Episode 725: The Simple Lead Gen Strategy That Scaled Revenue From $620K to $2.5M in 6 Months

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Today, we’re breaking down a lead generation case study that resulted in a 397% increase in revenue and a 356% boost in gross profit. The business, which was stuck at $620,000 in annual revenue, shot up to $2.5 million after just six months of applying the right strategies. 

 

We dug into the client’s existing assets, found multiple lead magnets, and used them to target different pain points across a broader audience. The result was a more engaged audience, a more diversified funnel, and ultimately more conversions. 

 

If you’re struggling to scale, it’s time to rethink your marketing strategy. Stop pushing for immediate sales and start creating a nurturing experience for your audience. Listen in and learn how you can adapt our lead gen strategy to fit your business.

Chapters:

  • 00:00:00 – Why strategy is critical for achieving marketing goals
  • 00:03:50 – Lead generation case study results breakdown
  • 00:07:49 – Step 1: Moving from simple to complex funnel strategy
  • 00:13:49 – Step 2: Installing the CPL/nCAC reducer framework
  • 00:17:23 – Step 3: Deploying the digital velocity engine for ad creation
  • 00:20:30 – Final results summary: 397% revenue increase

 

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READ THE TRANSCRIPT:

The Simple Lead Gen Strategy That Scaled Revenue From $620K to $2.5M in 6 Months

 

[00:00:00] Ralph: Not everybody is gonna buy and opt-in on the first impression that they see your stuff. Today’s show is about a lead gen case study. It’s from a profitability standpoint, very profitable business, but they were stuck after they worked with us for about six months, two and a half million dollars in revenue.

[00:00:17] Ralph: So it’s how we actually did it here. Pretty straightforward. First step, you are listening to Perpetual Traffic. Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic Podcast. This is your host, Ralph Burns and the founder and CEO of Tier 11. And today is a down and dirty episode, which is one of my favorite case studies that I, we’ve never talked about on this show.

[00:00:40] Ralph: And. I was reminded of this case study just recently because at the core of it all are two things that really have nothing to do with advertising, but it has to do with strategy. And I know we have done just recently more shows on strategy and how all of the pieces of digital marketing [00:01:00] come together, work together.

[00:01:01] Ralph: Which tools in the toolbox are you actually gonna use in order to get the result that you’re looking for? And this case study was one. That’s been sitting around for a while. It’s a little bit older, not outdated at all, but it is very important because it underscores the value of repurposing content and understanding that not everybody is gonna buy an opt-in on the first impression that they see your stuff.

[00:01:27] Ralph: In an ideal world, you show an ad to somebody once they click and then they buy. That is about less than 1%, ladies and gentlemen. So you need to try harder. You need to actually start to meet your prospect where they are in their head. Are they in the market for your stuff? Are they considering your stuff?

[00:01:48] Ralph: Meaning your stuff, meaning your product, your service, whatever it happens to be, and then put an ad in front of them. And thankfully now with the Meta Andromeda update, this is a whole lot easier. [00:02:00] So how we structured this case study here today might be slightly different today as opposed to how we would’ve done it maybe six months ago.

[00:02:08] Ralph: But the same principles apply is that multiple touchpoints often equal. Getting to know your brand better and better, and then understanding who you are, what you’re all about. And then ultimately, after all those touchpoint, then the prospect is no longer a prospect and becomes an actual. Customer. So today’s show is about a lead gen case study.

[00:02:32] Ralph: It’s lead generation, sort of a traditional kind of model. One that we talked about in this week’s show is a webinar funnel, which is still, webinar funnels are still highly relevant and as Lauren and I discussed on that show, we also realized that. A lot of folks probably aren’t utilizing webinar funnels if you’re in the services business and or if you’re in the e-commerce space.

[00:02:54] Ralph: And we see a lot of our clients at Tier 11 doing things similar to that using Facebook Lives, [00:03:00] Instagram lives, even TikTok to. Produce and create original content that’s helpful and useful. And then it’s an, oh, by the way, if you want more of this, here’s my store to buy X, Y, Z product. It doesn’t matter what it is that we do this a lot.

[00:03:13] Ralph: And the beauty niche works extraordinarily well, especially with makeup tips, makeovers, all of that. And, but the point is, is putting content in front of your audience. Different types of content is gonna resonate with different types of people. Sort of sounds stupid to say that, but it’s actually really true and I think everybody sort of forgets it.

[00:03:32] Ralph: You know, Facebook ads don’t work for me because I’m only trying one ad with one pitch. It’s like, just buy my stuff. Now. Not everybody is at that point where they just wanna buy your stuff. You have to warm them up. And this case study here today shows that to great effect. So without further ado, let’s get into today’s lead gen case study, starring yours Truly.

[00:03:50] Ralph: Just me today. No, Lauren Solo on my own. All right, so lead Gen K study. These are pretty astounding results here. 608% increase in [00:04:00] revenue, 401% increase in roas. We now call this MER Media efficiency ratio. We were only using one channel here. This was really the only place that we were advertising. We weren’t using Google, we weren’t using any other means.

[00:04:13] Ralph: We, obviously, we did have some email and some SMS going on in this particular case study, but some of the stuff here we might have. To blur it out, so just to protect the names of the innocent here, but it is in essence a sales funnel for. Selling coaching products. So you might see this screen here and I, well, by the way, I recommend you go head over to perpetual traffic.com/youtube to be able to watch this and actually see the case study.

[00:04:38] Ralph: You can see it’s sort of live. Got some animations here, which I’m kind of proud of. Worked very, very long hours trying to figure all this stuff out. I’m not a techie person. But anyway, a preview of things to come here. As you can see, this was the client. This is the client. It’s a coaching class, sort of a life coaching space, and also helping with businesses with a, [00:05:00] a mastery program to assist those students in order to get their businesses to the next level.

[00:05:06] Ralph: So pretty common type of business. Obviously, this individual does an extraordinarily great job. When they came to us, they were doing about $620,000. A year in revenue and they were getting great results on their ads. 13.72 roas, which we would now call mer. Okay. This would now be like reclassify this, but because it’s only one channel, you know, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll allow the ROAS here.

[00:05:32] Ralph: We don’t really talk about ROAS quite as much, but the point is, is ’cause we’re only using one channel. We had a little bit of email help. No Google, no anything else. We tend to use ROAS as a guiding light inside the actual account. When you’re doing multi-channel, it’s a little bit more dangerous to do it that way.

[00:05:48] Ralph: Uh, but anyway, the gross profit here was pretty outstanding. It was well into the half a million dollar range, so a very good business. Don’t get me wrong, this is largely digital information [00:06:00] products with coaching. So the biggest expense is the founder. Their time. So from a profitability standpoint, very profitable business, but they were stuck.

[00:06:09] Ralph: They couldn’t get to that next level. So after they worked with us for about six months, the business is, it took off. So just shy of 2.5 million in revenue, 5.97, return on ad spend. The profitability jumped considerably, just about tripled from a gross profitability standpoint, like an insane amount of money that was made here.

[00:06:33] Ralph: That’s probably conservative. So when I say gross profit, that’s not taking out like operating expenses, all the other sorts of things that go along with it. This is basically just ad spend minus any expenses, any software, expenses, anything that’s relating to the delivery of the product. In this particular case, and most of it was live coaching, so the expense air quoting was really was the founder’s time.

[00:06:57] Ralph: In most cases, so two and a half [00:07:00] million dollars in revenue, thereabouts, somewhere in the range of 1.8, 1.9 in that range of gross profitability. So a pretty good success story here. So revenue increase was 397%, as you could see. Gross profit increase, like I said, was about 356% and all right, here’s the number.

[00:07:21] Ralph: I actually knew the number. It was a $2 million increase in gross profit based upon our ad spend, so it was ad spend plus the owner’s time, gross profit. I believe these numbers are not factoring in. The founder’s time in their salary. So this might be slightly inflated. I would say it’s probably about 1.7, 1.8 if we sort of factor that in, because you gotta pay the person to actually do the work here.

[00:07:45] Ralph: So, but regardless of that, an astounding case study here. So we all did it in six months. That’s. The cool part of it. And so a couple of steps, how we actually did it here, pretty straightforward. There’s a number of steps. The first step [00:08:00] was we noticed that they were basically running a one click, one lead magnet, one piece of content funnel.

[00:08:09] Ralph: And lemme just show you sort of what this looks like here. So they had a very, very simple funnel. They had one lead magnet, which was, and I’ll show you that in just a second here. And. After they sign up for that lead magnet and with all that, that gets delivered through email, they also have the option to join a Facebook group on the thank you page, no pitch.

[00:08:30] Ralph: We’re nurturing actually a, a great little funnel here, so Facebook ads. To a lead magnet on the thank you page. Hey, you know that thing is gonna be in your inbox, or it might be actually delivered on a link below. That opens up in an open in a new tab. Very important on your thank you page. You don’t want them to lose sight of where they are right then and there on the thank you page.

[00:08:51] Ralph: That’s very, very important real estate. But on the thank you page, they would have the option to join the Facebook group. They’d obviously be on the email list. Then [00:09:00] there would be a training, a five day training that goes along with the lead magnet, and then they would obviously qualify for sort of some other things down the line, another webinar where there’s more value being delivered, and then ultimately a coaching program is then sold.

[00:09:16] Ralph: So that is sort of how the funnel works. Well, we found that with one piece of content, with one lead magnet, we were really limiting the size of the audience that we could serve. That one lead magnet, like what I’ll, I’ll show you in just a second here, was excellent and was doing a really good job. This was a, you know, a 640 some odd thousand dollars business, but it wasn’t reaching scale.

[00:09:40] Ralph: What we found is when we did a little bit of research, we found that this client actually had lots of different lead magnets, and if you look at a lead magnet as just another piece of content, in this case, it’s a gated piece of content that you need to put in your name, your email, and then you get this other thing and.

[00:09:56] Ralph: So, as I said in the opening part of today’s show, [00:10:00] one click, one interaction and then they buy is not how things usually work. They need multiple interactions. One of the great parts to this is on that thank you page of their lead magnet. They the. Offer is to actually join the Facebook group. So you’re not trying to propose marriage on the first date.

[00:10:16] Ralph: Hey, would you like to buy my, I just got you this thing on the thank you page. You say, Hey, you wanna buy my stuff now? This is even better. That’s bait and switch. People get turned off by that and you immediately lose credibility. You immediately lose trust. That’s not the case in this, in this business.

[00:10:30] Ralph: Coach, their business here, joining a Facebook group is a great way to engage. You’re getting more of what you already got, plus you’re getting this bonus of having a. Other people just like you in a group all dealing with the same problem that you are trying to solve. So an excellent funnel. However, it was limited.

[00:10:48] Ralph: So what we did is we found four other lead magnets and we said, well, why don’t we start running traffic to those individual lead magnets? They all had very similar funnels as you can sort of see here. So we [00:11:00] went from a simple funnel to a complex funnel. So here was, and you might see this actually blurred out here a bit, but this was basically the lead magnet.

[00:11:08] Ralph: This is for people who are maybe lacking confidence in their ability to grow a business. So it speaks to the pain of the audience. But this is a singular funnel. This is a singular opt-in. So what we decided is we said, okay. We’ll use all these other funnels and hit on different ways in which to solve the problem of the ideal avatar.

[00:11:32] Ralph: So you can see on if you’re over on perpetual traffic.com/youtube. You can see afterwards we started running all these. Five different front end lead magnets. Okay. This is coaching training for one three part masterclass series for another. Another one is a bootcamp for confidence in building your business.

[00:11:54] Ralph: Another one is. Three coaching tools to get your ideal client. [00:12:00] And then the last one is on mindset. How to become wildly abundant. So you’re hitting on five different pain points for the same avatar that you are looking to attract. And this is the key with marketing, is that you can’t attract everyone in your target audience, your tam, your total addressable market with one hook.

[00:12:21] Ralph: With one pain point, with one problem. John Moran have talked about this many, many times and myself on many of these, these episodes here where content diversification upfront, whether you use the 10 specific ad types that we talk about, or whether you just use different types of content, a founder story, UGC content before and afters, you know, something that’s a little bit more lower end of the funnel, just pure pitch.

[00:12:49] Ralph: So. There’s, the key to all of this is that you can’t catch all the fish with one hook. You need lots of different hooks, [00:13:00] and in this case, it was an opt-in okay with a name and an email, which is fine, okay? But you can also do this with just free content. You can put your best stuff in the newsfeed. As I always tell a lot of our clients, put the best stuff on your webinar in the newsfeed and then send them to an application page.

[00:13:18] Ralph: If you’re using a webinar or if you’ve been using a webinar for quite some time and maybe it’s running outta gas, maybe it’s running outta steam, maybe it’s not converting the way that it used to. People want free stuff. They don’t wanna have to opt in. Always. In this particular case, with this client, these people had had a real pain and were totally addressing those pains with these five different lead magnets.

[00:13:38] Ralph: So we started using all these five different ways in which to engage the audience, and that was, that was our first step, sort of reconfigure the funnel itself. The next step is we install what we refer to as the CPL or NAC Reducer framework, which is a methodology that we use in order to lower the cost to acquire a [00:14:00] customer or lower the cost to acquire a lead, a qualified lead.

[00:14:04] Ralph: So either a marketing qualified lead or a sales qualified lead. So in step two here, each one of the lead magnets had its own specific ad. So we were not just, we put these all in individual ad sets as I recall. Now, probably with Andromeda, we would throw all of these into the same ad set. We would use one campaign type, throw all of these ads.

[00:14:27] Ralph: And then send them to their individual lead magnets to save your spot. So you can sort of see here we’ve got some video ads, we’ve got some image ads, how to make a million dollars in one case. There’s a couple of, you know, embodiment coaching tools, videos here, which are really good. Some face to camera videos.

[00:14:47] Ralph: So we’re using a content diversification strategy to attract. IGL client, but also sending them to specific types of content that are relevant to the ICP that are relevant to the ideal customer [00:15:00] profile. And this continues on here. So those are three of those ads. The, these are two more ads. Some of them are face to camera, again, that talk about a very specific problem.

[00:15:10] Ralph: It’s an Instagram ad that you’ll see here. And then there’s another one that’s a, a challenge. So you’re, you’re mixing lots of things together. What we found is that they had all these assets kind of lying around. They just weren’t using them. Like, ah, we tried that before. We used the, the coaching challenge way back.

[00:15:27] Ralph: And it doesn’t work anymore. Well, if you had something that worked maybe a year or so ago, try it again today. That’s what we always tell our clients is like, Hey, if you had something that works, maybe you just ran out of that particular avatar at that particular moment. Now is a different time. So again, you’re diversifying your front end content to make sure that you’re hitting on different pain points.

[00:15:50] Ralph: ’cause everyone’s gonna have slightly different trigger. It makes them take that next step. So here’s one of the cooler graphics. I think you definitely need to watch this over@perpetualtraffic.com slash [00:16:00] YouTube. Once we actually got an opt-in for one lead magnet, we would then, we probably wouldn’t do it this way now, but then we would retarget those opt-ins for the other four lead magnets, and once they opted into one of those other lead magnets, then we would retarget them for the three other lead magnets that they hadn’t opted in for.

[00:16:21] Ralph: Once they opted in for that lead magnet, then we retargeted them for the final two, and then ultimately the last one, and not everybody opted in for all five. The point is, is you’re hitting the same audiences who have already been warmed up with different pieces of content, like I said. If we were to put this together an Andromeda campaign right now, we would probably lump all these together and let meta sort it out.

[00:16:47] Ralph: But the idea is this is that you’re giving them different values just to different pieces of value, valuable content that can then ultimately lead them to a buying decision, which. This particular case [00:17:00] is a several thousand dollars coaching program. So you’re to sell a several thousand dollars coaching program.

[00:17:05] Ralph: They need to consume a lot of your stuff. They need to listen to you on podcasts. They need to read your blog posts. They need to download your lead magnet. They need to know that you know what you’re talking about. So put yourself in the shoes of your client. Or your customer and then create content around that.

[00:17:22] Ralph: And ultimately, this is a little bit more of a complex strategy, but one that really did work. Third, we deployed what we refer to as the digital velocity engine. The digital velocity engine is our way in which to create branded high performing ads and creatives at scale. So this is what did not work. A pure pitch kind of videos, and you probably won’t be able to see exactly who this is on the, on the YouTube side once again.

[00:17:49] Ralph: Head on over to perpetual traffic.com/youtube to be able to see the whole presentation here. Point was is these were image ads that were not really resonating. They very polished. They kind of [00:18:00] looked like almost like they were stock photography in some cases. Nothing wrong with it, but we see this quite often.

[00:18:06] Ralph: It’s like, Hey, look at our ads. Our ads are really pretty, pretty ads don’t necessarily convert. So what we found is that these types of ads, and these are some more examples here of just sort of very, sort of generic, like, you know, they’re pitching something, you know, it’s all about the sale. It’s all about those clients or those potential prospects that are at the very bottom of your funnel are really at the stage of, Hey, I’m just about to buy.

[00:18:31] Ralph: That’s a very small percentage of your overall market. You need to warm up. The, the larger part of that market, and as we’ve said many times on this show, 80% of your market is probably in the zone of indifference. They’re not actively looking for your stuff. So that zone of indifference is really important.

[00:18:48] Ralph: Maybe 10% are super happy with their current solution to that problem. 80% are like, eh, I don’t know if I really have a problem, or it’s not big of a pain yet for me to go [00:19:00] seek a solution. And then maybe 10% or less are actually in market. If you limit yourself to just sale ads, promotional ads, you’re only gonna get that 10%.

[00:19:09] Ralph: You’re fighting with everybody else for that 10%. Your goal as a marketer is to go after that zone of indifference, that 80% and educate them about what you offer and how it’s different, and how it can benefit their lives. So now we’ll see some of the ads that did work. The ads that worked really well, were sort of lo-fi grainy video ads, which.

[00:19:32] Ralph: To this day still resonate. We do. We tend to do a whole lot more of this now with our creative team. It explains what the coaching guides are all about. It explains some of the tactics that are used in the being able to grow your business with greater self-confidence. It teaches in the news feed. It teaches prior to people engaging with you, and this is what people wanna see now.

[00:19:55] Ralph: They wanna see. You doing your thing, you showing opening the [00:20:00] kimono a bit and understanding that, yeah, I can actually help you, and here’s something in which I can help you with. We used to call it these teach and pitch videos quite some time ago. These are two examples of those in which you’re giving some kind of, Hey, do you have problem sometimes just lacking confidence, or you have an imposter syndrome as you grow your business?

[00:20:17] Ralph: Well, that might be the thing that’s really preventing you from scaling your business. Let me give you the one tip that I’ve learned that’s helped me overcome this boom. Then they give the tip that produces credibility. It’s great content. You get a lot of engagement. The meta algorithm obviously loves it, and these are the types of ads that really did work.

[00:20:35] Ralph: So that is our down and dirty case study here. Once again, $620,000 in revenue to start after we work with this client, about $2.5 million in revenue with all of those three steps. That I mentioned here on today’s show, I mean, that’s a 397% revenue increase. Pretty astounding. And a 356% gross profit increase, which I said is about 1.7 to $1.8 [00:21:00] million in gross profitability, which ain’t too shabby.

[00:21:04] Ralph: So I hope you enjoyed this week’s show. We’ll do down and dirty case studies like this periodically here on Perpetual Traffic. And remember, wherever you listen to podcasts. Please leave us a rating or a review. It helps us get out to a wider audience and teaches marketers like yourself how to do this stuff the right way.

[00:21:21] Ralph: So on behalf of my amazing co-host, Lauren e Petrillo, till the next show, see ya. You’ve been listening to Perpetual Traffic.

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