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Fire your advertising agency

I met up with a friend of mine yesterday who runs a male dating company, and we talked about how he’s looking to outsource all of his advertising.

He keeps running all of his own ads, which takes up a lot of his time, and that’s why he’s been looking for someone to manage his advertising.

He already tried working with a few agencies and freelancers, and all of them just tanked his performance.

And it’s not like he was cheaping out – he doesn’t care about the price as long as it nets him a decent positive ROI, but he keeps running into people who promise him the moon but deliver crap.

It seems like everyone’s got the same problem…

On Tuesday, I spoke with a business owner who hired a well-known advertising agency who burned 10.000 € of his cash and generated 800 € of revenue.

That’s what … 0.08x ROAS? lol

I told both of them that if you want something done well – you need to do it yourself.

Especially when it comes to advertising and copywriting; the two money-making skills every business needs.

Outsiders don’t care enough for your business to try hard enough.

And hiring isn’t always the solution …

Because if you’re not skilled at both, you’re going to have a hard time figuring out if your candidates are full of shit or actually good.

I know that might sound weird coming from a guy who owns and runs a marketing agency …

But it’s the truth, and most business owners don’t want to accept it.

I’m not saying you need to go back to the basics and learn every little detail…

But it’s smart to hire mentors that can teach you the 80-20 of copywriting and advertising.

It’s how you can quickly pick up these two crucial skills and start moving the needle on your revenue.

Just this week, I started mentoring Nik, who owns a fitness company, and so far, I love it.

Sure, it’s a bit strange because it’s one thing to write copy, but it’s something completely different to explain how to write copy…

But it looks like I’m going to have plenty of time to practice because next week I start mentoring yet another business owner on the same thing.

I feel like I keep jumping from one thing to another, and like my work-week is pure chaos.

On top of all of my copy work, I’m now mentoring two businesses on copywriting, funnels, and sales…

I’ve got mixed feelings about it – on the one hand, I friggin’ love it, but I also want to have a simple schedule where I sit on my ass and write.

But that’s the lazy part of me talking…

Because I love challenges, and I’d be bored out of my mind if I didn’t have a little bit of chaos in my life.

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Getting clients/jobs

Another application landed in my inbox today, and … well … it’s not very impressive.

So I wanted to spend some time today talking about client-getting / job-landing strategies that actually work.

Most people assume that the only way to get a job/gig nowadays is to have a direct connection / get referred.

And in some ways, that’s true.

Especially because marketing is an unforgiving field, and if you don’t have any experience / skills, it makes things tricky.

I kinda avoided all of that by getting lucky when I successfully launched a Kickstarter campaign back in 2014.

A few days later, I started getting calls from other people looking to launch their campaigns, asking if I’d help them.

It slowly spiraled into a part-time gig where I was writing email campaigns for a well-known Slovenian copywriter…

And a few months later, a friend of mine introduced me to Matej, who gave me an incredible opportunity to learn and work at his DR company.

That’s where I learned most of my skills, so when I went back to freelancing, it was relatively easy to position myself as an authority by hosting webinars and sharing knowledge.

And that’s a great way of landing clients.

But obviously, when you’re just starting, you can’t do that…

So what I recommend you do is follow a piece of advice I learned from Justin Goff.

It actually involves cold mailing.

I know most people assume that it doesn’t work …

But it actually does if you do it the right way.

Before I get into that, let me tell you about the application I received today and why it’s so bad.

It’s the usual pitch … My name is XYZ, I’m looking for a job, I’ve got 100 years of experience in marketing, I studied this, I did that, I’m very motivated and hard-working, attached is my CV, can we jump on a call, blah blah blah.

Boooriing.

But besides being boring, it puts me into a position where I need to do a lot of work to figure out if this person can actually deliver on what I need.

Instead, what you should do is provide value in the first email.

Here’s what I mean.

Let’s say I want to land a new gig for an ecommerce business.

I’d write a new cart abandonment sequence for them for free.

Then I’d tell them that if they like it to let me know because I’d love to write more stuff for them.

That completely changes the position they’re in.

Instead of trying to figure out if I’m good or full of shit, they can start running my emails and see how they perform.

And guess what?

If the emails work, they know I can make them more money than they’re going to pay me – which is exactly what any business is looking for.

The bottom line is that you need to show, not tell.

Don’t make it a hassle for employers to hire you – make their job as easy as possible, and you’ll have a much better chance of getting your foot in the door.