37: Don’t Make This $5000 Mistake: What We Learned (The Hard Way) About Paid Ads And The Customer Awareness Journey

What Is This Episode About…

In this episode, Chris will talk about the importance of understanding where potential customers are on their customer awareness journey. Him and John learned that the hard way when they put out Facebook ads for a teacher training and a retreat, both separate events, that they were organizing and needed to fill up. They hired a hugely successful Facebook ads agency to handle the ads for them, but the results for both events were surprisingly different. And that was all because of customer awareness levels.

The customer awareness journey starts with someone being unaware that they have a problem, and that there is a solution to it. They then progressively become aware of their problem and start discovering that there is a solution to it. It’s at that point that a person can then start looking for a solution, and such a person is always ready to purchase the solution wherever they can find it. 

Going back to the events that John and Chris had put out Facebook ads on, they were targeting people locally. And for the teacher training, people already knew them for offering that and trusted them in that regard. That was reflected in the success of the ads because they got quite a good number of people signing up for the training. But for the retreat, they were not so well known for it, and it reflected in the not so good number of sign-ups. That’s how customer awareness played into the kind of results that came from the ads for each event. Because the potential customers for the teacher training were at a higher level of awareness about what John and Chris had to offer, the number of people who signed up for the training was high, while the results for the retreat were the opposite. Stay tuned to learn more about how you can apply John and Chris’s lessons on the subject into your own yoga business, so you can always get the highest return out of your advertising dollars. 

Key Points Discussed:

• Breaking down the customer awareness journey (02:40)
• How people move towards problem awareness and solution awareness (04:06)
• Getting a 600% return on investment for using Facebook paid ads targeted at customers at a higher level of awareness (07:43)
• The importance of understanding where people are on the customer journey (12:50)
• Spending $5,000 on ads and getting zero leads from it (15:32)

Learn More About The Content Discussed…

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When Was It Released…

This episode was released March 4, 2020

Episode Transcript…

Disclaimer:‌ ‌The‌ ‌Transcript‌ ‌Is‌ ‌Auto-Generated‌ ‌And‌ ‌May‌ ‌Contain‌ ‌Spelling‌ ‌And‌ ‌Grammar‌ ‌Errors‌ ‌

 

(00:00):

We spent about $4,000 on ads, and I don’t think we got one person from those ads. And so, this is the lesson. You have to understand, one, what the program is and who it’s for, and then what the message is, and the result that they’re going to get from that experience. And two, you have to understand, at what level are they on the customer journey?

 

(00:29):

What’s up, everyone? You are listening to Yoga Entrepreneur Secrets. I am Chris Yax, and I’m John Yax. We are part of a small group of yoga entrepreneurs who are committed to making a living, doing what we love, without feeling guilty about making money, or ashamed of being successful, because we know the real value of yoga and how the world needs it now more than ever. This podcast is here to teach the strategies and tactics, so we can thrive financially as yoga entrepreneurs. We are the Yax brothers and welcome to Yoga Entrepreneur Secrets.

 

(01:00):

Alright. So if you listen to that you’re like, “I don’t understand what he just said.” I’ll unpack all of it. So, the story goes, John and I… at the end of last year, really, we actually started in August. We had two things going on that were super important for us to fill up. And that was, a teacher training, and actually, in two days we have the second weekend of the teacher training that we’re doing, and we’re super excited. It’s like where we’ve… like, that’s… like, I just love it. The environment, the people, everything we do and talk about. It’s like, take the gloves off man, let’s talk real… let’s… let’s really talk about what yoga is. That’s what that teacher training is about. It’s so good. But we also had a retreat, and that retreat is coming up in two weeks. Actually, we leave next Sunday as the… as you’re listening to this. Oh, I’m probably already there.

 

(01:51):

I’m actually right now probably surfing, and getting barreled in a wave. Or, teaching yoga, or eating some awesome food. Either way, you should be envious, and you should be there, but maybe next time. No. So the whole idea was that we had two very important events that we needed to fill up. And so, you know, we’ve been in business for 15 years. And, we have a big email list and we email pretty regularly. It’s… you know, we’re actually… we kind of like start and stop depending… it just… we haven’t been super consistent with it. It’s one of the things that is definitely on the list to shore up. But, so, we initially… we had both of them, and we’re like, “You know what, let’s start throwing some fuel on this fire, and like, work with a company to do paid ads, and let’s specifically target Facebook ads.” And, let me hold on that.

 

(02:40):

So, we started paying a lot of money, for one, to work with this organization, this group, who are awesome, awesome people, and do just… like they’re ninjas at what they do. But, we also paid a lot of money in the ads to get our message out there, to get people into our training. And so, what I will say though, before I tell you the results of the paid ads, and what worked, and what didn’t work, is that there’s this thing called the customer awareness journey. I think it’s a journey. I’m going to call it a journey. And if you look at it, basically it was by this, it was developed by this guy named Eugene Schwartz. The book that describes it… it’s like $1,000. It’s crazy. Oh, here’s a marketer, so I guess he understands the value of his book, and then prices it accordingly.

 

(03:20):

Um, but the customer awareness path or journey, it goes from like someone who’s completely unaware and what they mean is that they’re unaware that they even have a problem. They don’t know that there’s a problem, that they have a problem. They don’t understand that there’s a solution. And think about it this way. It’s like the person is like, as I get older I should feel worse and my body should feel aches and pains to try to tell them that, Hey, you know you, there’s this thing called yoga that gets you out of aches and pains or like, um, I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I as you get older, this is what is naturally going to happen. My stepdad growing up, I remember when he was 51 I asked him, so how does it feel to be 51 and he looked at me and he said, you know, I have more years behind me than I do ahead of me.

 

(04:06):

Right? That is a hardened belief system. He doesn’t recognize that there is a solution out of the problem of aging and that yoga could potentially help. So you go from like totally unaware. I don’t know. I have a problem. I don’t even know because I don’t have a problem. I’m not even looking for a solution to someone who goes up and be like, you know what? Yeah, this aging thing’s a problem. Oh, well. And like so they’re a little bit closer because now that they know that there’s a problem, they may or may not be looking for a solution to their problem. And so you go to the next level and you’re like, Oh, now someone is a problem and solution aware. So it goes unaware, problem aware, solution aware. So now they’re like, okay, I’m aging, I have aches and pains. That’s the problem. And I know there’s a solution and I got to start looking for it.

 

(04:53):

And they don’t know what the solution is, but they know there is a solution out there. Take it up one more level. And now you have someone who is a problem, who is problem aware, is solution aware and now is ready for an offer. They’re like, listen there. And most likely those people, they have actually purchased things already to fulfill and relieve the problem that they have. Right? So when you look at each level of this customer journey of the awareness that they have when you’re with somebody who is completely unaware, I mean they don’t know there’s a problem. They don’t those, which means they don’t even, they’re not looking for a solution. They don’t even know there’s a solution. The amount of education that is required to change the belief system of like, Hey, you know, like you getting older, like your body doesn’t have to deteriorate like it is.

 

(05:47):

That’s actually a problem that can be solved, but you have to educate them and the amount of time it takes to educate them means it takes a lot of money and it takes a lot of time. Or they have to be, you’re like, well, if they’re your family member, then it’s going to take a lot of time anyway. But you know, like if, listen, if you are a yoga teacher, yoga studio owner, your loved ones and the people that are closest to you, right? They are the hardest people to get in that yoga studio right now. They, because most likely there isn’t, like, I’m not problem aware. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Yoga. I don’t need it once yogurt anyway. Um, or they’re just like, you know, it’s the people that are closest to us that we don’t take advice from. We don’t listen at all.

 

(06:28):

We’ve got a great story about that, but I’ll hold off on it. As you go up now the pro someone’s problem aware and you’re like, Oh Hey, you know that problem you have. Like there’s a solution but still to get to your solution and your offer in the belief that what you provide as a yoga teacher, he has a yoga studio owner is the solution for them. It still takes a lot of time and money because of education. Bridge is so big. You go up one more, now they’re solution aware and like, so then another problem, then there’s a solution. All of a sudden it just takes like, Oh yeah, you know, like the problem you have like yeah, of course. I know. Like I’ve been trying to figure out how to solve it and like, yeah, you even tried it sometimes. Yeah, I’ve done like this, I’ve done that.

 

(07:05):

I’ve tried like CrossFit, I’ve done gone to the gym and like I just feel, I just don’t, that’s not working. I still feel tight and sore and I just don’t feel good. Like, Oh yeah, have you tried yoga? No, but I’m thinking about it. Oh well we have this offer. Come check it out. All of a sudden, literally in a conversation you can compel someone to come in and try yourself, do your thing. And so this is the I, the understanding is super important and it was so well received. Like I, so I understood that conceptually I understood like there’s this customer awareness journey and people have to go from unaware to problem aware, to solution aware, to like, uh, to ready to buy, right? They just need an offer. Just throw it at ’em and they’ll say yes to it because they’ve gone through the journey.

 

(07:43):

And so what is so important is that in that process, what’s also happening is that people are getting to know you, they’re getting to like you and they’re getting to trust you. So let me come back to paid ads. So here we have this teacher training and here we had this retreat and we sold, I think we had, um, I’ll go with the teacher training first. We had when we announced like, Hey, we’re doing this teacher training almost immediately within a week we had five people sign up for, and that was just us like doing Facebook lives and like organic, not putting any money behind it. Facebook lives and throwing out emails, doing email sequences, making announcements in classes. Hey, we’re doing this and got that. And uh, and like this is coming up and it’s starting. And just by that, just like super organic throwing messages out here and messages out there were like, Hey, five people signed up.

 

(08:31):

Awesome. When we did the same thing for the retreat, uh, it was similar results. We had like three people sign up for it. Like immediately. Now understand too, there is price sensitivity, but if you look at these two programs, the teacher training, and the retreat, they’re almost on par right there. Roughly between, depending on when you signed up between a 3,640 500 roughly. Right. Rough. I’m trying to lump them together. And so I’m trying to like average it out. And roughly that’s about the amount. So as far as the buying decision in terms of price, it’s basically the same. So what we ended up doing was we were like, you know what? Like I want to continue to throw the messages out organically, but I want to throw some fuel on the fire. This is what John and I were talking about. And we’re like, all right, let’s get some paint ads going.

 

(09:16):

So we found a Facebook agency and we’re like, listen, this is what we want to do. Here’s all the assets and we put these funnels together and did all this stuff. And uh, the teacher training, we started targeting a local audience, a local audience around the areas that we have spread our message that either we’d have affiliate studios or our own studios, or we’ve done workshops, but basically it was in this very kind of condensed but regional area where people already, right? So remember the customer awareness journey. They already knew of us, they liked us, they trusted us. And most of them have already experienced on some level what we offer, whether it’s in a class or a workshop or some prior training. And so within, I guess it was from August, we really in earnest started, cause we had to get assets together in October and we had gotten to ours, like we wanted 40, we ended up with 36, 36.

 

(10:13):

Yes. Crazy successful. I think we spent, uh, in the ballpark of about $6,000 on ads, but we had from the five initial, we had 31 more people sign up for the teacher training as a return on investment. Huge. Like we were close to like 600% return on investment. It was crazy. Super, super crazy. Awesome. Right? But remember, we were directing a very specific message with a very specific result to people who are at the higher end of the customer awareness journey. Now the retreat on the other hand, here it is the result of the retreat that people are looking for. It’s more of kind of like, I mean and we, we’ve, we’re, we’re combating this idea that a retreat is kind of a frivolous thing. Like it’s kind of needed, not really needed. What am I going to get? You’re not going to like at the end of the teacher training you’re like, I get to teach, right?

 

(11:11):

Result V I get to deepen my practice and share it with others. That is like super, super concrete. At the end of a teacher training, at the end of a retreat it’s like, okay, I’m going home now. I feel good, but we like what we do is way different and that’s why the people that signed up initially, they had been on a retreat before with us and they were like, Oh my God, I’m in whatever it costs, I’m down, let’s do it. But people who didn’t know it, one, the, the result in their minds was very vague. It’s kind of like they think of it like just as a vacation and like the price is still awesome, but the, the amount of education that was required to get those, the, the, the people that didn’t really know us yet to say yes to it was much bigger and therefore much more expensive.

 

(12:02):

The other thing we did wrong was, so all of a sudden we’re still targeting local people, but the run the reasons why it didn’t work as well with local people because what I just said, the result wasn’t codafide forum. And you know, I don’t know if people are struggling, the economy seems to be doing good, but personally, people still are kind of like, they feel like they’re teetering a little bit, they’re like they’re secure but not like totally secure. Or maybe it’s just fear from 2008 that’s like still in the back of their minds. But so here’s the other thing, we also then shifted, we’re like, listen, it’s a retreat so it doesn’t have to be local. Let’s try pushing messages out nationally. So we’re like getting applications from people in California and Idaho and like all over the country. And what happened is that we spent about $4,000 on ads and I don’t think we got one person from those ads.

 

(12:50):

And so this is the lesson you have to understand one, what the program is and who it’s for and then what the message is and the result that they’re going to get from that experience. And two, you have to understand at what level are they on the customer journey. Are they aware of you? Do they know you? People in California had zero idea who John and Chris Yax were, who, what Yax Yoga concepts is right? And they like the message was compelling enough and like enticing enough for them to fill out an application. Say I’m kind of interested, but the moment we got on the phone with them, they’re like, ah, no, I’m not really interested because they didn’t have any frame of reference as to how we teach and what we do. And it’s so important because it can save you a lot of time and a lot of money by not throwing messages out and paying for your message to be sent to people who are at the lower end of the awareness journey where they just don’t know who you are and, and if the, it’s one thing, if they don’t know who you are and you’re like, Hey, here’s a $7 free plus shipping book, you know like I’ll pay for the sh you pay for the shipping.

 

(13:54):

I’ll give you a free book. Like people who don’t know you because like the price is so low. They’ll take the risks, they’ll spend and waste potentially $7 just to kind of figure out who you are when the price is like $3,500 $4,000 people are way less willing to spend that amount of money on someone who they do not know, like, or trust. They have no relationship with you. And so this is so important because it like, I’ll call it a mistake on the retreat side, but it wasn’t a mistake. It was like nothing’s a mistake. You’re always getting as a result, the question is, is it the result that you wanted or not? And if it isn’t, guess what? Learn from it so that you don’t make the same mistake to get the same result later on in life and at the end that like what advertising really is.

 

(14:37):

You’re just paying for information and marketing. You’re paying for information, you’re throwing messages out and you’re saying, did anyone respond to that? No. Okay, well let me try something else. Throwing that message up. Anyone’s bound to that. Nope. So it looks like a lot of failure, but what it is is a lot of gathering of information. That’s what’s really important. Understanding where people are on the customer journey and what they’d be willing and not willing to pay for as far as the price point is concerned. We’ll help you understand how to position yourself, who to market to, and then what the result is of the program that you’re creating to get more conversions to get more people in your programs, whether it’s your studio, whether it’s a workshop, whether it’s a tree, whether it’s a teacher training, understanding what they’re looking for, where they are in terms of like of the journey and how much they know you already will allow you to really become more effective and efficient with your marketing dollars with your ad spend.

 

(15:32):

Yeah, man, it was tough though. I’ll tell you what, like man, spending that money and we’re spending money on the agency itself plus paid ads on top of it and like when we went bust with, it was probably $5,000 that we spent. It hurts. I’m not going to lie. It’s not fun. It’s no good, but it’s, it is good if I just reframe it and be like, listen, you know what? That was good money spent for good information and we know now we’re way better for it to be able to be more successful in our efforts in the future. So I really hope that helps. If you’re never like done any paid ads, you can start small and like just do like a video or do a live and just put like $2 behind it or you’re doing this, do a dollar behind it for seven days, spend $7 and just see the reach that you get what and Facebook is now a pay to play, right?

 

(16:21):

If you’re not paying for your ads, people are not seeing them. Even if it’s on your personal stuff, even it’s in a Facebook group like you, like more so on your personal and on your Facebook group. But if you’re like have a business page and you want people to see your stuff, you got to put money behind it. But what I’m saying is put money behind it effectively and efficiently by understanding what it is you want them to do, where they are on their journey so that the message can match the market. The person who that you want to help in your business. I hope that helps. Thank you so much and as always, always do the work, whatever work that is so that your message can get out there onto the struggle because you will fail, but it’s not a failure. It’s just good information so that you can learn and move on and be better for it and make the world a better place to live because God knows we need it.

 

(17:10):

Thank you. Bye. Peace. Yes, thanks so much for listening to Yoga Entrepreneur Secrets. Do you have a question that you’d like us to answer raw and uncut on the podcast? If you want your questions answered, all you need to do is head over to Apple Podcasts, and do three simple things. One; rate and review telling us what you think of the podcast. Two; in that review, ask anything you want related to yoga, and three; if you want to shout out, leave your Instagram handle or name and that’s it. Then listen in to hear your question answered Live, raw and uncut. Join us next time on Yoga Entrepreneur Secrets Podcast. Thanks.