Ralph and Lauren are going into the details of Q5 marketing—a prime time often overlooked by marketers. They are sharing how leveraging this period, starting mid-December when shipping constraints kick in, can yield leads at a fraction of the cost, especially for high-ticket items. They’ll be walking us through a real-time case study where $700 quality leads dropped to under $70 using strategic ad spending and optimized lead funnels. Ralph and Lauren will also touch on how chaotic human behavior affects lead nurture strategies. Be sure to tune in and embrace this “golden opportunity” window. Start the year ahead of the competition!
Chapters:
- 00:00:00 – Starting Bold: No Fluff, All Strategy
- 00:00:42 – Cracking the Case: The 63% Lead Surge
- 00:02:18 – Golden Weeks Decoded: Welcome to Q5
- 00:05:50 – High Stakes, High Ticket: The Ultimate Lead Playbook
- 00:10:58 – Back from the Dead: Breathing Life into Old Leads
- 00:15:50 – Tactical Brilliance: Paid Traffic Secrets for Q5
- 00:21:38 – Festive Farewell: Wisdom Wrapped with a Bow
LINKS AND RESOURCES:
- Episode 649: Fix These 17 Biggest Mistakes You Are Making Right Now With Your Meta Ads
- Generate new leads by providing value for people
- Tier 11 Jobs
- Perpetual Traffic on YouTube
- Tiereleven.com
- Mongoose Media
- Perpetual Traffic Survey
- Perpetual Traffic Website
- Follow Perpetual Traffic on Twitter
- Connect with Lauren on Instagram and Connect with Ralph on LinkedIn
Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to Perpetual Traffic? Have some feedback you’d like to share? Connect with us on iTunes and leave us a review!
Mentioned in this episode:
Read the transcript below:
90% CPA Reduction? Yes, please. How You Can Capitalize on Q5 Right Now
Ralph: Hello and welcome to the perpetual traffic podcast. This is your host, Ralph burns, founder and CEO of tier 11 alongside my awesome co host
Lauren: Lauren E. Petrillo, founder of Mongoose Media.
Ralph: today we’re going to get right into it. No banter. No chit chat, just all content because people don’t have time right now.
Ralph: There’s shopping for last minute gifts. They’re probably still at their laptops. It’s late on a Friday or maybe early on a Friday. And you’ve been up all night trying to figure out like how to squeeze more sales in before this Christmas rush is all over. So we’re going to give you some inspiration here with a case study from Lauren E.
Ralph: Petrullo, who. It’s quite adept in the lead gen category, which we’ve talked about here quite a bit. And I’m going to tease this a bit the big headline is. You’re getting 63 percent quality leads at one 10th the cost right now. And is that versus the stuff that you were getting cyber Monday, black Friday, and like Q4.
Lauren: Annually.
Lauren: It’s based off of a blended annual
Lauren: lead cost.
Ralph: so now
Lauren: If we compare it to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, then it’s like, for like a 20th, a 100th
Ralph: all right, that that would be an even better headline now. But anyway, a year over year. Well,
Ralph: comparing for the rest of the year, like, let’s just make sure that we’re accurate here. So baseline is the entire year, which probably includes black Friday, cyber
Ralph: Monday.
Lauren: Friday is because
Lauren: of.
Ralph: It’s pulled out. All right.
Ralph: So these are real pieces of data. Do you have anything that you can show us today? Or is it confidential? Cause it’s probably a client that has privacy doesn’t want you to show things. Doesn’t want everyone know all about this. That’s okay. We’re going to take your word
Lauren: if you see the YouTube video, it’s just like a, I will always protect the clients. I
Ralph: all screen shares. Like we do. We off our clients a lot. Actually, we try and blur them out as much as possible. Although one time we, although one time we didn’t.
Lauren: Oh,
Ralph: Yeah, no, that was a long time ago. It was a very long time ago.
Ralph: We
Ralph: that’s right. No banter. Let’s get right into it. All right. So how did you do it?
Lauren: so right now, you’re listening to this. We are in the very beginning of Q5. unless you’re listening to this delayed, like, joke’s on you, you should’ve listened to it sooner. and so Q5, is a term I’ve been using since 2018 when Meta introduced me to that term, and how this is, the, Golden week or two opportunities.
Lauren: Some people view Q5 as Christmas Day, New Year’s
Lauren: Eve.
Ralph: Are you claiming credit for that term by the way?
Lauren: no, no, Metta told me
Lauren: that term. Metta told me that term in our meeting as we started strategizing. And since 2018, we’ve been incorporating it for our clients. and so this golden week or golden weeks opportunity, is something where we’ve had a big push because some of our clients gets as much as 30 percent of all of their Annual leads in this golden period. You have the least amount of competition and the most amount of visibility on social media platforms. This is not true that we have not found inbound marketing, like in interruptive marketing places. Absolutely. Very, very leverageable period. So we’ve been doing this for years.
Lauren: year over year, we have case studies where it’s like blows out the water when people are like, I trust you. They do it. They’re like, Oh my gosh. How do I go back to it? I’m like, you can’t, this is your golden week. So the long story short is, we’re starting Q5. it is after Q5, when I say is the day after you can’t ship in time for Christmas, all the e commerce brands decelerate their ad spend.
Lauren: A lot of them go on holiday vacation because they’re like, Ooh, this is the only time of the year I can breathe. And people are. Not working, and this is like our final stretch, so it’s like our, we’re starting a marathon, two weeks, before anyone else is even entering the race.
Ralph: So just to clarify, if you’re not familiar with the term Q5, we have used it here on the show before, but this is basically the period like, you Right before some people say after Christmas, not really, but it’s right before it. It’s sort of in this period where you’re still maybe getting some Christmas time sales to a certain degree, but it’s really, it goes into like after the first of the year.
Ralph: So it’s sort of like a lot of people have different definitions of it. What’s your definition of Q5 just so we’re clear on
Lauren: Yeah, so, it started December 17th, U. S. Post Office said you can’t, especially in the U. S., because it’s the largest consumer market that we work with, you cannot ship anymore. If you order something on December 18th or later, you’re likely not going to get it in time for Christmas or Hanukkah at that point.
Lauren: And because of that, brands decelerate, they can’t sell. And then the, for sure, it’s Christmas Day to New Year’s Eve, but Q5 ends on New Year’s Eve because on Jan 1, every health and wellness brand is like on their own new Black Friday because everyone’s new year, new me. So that, category, that vertical explodes where you have this like mini increase of competition.
Lauren: In January, because that’s their Black Friday,
Ralph: So the first day sort of back from work is technically
Ralph: is, well, it’s really, it’s like the sixth, if you really look at it. I mean, if you look at the calendar, cause a lot of people are going to be taking obviously the first off and then there’s like two days, there’s Thursday, Friday. So I almost consider like Q5, like almost through to the six, because that’s like when people are actually back from work and then they’re like thinking about other stuff, but anyway, it’s this in between period here, which a lot of people take off
Lauren: love it! Please take
Lauren: off.
Ralph: which is an opportunity for you, the marketer, who’s listening to this show.
Ralph: So let’s get into this case study here, which we. Basically just like this is in real time, ladies and gentlemen. Uh, so talk to us about the space. I know you don’t want to talk about the, company specifically, are they trying to achieve? what historically have their cost per lead been for marketing qualified leads, sales qualified leads.
Ralph: What are we trying to sell
Lauren: of dollars. High ticket. Lead gen. We’re talking about a product that’s five figures. It’s an investment.
Ralph: This is an info product. Okay.
Lauren: So it’s in the info
Lauren: space. It’s
Ralph: Coaching like what are we kind of doing here?
Lauren: It’s in the coaching space. so think it’s like a mastermind, but it’s like coaching in that kind of environment.
Lauren: So in that, their cost, probably hundreds of dollars, their booked calls, all the show up, right? Cause you’re, you’re selling high ticket. We know that high ticket is a long runway. And so taking advantage of Q5 immediately, we saw immediately. I’m looking at the numbers in 24 hours, one 10th. Of the annual cost per lead price with a 63 percent sustained quality lead.
Ralph: So we’re talking hundred dollar leads down to
Ralph: hundreds,
Ralph: multiple hundreds, just give us some round figures here. Come on. We need more specifics.
Lauren: 700
Ralph: 700 a lead.
Lauren: per quality
Lauren: lead.
Ralph: And that’s actually a good qualified lead. So a sales quote, I’m talking sales qualified lead. They meet all the criteria they have they have the characteristics that they’re looking for.
Ralph: Maybe it’s. Maybe it’s, past occupation. Maybe it’s current occupation. Maybe it’s income
Lauren: It’s like, do they have the budget.
Lauren: to afford this high ticket? Do they have the need where we can provide them the group coaching environment and then, specifically that they are going to take action within the next two years.
Ralph: Okay, good. So you’ve got a definitive timeframe. You’ve got like some sense of scarcity, obviously, like with a time constraint. So in this particular niche, in this particular company, we are looking at, what’s the most important characteristic that you say, yes, they are qualified, no, they’re not qualified.
Ralph: Or as an aggregation,
Lauren: the affordability. Yeah, because this is a very high ticket product.
Ralph: Okay. And
Ralph: they
Lauren: of tens of thousands of
Lauren: dollars.
Ralph: like, how much
Lauren: close to 50.
Ralph: 50? Okay. So it’s an information. All right. Got it. I get it now. Like you haven’t even told me this stuff. I’m like, like pulling teeth here for the perpetual traffic listener. Trust me. They won’t figure it out. Our audience. Isn’t that smart?
Ralph: Just kidding. Um, They are really, that’s my thing. I’m like, who is Lauren talking about? Let’s see. They’re all Googling it right now on their phones.
Lauren: that many
Lauren: people
Ralph: don’t Google while you’re driving, by the way, just to me, you know, we don’t want any of that. you can just Google while you’re walking your dog though.
Ralph: And then you just like end up stepping in dog shit. I saw a lady doing that the other day, I was walking him across the park. It was just like, she’s got her dog. Like, you know, she’s on her phone and then she’s like, Oh man. It’s like a law in Brooklyn. Pick up your dog’s crap. But anyway, I divert,
Lauren: Let’s just get more real numbers. The numbers during the Black Friday Cyber Monday, we were looking at 1, 200 and 1, 800 per lead.
Lauren: Just to be transparent of like, yeah, but this is a runway and there’s call centers that are supporting this. I want to be honest about like where they are and all that stuff.
Lauren: So yeah, high ticket supported by call center have the runway to cover a four figure lead because they’re selling a multiple five figure product. And there is no downsell
Ralph: So how does the filtration process work
Ralph: for the lead? Is it metal lead forms? Is it hopefully it’s probably not Google is my guess here because we still haven’t figured out the lead gen issue, although we just did a YouTube live on that two weeks ago, where we. We’re pretty getting pretty close. I assume the traffic is primarily meta tick tock.
Ralph: Like where
Lauren: media. It’s It’s interruptive marketing channels.
Ralph: I’ve heard of those.
Ralph: Yeah.
Ralph: so it’s a lead form
Lauren: And we do lead forums and we do landing pages. So we have, both aspects for sure. And then it leads into a book funnel.
Ralph: Oh, okay. All right. So landing page or no. Or is it
Ralph: lead
Lauren: do both. We do both.
Ralph: Okay. So give us a, which one works better
Lauren: It determines on what is, what is better, in terms of what’s taking the more immediate, the person who, becomes a lead from a landing page. Has higher likelihood, a higher propensity of booking within the next calendar year.
Ralph: Okay.
Lauren: They’re just, they’re just, jumping on the calendar and I’m so, I should take that death.
Lauren: Not a calendar year. It’s like, they’re booking. If they’re coming from a page, let me take it back. They’re booking within 90 days, six months. And then we have a longer if they’re just coming in from form,
Ralph: Got it.
Lauren: but we have people filling out both. So we’re going after, we’re not eliminating or excluding because this is such a long buying decision.
Lauren: We have people that are filling out that were already leads that have already booked a call and they’re like, I need to talk again. So we’re using social media to stay on top of them so that we maintain that we’re top of mind. So just in that, if anyone is in the info space or if you’re in the high ticket space, I would not say like, please do not exclude people who have shown up on appointments before because people forget people made a decision and then they just need to be reminded that they made the dumb decision of not moving forward.
Ralph: That’s a really good point, actually. everyone wants it to be so clean when in fact humans are just chaotic, people forget,
Ralph: you know, they, they, screw up like they don’t
Lauren: grace.
Ralph: Yeah.
Lauren: they don’t show up or they did show up and they told you not now or they had a difference in their budget. So I can say like a small like little cool nugget is, if you can go after people that were in your ecosystem two years ago, there’s a really high likelihood that their income has grown.
Lauren: And depending on the quality of your product, you have not been forgotten, but I bet you forgot about them as a potential
Ralph: Yeah, for sure. Maybe you’re getting their email still. You’re just not opening them.
Lauren: For sure or it’s you’re you think about it you bring into the conversation you’re on their vision board Right, and a lot of people will just defer only to sms And email marketing whereas like we leverage Interruptive channels, so i’m going to keep using that because it’s inclusive of meta tiktok snap pinterest and everything in between , I would even argue that youtube can be counted in that just because of all those but we can get on that debate later but when You You can use the people in your audience.
Lauren: That didn’t forget you and go back after them to get them reintroduced. You’re reactivating dead leads Some people have call centers that can support and make those call outs when you’re inviting them Especially now in q5 like there’s not a better place to get them to re opt in To what you’re interested in to say to sell and to say,
Ralph: So we just recently did a lead list, clean up ourselves. And we do this many times for our clients which is just good hygiene overall. However, you’re sort of talking about, all right, somebody who hasn’t engaged with me for a year, they might not have forgotten about you. They just have been too busy or they just, whatever it was, didn’t really resonate with them that you’re emailing them, SMSing them, doing whatever.
Ralph: And you’re saying, what do you do with those people that you might be sort of on the cusp of letting them go or sort of putting them into that dead lead list inside your CRM?
Lauren: so people are like, I just delete, I don’t delete you paid for that data. How dare you? Cause you can use that data as a negative lookalike audience all day long. You tell them that I don’t want any more of these like zombies reactivation campaigns. You obviously have a sunset flow that you’re doing on both your emails and SMS.
Lauren: So you have your, call team, your call centers, your Whatever, whether using like AI assistance or the like, you’re reactivating that capacity, but sometimes people just don’t want to talk or they don’t want to open. And when you can use an interruptive channel, you have them sit on a list where you’re just like a business as usual.
Lauren: Top of mind type of campaign. You give them the opportunity with grace to reenter your ecosystem without feeling embarrassed or ashamed. Cause if they respond to something where it’s like, look, I’ve been here for two and a half years. they got a new haircut and they’re reintroducing themselves as someone who’s more successful, who someone who still has that same need and who’s ready to take action now.
Ralph: you do that? How do you re engage that lead? Because the reason is, is that I just looked into our lead flow to I think it was three days ago, and I looked at a massive lead that came up like ideal customer for us. And it was like, I looked back to all the broadcasts he didn’t
Ralph: open.
Ralph: And then all of a sudden, boom.
Lauren: Timing is now.
Ralph: it was like all of a sudden the lights went out. So I’m thinking to myself, there’s a silent salesperson that’s sitting in his inbox. He’s not opening it. I see them too. You know what I mean? But am I disengaged? Cause I’m not opening. And should that lead list, this is the conundrum, I think when it comes to emailing and what’s your take on it before you get into your paid traffic strategies, we want to do that very
Lauren: Sure, you never delete a lead. Never delete a lead. So help me, do not delete any data you paid for. It’s leverageable if nothing else in the negative lookalike audience. And then, you have them on a forever, we call it a campaign drip. even if they’re not opening, they’re showing up as ads.
Lauren: You’re looking at your mobile phone, you’re looking at your mobile phone, you’re looking at your phone and you’re reading your emails.
Ralph: are the phone? Is there
Lauren: Oh, car phone.
Ralph: house phone? we still have a house phone, by the way.
Lauren: I
Lauren: love that.
Ralph: that cute. It’s
Lauren: I want a house phone and I don’t want people to have my mobile number so that they can’t connect me when I’m out, but I’m just working on getting disconnected from my cell phone and being
Ralph: a perfect good idea. It’s because my mother in law doesn’t really know how to dial our cell phones, but anyway, that’s beyond it. So, all right. So that’s great advice right there. Let’s talk about the page traffic strategy. So the lead form, and then after they fill out the lead
Lauren: It’s our landing page. It’s leave from our landing page right now in Q5 until at least New Year’s Eve, my birthday, or potentially up until January 5th, January 6th when people are back in the office. So you’re listening to this. You literally have time. This is not a hard activation. It’s if you’re already doing lead gen, accelerate your lead gen right now.
Lauren: If you’re not doing lead gen, turn this on. You don’t have a landing page, go straight for the instant form. Whether it’s native lead gen, because you can do native lead gen on TikTok, you can do native lead gen on Meta, you can do native lead gen on a lot of different platforms, but don’t, invent the wheel, don’t create a landing page if you don’t have one already, but start generating leads, because I’m telling you, we have clients that generate 30% Of their leads for an entire year in this golden period less competition more online q5 If you’re not taking advantage of it and you’re listening to this I swear you just need to launch lead form lead generation if you’re already doing accelerate that budget Do not hold me accountable.
Lauren: I cannot make any promises I can just tell you what we have seen work really well and specifically we’ve turned them on like we literally have turned on our q5 strategies and we are seeing Significantly reduced now. I will say launching a new campaign so you can isolate that data and then you can make that a bau and or Accelerating a budget. Yes. making sure that if you’re going to do a temporary pop, it’s easy to launch a new campaign so that you can see and isolate that data. If you already have a legion campaign, the way that we’re doing it just to keep it clean and easy data, we’re launching a separate ad set. I know that’s not like the most recommended.
Lauren: So there are people that are going to be like, how do you learn like consolidation is the dream, but I’m just trying to compare.
Ralph: Hopefully you have no issue with
Lauren: legion against this new q5 period If you’re able to listen to this, I cannot make a guarantee, but I can tell you already the clients that we have activated our Q5 lead generation strategies are seeing immediate lift.
Ralph: The statements said by Lauren E. Petrular are not, backed up by the company of Perpetual Traffic Incorporated. there’s a legal
Lauren: lot of listening to it, yeah, full disclaimers
Ralph: Full disclaimer, tell me about the funnel just quickly on the thank you page is what do they get on the thank you
Lauren: depends on a per client basis, but often worth putting a book your calendar appointment now. Stole this from Kossum. Let’s go faster.
Ralph: for the sales qualified lead. Not for the marketing qualified lead,
Lauren: No, we get both.
Ralph: both
Lauren: Yes.
Lauren: Oh,
Ralph: getting booked calls off this. So you’ve got the leads coming in, but you’re also getting book calls for the sales team, which around this time of year, as you and I have discussed is a challenge from a scheduler standpoint.
Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. They’re not necessarily. I mean, we’ve got people that are booking in right now because they’re trying to get in their stuff before they go on vacation because they’re like, yeah, I’m ready to make a decision. I need to invest 50 plus thousand dollars now. So I get it for my tax write off.
Lauren: Or we have people that are like, I’m not going to do this. I’m not back in the office till. After mid Jan, so they’re, they’re booking out later. Now, the challenge is like, we’ve got some clients that don’t allow a large booking period. I will just say again, this is just me. I know many people have different philosophies on what their calendar open schedule will look like.
Lauren: I personally, you can’t get on my calendar for five days. That’s what we have. We have a five day block period because we’re prepping for our calls. I know a lot of people are like, you can get on my calendar in 20 minutes. If you can do it. And then I know other people that close out that calendar. Cause if you can’t book within the next three days, I don’t watch it.
Lauren: You have that immediacy period. I’m not sales enablement. I’m not vouching for any of that, but if you’re doing Q5, I would recommend that you open up your calendars for larger because people are like, yeah, I want this. I’m on social media right now. And I don’t know my calendar and I’m not sure what my work life is going to be when I come back to the office.
Lauren: So I need a buffer.
Ralph: And try it both ways. This is all I will say, the ending on this is try it both ways. And then,
Lauren: They buy flexible in your
Ralph: yeah, be flexible on your calendar to start take everything, but then figure out, all right, does it delay actually affect my show rates? So there is sales qualified lead. There’s booked call book, scheduled call.
Ralph: Then there’s show, right? Look at all those individual metrics. Those are vitally important for you. A lot of the show rates are determined by followup sequences, which you can obviously do through HubSpot or any other CRM that you have out there. The point is, is like, that’s something that you need to measure, which I don’t think we’ve even really talked about here.
Ralph: Should you be able to book immediately? Should you have to delay? I think there’s pros and cons for both. It depends on what your price is. It depends on what your product is. So anyway, this is an incredible case study and very timely for everyone who has been grinding and probably burning the midnight oil the last couple of weeks
Ralph: because yeah, maybe it’s time to keep burning.
Ralph: Get more candles.
Lauren: but you have to know, again, we do this for e commerce brands. We do this for high ticket brands. We do this for brick and mortars.
Lauren: Q5 right now is an opportunity for you to get in front of new customers, new potential customers. There’s not as much buying right now in that transparency. They’re still buying because they’re shopping for themselves.
Lauren: so you can’t have the same conversion
Ralph: They’re making.
Ralph: decisions now for something that they’re going to do
Ralph: later,
Lauren: You’re starting the marathon two weeks early. It’s a long run. You know, this is a marathon, but why would you start? It’s like, I get to start my marathon on mile four. Everyone else is starting back there where it’s crowded and you have to
Ralph: that’s a headstart. You’re probably going to win that marathon. Anyway, don’t be Rip Van Winkle. Don’t sleep on this. Be awake through the holidays, work right through Christmas, forget all those people call you family. They really don’t matter all that much.
Lauren: You
Lauren: just
Ralph: just work it, just grind it through.
Ralph: No, I’m just kidding. no, this has been awesome. Of course, we’ll leave links in the show notes here, wherever you listen to podcasts, make sure you leave us a review and a rating. We’re going to be doing some cool stuff here in the next week or so for our year end additions of perpetual traffic. We so appreciate you all listening to the show.
Ralph: We couldn’t do it without you and we also do it for you. So on behalf. Of my awesome cohost, Lauren E. Petrullo,
Lauren: Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Kwanzaa. Ciao!
Ralph: until next show, see ya.
