Checklist: 7 powerful questions to ask your marketer before handing over your paid ads

So you're ready to outsource your paid media and ads across Meta, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google, and more. 

Now it's time to choose the right team. 

But how do you know which ad experts are actually experts, and who is just going to tell you what you want to hear (until you don't see results, that is)? 

We've put together this checklist of 7 powerful questions to ask your marketer (yes, even us!) before you engage them to scale your ads.

So you can make sure you're getting the right person for your business.

1. What's the FIRST thing you're going to look at before starting?

The answer should be nothing but YOUR AUDIENCE.

Everything comes down to knowing your audience. 

If you know your audience, you'll know what they're looking for in terms of visuals in ads and landing pages, language in ads and landing pages. 

You don't want to hear something like this:

Females between the ages of 35-55 who like shopping and make ethical choices.

NOOOOOOO.

You need to know their deep desires. Your audience needs to be thinking… OMG, I think these people got a hold of my diary.

You need to speak directly with your specific audience and if we don't nail this, then you might as well set fire to your money now! 🔥💸

2. Have you worked with scaling ads for my specific niche before?

You want the answer here to be YES! 

Every niche is different and the same strategies don't always cross borders. 

The expectation of a cost per lead for an online course is VERY different for the cost per lead for B2B. 

And if they haven't worked with your niche before, they won't know which way is up ☝️ (or down!). 

3. What are the 3 most important touch points you're going to optimise for my business?

The most common answer will be:

Your ads of course… and then we'll look at the images and copy for your ads. 

Not good enough, my friend.

The answer needs to be, we're going to look at every touch point, specifically:

1. Ads (visuals, copy & audiences)
2. Landing pages, and 
3. Email sequences

Why?

Well, there's no point in sending the best ads on Earth to the sh*!iest landing page ever! 

And we also know that the highest revenue received by almost every company we've worked with is via their largest and most powerful asset - their email list. 

So we gotta give some optimisation love there too.

4. What will be your priority when working with my business?

Obviously this is business specific but in general, I want to hear LEAD-GENERATION. 

Why? 

For the same reason in the question above. 

Emails are your biggest company asset and have the highest return.

Email marketing can provide an average of a $40 return for every $1 spent!

So, for the love of all things holy, please 🙏🙏🙏 nurture your list and optimise every opportunity with them.

5. What budget should we start with?

The question that should be shot back at you is:

What is your life time value (LTV) of a client? 

Depends on what you're selling and how often you sell it, but if you sell beauty for example, and you make around $500 per client each year on average, then we'd call that ($500) their LTV. 

Or, if you have a long term funnel working for you like this:

1. Sell a book for $10 (make zero money and in fact could spend money to make this)
2. Order bump 15% of them on a fast and easy product of $20 = $3
3. Upsell 1 - 20% take $47 = $9.40
4. Upsell 2 - 10% take $97 = $9.70
5. 2 weeks later sell a $500 course (10% take) = $50
6. Several weeks/months later, sell a $10,000 workshop (5% take) = $500

The life time value = $572

It's pretty easy to spend more than $10 for selling the book, right?

So with that information, how much of that are you willing to spend to bring in one life-long customer?

6. Have you worked with both large scale AND small scale sales cycles?

What do I mean by a sales cycle?

Well, if you're selling B2B enterprise software, you could be looking at a deal from your lead within 3 to 18 months, or more.

If you're selling a live online course, then you could convert that lead within 6-12 months, or an evergreen course (available all the time) within 14 days.

Or ecommerce, within a few hours.

Each of these funnels requires a very, very different approach. A different strategy and different lead magnets.

Do they know what business and sales cycle you're in?

7. Where is your team based?

The answer here will be important for you. Are they based in your timezone? 

Do they speak your language? 

Will you get answers when you need them in a way you will understand?

More often than not, you'll pay more for someone who speaks your language, in your own timezone. But more often than not, it will be SO worth the results in the end.

How much are you willing to risk on the wrong team?

So... how does your marketer stack up? 

1. What's the FIRST thing you're going to look at before starting? ✅ ❌
2. Have you worked with scaling ads for my specific niche before? ✅ ❌
3. What are the 3 most important touch points you're going to optimise for my business? ✅ ❌
4. What will be your priority when working with my business? ✅ ❌
5. What budget should we start with? ✅ ❌
6. Have you worked with both large scale AND small scale sales cycles? ✅ ❌
7. Where is your team based? ✅ ❌