3 Things My Most Successful Clients Have In Common (and it's not the size of their ad budget)

What's this episode of the lionhearted ceo podcast about?

In this episode, we're diving into the three key strategies that my most successful clients share – and spoiler alert, it's not about having the biggest ad budget!

Here's what we're roaring about today:

🦁 Knowing Your Client's Journey: Discover why understanding how your clients actually buy from you is a game-changer for your marketing strategy.

🦁 Playing the Long Game: Learn why investing in a long-term, strategic approach to building your business ecosystem is crucial for sustainable success.

🦁 The Power of Truly Scalable Offers: Uncover the secret to creating offers that can handle explosive growth without burning you out.

I'm sharing real-life examples from my incredible clients, including:

• How we transformed a client's Instagram-driven business into a consistent, ad-powered revenue machine

• The step-by-step journey of building a digital product suite that's already seeing massive success

• How one client is generating £10,000 monthly from a single £97 offer (yes, really!)

Whether you're just starting to dip your toes into the world of ads or you're ready to take your existing strategy to the next level, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you become the Lionhearted CEO you're meant to be.

Ready to stop being the bottleneck in your business and start roaring louder than ever? Pop on those headphones and let's dive in!

MASTERMIND:

Ready to create an ads powered business? I've got something brewing that you won't want to miss! Keep your eyes peeled for details about my upcoming mastermind launching in September. It's perfect for ambitious women ready to create an ads-powered business that's intentional, strategic, and truly scalable. Click here to join the waitlist.

Hi! I’m your host Sophie Griffiths, a Meta ads expert and business growth strategist.

The LionHearted CEO podcast is designed for impatiently ambitious women who are ready to scale and often juggling motherhood alongside their thriving online businesses in coaching, course creation, or service-based business.

If you enjoy the podcast, here are some ways you can continue the conversation:

Social:

Love Instagram? Click here to watch a video I made on the Warm audience trap (hint, it's something almost every client struggles with!)More of a LinkedIn fan? I'm there too! Come and follow me here: Sophie Griffiths

Free Resource:

Ready to grow an audience of people who WANT you to sell to them? Radical idea I know, but it shouldn’t be! Click here to get access to my step by step guide to using simple, effective ads to build & nurture a community of superfans,

Work together:

Ready to build an audience of superfans who are excited and ready to buy from you?
Whether you are just starting with Meta (Facebook & Instagram) Ads, you have dabbled but want to build your confidence with your first funnel, or you're already killing it and you're ready for fast growth - I can help! Click here to choose the best option for you

Got questions?

DM me on Insta or LinkedIn
Email me here: hello@sophiegriffiths.co

Thank You for Listening!

If you found value in this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and mention this episode. It would mean the world to us!

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Read the transcript:

NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors. [00:00:00] Hello and a big welcome to Lionhearted CEO, the podcast for unapologetically, impatiently ambitious women who know they want to stop being the bottleneck in their business and become the Lionhearted CEO they know they are meant to be. I'm Sophie Griffiths, a tea enthusiast, marketing and Metis ad specialist and firm believer. The chocolate should never be kept in the fridge. Join me every Tuesday and Thursday for bold, imperfect, fun approach to marketing and scaling your business without burning out every few months. We'll dive into practical strategies and have inspirational conversations that will support you to create a thriving, sustainable business that brings you joy as well as financial freedom. Okay, let's jump in. Hello. I'm welcome to this week's episode today, I'm going to be talking about the three things that the clients who come to me and get the best results. Have in common and it is not the size of that ads budget. So let's jump [00:01:00] straight into the first thing. Okay. In this episode, I'm going to be talking about the three things I say. I'm going to give you some examples from clients I've worked with. And I'm also going to share how you can start to make these changes in your business to make sure you're moving your business towards getting the best results. So the first one is, clients, you get the best results, know how their clients buy from them. Now this might seem really obvious. Like, well, I know how my clients buy from me. They buy from me on my sales page. However, when you dig into this, there's actually a lot more to it than you might think. Often what I find is that clients come to me and they're doing a lot of marketing, so they might be on Instagram. They might be sending emails. They might be on threads and LinkedIn, and they go to in-person events and maybe they have a podcast they get referrals. They have affiliates, maybe there's loads of different ways that they get clients. It's very rarely just one source. However. The clients I see that do really well. They know what converts clients, they know if they need to fill a spot for [00:02:00] next month. They know exactly what leavers to pull. They know, they have to do a well-crafted Instagram story sequence with some social proof and a little bit of calling out they're going to get clients, or they know that if they go to that email list and do a few emails in a week. Okay. Client the next week. The clients that understand that, that know the leavers to pull are the ones that get really great results. And the reason for that is. That we can adapt the ads to work with your business. Okay. What else does he with ads is that it is this separate strategy that people have. So it's like, this is how my business works and then I want to run ads and that is like a separate strand. When actually the way that I approach it with my clients is much more about, okay, this is how your business works. How can we use ads to power this, to amplify it, do you know, to make the things that work, work even better but to do that, you need to know what works. I thought, I'd give you an example to kind of bring this to life. So I started working with a client who already is generating like 30 K months [00:03:00] organically. So it doesn't run any ads it doesn't even really use her email list. So she primarily uses Instagram and Instagram stories to generate all of her revenue. Okay. Which is absolutely. Incredible. A lot of referral clients, a lot of word of mouth, she gets incredible results. So people kind of refer people to her. It's it's a brilliant business model. However, it's very much run on her energy on her time and on her being present. And as she needed to step out and take some time away from the business. Then she just wouldn't get any clients. So that's why she came to me to put in an ecosystem that was going to be that foundation that steadiness, that consistency they're not only was going to bring people into our world without having to be on stories every single day. But it was going to allow her to generate revenue from her low-tech offers that she had and were created there, and just weren't getting sold. So what we did to start with, which is why I always do with my clients is we mapped out her current funnel. So we looked at where do people find her, how do they buy from her? What does that look like? And it very quickly [00:04:00] became apparent that her podcast and her Instagram, primarily stories were her main ways that she converted clients. The podcast was more about a longterm nurture. So she said most people who actually started working with her, they tell her that they've like binged loads of our episodes. And then Instagram stories were the ones that converted. And then her grid posts kind of supplemented that. So then when I looked at what she actually had in place, she had a welcome sequence. What I saw though, was that within that welcome sequence, people were being sent to sales pages on her website. So all of the staff was about, this is my offer. Here's my sales page. This is my offer. Here's the sales page. Now the copy and the welcome sequence was great. The copy on the sales page is a great, but what we'd already established is that's not how people bought from her people bought from her by bingeing, her podcast. Bingeing her Instagram content and then converting when they watched her stories. So we had a liquor. How can ads support this ecosystem that she's already created? That's already really successful. So the goal was to create an ads [00:05:00] powered funnel. . So we really needed to grow her email list. So the first thing was to create a lead magnet that was really high value. Really spoke to her ideal clients and reflected on the experience of working with her because she knew that once someone experienced working with her, they often worked with her more than once. And then they refer to other people. So that was really key as well. Do the lead magnet, wasn't just some flippant PDF that she kind of pulled together on Canva. It was a really thought through progress. There's embedded videos. The content was really dialed in to her ideal clients. And we embedded the low-cost offer in the lead magnet. So it was a totally obvious next step. The lead magnet and the low-cost offer were created together. They actually fit together really nicely. So if someone's consuming the lead magnet, it is totally obvious. Next step. To buy the local Stauffer, which I think is 47 pounds. The next thing we did was look at the welcome sequence. So what do we want to say? As someone comes through here, instead of sending them to sales pages, we want to send them to content that we know is going to connect with them and eventually [00:06:00] convert this isn't about necessarily getting a sale straight away. So in each of the emails we looked at what the theme would be, what the overarching offer is that we would want to be talking about. The overarching pain point that we wanted to be solving for the client, what offer that led to, and then what content was either that, or could be created to support that? So what she actually did was go wait and create podcasts relating to each of her specific offers. And they don't mean like a podcast. That's like, this is my offer and this is how you can buy it. And this is what's included. She went away and created value packed podcast episodes, just like she would do for any other podcast episode? but the thread was really clearly this offer. . And then she would sell the offer. . Well, we also did in those emails was send people to specific Instagram posts. You'd written again with the overarching theme of something that the client was really struggling with and then leading it through nicely to an offer, whether that was directly or indirectly. So in each of the emails, we led them really strategically to a piece of content that we knew [00:07:00] was likely to convert, The next thing we did was actually use Instagram stories in her ads. So we have a whole separate campaign for Instagram stories for her lead which just look like organic stories that she already does because they're so impactful. And then we've also been running Instagram ads to prompt people to go to our profile and then follow her because we know once they're on her Instagram, that is really, really powerful. And her content really speaks to her ideal clients. Finally, we also looked at each of our offers and how one led to the next, both in content. So this is the next logical offer. You've done this and now the next step is this. But also just from a client journey and experience perspective, we know that once someone has worked with her, they're likely to want to do the next thing. So we had to look at, how could each offer be supported with emails? And then tells them about the next offer and maybe gives them a discount or an incentive. They'll also be seeing her organic content. They'll be getting her emails. There'll be seeing her on stories. There'll be listening to a podcast. So it's not like the automated sales flows are. I'm a [00:08:00] separate piece of her business that just runs completely separately. And you know, the two things aren't connected, they are there to support that sales journey to nudge people towards like, did you know that this is the next way I can help you? Did you know that this offer actually supports you in this way. It's just a way of educating people on top of then the organic stories and emails and podcast. So that's how we set it up. The actual funnel went live A week or so ago, and it's doing incredibly well. When we had our call last week and we had to look at the stats. The low-cost offer is more than covering the ad spend at the moment, which is an absolute goal for a lot of my clients it's to offset the ad spend with their low ticket offer. So that's the first thing. The overarching thing for me on this one is intentionality. Okay. So being really intentional. And understanding how your clients buy from you and I'm plugging ads in, in a way that powers that rather than has a whole separate stream to your business. So intentionally understanding how your clients buy from you. And really leveraging that. So the second thing by seeing really successful [00:09:00] clients. Is that they understand and are invested in the long term success and the strategy that surrounds building an office suite and an ecosystem that is powered by ads. And they're not looking for us to plug ads in and it's done within a month now again, that may seem really obvious. However, you'd be surprised how many clients just put lead ads in and then create a low-cost offer and are wondering why their local Stauffer isn't offsetting their lead ads. Now it doesn't have to be a super long process for everyone. Sometimes that will work really well. However, the clients that I see that are most successful and have the longterm success that is really scalable. Are incredibly strategic, not just about their apps but about the process of really working out what this ecosystem looks like, what the messaging looks like, what the office looked like. And are willing to change things over time and are willing to build things and create things rather than just trying to take what they have and mold it together in something that kind of works. So I'm going to give you an example [00:10:00] of a client who I started with in October last year. Now they've never run ads before. And they have a really successful podcast that has had over a million downloads. They get about 10,000 downloads a month. So they have an organic audience and they had an email list, but they could really see that they were missing a lot of people in their world, but weren't hearing their podcast and ads were a way to get them in. And start growing even faster. So we started in October with the lead ads. They start to going really well, but we could really see that there was an opportunity but people were just joining the list and there wasn't really anywhere for them to go initially. So they have in the background, they have a consulting business that was bringing in revenue and working with clients. This was very much about building out the digital side of their business. So in January, we had a VIP day. Well, we really sat down and. dissected the digital side of their business. We mapped out their entire funnel. Again, similar things I do with all my clients. And it's exactly what we'll be doing on the mastermind day that I'm running in September. I will put the link to that in the show notes, because if you think, oh my God, I really need to do this funnel mapping thing. And. [00:11:00] It's not even like you have to have loads of different elements, but just understanding. Where people are finding you, what you've already got in place, and then what the next step would be for each of those can be totally transformational for your business. And that's what we'll be doing. On the 12th of September. So I'll put that link in the show notes. But back to this client. So we had this VIP day, we mapped out their entire funnel. We looked at where we wanted to go. We removed some offers, you know, they had 14 different lead magnets. So we had to get really intentional here. Like what happens when someone goes to your lead magnet? What's the next step from there and really map out. So it was super simple, super clean, super easy for them to implement. And also if their clients to understand. So we realized they had quite a lot going on and clients weren't exactly. Sure. What was the next step for them? What offer with fitted for them? So we mapped out a new lead magnet, which led to a 27 pound offer, which led to a 247 pound course. That would be available all the time, but we would do strategic launches all through the year. Which is then going to lead to a membership and then [00:12:00] a high ticket group program. So after that they went away and created the lead magnet initially. And we launched that in March and it did really well. Their average lead cost was 57 P from that lead magnet. So we knew that it really resonated with her. Audience and it was doing really, really well. So we're growing their Les really nicely consistently. Then in April, we lay it in the low ticket offer. Okay. So it's 27 pound offer. The first week that we launched it, we had over a hundred sales. Now that's without ads. So that was just organically. Again, we knew then that, this was really something that audience were interested in. And so we now run ads to it all the time. And the current return on ad spend on that is over six. So in a month, we generate six times more than we are spending on the ads. And that runs now all the time. The next thing was a launch of their 247 pound offer. Now this was an offer they'd had before, but they totally revamped the content. And the messaging to align them with the lead magnet. The low ticket offer. This was then the obvious next step. So the launch for this was a masterclass and we had over a thousand people signed up to that. A [00:13:00] mix of organic and ads as well. And then over a hundred people bought that offer for this launch, which was amazing because previously this offer hadn't really been one that had done really, really well. And they hadn't been able to quite land on what the messaging was for it. So. It just showed that the build from the lead magnet to the small offer to this offer worked really well on each point. We're testing that offer we're testing the ads, we're testing the organic, we're using the podcast to get people engaged. There's social media content going out. So we're using all the different channels and then come together. That works really well. And then the membership is the next offer. And then there's a high ticket group program that's rolling out from September. So we'll be moving into that phase. But I think what I want to really highlight from this, other than the fact that, we are building all the time, sales are coming in all the time now, and this funnel is starting to work really well. Is that we started this in October. We then really in earnest selected it in January, but in July when [00:14:00] I'm recording this, you know, we still have another two elements to continue rolling out. This funnel isn't complete yet. And even when it is complete, we will be refining it all the time. We'll be looking at their messaging. We'll be looking at the offer. We'll be looking at how we can improve it. But this wasn't something where, we went to the VIP day in January and it's all done and dusted by the end of February. This is something that they totally understood with a long-term investment in their growth and their scalability. And they using different points of the year to test different things. So the launch that we had in may and June. We very much land on the, before the summer holidays messaging. And we're going to do another launch of that later in the year. And we'll be looking much more at the Christmas messaging. So it's really then about looking at when are our launches. When's going to be strategic, when do people really. Lean into this product or this product. And then understanding when do people buy this offer? When do they buy that offer? How can this support us through maybe December there's a really low revenue month? Like how can we do a launch maybe in late October, early November to carry us through that December period. [00:15:00] It's really looking at that long-term strategic view. Rather than, I've got lead ads running and I'm trying to sell this local Stauffer. Why does this not feel easy? And that's because we just need to look at this build over time. Okay. So the third thing. I see in my really successful clients is that they have a truly scalable offer. Now what I mean by this? Not all offers, allow you to scale your business are truly scalable. Now that doesn't mean that they don't offer scale to your business. But when I'm talking about a truly scalable offer, I'm talking about one where you could plug it into ads. And if you got a hundred people or 5,000 people, you, you might have to make some tweaks, but it would pretty much cope. For example, my audience builder course is a course on thrive cart that I could have 5,000 people in tomorrow. That would be absolutely fine. I do have group coaching calls, which people can opt into that our fortnightly, if I had 5,000 people plugged in, I would probably either have to look at limiting the number of those. Increasing the price of those, [00:16:00] or maybe putting some additional calls on getting some coaches in to support me. I'd have to have a look at that, but overall, the actual core offer is truly scalable and there are some elements that I might have to tweak. If I suddenly got 5,000 people in it. So that's what I mean by truly scalable offer. Now, when you're working one to one and you want to scale and maybe in a group program at that has maybe a one-to-one kickoff call with you. And then you give feedback on something for them. And, you know, you have these elements that are quite high touch that absolutely is a scalable offer. So you absolutely going from one-to-one to creating that you are scaling your business. But it's not truly scalable from an ads perspective. So the clients that I see do the best have one offer, but is truly scalable. So that could be your 27 pound offer. That could be your low ticket offer. That people come into your world and they can buy and you know, that they can buy as many as they want. And it doesn't impact you. But having that in your office, we can be such a game changer because it can offset your ad costs [00:17:00] without you having to do more work. And that's really key is that if you have an offer that is scaling your business. But it's based on your time, your capacity and your energy is going to be really hard. If you get, you know, you're using ads to get more and more people in it. And actually it's just making it feel more and more stressful for you. So the clients that have a truly scalable offer can create an eco system where they can offset the cost of their ads. And generate revenue streams in itself. So I want to share an example of a client who has a 97 pound offer. And she generates 10,000 pounds a month just from this 97 pound offer. She spends between 1500 pounds on 2000 pounds on her ads every month. So not all of that is obviously a profit, however, you know, a good 8,000 pounds of that is profit more than covering her ad spend. So she was running ads and they were doing well, but it was quite sporadic and she really wanted to scale. She knew she could scale. She knew she could have the many people she wanted in this 97 pound offer. And she knew people were really interested in it. But she just couldn't work out [00:18:00] a way of scaling it where, she just kept increasing her budget and then the sales would just drop off. So what we needed to do was have a look at how we could scale her ads in a way that meant that she wasn't relying on one campaign, one audience, one ad to generate all of this revenue it can be really scary because if that starts to stop working. Or you try and scale it and it doesn't work. It can be really stressful. The flip of that is you can get a little bit overexcited and have loads of campaigns, loads of audiences, loads of outsets and you're not actually exactly sure. What's working and what's not. She'd got herself into a position where she was checking the ads every day. She had a spreadsheet. She was like feeling really anxious if they dropped off for one day, that was, felt really stressful for her because it wasn't bringing them the revenue in. So, what we did was work on having a really consistent, scalable strategy. Now she was going globally to what, like the whole world. So we did a lot of testing in the three months I worked with her and we tested different audiences. Specifically looking at different areas of the world because she was [00:19:00] selling globally. We also looked at different objectives. So do we go directly for the sale or do we get someone in on her lead magnet and then get them to buy from there? And then also we looked at different ads. Now, interestingly, she had the most amazing graphics because she was an artist. But a couple of colors of hearts in to perform a lot better than some of the other colors. And that was consistent then across the different audiences, the different types of campaigns. So in the end where we got to with being able to have sales ads on and lead ads on. Going to different groups of countries, which we knew worked. And then with the ads, like the colors and the ads that we knew worked really well. And what we found was the sales ads were really, really consistent. So they brought in consistent revenue, but it was slightly lower. The lead ads I mean, they were bringing in like a hundred people a day. At one point it was absolutely incredible. And people would buy the calls from the lead magnet really quickly. So we found like if they didn't buy it within the first 40 hours, they probably weren't going to buy. So at that point, once we found the sweet spot on how [00:20:00] much we were spending on the ads and then how many sales we were getting. Then we worked on the rest of our funnel. So we had to look at how could we get more purchases once someone was in the email list, how could we improve the sales page? How could you look at other courses that she could then cross sell? So that was the next thing. But fundamentally that initial offer that one course of 97 pounds. She was adding 10,000 pounds from every single month. Just from that mix of sales ads and lead ads. But again, that took us about six months to get to that point from her working on it, on her own, and then me working on it with her. And then I know she's done a lot of work on it. Since as well. So. Again, it's that long-term strategy, but having that truly scalable offer. Being strategic and then being really intentional about the entire ecosystem. Those are the three things that make such a big difference. So I hope that has been really helpful. Those three things intentionality. Strategy and having a truly scalable offer are the three things I work with all my clients on and in particular, my clients that want to create this ecosystem [00:21:00] where they're not the operator in their business anymore, they become the CEO where their business doesn't rely on their time, their energy and their availability. And the day-to-day runs and revenue is generated while they work on this stuff that they absolutely love, like the podcast and the speaking and creating new offers that real creativity, C E O stuff. Often we don't get to. And my mastermind, which is launching in September. It's going to be for women who are looking to do exactly that. So if that's you and you think, oh my God, yes. I would love to be part of a group of women who all have this overarching goal. Of creating an ads powered business. That is intentional, strategic and truly scalable. Then have a look in the show notes where you'll find the link to the wait list. I will be sharing more, very soon. Thank you so much, and I will see you next week. Thank you so much for listening today. Before you go, if this episode struck record with you, I'd be over the moon. If you could take a moment to rate, subscribe, and leave a review, your words not only [00:22:00] brighten up my day, but they are also the magic that helps others discover this lion hearted community. Again, thank you so much and I will see you next week.