The Power of Funnel Stacking feat. Ryan McCrary

Narrator 0:00
You’re listening to the off systems go podcast, the show that teaches you everything you need to know to put your business on autopilot. Learn how to deploy automated marketing and sell systems in your business the right way with your host, the professor of automation himself and founder of automation bridge, Chris Davis.

Chris Davis 0:32
Welcome everybody to another episode of The all systems go podcast. I am your host, Chris L. Davis, the founder of automation bridge. And, you know, I’ve been running this podcast for a while everybody, I’ve heard a lot of terms, I’ve created a lot of terms, you always tell me I’m creating words. And today, I’m excited to present you all with a term that I did not create, and I hadn’t heard of, and it’s coming from a trusted resource, which is even better. So on today’s podcast, we’re going to talk about funnel stacking. All right, break we’re going to break down what it is and how to use it. And our guest to do so is digital marketing expert, CEO, speaker, and author specializing in helping online entrepreneurs grow and scale their business online through profitable sales and Facebook at facebook ads is Ryan McQueary. After working in the corporate finance industry, he discovered his passion for helping people create true generational wealth, generational wealth, one more time, generational wealth, that didn’t require them to sell their soul to draining careers. His strategies are rooted in designing a life that doesn’t require the constant grind with over 500k in AD spin managed to generate over 450 million in revenue. He’s helped clients maximize their income and impact while creating true freedom based lifestyles. He is somebody that I’ve had the pleasure of knowing and meeting in person, our circles cross very frequently in conferences and out. So I’m finally Glad to have you on the podcast. Ryan, welcome to the podcast, man. How you doing?

Ryan McCrary 2:33
I’m doing great, Chris, thank you so much for having me. I’m blessed to be here. I’m definitely looking forward to this conversation.

Chris Davis 2:40
Yes, yes. And I let me let me just prime everybody to understand who’s in the room. So we have a mutual friend and Lamar Tyler. And both of us have both learned and assisted in the growth of his company in some capacity, whether it’s helping other people in his business, whether it’s just being a sounding board or updating like a bro, this is what’s happening in the industry right now. This is crazy, right? So there’s a few of us that really come together and bring our minds together. So you’re getting a little bit of insight into my, my network. Okay, so I love to preface it with that so that you all can put your guard down. I didn’t pick Ryan up off the street, just somebody that looked like they knew what they’re talking about, like, Hey, what’s your name? Come on the podcast, this brother has been in the space. In fact, Ryan, you didn’t you weren’t always the funnel doctor. You weren’t always in the digital marketing? What? What was life before funnels?

Ryan McCrary 3:40
That’s a great question. So my corporate background is actually in finance. So I worked in finance for many years, I had my securities licenses, my series, seven series 63 licenses. And after working in corporate for a few years, honestly, I just was not happy with my job. You know, I did not want to go up the corporate ladder. I did not want to play corporate politics. So I had this crazy idea to become an entrepreneur. So I dove headfirst into that was very naive, I didn’t know anything about business. I don’t come from entrepreneur family. And you know, as entrepreneurs, we know, like we go to we go through certain challenges that we can always share with everyone, whether it’s our family members, whether it’s our spouse, whether it’s our siblings, cousins, like whatever it is, you know, we go through certain challenges. So I dove head first, and my first business was actually in finance. So I wrote a book, I did the free plus shipping thing. I had a bunch of courses, I had coaching and stuff like that. And when it was all based around like financial literacy, wealth building, really trying to teach people a lot of stuff that I learned in corporate that I seen, you know, the average day to day person wasn’t familiar with. So that was my first business like I say, just doing stuff around finance information products, but I had to really learn how to make money because I don’t have my job anymore. I wasn’t a bank my my corporate salary Read. So I was like, I really got to figure out how to make money. And that’s how I got into digital marketing. And then, you know, fast forward became the funnel doctor, we’ll talk about, you know, specifically more about that. But it really came out of the need for myself to actually have consistent sustainable revenue as an entrepreneur, which was very, very challenging in the beginning.

Chris Davis 5:19
Yeah. And, you know, you said some, because my journey mirrors that, right, like you, you did a thing, and you learn how to do it, but it’s like, okay, how do I make money, though? You know, I’m saying. And it’s a weird, it’s a weird dynamic, because it becomes progress without profit. And usually, you don’t hear that usually, it’s like, well, you need to make progress. And then you make profit. But you could also make progress in nonprofit. And for me, I was learning, I could do stuff really well in terms of like web development, and you know, some some email marketing stuff. But I hadn’t quite unlocked the code where it was like, okay, pushing this button generates this, right. Important, man, it’s important for people to not settle for progress, if profit is not a byproduct of it, or the main Northstar driver, because what are we measuring progress by? So anyway, that just stood out to me. So now, you’ve got the funnel doctor, I know of people that you’ve worked with personally, you’ve got testimonials. You’ve been in this space? How long have you been doing digital marketing now? Right?

Ryan McCrary 6:35
About four years now? Yeah, four years. And like I said, when I was still doing finance stuff, I was learning digital marketing, you know, I was understanding funnels and landing pages, copy ads, and like all this stuff, because like, for me, like I said, it was a necessity. Like, I had to do that to make money. And of course, in business, you know, if you’re not really generating revenue will line up no battle. So I knew like that was non negotiable. And then from there, I got good at it. So I started getting a knack for it, I was interested in it, it was something that I liked was something that I became passionate about. And then I started indirectly helping other people. So you know, first got the result for myself. And then it was like, Well, can I work with someone else and get the result for them. So you know, as we know, since we go to different conferences, and meet different people, I started making a lot of entrepreneur friends. So I started indirectly helping them with like, you know, let me see your landing page, like, I can tighten that up for you. I can make that look a little better. I can, you know, do some better coffee, I can make it, you know, look a lot better. And then also, it’s like, hey, you know, people started seeing my ads when I started learn how to do ads. And they were like, you know, who’s the person who did your ads? Like, I love to hire them? I was like, it’s me. Right? Right. Like it was me. So that’s when I started indirectly, like helping other people. And then I came to a crossroads was like, Do you want to actually do this as a business? Do you want to start an agency? Or do you want to keep going finance, like, you know, what do you want to do? And Lamar actually was one of the persons that said, you got to make a decision, you do both. You know, you can’t have to, you know, five finger or six big or whatever, like, you want to really get to that next level, you need to really focus, no fracture focus, you need to actually lock in and do it. So that’s when I made the decision in 2019. To become the funnel doctor, start the agency. We’ve been growing ever since. But I knew nothing about starting an agency at the time. It was a learning curve, but it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

Chris Davis 8:26
Yeah, and I’ve got to parenthetically insert this. Shout out to Lamar and Rodney Tyler of traffic, sales and profit, hate, listen, unsolicited, if you haven’t, go to traffic sales and profits.com Right now, make sure you look at an upcoming event. I promise you, you will not regret engaging join the Facebook group. I say this because there’s not a lot of genuine, seasoned. Yeah, always growing, always expanding, always evolving. entrepreneurs in the space that aren’t money hungry, trying to just get the bag run and hey, get it while I’m getting it because it’s gone, you know, a true heart to help so to hear. It’s almost like I heard his voice when you say you got to make a decision. No, we all know that Lamar voice was like, look what you’re gonna do. Shout out there. And I mentioned that at the beginning of the podcast, man or Ryan, I make up so many frameworks and terms and, and the idea is to make things tangible. If there’s one thing that people have told me, he’s just like, okay, I can understand it. Now. You know, I’ll use a loaf of bread or a car or something that people know to help break down these concepts. But when you told me you wanted to come on and talk about funnel stacking, I was like, Whoa, x out everything that I thought. Let’s, let’s talk about that. So I’m gonna give you the floor man. Just take us from the beginning and all the way through So, what is funnel stacking? What? Why should we know about it? What does it do for us?

Ryan McCrary 10:05
Yeah, thank you. And I’m so happy to share this, you know, because I’ve been working with it closely for myself and other clients that we’ve been working with. So funnel stacking basically, is when you stack multiple funnels on top of each other on the front end. So what happens is nowadays, you know, when we’re spending money on marketing on paid advertising, it’s very expensive. So specifically with Facebook, two years ago, when 2021, there was a big thing in the marketplace, where Apple release and iOS 14 update. And now, anyone who had the apple 14, iOS 14 update, or, you know, beyond now we’re in like, 18, or whatever, right? You know, now they had to agree to be tracked with ads. So what that did is it rose advertising costs. So now just to get in front of people, it’s a lot more expensive. To get a lead is more expensive, to get an acquisition to get someone to buy something to get to click, like everything is a lot more expensive. So previously, you could use a funnel, like a free plus shipping book funnel, you could use a lead gen funnel, you can use some type a loss leader, where it’s like you either break even, or a lot of people got into the black in the front on the front end, as well with, you know, advertising costs increase. Now, when we’re spending money and trying to acquire a new customer or a new lead, most of the time, we’re not even breaking even, we’re losing a lot of money, a lot of people are in the red. So now when you stack multiple funnels on top of each other, you can get into the black on the front end faster. But instead of doing it through one funnel, you do it through multiple funnels on the front end. So here’s an example. I have a front end funnel, where it’s a low priced course, the $47 course is my sales funnel course it’s a lot of great information, but it’s a DIY $47 course. So I was looking at going back and looking at my numbers. So we spent over $50,000 in Facebook ads to get someone buy this $47 digital course. Now when I looked at my core sales, we only made about 25,000 in revenue. So you’re like, Okay, you spent 50k, you only made 25k back from this course. But what we did is on the thank you page, when someone bought that course, we put a link for them to schedule a call a discovery call for someone to get on a call on a sales call so we can sell them services. Now to everyone that came through that funnel and went to that thank you page and scheduled call. We booked over 500k in services from them coming through that funnel. So that is an example of funnel stacking. So we put the lead, you know the tripwire funnel out there, the $47 funnel, we spent over 50k in ads to get people to it. We only made about 25,000 Back when actual core sales. But when they came through, they scheduled a call with me or someone on the sales team. And we got over 500k and new projects or new business. So now that 50k 10x Or a little more than 10. That’s because if you count the core sales as well, so that example of how we use funnel stacking profitably. So you have to spend money on the front end and get people on the back.

Chris Davis 13:17
Man I love it. And if it made sense, right when you broke it down and you said scheduled the call right? Because you understand that just because they didn’t say no on the front does not mean they won’t say no in the middle. I’m not even gonna call it the back backer like fulfillment and you know all of that right in the middle that what’s what’s that offer? So right to your words to stack that funnel is really understanding that the first no is not the end of the game. Exactly. Right. So in that what are like what are some of the challenges? I know you mentioned you were looking at you know your your numbers and realize like, Man, I’m not I’m not even breaking even where did the concept come from? For you? I know you’re a student of the game. And I know you’re in mentorship, you’re you’re still actively teaching engaging. You’ve got clients with the agency, was this a trend that you saw? Was it a strategy that you saw somewhere and say, Hey, let me see if I can apply this and make this work. What was that that initiator to you

Ryan McCrary 14:25
that shader so yeah, I did not create the term you know, I’ve heard it before, but I haven’t really seen people activate it and talk about it, you know, because if you’ve never really heard of it, that’s saying a lot. Like a real OG and like expert, like a big expert in this industry, you know, so first heard it, and it you know, sparked my interest. And then what really was the pivotal shift for me was really understanding. It’s not just about making money on the front end, and that’s where a lot of people just fall into trouble, especially those spinning money on paid advertising is like if I spent 100 bucks, if I get 200 bucks or 150 or whatever, like it didn’t work, it’s a scam ads don’t work funnels don’t work, digital marketing doesn’t work. It’s like, No, you really have to understand lifecycle, and just really how it works, especially like I say, nowadays, when it costs a lot more to acquire customers. So once I understood that, like, initial concept of like, whatever I’m spending on the front end, like, I’m not even looking to necessarily make it right back. That’s what initially intrigued me. And then I was like, Well, if I put something in there, I may be able to actually make it right back. And of course, that 500k that we got in revenue was an instant, you know, but it was over, I think, maybe over nine months to a year or so, of, you know, running the campaign. And like I said, just spending the money on ads and stuff, we’ve seen that return. So for me, it was that, again, it was literally just implementing it. Because to be honest, it wasn’t a big shift, we just changed the thank you page and put a button for them to schedule a call. You know, we didn’t have to, in this case, and you can do it, you know, different ways of building different funnels and offers and stuff like that. But I didn’t go out and like create something, I didn’t go record a new course, I didn’t do anything that was like, you know, a lot of back end stuff that we had to do with my team or get other people involved. It literally was just tweaking the funnel and adding a button and another call to action. Because a lot of people think once they come through your funnel, and they get whatever the initial thing was, it’s over. The Thank You page is one of the most underutilized pages of the funnel talk about and that’s the page that most people see anyway, you know what I mean? It’s like most people, you know, get to the thank you page, whether they download something, whether they buy something, whatever it is, and most people just say thank you, thank you for buying thank you for subscribing. Today. There’s always another call to action. So once I learned that, that’s what it was like Are we got to implement?

Chris Davis 16:53
Yeah, I was on a recent training, I did a private Facebook training. And I mentioned that I said, Listen, in marketing, it’s hard to get guarantees. In fact, there really our 911, I can guarantee you, when someone fills out a form, they’re seeing what’s ever next.

Chris Davis 17:15
Waste that on Thank you, we will be in touch, or your information has been received Shame on you, as a marketer, as someone who just a business owner doesn’t know better, hey, you know, no harm, no foul. But that page needs to be highly optimized. I want to I want to sprinkle some automation fairy dust on this too. And give people strategy that I live by and all my students who are listening and mentees, they think they know what I’m about to say. But I live by the

Chris Davis 17:53
the thought that once I have your information, I should not ask for it again. All right. What’s like, let’s make your personal. Look how weird it would be like after we’ve recorded our let’s just say when we linked up at the conference, and I was like, What’s your name again? Right? You know what I’m saying? Like

Chris Davis 18:15
playing? A, if it’s a virtual lead score that you had in your mind, like points are just getting deducted. Right? So it’s like, because Ryan, I’ve met you matter of fact, I met you many times, and we didn’t chop it up at weddings, you know, like we know. So to go in reverse? Is it if throws off the experience. So when I when I talk to people, I said, Listen, if they filled out filled out form number one, you at minimum have their email address, and you have their name, you know, whatever information that is. So for those of you listening, here’s some automation does make sure whatever form software, you click that button that adds those parameters to the URL. Yes, make sure they’re in the URL. And then the next step you want to do is couple that with the form software on your thank you page to pre populate, grab that information from the URL. And Ryan, I’ll be honest with you, I have not met an online scheduling platform that cannot do this. I have not I mean, I know Calendly acuity book me now I’ve seen all of them. And I’ll hack the code and I’ll do it for a person. I’ll go into the inspector and be like, hey, look, if you put this variable in your code, it will just put my name in there. Now, is that cool? Yeah, sure. It’s cool. But listen, this is automation for purpose. Watch this. If they filled out that first form from the ad. The last thing you want them to do is put in a different email address on the scheduler.

Chris Davis 19:48
Oh you get what I’m saying like catch this. First off, I try to I try to prime you all. You got some heavy hitters on this one. All right. So pick that up. If you dropped it, put it in the bag. If you missed it rewind, okay, but what this does, especially if you’re working with somebody like Ryan, who’s savvy in ad spending, which we’re going to talk about in a minute, who savvy and ad spending, you want to make sure that in your CRM, you get the proper attribution from the front end all the way through. So I love hiding. Maybe people get mad, maybe they think think of it as a convenience. But I love hiding the email address once I’ve captured it. Yeah, you know, because it’s like, I don’t want to give you another opportunity to change. It won’t be like, Oh, let me use a different email address for the car. No, no, no, no, no, we said, you were, we’re going to run this. Now. When you become a customer. Feel free to change whatever you want. I’m okay with that. But I need you to stay who you said you were throughout this customer journey, you know, so

Ryan McCrary 21:02
you got me thing.

Chris Davis 21:03
For. Right, right. So again, everybody, Ryan started off by talking about getting stuff done. And we all start there, but we want to get it done for a purpose. Ryan, you’ve had success with ad spending man, this has this continues to be so elusive for so many business owners. And I know the lore and aspirations. You look at Facebook, and you’re like, Man, I seen somebody else do it. Somebody’s advertising to me, it’s possible. If someone came to you and said, You know what, I want to be successful with Facebook ads? What are some of the things that you’re looking at? Before you can even say, look, it’ll work for you? Because it ain’t, it can’t work for everybody? And there’s a certain archetype, right? That’s like, okay, you’ve got this, this and that. Let’s give it a go. Still no, no. Guarantees.

Ryan McCrary 21:59
Your probable your chances are very, you know, highly likely, as opposed to someone you know, may not be a good fit. Yeah,

Chris Davis 22:04
right. Right. So what would you say? What do you look for?

Ryan McCrary 22:08
I mean, the first thing is like, proof of concept, like, you know, like, what, like, what do you sell? What do you do? What are you already doing? How much revenue how many customers that you have, like, people are already buying it. Because I always say this no ad campaign, no funnel is a substitute for product market fit. So you can have the greatest and you can have, you can get the best videographer in the world, you can shoot the best content, you can have the best landing page, you can have Chris set up the best automation for you. But that is not a substitute for product market fit something that people want to buy in the marketplace. And that’s always look for, like just what like, where are you with that? Where are you with customers and your list, like all that stuff. And then from there, another big thing now is this price point. Because people that sell higher price stuff, you know, whether it’s automation services, whether it’s funnel services, whether it’s masterminds high ticket, whatever, we automatically had the advantage, no matter how big, you know, could your product or service A’s or whatever, if you’re selling a $50 product, I’m selling a $5,000 package, I immediately have the advantage because I can spend more, you know, on the front end, because if someone pays me 5k, that can make more my ad budget for the next two weeks, as opposed to you selling something for $50, you got to make a lot, you know, so you got to have that volume to be able to sustain your ad budget, not including your cogs and your you know, cost of goods sold and all that type of stuff to fulfill whatever you’re selling. So that’s another big thing as we look at what your selling price point average order value, and then of course, ad spin. Yeah, that’s probably the number one question I get is How much should I spend? And I’m like, it depends, you know, how much can you afford to spend? What was the price of your product? What’s your cost of goods sold, you know, looking at your numbers and what it costs to fulfill. And a lot of people think fulfillment is only products, oh, well, I don’t have a product, I don’t have shipping involved. I don’t have you know, people to make it or good go to China or whatever, to actually fill something. So I don’t really have you no cost of fulfillment. If you have a service, whatever you sell, there’s a cost of affiliate. Even if you’re a solo, poor, it’s your time, especially if you have a team and you’re paying people to fulfill something or whatever. Like we always meet with our team and looking at our projects and like what our operating costs, like what does it cost to get a project done? And we always try to look at that tweet that which clients, you know, spend more hours than other ones and stuff like that. So there’s always a cost to fulfill us for product. So that’s another thing we love. So some of the some of the main things. There’s other stuff like you know, like your content strategy. Are you doing stuff organically? You know, are you just starting with ads now? Have you already been running ads for a while and they kind of haven’t been doing as well? Are you looking for a different agency? So there’s a lot of different nuances to it. But I think those are some of the main ones Yeah, no,

Chris Davis 25:00
those are all good. And, you know, I think about it, because sometimes the best thing, you know, you drop it nuggets to here said, there is no advertising. Advertising cannot is not a replacement for a poor product market fit. And if can we be honest, everybody, listen, remember no shame for previous performance on this podcast. But it’s a promise to do better. And that is this, let’s be honest, you don’t know your product market fit. And you don’t know, if you’re, if your audience is truly looking and asking for what it is you have. And you want them to what you’re trying to convince them to. But I always think of this. And this happened the other day, man, I was looking for something online. I can’t remember what it was Ryan. But it didn’t matter to me how it got to me, I just needed an answer to this thing. Like I was looking for it. And it was very hard. And I found myself on the other side like, Man, I wish they would advertise to me. Right, like make for me to find. And that’s what it’s just rampid, just in the industry is that those who do have the tight product market fit are usually tight with their pockets. Right? And then the ones that don’t have it are like, look, let’s let’s go what we what we spend in how much? Okay, a 10,000 a day, here you go, it is about, I would love to take your money, you know, but you don’t have product market fit and it’s in, it’s so critical. And let me ask you this man, I’ve been thinking about funnel stacking, as you’ve been talking, and just how effective I’ve seen some people do it now that now that you’ve broken it down? No, there’s just the context. Right. So what industries would you say, have the biggest results for you, you know, specific to you, and what you’ve experienced with the with funnel stacking? Because I, the reason why I’m asking is because I can see it be of great value in my industry, right? Education, consulting, oh, Graham enrollments are doing what I’m saying. And I look, I think of my clients, like some of the E commerce clients I have and things of that nature. And I just, the engineer in me wants to break, break something and say, Okay, how far out does this thing extend? Before we start, you know? And I know you probably strategize differently if you go into different industries, but what have you seen, for the most part, let me say, put it this way, like some of the most low hanging fruit type implementations industries, where you put the funnel stacking in places like Wow, we got a call Ryan? Oh, my God, it’s working, you know?

Ryan McCrary 27:53
Yeah, yeah. So we do have one that’s kind of outline, which I’ll talk about in a minute. But the main one is those intrapreneurs, the coaches, the authors, the consultants, you know, whether you’re selling a book or doing some type of lead magnet, and then a lot of people just put a webinar on the back of it. So just a webinar alone on your thank you page, whether it’s automated, or they go into a live training, you’re doing like that alone is a great funnel stack that we’ve done tons of times, that was highly profitable, because let’s say they come through, you know, get your lead magnet, get your free thing or your book or you know, whatever, whatever your your low hanging fruit is, or your tripwire or your you know, low price thing, if it’s not free, generally, it may be $7, or, you know, $17 $47, something like that. And then from there, a lot of people will, you know, enroll you right into my webinar, we’re like, and so you high ticket gets you into my mastermind, gets you into my coaching program enrollments, or whatever the case may be. So that’s when that we’ve seen tons of times, and a lot of people try to break those funnels up as like, No, you can actually put those funnels together, where it’s like, yeah, they come through to get my lead me to get on my list. And then I’d be my webinar, I do a separate campaign from our webinar, I get some new people or I get it gives people my list, you know, but you can actually like stack those funnels together. And that everybody comes through that journey when they’re first introduced with you, and then get into the webinar, and then you sell them that way. A lot of people actually automate that. So that’s what we’ve seen tons of times that we’ve done for, you know, the infopreneur as coaches authors, consultants, stuff like that. Another one another industry that we work with heavily now we’ve seen a lot of results for its travel. So we work with a lot of travel agents, a lot of travel businesses that use this effectively as well. And our three main components that we work with travel agents are number one list building, you know, generally the more people on your list, the more revenue in your business. The second part is community building, you know, with travel and you know, a lot of them target you know, women you know, in their 40s You know, mid 40s, early 50s Where it’s like hey, you leave you know your friends are playing your hair sisters don’t want to go come you know, connect with to join our community of traveling women that are just like you that want to see the world, awesome build community, whether it’s through the Facebook group, whether it’s like a mighty network platform or something like that. And then also get them bookings, you know, as like, we want to get these trips sold out. So we’ve definitely use funnel stacking on the lead gen on the front end. On the thank you page just happened schedule a call where you can sell them a trip, or we have a lot of our clients and ages and stuff like that actually doing like virtual events, creating experiences, or webinars, which they call info sessions on a certain trip, and put that on the back end of the lead gen funnel. And it’s been really, really profitable. We have a number of seven figure travel businesses and working with a lot of multi six figure ones. The funnel second concept has been great working with

Chris Davis 30:46
them. Man, Ryan, you get oh my goodness, like you said travel. And immediately the segmentation just started oozing out. You could do by destination travel by destination want to travel location you’re at, like if, for instance, for instance, I’m from Minnesota. And right around November, December, we’ll February is really the worst month always. But right around that time, it’s getting to the point where just like, you know, what do I really want to deal with this for the next three months, the next six months, all the way till June, you know, if I were a travel agent, and I knew that about my person, right, that’s prime time everybody in a cold state to talk about an exotic or a warm getaway. This is like a no brainer. So when you said traveling, I’ve got many more actually just firing right now I’m gonna write them down. So I don’t forget them. Because these are great segments, I believe. But it’s another show of how complementary that advertising and then the marketing, the follow up marketing really needs to be. Exactly. And if anything, Ryan, I’ll say that’s the mistake that I see a lot of people make is that they do if they do invest on the front end, they don’t take that same level of attention and investment, right in the middle in the in the actual follow up marketing. And what I have played best friend to many advertisers, and it’s because of one reason attribution. So so let me I’m gonna say this at Listen, Ryan doesn’t know what I’m about to say everybody, but watching the great because any advertiser worth their weight is just like Thank you, Chris, just please tell them to do this more. Go back everyone to what I said with the pre filling the email address our first name because you grabbed it. Also, also, please now now the thing is, this would never happen if you’re working with somebody like Ryan. But if you’re out here, just DIY in it. Do not I repeat, do not have a link on social media that does not extract input UTM parameters when someone clicks

Ryan McCrary 33:03
below? Yes.

Chris Davis 33:05
Okay, yeah, not, don’t do it. Because if you don’t have it to where it’s populating the source and the medium and content, all of those parameters. What we do as marketers on the back end, is we put hidden fields that pull those values. Now, in the CRM software, you can see which ad generated which lead. Exactly watch what we can do. Now I can go and say, Hey, Ryan, these are my buyers. And it looks like they all came this jacket, um, just just dream for me for a minute Ryan, on the spot. If you had clients that were giving you that type of data, just tell me. Does that make your job easier?

Ryan McCrary 33:57
A lot is here. Absolutely. Yes. So yeah, that’s something that we do. You know, like you said, you DIY in it, we definitely recommend that. Because if you don’t you don’t know. So you don’t know what’s performing better, which not. And also, even outside of just like paid ads, like if you’re doing organic posts, if you know you’re doing affiliate stuff and someone sharing your stuff, different email, or whatever it is, you want to really know like, which is performing better, where’s the data coming from? So those UTM parameters are definitely going to help, especially like I said, with all the uncertainty with ads as of late. You definitely want to do that.

Chris Davis 34:31
Yeah. Ryan and I had a conversation before we recorded this. And we were just looking at a dashboard and we’re just kind of nerding out over it. And really what came of it was how many professionals are flying blind. And I say professionals not because they’re I put air quotes, by the way for everybody watching the video. Not because they’re fake, but because a professional can’t show up as such, if they don’t if they’re not fully equipped, and Yeah, you know, so being able to provide feedback to how something is performing is critical. And to oftentimes Ryan, man, we had to do better in the marketing industry, that we just settle for capturing the lead, but never giving feedback to the source of where it came from, so that we can, you know, figure out what works and do that better and better, more and more, you know,

Ryan McCrary 35:23
yeah, I love that. Another thing too, with, you know, to piggyback on that, is tracking all the metrics throughout the funnel, because we’re telling everyone, all of our clients, you know, looking at that, helping them with that, or, you know, if we just do the front end, like, tell them, make sure you go on the back end, because a lot of people will be like, alright, well, I gotta leave for $2, then I gotta leave for $10. Well, I only want to get the $2 lead, you know, the $10. One, Oh, that’s too high, cut the ads off or whatever. But if you don’t track the rest of the funnel, and you don’t necessarily know, so let’s use travel. For instance, let’s say you got a $2 lead, and then they buy a trip for $2,000. But you get a $10 lead, and they buy a trip for $10,000. Now watch leads more valuable, you now pay $10 all day, if you’re gonna get a $10,000 package, as opposed to a two hour lead as getting the $2,000 package. But it will track the rest of the metrics throughout the funnel and the lifetime value, you don’t know. So like I say, you know, a lot of people would just be like, Oh, well, I want the cheapest lead as possible. You know, I don’t want to pay over $6 a lead, if it goes beyond that, and we cut it off and stuff like that. But you’re really doing yourself a disservice. If you don’t track the other metrics in the funnel and the lifetime value the order value, not just the front end acquisition costs,

Chris Davis 36:44
man, Proposition Joe would say you think is short, we should be thinking long. Gotta play the long game. Hey, everybody, if you if you didn’t realize it, did you see how fast Ryan spit those numbers out? See how fast 10,005 Listen, this, this is something that I want to highlight, because maybe they know they heard it on the front end, that you have experience with finance. But perhaps they didn’t make the connection. Your ads person, everyone should not be afraid of numbers. I know this, this is like Well, of course, you will be surprised at how many ads people love the creative side of it. As you get what I’m saying like they, they just, you know, they can do some numbers to make sure that what they created is seen. But they don’t specialize in the numbers throughout the funnel. Right? They may be able to go into Facebook manager and look at some some data. But everybody again worth their weight knows you better not just rely on Facebook.

Ryan McCrary 37:52
Right? Oh, I’ve seen too many businesses do that. And be vulnerable. You know, I’ve even slipped into that trap of being too reliant on it. You know, I’ve never, ever put all my eggs in one basket. As I always come into the game, I understood traffic and holistic strategy and like many different sources and affiliates and referrals, relationships, all that. But you know, when Facebook ads so good, it’s easy to be like, listen, let me just do all of my budget, because it’s working well. But you definitely do not want to do that. And I love what you said about the content aspect of it. Because you know, as an ad agency, and you know, funnel agency, we definitely do help with content creation. And we have video editors and graphic designers and so forth. But I always make it clear to people. We are not a design agency, we are not a Content Agency. We are a marketing agency. So we are designed like you say to look at the numbers, get you leads, you know, get more revenue, look at the data, track all your numbers and your conversion rates and so forth. But we don’t want to be like, Oh, we specialize in design, and we specialize in content creation. That stuff helps. But we are a marketing agency designed to drive more revenue into your business.

Chris Davis 39:04
Yeah, that’s good. You, you You always need to know where you begin and end and I want to encourage somebody that’s like, man, it just whenever people say what they can and can’t do it just one day I want to get there. It takes time, Ryan, how many wrong clients? Did you say yes to until you could figure out like, hold on. We don’t do this, this and that. This is our sweet spot, you know, I’m saying like, it’s in countable.

Ryan McCrary 39:36
To many of them, you know, but now it’s really clear like I have a quick conversation with someone and then almost immediately I can rely on it’s not gonna be a good fit, or based on a conversation. I’m already thinking of ideas that we can do and help this plug this and stuff like that. But yeah, it definitely was a learning curve and went through a lot of, you know, I won’t say bad clients, but where it just wasn’t a good fit for both of us. You know? Have you said, really getting to a point where you say no a lot more, where you can take on, you know, people who you know are going to be my fit. And it’s really about driving results. I don’t even want to take a client, if I know that we can get you the results.

Chris Davis 40:12
Yeah, it’s, it’s the old adage in comparison to dating man and relationships, because these are relationships, they’re professional, professional relationships. And sometimes you just have to make it personal to people. And it’s just like, Look, if, in the first five minutes you were talking to somebody, and you realize this joker ain’t about nothing, right? Like, I’m not gonna be able to do anything. And it’s not like you’re trying to manipulate but it’s like, you might be trying to have fun, then the person you’re talking to is just stay Oh, yeah, we could just chill at the hotel, you know, I bring my Xbox, you like we Mexico was even thinking about. So I wouldn’t even go on that trip, right? However, if I can see a future, if I can see a mutually beneficial future. And I want to say this. You say you could talk to somebody, and within the first few minutes, you know, if you’re going to be a good fit, listen, everybody, this, this is where you want to be. Everything is not online, you’re gonna be talking to somebody at a coffee shop, you’ll be engaged with people at birthday parties, you need to know like those words, those trigger words. It’s like, you could be ear hustling a little bit. And you have one conversation in here a few words over here like you, I’m just trying to get my attribution and ad spin down. I’ve got a really high ticket offer. Yeah, Ryan, you’ll

Ryan McCrary 41:39
my ears forget.

Chris Davis 41:41
Right, you have to doubt his birthday. You like who is this talking like that? You know, but we have this is the responsible part about being a business owner and in a marketer. I feel like I’m never not collecting data. Yeah, always, oh, you know, like, every conversation. And then I’m thinking like, man, maybe if I could have said that better. Or I may say something in somebody’s face shows an expression. And I’m like, Oh, that was good language. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Chris Davis 42:11
So always doing it, I want to, as we get to the end of this, you made mention, I know we’ve talked a lot about the front end funnel stalking the advertising. I know that’s one of the core components of what you do. And especially in in the travel industry, man, I just, it’s got so much potential just oozing out of it, man, I just like I said, the marketer in me is going, but you, you made mention of tracking the metrics throughout the funnel, I want to I want to give you the Florida just to talk about some of your favorite software tools to build a funnel, not the best, not the ones that you absolutely have to use. But just give people some insight on some of the tools that you’re like, you know what, I’m not building a funnel without this because you’re not just front end rang you know, like you can go and build that whole marketing and sales funnel out whatever if you could, if you limit it to like the top two or three that you just really are liking right now.

Ryan McCrary 43:11
Yeah, I mean, I’ve you know, I’ve been a Click Funnels person for a while now you know, and still you know, appreciate the software I still personally use it. So that’s, you know, usually my go to now go high level they’ve been, they’ve been gaining ground on their own, they come in, right, they come in, so that’s like, you know, that’s the one that we’re using. That’s the one that we build a lot of stuff out and it’s really what I like about it because it’s really been hard to find all on one platform that do most of the stuff well and this is one of the probably the best one that I’ve seen that can get you know, accomplish your funnel, your automations like your emails, SMS scheduling, social media and they have aI component of course merchants and payments and all that stuff on their website can connect WordPress Of course your funnels and you know all that type of stuff and then look at you know, your lead source and you know your conversions like all that stuff. So I really like go high level right now. Of course you know using Active Campaign for a while key CLEVEO for my E commerce folks. Those are probably my favorite ones

Chris Davis 44:24
Yep. What any any sleepers out there like productivity utility type that’s just like man this this thing is small, but it just keep working. You know, any anything out there?

Ryan McCrary 44:39
I’m trying to think I’m not that many come to mine. Um, that’s fine. Yeah, I can’t I don’t probably think of it

Ryan McCrary 44:50
once we go to the next question. I already like right now. Those are probably the main ones. This is a great for like a Add your ads and can tracking your you know, attribution and your conversions and alignment with the funnel. So that’s, that’s a big one that we’ve been using for, you know, a good amount of time now, which was good. And that really takes everything to the next level of connecting like your ad, like you said, your attribution, you know, looking at that what you’re funneling, you’re backing lifetime value, and it also will make certain adjustments to your campaigns automatically, when something happens in the middle of night sleep or like, whatever. So that’s, that’s another one that we you know, use that we might as well

Chris Davis 45:33
yeah, I’m gonna fire off a couple of no tech one low tech ones for everybody. And a couple reasons why. No shocker. No, no sharp. One is Canva. Oh, the reason of layers? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Do every ever since they put layers in? I’m an old Photoshop guy, too. Yeah. Okay. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve like had something in the background, and just could not get to it, then I had to move elements out the way to select it. So just having layers, I haven’t even played with like the AI stuff where you can replace images, like shirts and all that. I haven’t done that. So that’s one in two people. Listen, you’re just gonna hear it. Air table, man. And let me let me say why specifically to this podcast, there is a database that I use that all those UTM parameters that I told you about everyone, it creates those links for me. And then with some additional automation magic, I have it sent out to you name it rebrand Lee short.io, Bitly, it doesn’t matter to Meech pick one, they all integrate, and it creates the the short link for me, and then fills it back in to the record. So I never leave air table, I can put the link in, say my sources, Facebook did it up, put all the UTM click a button, it goes out automation shortens the link in places it right in the field for me, and then I could just copy and paste it from there. So these are like, I say that I know that I said that matter of factly. Everyone and I know you may want to be like Hold on What is he doing? But you do it so frequently that it just becomes tongue in cheek or wrist, wrist and click. But I did want to I do want to highlight that because sometimes you don’t have to have these big use cases, everybody. For some of these tools, it’d be some small stuff. Sometimes it’s like, man, that’s really effective. You know? So. So Brian, man, this is this is great. We have we have many, many conversations on off air. This is our first one on and you know I can I could keep going I could listen, I should have hit record everybody before we officially started recording because we dropped some gyms just getting ready for this. But I just have to envision somebody was listening to this. They were like, oh, that’s how you do that, that I’ve seen people do that. I always wondered how scheduling an appointment worked? Or how do you do the webinar on the back of something. Or they may be in the travel industry, just whatever. Or they may just be looking for an agency to help them with their digital marketing man. That’s the most common case, right? So I want to give you an opportunity, man, you’ve given us so much value. If somebody wants to connect with you and reach out further and engage where can they go?

Ryan McCrary 48:33
Yes, so of course, I’m all over social media. Our website is the funnel, Doctor agency.com. That’s the funnel Doctor agency.com. Of course, we’re all over social media, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn. So just type in Ryan McCrary or the funnel, Dr. Asha come up. Also, if you want to get a free copy of my ebook, go to www dot the funnel Doctor ebook.com That’s the funnel with Doctor ebook.com has tons of gems in there. It’s also a lot of resources and templates and stuff that you can download as well. So make sure you check that out www dot the funnel Doctor ebook.com And my actual book will be coming very very soon the prescription as we’re funding that we finalizing that right now, like was pretty much done. But we’re going through, you know the whole launch strategy and everything like that. So you’ll be notified very, very soon the official launch date, but the prescription is coming as well.

Chris Davis 49:32
I love that name. Listen, you can a good marketer always appreciates another one and if it’s one thing marketers love, it’s a good name boy that mean the prescription without context means nothing but from the funnel doctor. Every big bad, so don’t worry everyone we have all of the links in the show notes. You’ll be able to go there right now, if you want to and another Another point, you see all of those were the funnel doctor. You see the branding, you see the consistency. I’m just saying, Ryan, I just want to point these things out. Because I just find that I tried to tap into beginners brain as much as possible. Yeah, sometimes things fly over people setting they don’t realize how valuable it is. But listen, man, I can’t thank you enough for coming on to the podcast. This was everything that I anticipated. It will be man, so greatly appreciate it on that one.

Ryan McCrary 50:27
Yeah, of course. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I love having this conversation. And we definitely got to do it again. So

Chris Davis 50:33
yes, sir. Yeah, we may have to have you back for the prescription. Break down. Break down the content, and what everybody gets. So everybody makes sure you access the links that we have. Listeners, I can’t thank you enough. You spend 45 minutes with me at least once a week if you’re waiting for the new releases. For the rest of you, you’ve been binging continue keep going they just keep getting better and better because my guests are just there fire I can’t live people man. Like I’ve listened to them while I’m recording and afterwards but thank you for your listenership. I don’t want to take it for granted that you have spent time out of your schedule to listen to this. So thank you very much, and to everybody, everybody from the bottom of all of our hearts to y’all continue to automate responsibly, my friends.

Chris Davis 51:29
Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The all systems go podcast. If you enjoyed it, make sure that you’re subscribed at the time of recording the all systems go podcast is free to subscribe to, and it can be found in Apple podcast, Google podcast, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts new episodes are released every Thursday. So make sure you’re subscribed so that you don’t miss out and while you’re at it, please leave us a five star rating and review to show some love but also to help future listeners more easily find the podcast so they can experience the value of goodness as well. We’ve compiled all resources mentioned on the podcast, as well as other resources that are extremely valuable and effective at helping you grow your marketing automation skills quickly. And you can access them all at all systems go podcast.com Thanks again for listening. And until next time, I see you online. Automate responsibly, my friends