As lead gen costs continue to go up, and social media algorithms are optimized for rapid rising, negative emotional responses, it gets more and more difficult to put any kind of a direct response call-to-action in front of people on social media.

That goes for whether you pay to play or not.

I'll give you an example. Let's rewind to February 2020, the MicroFamous book just launched, got great feedback and reviews. So my idea was to run the free+shipping offer to build the email list, and I built a whole 90-day email nurture system to follow up and convert those book buyers into true believers in the MicroFamous message.

But the ads just were ridiculously expensive, despite us doing all the latest, greatest, micro-testing techniques.

Then I found out why.

The guy helping me with ads checked with his network around May of 2020 and heard that it was starting to cost $40-50 in ads to get one conversion on a $7 free+shipping book offer. What that told me is that the people doing it are spending a warchest to build their email list. They probably have a complex set of backend follow up and a mix of offers to try to recapture all that ad spend and hopefully make a profit. And who knows if it's working or how long they're waiting to actually profit. Just because people are doing things doesn't mean it's working or that it's sustainable.

So I pulled back that offer.

My observation is that over the long run, lead gen costs will continue going up, regardless of short-term issues like iOS14 or variations in the market or by niche.

The more the big companies start shifting ad budgets away from TV and radio into social media, it just drives up everyone's cost. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

I've talked to some Facebook ad agency folks over the last year, and they're proud of getting their clients leads at $5-10. When they first start running ads, opt-ins can be $15, $20 or more. Now, you might say, what about the folks who are running ads and selling programs and courses in the millions? The Russell Brunsons, Russ Rufinos, Amy Porterfields, etc.

I have no doubt that the top 1-5% of info-marketers are still making money.

Whether that's with free+shipping funnels. Or running ads to webinars with a whole series of upsells and cross-sells and complicated, trigger-driven email campaigns.

Or maybe they're running ads to call-funnels and hard-selling with a phone team. I'm sure it all still works to a degree. But to make the math work now, in an environment of $5-10 lead costs, the game has changed. Your backend has to be fine tuned.

It reminds me of a story one of my mentors, Frank Klesitz, told on this podcast in the episode on puffery and copywriting. The story goes that he was at a Dan Kennedy event years ago, and one of the guest speakers was a top info-marketer.

And to show his autoresponder campaign in all of its glory, he took a 6-foot tall roll of paper with his entire campaign sketched out. When the paper was rolled out, it ran across the width of the entire stage and needed several people just to hold it up.

On seeing that, Frank decided that was not where he wanted to compete.

So is the biggest challenge facing us just an issue of optimizing ads? In other words, if we just became better info-marketers, does that solve the problem?

I don't think so.

Let's say the top 5% of info-marketers can still scale up using social media ads and a complex backend of funnels and triggers and upsells and cross-sells. Do you WANT to put in the work to reach the top 5% of info-marketers? Do you have the rare set of skills and mentality and engineering ability to get there?

Do you have the internal values that drive you to extract maximum value from someone regardless of whether it's in their best interest? I don't know that I do. I certainly don't have the values piece.

I also don't have the passion to reverse engineer ads on social media...every day... looking for that slight tactical edge that will cut my ad cost another $.30 cents.

I definitely don't have the passion to start over again every time something in the algorithm or the bidding system changes. And if you're listening to this podcast, odds are, you don't either.

What I take from these stories and examples is this:

The fundamentals we talk about in the MicroFamous book and on this podcast are becoming more crucial to success than they were 5 years ago when lead costs were lower. Fundamentals like word of mouth.

Like having a Clear & Compelling Idea at the heart of your business. Or becoming famously influential to the right people, rather than going for a maximum number of eyeballs on your content. All of those fundamentals are more critical now than they were 5 years ago when you could just run ads and build your email list at break even without being in the top 5% of info-marketers.

The game has changed. And for some, that's good news.

For others, it means they will continue to struggle and not know why.

Let's take word of mouth and the Clear & Compelling Idea, for example.

If you can’t distill your Point of View, your belief system, down into a single powerful idea that grabs the attention of the right people, you will struggle to grow. If the core idea of your business isn’t worth talking about in the eyes of your ideal clients, no amount of ad spend will fix that. Regardless of the money you throw at the problem.

If you don't have a razor-sharp Clear and Compelling Idea at the heart of your business, it's going to be hard to create eye-catching, unique content. It's going to be hard to grab people's attention even after they opt-in. It's going to be hard to keep their attention and convert them into clients.

It's going to be hard to get word of mouth, so you have consistent referrals or champions out there telling everyone how awesome you are.It's going to be hard.

And you might think the solution is to hire the ClickFunnels person or the Facebook ads person or the Tik Tok ads person or the mini-masterclass workshop person. And none of that will move the needle if at the most basic level, when your ideal client hears the core idea of your business, it's not razor-sharp, clear and compelling to them.

So to me, that is still the greatest challenge for business coaches, consultants and any kind of expert trying to build a lifestyle business. Maybe it always will be. And that's good news if you're listening to this podcast.

Because this is the place where I'm going to push you to get more clear and compelling with the core idea of your business. If you want some help finding your Clear & Compelling Idea, reach out and maybe I can help you work through that.

Hit me on Facebook messenger, my handle is GetMicroFamous, or reach out to grab a time to chat, [email protected].