ads, or because ads are more expensive (they’re generally not).
It’s because they don’t know where to place the ad spend in order to generate a profit.
Let that sink in.
Businesses will close because they don’t know how to make Facebook ads work profitably and they can’t reach their customers.
There are over 10 million advertisers on Facebook.
Many of those are small businesses running their own ads trying to achieve their dreams through advertising.
Others are businesses that have found traction and now need experts to scale them further.
Others are businesses already scaling and profiting that need MORE than just Facebook ads.
This is why we, as those responsible for helping clients, need to stay ahead of the game.
Seen this before?
In 2019 and 2020 a basic Facebook ad campaign setup of:
- CBO (campaign budget optimization)
- Broad Audiences
- Regular Creative Refreshes
- Fast Loading and Good Converting Funnel
- Good Offer / Messaging
was enough for most people because Facebook’s clever machines could find the right person for us and guide us on the numbers on what was working.
But now this simple model doesn’t work.
It’s going to get worse too.
This is why you need to be the expert your clients need.
Now’s the time to learn the new way of running ads on Facebook.
Now’s the time to get experts into your corner.
Now’s the time for your business to scale.
2) Don’t Focus on Facebook or Other Ad Platforms, Focus on This
Get good at the good things that you do and be clear to clients what those things are.
At SM Commerce (my agency) we only do a few things. And we do them well.
Our core is…. Marketing. Not Facebook advertising, or Pixels, or CBO or anything technical like that. We focus on being great marketers.
The reason folk like Ogilvy and Hopkins are still mentioned decades after their death is because they were great marketers.
As an agency or freelancer, being a great marketer is your key to success.
It can be Facebook marketing, it could be Google, or Snapchat, Instagram or TikTok.
Doesn’t matter, you need to master marketing before mastering platforms.
Your clients need this and your business growth relies on this.
A great marketer ALWAYS remains a great marketer regardless of the market or the platform.
Here’s what we focus on:
- Being great at the principle of marketing
- Focussing on just a few niches and MASTERING them
- Working with clients we know we can get results for
- Creating results, which create case studies, which attract even better clients
Being ace at marketing is what allows our agency to offer clients Facebook ads, Google ad, YouTube ads, email marketing and pretty much any channel we want.
Once you understand how to market, and bring products to users that convert through high performing funnels, you can make any ad platform work.
Think of it like using a Mac vs a Windows machine.
Both have inputs (keyboard, mouse) and outputs (screen, print, text, graphics).
Once you know the basics of each, you can easily learn how to get used to the technical differences (through training or trial and error).
No matter what happens with Facebook, or Apple and iOS14, being good at marketing will keep you paid for life.
3) Prioritize YOUR Business Success Too!
How many businesses are you responsible for to generate revenue?
As an agency owner I run TWO businesses:
- one business is for our clients, spending their advertising budgets to ensure their business remains profitable and stable.
- The second is ensuring my agency’s business remains profitable and stable.
Don’t get them both mixed up.
And definitely don’t over focus on one at the cost of the other.
One of my first mistakes as an agency owner in 2017 was in not charging enough.
This meant I couldn’t pay my team enough so my hiring wasn’t too good.
It meant sometimes the quality of our work wasn’t good.
It meant I had to fix LOTS of things my team were not getting right.
It meant I was working IN my business, as an employee and not working ON my business as the CEO and owner.
I now teach agencies and freelancers how to make more money, save more time and create higher profitability, but it took me over 18 months of test and learn to get it right.
I’ve seen some agencies that are AMAZING at generating leads and creating new business – but they STINK at getting their clients results.
So they have a 24/7 lead generation machine working away because their lifetime value, and client retention is BAD.
Then I see some agencies that struggle for leads and new business but are absolutely GREAT at getting their clients results!
They don’t have many clients joining but their clients LOVE them.
Imagine the power of being able to attract high quality leads AND get them amazing results.
And enjoy the business you’ve created.
Isn’t that why you started your business?
Doesn’t the impact of what you do for clients feel better when your business is also growing?
So that you can hire better people to continue servicing your amazing clients so well?
I failed myself in the first 6 months of my business, because I didn’t know how to manage multiple ad accounts for multiple businesses in a way that didn’t require me to work 14 hour days.
Would it make you laugh if I said my first client was spending nearly half a million dollars in ad spend… that is, my agency were responsible for nearly $500K PER MONTH in ad spend…
And I charged a few thousand per month to manage this.
I got the client great results but my business suffered.
Now I can charge my worth, still generate amazing results AND build an automated lead gen system that keeps even more quality leads flowing in.
If you’re not in a position already where you’re working with clients you love and providing them the best results, are you ready to make a change?
Achieving this simply comes down to having the right system in place. The rest comes from experience (as I learned).
4) Media Buying Is Dead
A dramatic headline to get your attention…
Media buying is becoming less and less important. This is true.
Being a great ‘media buyer’ is not good enough anymore.
In December 2020 I ran a test on an Ecommerce business I own:
- I wrote some rules using automation software, to follow the same daily rules on analysis and actions I would take manually
- I set up a simple COLD (top of funnel) targeting campaign using Lookalikes and a bidding strategy that would only spend if Facebook could find me results at a certain cost
- I added a HOT (retargeting) campaign using our Infinity Retargeting strategy which would cycle through reasons people didn’t buy each day and aim to serve the best ads
- The rules ran autonomously through December, pausing and restarting ads and managing budgets with ZERO human intervention (aside from checking in on spend/results every few days)
- The month ended profitably, in fact the highest profit on the store in 2020.
This proved to me that machines can more reliably generate results than humans when the human providing the machine with rules, understands how to buy media.
If that makes sense, then it will also make sense that we use many of these rules and techniques with our clients.
You see, in 2020, our small team of media buyers and account managers serviced $2M per month in ad spend and didn’t break a sweat.
Sure, there are unexpected curveballs that hit you as an agency, but without knowing how to create the right rules, in the right setup and to implement them into automations, I’d probably need to DOUBLE that team to support those clients.
Fewer people means fewer overheads, fewer mistakes and the chance for your team to focus on what matters: creative planning, test ideas, exploring new channels and lifetime value growth.
And the things machines can’t do?
They’re the high value things only humans can do, which are also the things that really move the needle.
Like building avatars, promotions, funnels, campaigns, creatives and more.
It’s important to learn media buying but as important to leverage technology to help you and your clients generate better results.
5) The Obstacle Is The Way
Right now, it can feel doom and gloom but I can assure you there is a path.
iOS14.5 shook the advertising world.
I’ve been advertising on Facebook since 2012 and changes have become part of the process.
I remember running Facebook ads via a Chrome plugin because there was no other way.
I remember losing ‘Power Editor’ and feeling like Facebook had destroyed the platform.
I remember my first policy issue in 2015 and thinking that the strict policies would kill advertising.
I recall Cambridge Analytica hitting and thinking this was surely it for Facebook.
But none of those things stopped the JUGGERNAUT.
Facebook right now, is too big to stop.
I’m already using workarounds for iOS14.5 and sharing them with clients and students.
Facebook will bulldoze anything in it’s path.
Facebook is already working on new attribution tools.
In 2020, we generated over $52M in tracked Facebook ads revenue, combining sales for our clients, our own digital products and our Ecom operations which we continued scaling into 2021.
This is part of the reason many of the other well known Facebook ads’ people you follow and learn from have probably learned from me.
It’s why many of my network reach out to me for opinion and feedback.
Not because I know the answers to everything, far from it.
But because I obsess in my goal of creating results.
That’s why I wrote a 50+ page guide on the iOS14 impact and distributed it for free to over 100,000 Facebook advertisers BEFORE most people even knew it was going to be an issue.
If there’s a problem I go all in to solve it, or to get as close as I can to solving it. It’s why I wrote The Ultimate CBO Cookbook and have thousands of students that have succeeded in making CBO work for them.
Impact first, profits later. It’s what serves us in our agency within our client manifesto and the principle that drives me every day.
In developing any skill you have 2 choices:
- Continue on the path you’re on, learning for free from all the information around you, to continue testing, learning and trying new things, which is fine but doesn’t come without risk.
- Or, you can work with me and my team and let us transfer our knowledge and experience into your business. It’s not free but bypasses much of time and risk of learning it yourself.
Can we help you?
I’ve put together a short workshop to show how we deal with this in our agency, SM Commerce.
I break down the process so you can understand how we implement our Agency Client Services model, and how you can take that into your business too.
Facebook’s becoming more difficult and I want to ensure agencies and freelancers are fully prepared to deliver high quality results for clients in 2021 (and beyond) which is why I and my team and working closely with a small group of those doing our best to serve clients at the highest level whilst achieving what we want from our businesses.
Join the on-demand workshop here (no opt in just watch the video on the landing page): http://www.elite-accelerator.com
Here’s a hint of what’s inside the workshop:
We are our clients’ brand – that is, our ads are only as successful as our clients’ products/services, which means our case studies are only as good as that too.
I set the agency direction and we as a team use The BPM Method (our advertising operating system) to deliver results, primarily via Facebook ads but we also offer other services too like store builds, CRO, organic and other paid channels (whilst still staying lean!).
Finally, we have a team geared towards results that generate awesome case studies (I’m sure you’ve seen at least one of ours!).
In fact our model only has 5 parts. We let our case studies do the talking and clients come to us because of this.
The easy part is delivering results through The BPM Method because we know it works IF we work with clients that are ready for it, which is where our Client-Service fit process comes in.
90% of failed agency/client relationships are because either the client is not ready for your services (eg not ready to scale) or you’re not able to deliver the promised results. We can fix both for you.
Plus, if it makes sense, we can help install our agency operating system into your business too as long as you:
- Have an existing client services based business (an agency, freelancing, contracting) anywhere in the world
- Already offering, or looking to add an offering of Facebook advertising and to achieve great client results
- Looking to grow with new, better clients
- Wanting to hit consistent 5 or 6 figures in monthly revenue for your business without sacrificing more time or resources.
We have limited capacity to work with a small number of people right now on implementing new revenue opportunities into your business so time is of the essence.
Go check out the workshop here where I open our our 5-part Client Services model: http://www.elite-accelerator.com
I’ll be sharing our exact CS (Client Services) framework which covers how we create so much value for our clients this year (and since 2017), whilst allowing me to step back from the day to day.
I focus on client results, creating case studies, that attract even better clients.
I care more for lifetime value in my agency than worrying about chasing new leads.
You?
If any of these goals are important to you then go ahead and check out the workshop.
Here are some of the results from the last 12 months that we’ve helped agencies and freelancers to create:
Want to see how our clients have created big success in a small amount of time?
Learn how Pawel halved the number of clients, increased revenue, increased profit and earned back more time!
Or how Alex grew his client’s performance through the iOS14.5 rollout, earning him higher revenues from his clients.
Or how Rachel tripled her agency’s revenues within 3 months, enabling her to hire more people and reduce her stress and anxiety with her race team (ELITE) in her corner.
See their stories and more over at bpmmethod.com/elite-success
Or if you’d prefer to speak to us directly,
go ahead book a free application call today
Let’s see if me and my team can help you leverage a big opportunity this year in helping more clients get even better results through online advertising.
Whether it’s through our paid programs or free resources we’ll do what we can to help.
Speak soon,
Depesh.
P.S. our client support team are ready to take your call if you want to see how we can fast-track your support
Book a free application call today
Or you can watch the on-demand workshop for the inner details at www.elite-accelerator.com
And view many of our client success stories here: www.bpmmethod.com/elite-success