Speaker 1 (00:00:00) – Are you looking for a way to make a real difference in mental health? Thank you. Life is here to help. They are a nonprofit dedicated to making Evidence-Based Mental Health Therapies accessible to those who need it most. And thank you, life. They provide financial assistance for ketamine assisted psychotherapy, helping individuals struggling with treatment resistant depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Their mission is to eliminate financial barriers to these life changing treatments and ensure everyone has the opportunity to heal. And the results speak for themselves. Their data shows that the average beneficiary experiences a 55% reduction in symptoms, which is on par with the broader ketamine research that we see. If you’re in private practice or own a business and want to learn more about how you can help your local community connect with them today. Thank you. Life. Org or email them at partnerships at. Thank you life org again that’s thank you life. Org or email them partnerships at. Thank you life. Org thank you life healing through accessibility. This is the practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sarna, accession number 1037. Speaker 1 (00:01:26) – We’re really excited that you are here. Excited we’re hanging out with you. Level up week has been so exciting. you know, on Monday, we covered a panel all on people who had started practices. Yesterday we had a panel on group practice owners that just started in like the last year. And so it’s really exciting to just see the energy around this and just just how everyone is, is kind of just growing together. And it’s really been quite, a quite a great group of people. So I see a lot of familiar names and I can’t wait to see your faces on video. Today. We’re talking about how to consistently generate enough leads to keep your practice busy and thriving. You know that we’re thriving is part of our tagline. We want to help you build a thriving practice you absolutely love. You know, in grad school, oftentimes we’re told, you know, we’re not in it for the money or, you know, that we’d need to live just a little bit above, you know, what our clients are at that somehow money is a bad thing. Speaker 1 (00:02:23) – To be successful and to thrive is a bad thing. And it practices the practice. We don’t believe that. We think that money amplifies what’s already there. I’m Joe, if we haven’t met yet, I’m really excited to meet you today. I’m the founder of practice of the practice, which I launched in 2012. Really to just document my process of business in private practice. There wasn’t anything out there that I found that I resonated with around just private practice and business. So in 2013, I launched the Practice The Practice podcast. It was the first podcast on a business of private practice. So from day one we were number one. And we’ve continued to grow over time. And honestly, at the beginning it was just me selfishly wanting to interview brilliant experts like Amber, who we have here today that I’ll be introducing in a second, that I wanted to interview and get help for my practice. And I didn’t want to pay him. So I just would interview people on SEO and on websites and marketing and all these things that, you know, I do one interview and get like five terms I had never heard of and I’d be like, pay per click, like, what is that? And then I go Google somebody, find someone, be like, can I interview you on pay per click? And then they’d say something like a B testing. Speaker 1 (00:03:27) – And I’m like, what the heck is that? And over time I just started to acquire all this knowledge. And now we do one on one consulting. We have small groups, we have membership communities, all sorts of things to support, therapists, to have thriving practices they absolutely love. I’m also a single dad get to raise these two awesome girls primarily on my own. they’re nine and 12. We like stand up paddle boarding. we like traveling, playing board games. Lately we’ve been into this game called cacao, which, if you haven’t played it, it’s super fun. You, like, grow these little, like a cow plants. And then you, like, level up and harvest them. And it’s a fun game for an adult as well as for kids. So if you’re looking for a new board game, cacao Kakao is the one for you. Well, Amber Rose Thomas is our level up week, not just pay per click. She’s been doing so much and just helping us look at our branding, look at our marketing, all of those things. Speaker 1 (00:04:20) – I did want to let you know that literally three minutes before this webinar started, our internet went out in my house and I’m streaming this via my phone. So we have Jen in here as a co-host. If any point I disappear, that’s why. So I just let you know that from the beginning. Amber is a marketing strategist, paid ads expert specializing in helping coaches, consultants, and course creators find more leads and make more sales online. She’s been in the ads world since 2015, and since then has managed over $5 million in ad spends, and she’s based in the UK. Amber, I am so excited to have you here today. I’m going to stop my share and I know you have some slides but welcome! Really glad to see you. Thanks for coming over here in your afternoon and our morning. Speaker 2 (00:05:01) – Thank you for having me. I’m really excited to dive into our content today, and it’s just a joy to be back teaching to the practice of the practice community, because I love it and you guys are awesome. Speaker 2 (00:05:11) – So we’ll dive straight in. save questions for the end. We’ll go through them all together all at the same time, just for speed, so we can get the most out of this as possible. And I’m excited to go through everything with you. So our topic today is how to consistently generate enough leads to keep your practice busy and thriving. As Jo said, thriving is an important word. We definitely want to feel that way about our business. So today we are, Well, this is me. Joe has done a fantastic job of intro me, so I will not recap this. Apart from to say yes, I mostly do page, Facebook and Instagram ads, but ads are on a lot of places these days, so I run them in all kinds of places. But the strategies and the theory behind it is pretty much the same across all platforms, with some slight tweaks. So everything I’m talking about today is pretty applicable for no matter where you think your clients are and what platform you’d like to advertise on. Speaker 2 (00:06:05) – So we’re going to cover why your number one marketing activity should be lead generation, in my opinion. how to work out how many leads your practice needs to stay busy? Because that’s important as well. And how you can consistently attract new leads without using any of these strategies. Sending cold DMs or emails joining. And this directory is all low paid apps and things. networking with referral partners who then never actually refer leads to you, or posting random advice on social media. Now all of those strategies are perfectly valid. If you didn’t want to use these, this is an alternative that we’re talking about today. So first of all, why I very strongly believe that lead generation should be on number one marketing activity. So for every new client you or I will ever sign. They’ve all gone through the same customer journey. And that’s going to look something like this. They go from having no idea who you are and they don’t care. They’re not looking for you through to they’ve heard of you or they’ve seen you online or somewhere, to being interested in potentially working with you in like an abstract way, then to having interacted with you, whether it’s on a consult call or something else, or on a workshop like this, to actually having hired you. Speaker 2 (00:07:22) – So everyone’s going to go through that process, like we have to go through that idea of meeting someone, deciding you want to work with them, actually working with them. And that applies no matter where they came from. And it doesn’t matter how they first found you. That could be Google search, referral, social media. They have to go through that process. And this might be something you’ve heard of as a sales pipeline. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that phrase or if you need to have a pipeline of leads coming into your business. but it’s also pretty much the same thing as a sales funnel is that people have to go through this process to become a client. So if you’re familiar with either of those terms, that’s what we’re talking about. That’s the process we’re kind of tuning into and hacking in a way of making it consistent. So every single marketing tactic out there pretty much has the end goal of adding more people to the start of this funnel or moving people from one stage to another. Speaker 2 (00:08:17) – So in the example of Joe’s podcast, that is a fantastic tool for getting people into the beginning of the pipeline, into the beginning of the funnel, because they’re going to hear about him for the first time and they’re going to hear about his expertise, and then they might go and follow him in other places and then come on as a client. But that’s that first touchpoint, and that’s how they get to know him. And so there’s loads of other pieces and other marketing tactics which contribute to that. But when you start thinking about it, they all have that same goal of adding people to the pipeline or funnel or moving them further along it. So this process is what’s going to keep you getting clients, and that’s why it should be your number one priority. And that’s what we should be thinking about and improving all the time. So now that we hopefully agree that this is what we need to be thinking about, and this is what we need to have a focus on as part of the marketing and the working on our business side of things. Speaker 2 (00:09:12) – How many leads? How much are we talking? How how? How are we going to find them? So how many clients do you need? To have on your books to keep the business well funded? That’s a question only you will know for you yourself. But for me, as an example of when I was doing business coaching, which is what I did before I started doing as management, and then I noticed that my clients needed help with the traffic generating piece. So I opened my ads business. I needed about eight clients to keep the lights on and have enough money to feed my cat after tax and all those other things, so I needed eight. That was my number, and I knew that a client on average stay with me for about four months because that was the coaching program package I had. Some people stayed on rolling monthly after that. Some people didn’t, but I knew they’d be at the ER for at least four months. So that was a safe number. And once you know those things. Speaker 2 (00:10:05) – This will give you a really important number that you need to know, which is how many clients do you need to replace the ones that leave or finish their contracts. So what. You’ll replenish a number of clients. Like how many do you need to be getting every month just to maintain the status quo, client level? And then on top of that, how many clients do you need to be growing your total client roster over time? Because if we want to grow our business and expand and take on more people and grow into a group practice, we need the clients to do that. So we need to know what that number is as well. And here is a very rough idea of how you would calculate that. So for me let’s say I started my business in January and I’ve got two clients in the first month and they’re locked in for four months and no one’s going anywhere until May. So now I have two clients. Now, in February, I signed another two clients. Now I have four clients. Speaker 2 (00:10:56) – March I have another two. Now I have six. We’re going great. By April I have eight. And then in May, the people who signed on in January have now left. They finished at the end of April, so I lost two. So now I still have eight, even though I gained two. And the same thing happens in June. But I lost the two Victorian in February, so now I still have eight. And so even though I could say woohoo, I’m signing two clients every month, I’m not actually growing because all I’m doing is maintaining that replenish rate, and that’s what that number is. And so this is why I think it’s really important to know that, because I think a lot of people just look at it from the idea of growth in terms of, okay, we gained two, we gained two, therefore we’re growing. But actually they’re not growing because they’re not accounting for the churn rate, which is normal for client accounts. So now we know with that idea we need a minimum of two clients every month just to keep things going and replenish things. Speaker 2 (00:11:55) – And we need three or more to be growing. Simple kind of calculation there. So now that we have your monthly client goal, which is two or more, ideally we can calculate a monthly lead goal which is going to get those clients. Because remember we’re taking a step back along our pipeline. So here’s another question for you. On average, what percentage of new inquiries or consults turned into a paying client? So if you have ten calls with potential people who are interested in working with you, what percentage of them actually end up coming on board as a new client or new patient? And let’s say it’s 50% for the sake of easy maths. Some people will have much lower percentages and some people have much higher. If you’ve exclusively based on referrals and personal connections, that might be a lot higher. Whereas if you’re kind of in a business where you’ve relied a lot on cold prospecting and just trying to get as many people on calls as possible with no, prequalification process and making sure they’re actually a good fit. Speaker 2 (00:12:56) – That might be a lot lower. So it doesn’t really matter where you are on the scale of things, as long as you know your number and what is normal for your business. But for the sake of today, we’re going to say it 50% gives us some easy maths, because that means we just need to double the number of leads as we need clients. So if we want three new clients every month, we need six new consults. We need six calls if we’re going to get those clients. So here’s a question for you. How many new leads did you get for your practice last month? And is it enough now that you’ve starting to get an idea of what those numbers might be for your business, and is it going to help you hit your client goals? Now, if you’re like, this is important, I have no idea. I need to figure this out. Don’t worry, you’re going to get copies of these slides if you registered for this workshop. So you can go back through those calculations again. Speaker 2 (00:13:45) – Figure them out for your own practice and for your own business. But if you’re already starting to go, I don’t think we’re getting enough. Maybe it’s time to start running ads to solve that problem. So let’s get into the promise of today, which is how to consistently generate enough leads to keep your practice busy and thriving. So if you couldn’t tell already, generating clients is just simply a numbers game. It’s as simple as that, which for some people they find that really reassuring. For some people, they find that really stressful. To me, I find that reassuring because once you know the rules of the game, it’s much easier to win, as I’m sure Joe will attest to in all his time board gaming. Going into something where you have no idea what you’re doing. Very difficult to win that game in the end. If you go, and then knowing the rules and understanding all the ways to work the system, you’re way more likely to do well. So the easiest way to consistently get those new leads into your practice without playing wait and see. Speaker 2 (00:14:43) – What happens with social media or referrals or anything else is to run paid ads. And obviously being a paid out strategist, I’m going to be a big advocate of paid ads, but I have some good reasons why I love them. So the reason I love Facebook ads mainly is because I’m an impatient person. I’m the instant gratification kind of girl I am, and so I love that it allows you to target people immediately and show up in their newsfeeds with an offer or something, and you can immediately start that conversation and get people into that funnel or that pipeline, because now they know who you are. They’ve seen you online. You started that process, and I love being in control of that process. Instead of waiting and seeing if it’s going to happen, or relying on something else to work on the behalf of my business. I like feeling like I’m doing this for my business myself. So here are some examples of what that might look like specifically in the therapy. counseling kind of space. So BetterHelp might have heard of it. Speaker 2 (00:15:46) – Probably heard of it. I get ads for it all the time. and it’s one way of accessing therapy, and they run ads all year round. They have a large budget for ads, so you’ll see a lot of their ads. But here are some examples of the sort of thing that they have been running. just to kind of say, hey, if you want this, we have it. And you can see they’re pretty simple. And this is a company that has a huge budget for ads, and they’re very simple, which is reassuring. I hope to know that your ads don’t have to be terribly complicated or stressful or anything like that. You could easily have recreated this in Canva and tada! You’ve got some great ads. So to find some examples which do not come from a big international corporation, here are some other ones of ads which are for, you know, in the same kind of space which are promoting assessments, consults, a quiz, it’s all in the space of, hey, come and become a client, we can help. Speaker 2 (00:16:45) – And that is what these ads can look like. And this is what you could create for your own business, to get more people coming through that pipeline and entering that funnel. So here are some other ways you can use ads to get leads for your practice, because you’ve seen what that might look like in a practical way. But here is what those ads could go to. So you could offer free or discounted trial sessions. Very simple. Come and chat to me for 30 minutes. See if we get on well. See if it’s a good fit for you. You could easily do that. You could invite people to a free or paid console call to, just to talk to you about whether or not your services are the right fit for them. This is not you delivering any kind of service. This is just you talking about the potential of them coming on. and seeing if it’s a good fit. You could also share a free guide. We saw a quiz ad just now. So any kind of free thing in exchange for their email address. Speaker 2 (00:17:38) – Because then you can follow up with them over email. and continue to invite them to become a client or a patient. So that’s another thing that you can do. You can invite people to submit an application or an inquiry form via an ad. That’s very easy to do, because then you can gather a lot of information from people up front. And also it’s, it’s a bigger request than just saying, hey, give me your name and email and I’ll send you a free guide on how to do x, y, z. It’s showing that people are pretty serious about investing in something if they’re submitting an application form for it, and they’re willing to take the time to give you more information. So this is a really good one. If you want to skip to people who are ready to start thinking about investing in a service or support, and you can get people to attend a free life workshop like this one. And these kind of workshops work really beautifully across a whole different range of niches and industries. Speaker 2 (00:18:34) – because you don’t have to teach tools. You can also just share what the possibilities are, and you can share your knowledge and you can show who you are. And I think with a lot of industries, like ours and like this one that we’re in now, which is technically online education and support, that personal collection is really important. You want to like the person that you’re learning from, and you want to know if you want to spend more time in their company. Because even if you’re buying an online course or group program from someone, you’re going to see their face a lot showing up in videos. You’re going to be spending a lot of time in their energy, even if it isn’t actually one on one. So sometimes things like work, like workshops, are a really great, option for letting people get to know you in a low effort way. And then finally, something very simple. You can use ads to get people to follow you on social media, and you can grow your audience that way. Speaker 2 (00:19:27) – So if you have like social media FOMO of like, I only have six followers right now, and I’m pretty sure three of those are cousins of mine, you can use ads to grow your social media with people who are actually likely to become clients in the future, which is going to help you in the long run as well. So once you have any one of those kinds of ads up and running, they will be bringing leads in for you all the time. Now, they might take a bit of testing and tweaking and optimizing to get working really well, but that is pretty much what they’re going to start doing from the time that you turn them on. And keeping that pipeline of new clients of active is so important, because that means you’re not going to be wondering where your next client is going to suddenly appear from all the time. And one thing that is really fun about this as well is that eventually you will get a console called booked and you’ll be able to go, I wonder where they came from because I can look up in my system now. Speaker 2 (00:20:20) – so-and-so just booked a call and it will say great. They signed up for a Facebook ad four months ago. They received these emails, and now they finally booked a consult call with you to become a client. And it’s really fascinating to get to see how they went through that pipeline all by themselves in an automated way, without me having to do anything. It’s the first time I’ve seen their name, but they’ve seen my name 15, 20 times because you have that automated pipeline consistently bringing people through to the point where they’re ready to become a client. So when should you start running ads for your business? When are you further along? When are you ready? Let’s talk about this one. Who is it right for? So technically, you can start running ads as soon as you’re ready to start taking on clients. You could even really start running them before and build up a wait list. But if you’re ready to start doing that and you’re ready to start growing, you could be running ads. there’s no there’s no level of business that you have to wait for to be ready or allowed to run ads. Speaker 2 (00:21:17) – You don’t have to be established enough. You don’t have to have a certain number of followers on social media. There’s nothing really as a prerequisite to running ads other than you deciding that it’s something you want to do for your business and probably learning how to do them. But there’s no rule about when you can start. And as I said, you can start taking on a wait list before you’re even ready to start taking on those clients. So if you’re hoping to grow by taking on another practitioner, but you want to make sure there’s a pipeline of clients there ready for them when they start, you can set up a waitlist ad and have that running. So even if you don’t have the space and the capacity to take on those clients yet, you could have a waitlist and have that running. So there’s no restriction on that. but you do need to have a few decisions made or things set up before you start. So here are some practical things that you are going to need. And this might make your decision for you. Speaker 2 (00:22:06) – You need to have a professional Facebook page and by a professional Facebook page I just mean you need to have the page version, not the profile. So this is where people will like and follow you and it’s your your brand, essentially not where people will add you as a friend and see photos of your cat. You need one of those to be able to run ads from. You need to have a clear idea of who your ideal client is, because if right now you think your ideal client is anyone who would happily pay me money, we need to refine that a little bit, because you will have your own expertise. That will be a special fit for this. So we want to make sure you have a clear idea of that. And you’re also going to want to make sure you have a good strategy in place of how you’re going to follow up with your new leads, because, as I mentioned, I can now look back and see, oh, this person came from a Facebook ad four months ago, and then they received these emails. Speaker 2 (00:22:56) – You want to make sure you have a plan for what happens after they come in from the ad. You got to follow up with them yourself. Are you going to message them or are you going to have an automated email sequence? That’s totally fine. You can be very hands on in the beginning. but you need to decide what that’s going to be because it’s no good if you have an ad that’s running. getting people to sign up for, just more information and then you never follow up with them because they’re just going into the void. So make sure you have a plan for that, which might seem obvious, but you wouldn’t believe the things I see in Facebook ads. So make sure you have that plan in place. Speaker 1 (00:23:38) – As a therapist, I can tell you from experience that having the right EHR is an absolute lifeline. I recommend using therapy notes. They make billing, scheduling, notetaking, telehealth, and e-prescribing incredibly easy. Best of all, they offer live telephone support. It’s available seven days a week. Speaker 1 (00:23:57) – You don’t have to take my word for it. Do your own research and see for yourself. Therapy notes is the number one highest rated EHR system available today, with a 4.9 out of five stars on Trustpilot. Com and on Google. All you have to do is click the link below or type promo code Joe on their website over at Therapy notes.com and receive a special two month trial. Absolutely free. Again, that’s therapy notes.com and use promo code Joe on the website. If you’re coming from another EHR therapy notes will also import your demographic data quick and easy at no cost, so you can get started right away. Trust me, don’t waste any more of your time and try therapy notes. Just use promo code Joe at checkout. Speaker 2 (00:24:44) – Okay, so we’re reaching the end, so Q&A is coming up. Start putting some questions or thinking about questions that you might have, but here are some resources. If you’ve got to this point and you’re like, this could be a good thing for me, I want to look into this a bit more. Speaker 2 (00:24:59) – So first of all, you can go and look at what other ads people are running. That’s how I got our examples for today’s workshop. You just go to facebook.com forward slash slash library, and you can go and have a look at other people’s ads. So you can do this whether you’re running ads for yourself or not. It’s not gate capped for people who are active managers, that could be a really fun thing to look at. If you want to get inspiration of what’s possible in the area that you are particularly working in, then on a very basic level, the Facebook Blueprint will teach you how the ads platform works. Now, I will warn you, it’s such an interesting thing to me because the people who run the Ads platform know how the technical side of it works really well, but for some reason they have no idea about the strategy piece. I don’t know why it’s a thing. So if you want to learn on a practical level how the ad platform works, go check out the Facebook Blueprint. Speaker 2 (00:25:51) – If you want to learn strategic things about how to get ads to work for your business, I would look elsewhere. two of the things you can look at is I personally have something called the ads prep list. it’s a checklist on tasks and things that you should do to get your business ready to run paid ads. Part of it is to do with your ads setup and the practical things, and it’s also to do with the quality and quality. But the setup you have in your business to make sure that’s all working really well. And also you could join a program I have training programs I do done for you ads, and there’s some really fantastic, trainings inside next level practice and group practice boss as well, which I’m sure Joe will talk to you more about in just a moment. So Q&A time, I can see some questions coming in. I’m going to stop sharing and hand back to Joe, and we can start chatting to you guys about your questions and everything else you want to go through today. Speaker 2 (00:26:46) – So awesome. Speaker 1 (00:26:47) – Let’s dig in. All right. Speaker 2 (00:26:51) – Before we do, ask questions Actually, while we stay on topic, we have a lovely question from Maria about how many new cohorts you do for your programs every year. So oh, great. Answer that one first and then I’ll dive into everything. And again. Speaker 1 (00:27:03) – Thank you for glancing at those. yeah. So we do level up week twice a year. So we open up our membership in the spring, which is what we’re doing right now. And then, I think the second week in September is when we open things back up. So say you are thinking about joining group Group practice launch. I’d say if you think sometime in the next nine months you want to do that, it’s worth it to join the program now, because then you can be going through it. Even if you’re thinking, you know, I’m not sure I want to start that until the fall. Well, if you don’t hire your first person, you can come back through it totally for free. Speaker 1 (00:27:31) – We don’t charge you anything for that. And you get full access to the group practice launch. So make sure you join when you’re feeling ready, because most people when we’ve interviewed them have said, I wish I would have joined sooner In both of our panels, the next Level practice solar panel and the starting group practice panel. Across the board, people said, I wish I had joined these communities sooner. Speaker 2 (00:27:50) – I actually hear the same thing about ads. I wish I’d run out sooner. Once they get them working, they’re always like, why do they wait so long? Well, the. Speaker 1 (00:27:58) – First question here we have is younger people aren’t using Facebook, so just running ads on Facebook put them on Instagram at the same time. Speaker 2 (00:28:05) – Well, I use Facebook, so I choose not to be offended about that. Younger people don’t use Facebook. But, it’s an interesting thing in that I see this a lot as well. I see lots of articles about how the youth are on TikTok, and they’ve all ditched Facebook, and it’s all for their parents. Speaker 2 (00:28:21) – the most successful age range I have on ads, because it does a breakdown of reporting in terms of how many leads you got per age bracket. The most successful one I have is 25 to 35. So I’ll let you decide if you think that younger people or not. So if that fits into your demographic, Facebook is still a good place to go. But yes, because Facebook bought out Instagram and now it’s technically under the umbrella of meta, which no one actually uses. yes, your ads will go to Instagram as well, and it will go to both places. I find the the the demographics slightly different. I feel like people on Facebook, a bit more practical, and people on Instagram are a bit more visual. So if you want to do video or have really beautiful graphics, you’ll probably get better results on Instagram. If you’re the uglier ads will do better on Facebook. It’s an interesting thing, but I usually let ads run to both because there’s not that much difference between the two, believe it or not. Speaker 1 (00:29:16) – Yeah, and I think also it’s like, who’s the decision maker in the family around therapy? You may be targeting teens, but is the teen the one that’s picking up the phone and saying, hey, I’d like to start therapy or is it the mom or dad that’s doing that too? Speaker 2 (00:29:27) – Yes, for sure. I have a client who does tutoring for the UK equivalent of the SATs. It’s not the SAT person doing it, it’s the parent going, hey, come and help my kid. So that makes a big difference as well. okay. Next question. Speaker 1 (00:29:43) – Yes. And next question. do you recommend a professional Instagram page? Speaker 2 (00:29:48) – not necessarily. I mean, the difference between a professional and a personal Instagram account is what features you have access to in terms of analytics and other things. So that is different to Facebook because with Facebook you have very different, structural change differences between the profile and the page. So you have to have a page on Facebook to run ads. There’s no getting around that. Speaker 2 (00:30:09) – But you don’t even have to have an Instagram account to run ads on Instagram, because they can run ads from the frontage of your Facebook page onto Instagram. So if you don’t have an Instagram account, it doesn’t matter. You can still run Instagram ads and you can run Instagram ads from a personal or a professional Instagram account, so that doesn’t matter so much. So Google ads and social ads are fundamentally different in the sense that Google ads will show up when someone is actively searching for that solution. Social ads will interrupt people when they’re just scrolling on social media. And so with social ads, whether that’s Facebook or Instagram, you need to be wording your ad as a hey, have you thought about this? Do you need this? Is this you? Whereas you don’t need to do that with Google Ads because you already have the answer to that question. Because they search for the thing you want. but the other difference is that when you have search ads, you are showing up against five, seven, 20 other solutions that offer the same thing as you, because that’s the purpose of search out. Speaker 2 (00:31:10) – You’re showing up as one of the search results, whereas with social ads you are not showing up against your competitors. You’re on your own and you’re up against someone doing a dance routine to Beyonce’s new song versus a cat video beneath it. And so you get to be judged on your own merits in in your own space. So yes, it needs to be tweaked slightly because you need to think about the state of mind of the person who’s seeing that particular ad. and I prefer social ads because I find them to be cheaper than Google ads, because you’re not in direct competition with the things which are next to you. But that’s how I would tweak it. But both work. I like both, but I just happen to prefer social ads because you have more space to be creative with them. Speaker 1 (00:31:52) – Yeah. So I just see the question average cost. I’m going to kind of expand on that. What’s the average cost for having a ads manager? And then what’s the average cost for ad spend. And so you know, how much should someone budget if they’re just kind of dipping their toes in and how much and then when should they start to say, oh, this is really working, I’m going to double my ad spend or triple it. Speaker 2 (00:32:13) – So average cost for an ads manager. It’s my English teacher used to say how long is a piece of string? When I asked her how long an essay should be, and I hated the answer to that question, but it’s it’s true. you’ll find some virtual assistant type people out there who will say they can run ads for a very low cost amount. And you on average, if we’re talking about an agency level, you’re looking at somewhere between 2 and $3000 per month. I’m probably on the lower end of that scale because I’m like a boutique ad person. I’m not a massive agency, but anywhere from 500 to 3000, depending on the scale of people that you’re investing in. In the same way that if you were hiring someone to redo your website, there’s a massive difference in options there. as spent, I would say you have to start at $5 a day, which is what, $150 a month ish? I say start there at a minimum, because that will give you enough spend for Facebook to actually show your ads to people, or anywhere to show you as people. Speaker 2 (00:33:14) – You will get some results. You’ll have an idea of if they’re going to work for you or not. I would say by the time you’re spending $500 a month, you will know how well ads are working for you in terms of how much do I need to spend to get a lead, how much do I need to spend to get a client? And then you can decide how to scale for that, because I would not recommend that anybody spends more than $500 a month until they know if their ad costs are good and if they’re working and all that, because otherwise, what’s the point? You’re just throwing money at a system and hoping it works, which we don’t want. We want something more predictable. So that’s where I would say you start. Speaker 1 (00:33:48) – Awesome. I have a question about Google ads. I recently consulted with a Google Ads manager who said, If I’m not spending over a certain amount of money each month on ads, I’m essentially wasting my money because my ad isn’t getting in front of enough quality leads. Speaker 1 (00:34:01) – Is that true that we have to be spending above a certain amount of money to make the ads effective? Speaker 2 (00:34:08) – that’s more true with Google than it is with Facebook. So with Google, it’s it’s a competition. Basically. There is only so much ad space. And so if you’re competing on a very high competition search term, the people who are spending the most money are going to win and they’re going to be the ones at the top. And so that is true. If you aren’t spending enough money, you’re just you’re not even going to appear. So what was the point? so that yeah, unfortunately that’s true with Facebook, it’s not quite as true because you will not show up as often, but you will show up so you’re not spending money, but being hidden away. On page five of the Google or Google search results, you will show up in newsfeeds. You’re guaranteed that no matter how much you spend, So you will get better results if you spend more. But you will get results even if you spend a little like I have some ad campaigns that I’ve spent $5 a day on for a year and left them at that because they’re just ticking over, and I don’t need them to do any more than that. Speaker 2 (00:35:07) – So it depends, but more so for Google and Facebook. Speaker 1 (00:35:13) – Awesome. We have similar costs and effectiveness for private practice. Speaker 2 (00:35:19) – in terms of costs, again, it depends on what you’re targeting. So Google can be very expensive if you’re in a high competition kind of area. so for an example, therapist for executives in New York City might cost you a lot of money to target compared to, like, executives in Austin, Texas, you know, so you’ve got to kind of use your best judgment on what your competition is. I personally have always found social ads iu Facebook ads to be cheaper. I have always found that, but it does depend on what you’re doing in terms of effectiveness of private practice. Some people will find a spot on Google Ads that works beautifully for them. And when someone’s googling therapists for ADHD teenagers, you come up and it’s working beautifully. You’re getting loads of clients from that. other people will really struggle in what they’re trying to do, and they will have much better results on social. Speaker 2 (00:36:16) – So what I would say really is set $500 a side test, both put 150 into Facebook, put a little bit into Google and see what kind of results you get, and then judge for their what’s on the best, thing for you I have I’ve used both. I gave up on Google pretty quickly. Speaker 1 (00:36:33) – So it sounds like. And this is kind of a follow up. Amber, this is brilliant. And your presentation was really clear and helpful. Do you think Facebook is a better bang for your buck than Google? Sounds like you’re saying yes, especially in high competition areas. Speaker 2 (00:36:44) – Yeah, pretty much awesome. Speaker 1 (00:36:47) – Amber, I went to the link and was unable to click on anything. there was nothing to download, at least in Chrome, so if we can just make sure. Speaker 2 (00:36:57) – You get a follow up link to that. So I’ll make sure you get a copy of it. Kendra. Sorry about that. Very strange. Speaker 1 (00:37:02) – All right. Do you have any numbers regarding how much money would likely generate X number of leads per month from Facebook ads? I know that it can vary on a case by case basis, but like an average or a range. Speaker 2 (00:37:14) – Sure. So the key I would say is how much you’re asking some someone is going to affect the cost. So if you’re asking them to like take a quiz or an assessment, your leads could cost you 1 to $3. I have someone at the moment who’s running ads, and they’re costing her $0.68 per lead, like amazing in the hundreds of these kind of level, not just 1 or 2, but hundreds. So it can be very, very cheap in terms of the cost per getting someone to attend the workshop for 90 minutes and take that time out of the day and show up live. That might be 5 to $10, depending on who you’re targeting. If we’re talking about you getting someone on a call where they know they’re having to show up on a one on one conversation to have a talk about them giving you money, essentially, that might cost you between 50 and $100 at the higher end. But if you know that a client is worth $3,000 on a lifetime value, overall client value spending $100 to earn 3000, I would play that game every day of the week. Speaker 1 (00:38:15) – Awesome. My Facebook ads in Google got suspended after the first day, but my Instagram ads are running great. What happened? I’m sure you have thoughts on this, but let me just say I worked with a Facebook ad specialist around, podcast launch school. so helping, you know, therapists do podcasting. So knowing that it was like a $500 course and that we had dropped the price for and if we got X number, then, you know, it should make money, didn’t make any money. He didn’t do a great job and my ad account got suspended. and at first I thought it was one of these things about, like, coming across as, like a pyramid scheme or something like that. And that’s what, you know, kind of people had said as I dug into it. But actually someone had flagged something in our hiring language when we were looking for a virtual assistant on our page as being, I forgot how they had said it, but there’s something that they said that the way that we set our hiring wasn’t kosher in regards to what they were looking for. Speaker 1 (00:39:11) – And then we went through it and we’re like, we just submitted a report. They said, you know, no, sorry, that was a mistake. The bot flagged it, but it took us 12 months to undo that process to get our ads back up. so from my experience, it’s very hard to figure out what happened unless you’re working with someone that really knows that system. But Amber would love to hear your thoughts in regards to if the Google and I mean, those are two separate systems. So if both got suspended, just where would you start? I guess because you obviously can’t fix it from that little information. Speaker 2 (00:39:43) – the fact that it’s something from the first day tells me that there was something fundamentally wrong with the setup, and that is necessarily something terribly wrong. It could have just been that you didn’t have a privacy policy or a terms of condition things on the landing page of where you were sending people to. It could be something very simple. The other thing I’ve noticed is that Facebook in particular, are being a bit more strict about having identity verification going up before you start running ads. Speaker 2 (00:40:07) – So it’s very hard to tell, but it could be any one of those things. One thing I would suggest, though, is that, Facebook has live chat support for people who are high spenders on Facebook, so I have access to works across all of my accounts. We spend a lot of money with Facebook for people who are brand new, that probably won’t even appear as an option, and you’ll go around circles for days with support articles. So what I would suggest doesn’t have to be me. Find someone who has that available to them, because I can literally get on a phone call with Facebook and say, look at this account for me. What happened here? Fix it. And because it’s in their best interest to fix it, because they want you to spend money on ads, they will help you do that. But that is the fastest route to success is just get someone to do that for you who has that access. Speaker 1 (00:40:50) – Awesome. What’s a good strategy to search slash research your competition for Google Ads to see if it’s worth it to proceed with ads on that platform. Speaker 2 (00:40:59) – I would suggest you get on your browser, you go in incognito mode and you search for what your ideal client should be searching for and see what shows up and have a look at what is coming up. Are there people running Google ads? What is showing? are you up against really big companies or are you up against more smaller local businesses? and see what happens there and then. Oh good question. I’m sure there’s a Google keyword search feature around somewhere for that. I don’t use that one anymore, but I’m sure there is. So I’m sure you could have a look at what the, the scale of the traffic for those keywords are doing. So I would suggest that, but my first instinct for anything is to go and recreate the experience that your ideal client should be having and see what they’re seeing. because that will tell you a lot about where you need to fit into the ecosystem. Speaker 1 (00:41:52) – Our Facebook ads, something someone who is not an expert can figure out. I’ve shied away from trying them because it seems complicated, but I’d like to venture into it. Speaker 2 (00:42:02) – 100%. Yes. Loads of people DIY their own ads. They totally do. In terms of the theory, if you can get your head around this idea of okay, if I spend this much money, I will get these things back, and if I make these changes, it will get better. If you can figure out that piece, you’ve got the strategy for ads and you can improve from there, you’ll go good Facebook. I think the platform is not very user friendly, as in when you go into it the first time it looks like a mystery. You have no idea what anything is. They keep changing it on a bi weekly basis, so I would say definitely go somewhere to learn the platform first and get up. Get up a crash course in it. and then you could totally do it yourself. And actually, I like people doing their own ads first, because then you have an idea of what’s possible for your business. You have an idea of what results you can achieve. And then if you do want to hire someone, you’ll know if what they’re telling you is correct or not. Speaker 2 (00:42:54) – Like you’ll know if they’re getting you good results, because you will know what results you can get. And if they’re beating your results, they’re doing a great job. Speaker 1 (00:43:00) – I’ve heard of therapists in the UK starting to use LinkedIn rather than Facebook for making connections. However, I think you can only advertise business to business in LinkedIn. Speaker 2 (00:43:11) – good question. You can you can advertise to users on LinkedIn. So I don’t know if that’s quite as correct, but I would tend to use LinkedIn ads for business to business things more than anything else. So, And the reason I say that is because I have one client who’s running LinkedIn ads, and she’s like a feminine embodiment coach for women CEOs and executives and things. And so that’s not really business to business, but it’s working because she can reach those people on LinkedIn. so not necessarily I don’t know if it’s UK specific. I think it’s niche specific. So if you’ve got a group of people who are more likely to be on LinkedIn, by all means go to LinkedIn. Speaker 2 (00:43:58) – But the thing I often say is just because they’re on LinkedIn doesn’t mean that’s going to be where they’re going to sign up for your ad, because if you’ve got someone who’s very stressed, what are they doing? They’re procrastinating on Instagram. They’re scrolling through reels and trying to avoid whatever, stressing them out. And so if something then pops up and goes, are you feeling burned out? Do you have these ten symptoms of burnout? Come and do a free assessment with us. They’re way more likely to pay attention to that then when they’re scrolling through Instagram than if they’re on LinkedIn trying to do business networking. Speaker 1 (00:44:28) – so good. feel free to pick a emoji, either as a reaction or put it in the chat to share. How did you feel about Ambers presentation? Like did it blow your mind? did it inspire you or are you just all giggles like throw throwing emoji either in the chat or one of the reactions? It’s always fun to just see that we see some claps coming through. Amber, thank you so much for hanging out with us today. Speaker 1 (00:44:52) – Thank you all of us for putting the fun emojis in at the end. Thank you so much. Bye. You know, we also couldn’t do this show without amazing sponsors like Therapy Notes, therapy notes is the best electronic health records out there. They will help you switch over from your current EHR. they also give you two months for free or, just money off if you use promo code Joe at checkout. they are phenomenal. They help with automated billing. it’s going to make it easier to outsource your billing. So many reasons to switch to therapy. You know, it’s just head on over to therapy notes.com. Read about it and at checkout just use promo code. Joe, thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. I’ll talk to you soon. Special thanks to the band, Silence is Sexy for that intro music, and this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers or guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical or other professional information. Speaker 1 (00:46:01) – If you want a professional, you should find one.