Pick apart my ads strategy! - B2B (Website maintenance services)

[DoTheWork]

Hey everyone! Thanks for taking the time to read this.

I'm seeking feedback on my ads/lead gen/sales strategy for my WordPress maintenance business. I also hope you can find value in my strategy (and this discussion) for your own business!

Background:​

In 2020, I started a website management business that I grew using Google Search ads. In 2022, I did $135k but only $80k YTD (50% margin) because I stopped running ads this year while I focused on another business.

I have determined recently that this business is best for me to focus on, so I am relaunching the brand along with a new lead gen strategy. The only major roadblock I've had with the business is getting leads. It's such a HUGE constraint on the business and if I could overcome it, the business would explode. I would love to hear your feedback.

Where I went wrong with previous campaigns:​

I've identified some key mistakes that I made with my previous ad campaigns.

1. No strategy – We just targeted the searchers for website management/maintenance and ran basic ads on those to a page pitching our services, just like many of our other competitors.
2. Poor targeting – We didn’t target any WordPress-specific keywords even though we only worked with WordPress. This was a very inefficient way to run ads because we wasted plenty of ad spend on prospects that would never be qualified.
3. Long payback period – It took probably 6+ months to earn back our ad spend on a customer. This is a huge cash flow issue and makes it impossible to scale ads at a reasonable rate.
4. No commitment – We were erratically raising/lowering the budget or pausing ads entirely.
5. No measurement – We had no dashboard for viewing performance. We still have no idea how profitable those campaigns were.
6. Not enough testing and variations – We didn’t run nearly as many ad variations and split tests as we should have.
7. Poor landing pages - Our landing pages were not well thought out or strategic. We looked just like the rest of our competitors, for the most part.

What I'm doing this time:​

My strategy is to run ads on search queries that someone would make if they are experiencing an immediate problem with their WordPress website.

Search examples:

• “wordpress critical error”
• “wordpress 404 error”
• "my wordpress site is down"

This puts me right in front of my ideal customer at a point when they're experiencing pain. Someone searching these terms 1) has a problem keeping their website properly maintained and 2) has a poor or nonexistent support team.

To turn them into a lead, we will offer a completely free fix to their WordPress problem so they become a lead that we can nurture. We are also experimenting with a very low fee, since some people may be skeptical of giving access to a company for a free offer.

I have detailed plans for how long the campaign will run, specifically if it is below breakeven. I am committed to a monthly budget. I also have an excel sheet to track all my KPIs which are measured through various systems.

Reducing payback period:​

We need to reduce how long it takes for us to earn back the customer acquisition cost (CAC) to reduce cash flow issues.

To achieve this, we will:

• Sell bulk development hours at a steep discount
  • It could be 50% off. The profitability doesn't matter much because people won't use these hours all at once in most cases. The important thing is that it moves cash from the future into the present.
  • These hours are only valid if they have an active subscription with us.
• Offer annual billing for 15% off
  • New customers may be hesitant to sign up for annual billing immediately, so send an email after 1-3 months reminding them that they can pay annually to save 15%.

The goal is to sell enough to cover our cost of acquiring a customer (CAC) within the first 30 days (or, at least, get as close to this point as possible).

The process:​

1. Prospect clicks ad.
2. Prospect fills out a form describing their website issue.
3. Prospect receives a personalized, automated email with next steps for sharing website access.
4. We collect any additional information we need to resolve the issue.
5. We resolve the issue.
6. We provide a summary of our findings.
   1. In written and video format, explain 1) what the problem was and 2) how it was resolved
   2. Call-to-action: Book a free consultation to discuss more.
   3. Lead magnet is now delivered.
   4. Delivery follow-up:
      1. Wait 1 day - If no call is booked, send a reminder to book a call.
      2. Wait 1 day - If no call is booked, send written and video report explaining 1) why the problem occurred) and 2) how it can be prevented.
         1. This is where we pitch our services.
   5. Prospect enters email nurturing sequence.
   6. If prospect signs up, exit email nurturing sequence.

The offer:​

Three (3) monthly WordPress maintenance plans ranging from $179 to $499. It includes maintenance, support, and security.

USPs, bonuses, and guarantees:

• 100% U.S-based support (no foreign support reps)
• Dedicated account manager for each customer (each rep is already familiar with your site)
• We personally get in there and do the work on your site, rather than setting up systems to run auto-updates
• No contracts. Billed monthly (or annually) with the ability to cancel renewal at any time.
• 30-day money back guarantee
• Free development hours with sign-up (if needed to encourage the sale)

Lead nurturing:​

After the lead magnet is delivered, the prospect enters an email sequence to nurture them into a buyer.

This begins with a 30-60 day sales sequence that is focused on selling our core offer (3 monthly website maintenance plans), followed by a long-term sequence focused on keeping the lead warm and educating them about WP maintenance.

Phases of the sales sequence:

1. Sales and offers - our prospect is experiencing pain related to our services right now, so we are leading with sales emails
2. Content and education that leads to an offer
3. Objection handling
4. Risk removal

Current results:​

I've already started running these ads. I'm currently doing a 2-week testing period before I launch in full force on Jan. 1st. I have some systems to clean up now that I've validated this strategy a bit.

Here are my current results from the past 10 days:

• 2 leads (1 unresponsive, but they're in the email sequence)
• 67 clicks
• 834 impressions
• $5.66 CPC
• $379 ad spend

 

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[Andy Black]

Hey everyone! Thanks for taking the time to read this.

I'm seeking feedback on my ads/lead gen/sales strategy for my WordPress maintenance business. I also hope you can find value in my strategy (and this discussion) for your own business!

Background:​

In 2020, I started a website management business that I grew using Google Search ads. In 2022, I did $135k but only $80k YTD (50% margin) because I stopped running ads this year while I focused on another business.

I have determined recently that this business is best for me to focus on, so I am relaunching the brand along with a new lead gen strategy. The only major roadblock I've had with the business is getting leads. It's such a HUGE constraint on the business and if I could overcome it, the business would explode. I would love to hear your feedback.

Where I went wrong with previous campaigns:​

I've identified some key mistakes that I made with my previous ad campaigns.

1. No strategy – We just targeted the searchers for website management/maintenance and ran basic ads on those to a page pitching our services, just like many of our other competitors.
2. Poor targeting – We didn’t target any WordPress-specific keywords even though we only worked with WordPress. This was a very inefficient way to run ads because we wasted plenty of ad spend on prospects that would never be qualified.
3. Long payback period – It took probably 6+ months to earn back our ad spend on a customer. This is a huge cash flow issue and makes it impossible to scale ads at a reasonable rate.
4. No commitment – We were erratically raising/lowering the budget or pausing ads entirely.
5. No measurement – We had no dashboard for viewing performance. We still have no idea how profitable those campaigns were.
6. Not enough testing and variations – We didn’t run nearly as many ad variations and split tests as we should have.
7. Poor landing pages - Our landing pages were not well thought out or strategic. We looked just like the rest of our competitors, for the most part.

What I'm doing this time:​

My strategy is to run ads on search queries that someone would make if they are experiencing an immediate problem with their WordPress website.

Search examples:

• “wordpress critical error”
• “wordpress 404 error”
• "my wordpress site is down"

This puts me right in front of my ideal customer at a point when they're experiencing pain. Someone searching these terms 1) has a problem keeping their website properly maintained and 2) has a poor or nonexistent support team.

To turn them into a lead, we will offer a completely free fix to their WordPress problem so they become a lead that we can nurture. We are also experimenting with a very low fee, since some people may be skeptical of giving access to a company for a free offer.

I have detailed plans for how long the campaign will run, specifically if it is below breakeven. I am committed to a monthly budget. I also have an excel sheet to track all my KPIs which are measured through various systems.

Reducing payback period:​

We need to reduce how long it takes for us to earn back the customer acquisition cost (CAC) to reduce cash flow issues.

To achieve this, we will:

• Sell bulk development hours at a steep discount
  • It could be 50% off. The profitability doesn't matter much because people won't use these hours all at once in most cases. The important thing is that it moves cash from the future into the present.
  • These hours are only valid if they have an active subscription with us.
• Offer annual billing for 15% off
  • New customers may be hesitant to sign up for annual billing immediately, so send an email after 1-3 months reminding them that they can pay annually to save 15%.

The goal is to sell enough to cover our cost of acquiring a customer (CAC) within the first 30 days (or, at least, get as close to this point as possible).

The process:​

1. Prospect clicks ad.
2. Prospect fills out a form describing their website issue.
3. Prospect receives a personalized, automated email with next steps for sharing website access.
4. We collect any additional information we need to resolve the issue.
5. We resolve the issue.
6. We provide a summary of our findings.
   1. In written and video format, explain 1) what the problem was and 2) how it was resolved
   2. Call-to-action: Book a free consultation to discuss more.
   3. Lead magnet is now delivered.
   4. Delivery follow-up:
      1. Wait 1 day - If no call is booked, send a reminder to book a call.
      2. Wait 1 day - If no call is booked, send written and video report explaining 1) why the problem occurred) and 2) how it can be prevented.
         1. This is where we pitch our services.
   5. Prospect enters email nurturing sequence.
   6. If prospect signs up, exit email nurturing sequence.

The offer:​

Three (3) monthly WordPress maintenance plans ranging from $179 to $499. It includes maintenance, support, and security.

USPs, bonuses, and guarantees:

• 100% U.S-based support (no foreign support reps)
• Dedicated account manager for each customer (each rep is already familiar with your site)
• We personally get in there and do the work on your site, rather than setting up systems to run auto-updates
• No contracts. Billed monthly (or annually) with the ability to cancel renewal at any time.
• 30-day money back guarantee
• Free development hours with sign-up (if needed to encourage the sale)

Lead nurturing:​

After the lead magnet is delivered, the prospect enters an email sequence to nurture them into a buyer.

This begins with a 30-60 day sales sequence that is focused on selling our core offer (3 monthly website maintenance plans), followed by a long-term sequence focused on keeping the lead warm and educating them about WP maintenance.

Phases of the sales sequence:

1. Sales and offers - our prospect is experiencing pain related to our services right now, so we are leading with sales emails
2. Content and education that leads to an offer
3. Objection handling
4. Risk removal

Current results:​

I've already started running these ads. I'm currently doing a 2-week testing period before I launch in full force on Jan. 1st. I have some systems to clean up now that I've validated this strategy a bit.

Here are my current results from the past 10 days:

• 2 leads (1 unresponsive, but they're in the email sequence)
• 67 clicks
• 834 impressions
• $5.66 CPC
• $379 ad spend

Seems complicated. You also seem to be bidding on info-seeker rather than buyer keywords.

How quickly can you get into conversation with people who want to pay for WordPress help? Would you learn quicker and get clients quicker if you were in conversation instead of them being on an email list?

Maybe listen to the last part of this:

MINDSET - For those getting started - Stop learning & overthinking. Just go off and do it

I did a call to help teens, students, and others get started in business. This 8 minute extract seems to help people so I've created a separate thread for it. I'll upload the transcription shortly, and copy/paste other people's takeaways below. What's your takeaways? What will you do...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

 

[DoTheWork]

Seems complicated. You also seem to be bidding on info-seeker rather than buyer keywords.

How quickly can you get into conversation with people who want to pay for WordPress help? Would you learn quicker and get clients quicker if you were in conversation instead of them being on an email list?

Maybe listen to the last part of this:

MINDSET - For those getting started - Stop learning & overthinking. Just go off and do it

I did a call to help teens, students, and others get started in business. This 8 minute extract seems to help people so I've created a separate thread for it. I'll upload the transcription shortly, and copy/paste other people's takeaways below. What's your takeaways? What will you do...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

Thanks for the video and feedback!

To be clear, the email sequence only comes if we cannot get them on the phone for a consultation. Also, when we start on their WordPress fix after they fill out the lead form, we're already beginning to educate them about our company and the importance of website maintenance and we work through their site issue.

Yes, the keywords are more on the info side. The buyer keywords in this niche are highly competitive and expensive, but these keywords are much less so. Our CTRs on these searchers so far are 7-10%, so doesn't that indicate that our ads are interesting and relevant to those searchers? We haven't even split-tested any ads yet.

One of the reasons we decided on this strategy is that, when we were running ads on buying keywords, the easiest and best customers that we acquired were experiencing an immediate problem with their website. We would help get their problem fixed, then we ended up selling them on monthly maintenance.

So, since those have been easy sales with a great customer fit, it seems helpful to target these people directly in searches like these.