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Amy: Good morning everyone. Thank you so much for coming back to listen to the Bookkeepers' Voice Podcast. And today, I have a very special guest with me. I have Lukas Jessop. And so for those of you who don't know Lukas, he is our online marketing consultant at Savvy. Lukas, are you there?

Lukas:  I am. Thank you so much, Amy, for inviting me on your podcast so I can give your listeners a bit of value today.

Amy:   Yeah, yeah. I'm sure you will. So just for those of you who don't already know Lukas, so Lukas joined me at Savvy, when was it? It was some time, mid last year. So he came on board to help me to grow the Savvy community via Facebook ads. So basically, yeah, so he came on board with me and he's actually become a really valuable part of our team. He's a very smart, savvy guy who's, he's got a really interesting background which he'll share with us in a moment. And so Lukas has helped us through his Facebook ads. He's helped us to, I would say almost double would you say? Probably doubled the size of our community?

Lukas:  Yeah. We've grown it quite rapidly, been fantastic and …

Amy: Yeah. It's been a very good experience for me because until I met Lukas, I hadn't actually had anything to do with Facebook ads or Google ads or anything like that. So Lukas has opened up a whole new world in terms of online marketing. And so I thought there's probably some of you have been following what we're doing at Savvy and thinking, how can I get more leads? Or if you don't use that terminology, how can I find more clients? How can I grow my client base online? So, yeah. Lukas, do you want to just share a little bit about your background? So before you are into online marketing, you were doing something else, right? Do you want to just share with us what you were up to?

Lukas:  Yeah, of course. I was doing a few things, so…rather good question actually. I actually started off as a high school teacher, and I did always have the dream of one day owning my own business, which is good. And essentially, what happened in 2013 was I was finishing my master’s in business, and I finally had an opportunity to co-found a company with my business partner. The company was a health food online business mainly. So what people would do was login to our website. They would order their favorite food, and we would then deliver it to their door.

Amy:  Wow.

Lukas:   I know. So it's been a long-

Amy: I remember you telling me about the teaching in the MBA and I actually, I remember this story, but when you reminded me then I thought, oh yeah, that's right.

Lukas: Yes. It's been a long journey to end up here. So I guess having the business online led me into the world of online marketing. We had a commercial kitchen and everything, but the business was all run online. So I guess I had to learn quite quickly all about online marketing and growing a company essentially from scratch through online marketing.

Amy:   Wow. It's so interesting actually. I know you have shared this with me before, but just hearing it again, I guess the question that came to me is firstly, what made you do an MBA when you were doing teaching? Because they're quite worlds apart in a way, aren't they?

Lukas:  Yeah, they are. So I think I always had the dream of owning my own business. And at the time, this was before the whole, you can start a business easily online for 250 dollars. And so for me, what I found was I needed maybe 200,000 dollars to actually start a business back then.

Amy:                Wow.

Lukas:  Yeah. Right. And so I started off teaching-

Amy:   Very different. I can't even imagine it. Yeah.

Lukas:   Yeah. So I started off teaching, which was good, and it is something I'm passionate about, and I was going to use that as a leverage into then my own business. But obviously, to get that money at the time was quite hard. So I thought, what can I do in the meantime to make sure I'm still preparing and ensuring that I'm actually going to run a good business when I have one? That's what led me to the MBA.

Amy:  Yeah. Wow. That had not even occurred to me. But it's quite interesting because a lot of our listeners who are on right now, most of us would have started our bookkeeping businesses originally not online. Bookkeeping's a little bit of a different world because I guess you can start a bookkeeping business without a lot of start up costs. And then once it moved to the cloud it became even more simple. And I think in the book-keep, even the accounting industry as a whole is like quite low barriers to entry. Whereas you've got, so you had a health food business obviously, how did you get, obviously you're looking at starting a business, and you didn't have all the capital, but how did you actually then get into a health food business where you had a commercial kitchen and everything? How did you kind of make that work?

Lukas:  Good question. So one of my good friends actually owned a gym. We were living at a time and it was a good, I guess, add on to his business and we put our funds together, the little funds that we did have, which really got us just to launching. And then it was quite a scary place because then you have to make money to cover not only paying yourself, but the rent, the electricity, food costs. And I think for me, that's probably where I really turned to Facebook ads at the time when we first launched, we were really just relying on word of mouth, referrals and maybe doing some promotions. And really, that money was quite inconsistent because it was relying on how many people we could obviously get referrals from. And even how many promotions we could physically do in a week. So obviously, we turned to Facebook advertising, and I was actually able to then get some consistent money in the business, which is really nice. And we did grow that company quite fast and eventually sold it two years later.

Amy:   Yeah. Wow, that's great. And I was just thinking just to relate it, I assume most of the people listening now, will be bookkeepers. And it's quite funny because as a bookkeeper, when you're running your bookkeeping business, you don't really have the type of pressure that you just described. So what I'm talking about is where you're going week to week. Like, where are we going to get the money to pay for all of these costs that we've committed to that we can't get out of? And so bookkeepers have a very different business model to that. But I think it's great the point that you made, because this is what a lot of our clients are going through.

Amy:   So bookkeepers, and I talk a lot about this in my other podcast episodes, where I talked a lot of bookkeepers about putting themselves in the shoes of the business owner and what the business owners are actually going through because business owners in different industries to bookkeeping, obviously they have a lot of different experiences to what bookkeepers have. And so I've done a lot of training on past episodes talking about, what's the experience that the business owner is having and what's it like for them to be juggling all of these different things and the cash flow problems. I think now that before when you said about, you reached a point where you were scared. You hit a point where you're like, oh my God, what am I going to do?

Lukas:  I know. And I think that's probably even common now with some of the business owners I do work with today to do the online marketing is, maybe they're not so much scared of where the next income is coming from, but they reach a point where you exhausted your referrals, your friends and everything and you're stagnant in your business. So you're not really growing the revenue. You can't really pay yourself more, not sure how to then get more clients to build that business up. I think that's where online marketing becomes beneficial because you can scale it up.

Amy:  Well, exactly. Because referrals are great and obviously if you're very good at what you do, you will get a lot of referrals. But it's not, I guess, it has its limits in that you can't predict when you're going to get a referral.

Lukas:  Yeah, that's right. It can be up and down.

Amy:    That's right. And you're still going to have a system in place even to make sure that you ask for referrals because people might not necessarily automatically refer to you. And it's interesting because a lot of bookkeepers that I speak to do a lot of referrals until they reach a certain point. All right. Okay, so you wound up your health food business, where you sold your health food business, so what happened then? You got a taste for online marketing, would you say or?

Lukas:  Yeah, that's right. I really enjoyed the online marketing aspect of running that company. And I guess for me, I really saw an opportunity for other business owners who were in that same position as I was, where I could actually take those skills and help them to grow their business, which is what I did with mine. I guess that's where the passion for online marketing started and why I got to where I am today, because I see it as a tool really for me to help other business owners create the drain and create more income for themselves and all the rest of it. Yeah.

Amy:  Yeah. I love it. It's good for me hearing a bit more of your backstory as well. Because obviously, for the listeners, Lukas is, obviously he joined us to give us some advice about online ads, but he's really a part of our team now, and he comes along to our monthly meetings, and he contributes a huge amount to the team. So I guess it's really good having him on board because of obviously, his passion for small business, but also the background that he's come from. He's actually got that experience of not only, hasn't just learned to do ads or whatever, but he's gone through this experience where he's had to learn how to build up a business through online advertising.

Amy:  So it's really great. And so, Lukas and I were talking just a couple of weeks ago. Obviously, Lukas is there when I'm doing with a bookkeeping project, and he's been helping with that as well. So what was the idea that you came up with Lukas? Some of you probably already know about this, but with Google and Facebook ads.

Lukas:  We actually ended up having a conversation between ourselves around Facebook and Google advertising. And-

Amy:  Yeah. And it was when, because I'm starting up my bookkeeping business, again. Obviously, Lukas has been working with us on Savvy ads, but when I started the bookkeeping business again, I said, let's do something for the bookkeeping business. And then … Yeah, I'll hand back over to you.

Lukas:  Then I suggested we should look at Google advertising. And we went on a snowball conversation around, I guess the pros and cons of Facebook versus Google advertising.

Amy:  Yeah. And also, because I've been comfortable in Facebook ads as well. You've gotten me over time, you've got me really comfortable with Facebook ads. So I think when I told you about the bookkeeping business, I thought you'd just say, all right, let's set up some Facebook ads. And then you introduced Google ads. And I'm like, okay. Yeah. That's a different angle that I've ever been on myself. And so yeah, we had quite a good conversation about that.

Lukas:  Yes, I think they both offer quite different aspects to your marketing. And essentially, what happens with Facebook is it's really great because you can push your marketing message, your promotions and your services to people on Facebook, which is really good. What Google does though is it waits for people to search for your service and what that means is you're typically going to get people at the higher end.

Amy:  Yeah. What do you mean by that?

Lukas: Personal journey.

Amy:   Yeah. Do want to just explain?

Lukas: Yeah, of course. So if you look at a customer journey at the start, you might have people who, let's say you're a bookkeeper and you're trying to get small business owners, what you'll find on your customer journey is at the start, you've got business owners who are doing their own bookkeeping. It's getting to them a little bit and then maybe thinking about, should I outsource this? But they might be two or three months away.

Lukas:   And then if you look in the middle, you might have business owners who then are thinking, this is not for me. I might start outsourcing this, are looking to outsource this. And at the very end, you've got people who are then saying, I'm overbooking this-

Amy:  I'm done.

Lukas:   I'm not going to do it. I've had enough. I'm going to outsource it. As soon as I find someone, I'm going to hand it over. What Google does well is it attracts a lot of those people at the very end because they're searching for your service, which means they're at their wits end and they want to hand over their bookkeeping.

Amy:   Yes. Okay. And so I was fascinated, obviously when I heard that, that that was actually, it was a thought that I hadn't actually had before. Obviously, I spend a bit of time doing SEO and I'm quite passionate about organic SEO. So to hear about ad words was a little bit like of a head spin for me. But when Lukas started to explain it to me, I thought, wow, this is actually really good. Because I hadn't considered exactly that with Facebook ads you've got people, I guess you've got people looking for, maybe they're looking for content, they're looking for entertainment even, whereas when you've got someone going to Google, they are looking to buy something.

Amy:   I guess when they're typing in, there'd be certain key terms that the person would use that will indicate this person wants to sign up a bookkeeper now. As opposed to, let's say someone's typing in, maybe they're typing in something like, how do I reconcile my bank account? That person's not really ready to hire a bookkeeper. Whereas if someone's typing bookkeeper in their suburb, that person's like, I need a bookkeeper. Like in my area.

Lukas:   That's right. That's right.

Amy:   Yeah. That's great. That was a huge mind shift for me to actually realise. So obviously, then Lukas had a great idea to-

Lukas:  I guess we're going back and forth. I decided, I said, all right, Amy, I think what we should do is we'll run our Facebook ads that Amy wanted to do. We'll run some Google ads alongside it. And what we'll do is, we will then show the details and go through what is actually happening in those ad campaigns. Also, how much it costs for someone on the Facebook ad versus someone on the Google ad, and then we can look all the way through the customer journey to how many sales we produced for each funnel. And I guess, really what you're looking for is data that's happening across both of those marketing channels and how you can use that to reach the goals you have in your business. So if you're just wanting to only run ads to bring in clients straight away, you might want to do 80% of your budget then in Google, if that's giving you the best sales conversion. Or if you really just looking to promote your business, get word of mouth out there, you might want to do more Facebook ads.

Amy:  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Great. Well, so when you mentioned it, I just thought like, what a fantastic idea. Because obviously, as we've mentioned, that I was a little bit more attached on the Facebook ad side just because I'd seen it work so well with Savvy and so I guess my mindset was, wow, it works so well with Savvy. Obviously, it's just going to work just as well with the bookkeeping and it was good to learn why that might be different. I guess the whole contest between the two, just to actually measure the performance, that really intrigued me as well because I think that's the thing I love about SEO, the competitiveness of it. So it's creative and it's a bit about marketing and it's got that competitiveness.

Lukas:  You're always going to reach number one, which is good.

Amy:   That's right.

Lukas:  I think even on a broader aspect of doing this, I guess experiment, but if we want to call it that is that, as you said, a lot of people will get different information and there's so much information going around where you might hear something about Facebook ads, positive or negative, or you might hear something about Google ads, positive or negative and you're not sure which is good, which is bad. Which determines how you'll spend your money. This is going to give you an insight to what happens with those channels and then that can help you make a better decision in your actual business.

Amy:   Yes. Yeah, that's right. Exactly. For those of you listening who are in the bookkeeping project as well, you would remember I did a video about two weeks ago talking about sales conversion rates, and then I was talking to the members about, once you work out what your sales conversion rate is, which basically I explained it to them that, once somebody actually gets in contact with you and then you have a meeting with them. So with the whole bookkeeping, my sales conversion rate is 25%. So out of every four people that I meet with, one of them will become a client. And so then I went on to talk to them. I was saying to the group, I don't actually know what my marketing conversion rate is, which is obviously, this is going to be people who come to the page and then fill out a form, I guess.

Amy:  So your marketing conversion rate's going to be the people who, from the point where they discover you to actually making that step to getting contact. And then from there, what Lukas was talking about getting, once you start to collect some data, you can actually start to predict and plan. You can break everything down into smaller steps. So this is going to tie in really well with what we're doing already in the bookkeeping project. So I'll be able to update you all very soon on the marketing side of that and how that fits in. So-

Lukas: It's actually interesting you say that, Amy, because what I typically find is most people know their marketing conversion, meaning they run a Facebook ad, they know costs them one dollar per lead or one dollar to get someone from the ad to sign up. But they don't know the sales conversion.

Amy:   Yes.

Lukas: And so that is one of the most important. So you're doing it backwards where you need four people to make a sale, but you're not sure how much advertising if you like, you need to do to get those four people.

Amy:   Those four people. Yeah, exactly. So in the bookkeeping project, I've broken it down, so I've set my goal, I've set an income goal for five years and then I've broken it down into individual years, and I've worked out how many clients I need in total. Then I've worked at how many meetings that I need to have. So I basically just estimated my marketing rates. Okay, I think I need to connect with these many people, get my message out there to these many people, but we'll be testing out to see if that rates correct now. So, that's really good.

Lukas:  Yeah. I like that you have spoken about that too. Because I think what I enjoy the most is once I've been working with a business for maybe a month or two months, what we find is we know that data, so we know that we need to reach 100 people with this ad. From that 100 people, we're going to get 50 people inquire and we know from that 50 people we're going to get 10 people become a sale and we make x amount of money. And when you know that data, you can then say at the side of the month, I want to make x amount of money, then I can put x amount into my advertising. And it's quite consistent, which I really like. So as I said at the start, for a lot of business owners, if you really want that consistent money in your bank account, which is always good, or even to consistently grow the money in your bank account, I think that is where you want to get to.

Amy: Yeah. Yeah. That's good. I like it. I put it out there just a couple of days ago to see if anyone had any specific questions about online marketing. And so I did have a couple of questions that came through.

Lukas: Awesome.

Amy:   Yeah. Someone said, they said, how much do I need to spend to get started?

Lukas:   Great question. So in terms of online marketing, I think again, I really enjoy it because if you look at other, I guess traditional marketing channels, what happens if, let's say you did a newspaper Ad, what happens is you pay one to 3,000 dollars. And no matter what happens in terms of how many papers are sold, how many people see your ad, how many people take action on the ad? You have to pay that amount of money. And what's really great with the online marketing, so Facebook ads or Google, is you can only spend five dollars a day. And what I mean by that is you could start with five dollars a day, if it's working. Then you can just scale it up. If it's not working, you can turn it off and fix it.

Lukas: To answer the question, what budget do you need to get started? What is really good as you can start with a very small budget. So you can start with five dollars a day and then as you see results, you can then multiply the budget by the result you want. For example, if you spend 20 dollars and you make one sale, then tomorrow if you want two sales you can spend 40 dollars.

Amy:   love it because I, I didn't realise until I got into the whole world of online marketing, like probably a couple of years ago, I also did a Facebook ads course. And then obviously, I needed you because I couldn't be bothered implementing everything that I learned in the course because it's actually quite complicated. I used to think that boosting posts was the same as Facebook ads. I guess they are related but I didn't realise that there was this whole extra part, like the business manager side of Facebook where you can actually create ad sets and-

Lukas:  Again, I'm very glad you said that. So I think where a lot of people fall short is, particularly with Facebook advertising is that example. So they boost a post. And-

Amy:   And I did it. I think I did it with like 50 or 100 bucks.

Lukas:  Yeah.

Amy:   And I just got all these weirdos clicking on my post.

Lukas:  And then you just sit back and realise it doesn't work and… where's all the sales coming from?

Amy:  Nothing.

Lukas:  Yeah. And so what you need to do, I guess is, why it's more than just knowing how to set up an ad. You need to add in the marketing principles and your strategy. So if you boost a post, One, I usually never recommend it at all because you do waste money. And two, at the very least, you need to make sure the post you boost is very detailed on the marketing message you want to convey. And it has very clear actions for people to take. So, for example, if you boost a post on something around bookkeeping but you haven't linked them to website, you haven't asked them to become a lead or inquire or anything like that, then nothing's really going to happen.

Amy:  Yeah, that's right. It's funny because you might post something on your Facebook page and then Facebook says to you, hey, your post is doing 90% better than your other posts. Maybe you want to pay some money to make it do better. And so, I think we were talking about, obviously it's probably quite common for people to point their ads to their home page on their website.

Lukas:    Yes. That's the only good one. So just quickly I will go back because what you said about the boosting posts is technically Facebook is, right. So what they say, and I do talk about this a lot in my own marketing and education that I do in my business is, what Facebook says is your post can reach more people. And I guess traditionally, advertising is just about interrupting people and putting your marketing or advertising in front of them. Technically, you boosted that post and it did do what they say, in terms of it did get in front of people. But it's not actually action based and it hasn't incentivize anyone to actually do anything with that ad. So traditionally, what you want to do is create an ad based on the outcome you want to achieve.

Amy:  Yeah. I love it. So years ago when I, because I thought I'd love to understand how Facebook ads work and I remember I paid like, I think I paid about a thousand US dollars for a course, and then I think I paid about another 600 US dollars for a private mentoring session with the person who ran the course. And I ended up, I went through the lessons, maybe I went through half of them, but I just remember thinking like, I just don't like to me to get started to do it on my own was just going to seem like so much work. One of the things that I learned about in that course was about how they teach you how to set up ad sets and then test them on small budgets like you said, five dollars.

Lukas: Yeah.

Amy:  So did you want to say a little bit about the testing period and stuff like that? Because obviously people might think, you just boost a post or you just pop a random thing up there and people are just going to flood into your business.

Lukas:  Yes. That is an assumption that is often made.

Amy:  Yeah.

Lukas:  And so actually on that point, I do have my own Facebook ads course. And I think what you said is what I focus on a lot in it, is where I teach you obviously how to set up your ads and test them. But what I teach you in there is about marketing and advertising funnels. And so what you find today is a lot of ads, if you're just trying to do an ad directly to a sale or directly to an inquiry and you're sending it to people who have never seen your business before, they've never seen your brand and don't know anything about you, typically that ad is going to fall short.

Lukas: What ad funnels do is it actually creates a funnel where you're taking people through the customer journey, what we spoke about earlier. So if you do an ad, for example, you're going to send them to a landing page and that landing page can then convey all the information someone needs to know to actually become a lead. So if we put that into context, let's say you're a bookkeeper. Surprise. Surprise. Yeah. Run an ad, you want to send people from the ad to a website page. But on that page you need to think about, what does someone need to know to actually inquire about my services?

Lukas:  And this could be firstly, they need to know what you offer. They need to know, are you good at what you do? Where you could share testimonials, you can share case studies. And then on the back of that you can also show how those case studies, testimonials relate to them and what outcome will they get from your service. So once you actually put in all the pieces that someone needs to know before they can take action and become a lead, you actually get really great cost per leads from that rather than trying to go straight from an ad to a sale where you're missing a lot of pieces along the way.

Amy:  Yes, exactly. Exactly. Because the goal is to get the cost per, so you pay per click, so the goal is to get the click right, the click costs down as low as possible. Is that right?

Lukas:   Yes. Per se. Really what you're looking at is the overall result. So for us, let's say we're trying to run ads to get new clients into the business. So essentially, what we do is look at how much it costs us to get that sale at the end. If it costs 100 dollars for that sale, we can then go back and then look at how much it costs per click and try and reduce that over time.

Amy: Yeah, yeah. That's great. Obviously, when you're a bookkeeper and you're running a bookkeeping business, the great thing about sales, so unlike your online food business that you had before where you're having to constantly resell and re-promote things, with a bookkeeping business, you only make the sale once and then you get the recurring income every single month for the life of the client, which for some bookkeepers, that client might be with you for a year. They could be with you for five years. Although, if you're like most businesses, most businesses tend to stay with their bookkeepers for a really long time. Like a lot of bookkeepers I know would have clients that have been with them for 10 or more years. So I guess, the value, I mean, often, I actually think about this when I'm working on the Savvy side of things, because obviously when I'm working in a consulting business and I'm selling courses and mentoring and that kind of thing, it's products where I'm selling the same things over and over again.

Amy:   I always think to myself, you bookkeepers really think about how lucky you are in terms of making sales because once you make a sale, it's regular ongoing income and it's actually like, it's quite an easy way. Once you get the hang of the sales and marketing side of things, bookkeeping's actually really good way to make money.

Lukas:               Yeah, that's right. And I think if you keep that in context as you're saying is if you secure a client, and let's say they say for 12 months, and let's say, what's an average cost per month?

Amy:  Let's say a small client comes in, they might be a 300 dollar a month job, which is like 3,600 for a year.

Lukas:   Yep. So you could potentially make 3,600 dollars from one client. So if you acquired them through Facebook ads, for example, for 50 dollars, that return is quite significant.

Amy:  That's huge. Yeah.

Lukas:  And so I think some people get caught up in, oh, but it costs two dollars per click. That's a little bit high. But if you actually look at the lifetime value and the revenue you actually make per client, you might even say, well, if I'm going to make 3,600, I'm willing to go all the way up to a thousand dollars to acquire them.

Amy:    Yeah, that's right.

Lukas:  Not that you'd have to pay that, but that's an example. Yeah.

Amy:  That's right. Yeah. So it's actually quite funny because a lot of the work that I do with bookkeepers is helping them to figure out their niche and their target market. And so it's quite funny. I remember when I first started, I created this form where all my clients fill out this form before they have their first meeting with me. And so I do it before I do their website or before I do mentoring. And it's quite funny when I'm doing a website, I always ask them, who's your target market? Then I gave check boxes of all the different options. And it will be quite funny, the results that I would get would be, so my target market is Australian based small businesses earning anywhere from 50,000 dollars a year to a million a year. Business owners are age between 25 and 65 years of age, male or female, it doesn't matter. And I used to think, so basically everybody.

Lukas:   Everyone and anyone.

Amy:  Anyone and everybody. And it's really funny once I actually start digging into that, because I normally say, well, a lot of people go, oh, I don't want to have a target market because I like to have variety. And so the point that I've been driving home to the people in the bookkeeping project is that, you don't have to limit yourself to a specific industry or even an income level. But I try and get them to also think about the type of people that they like to work with and where are those people going to be and what type of message is going to appeal to them because that's really important.

Amy:  But in terms of a target market, I've actually had a bookkeeper come to me before and say that she wanted me to do her marketing, but she refused to do any work to work out her target market. And I'm like, well, how do you think we target people? Even if you don't want to niche yourself, limit yourself, you still have to know, for example, if you're going to do a Facebook ad, you have to know who to target because you've got a target some.

Lukas: That's right. So when you think, that's a really good point, Amy. So I guess if we go just to the marketing advertising side, what happens if you go broad? Let's say I want to do a Facebook ad and I'll target anyone from 18 to 65, lives in Australia and that has a business. What happens is the actual ad itself, the message, the image, the cold action, the headline has to be very, very, very generic. Because you can't target all those people unless you're generic. And so what happens is you're going to, one, fall into the sea of competition and become blend because people will obviously gravitate towards the ad that's right for them. And so, one, you're dismissing everyone by doing that. And two, it's really hard to decide on, let's say an image because do you put an image of a woman 35? Then that puts off all the men for example. And so you need to niche down your market-

Amy:  Or it just attracts men, depending on-

Lukas:  Yeah. That's a very good point. When you do, particularly you're marketing and even if you broaden it out to marketing message, it really needs to be niche because it attracts people into your business unless you're connecting personally with them. So if you, for example, even on your website, if you say we're a bookkeeping service that services anyone that owns a business from 50,000 dollars to 1,000,000 dollars, then the person that's earning 250,000 will think, well, they're not really for me. And person that's earning 500,000 will think, well, they're not really for me. But if they go to the website that says, we service online businesses who earn 50,000 to 250,000, then you really going to attract the right people into that business.

Amy:  Yeah, that's right. And I guess there's ways of saying that you work with people of a certain income level without actually saying the income amount. So through, I guess, through the type of language that you use, the type of messaging that you use or for example, a really classic example would be, if you want to work with sole trader tradies for example, you would use a certain type of language, you'd speak in everyday language, use bookkeeping jargon. You might talk in the same, I've seen a lady, actually there's a lady who I spoke to a little while ago and she's done a great job branding herself to the hospitality industry. And so what she's done is through her website, she's got, her price list is a menu and she's-

Lukas:  That's really cool.

Amy:  Yeah. She's given her business a really cool name. I won't say who it is because she might not appreciate that. But yes, obviously she's done a fantastic job in using the cooking chef language through the website.

Lukas:  That's Perfect.

Amy:    Yeah.

Lukas: And you can imagine now. When someone who is in that industry looking for her, they go to that website and go, this is perfect, this is exactly-

Amy:   This person understands me. They know what they're doing.

Lukas:  That's right. And then especially if they've come from maybe three, four, five other websites, they're very generic, you can't really tell if it is going to be right for you or not. And then you get to this side and it's like, wow, this is perfect.

Amy:  That's right. Exactly. Exactly. One of the things that got me into website designing for bookkeepers in the first place was just to see, when I was building my own website years ago, I started googling other bookkeepers websites and I just found the websites were very generic. Every website says, we take care of the bookkeeping so that you can take care of business. Like that's pretty much the value proposition of every bookkeeper's site. And then all it would be like, these are my registration logos and these are my qualifications. I found that the websites were very focused on the bookkeeper. And so that was what motivated me to get into this in the first place. I think a lot of bookkeepers now are starting to really take this on board and I've seen a lot more people starting to develop their websites more tailored to their target market.

Amy:                And there's a lot of stuff that ends up on a bookkeeper's website all over the home page and everything. It's really should just be a paragraph on the about page because what you're really wanting to do is you're wanting this person when they come on your website, you don't need to tell them how great you are. But you need to be able to show them that you understand, that you care about that type of business and then show them very clearly, concisely, a lot of bookkeepers websites, they've been in the past very wordy, way too much, like a huge big wall of text and all that kind of thing. So I've been really encouraging those that I work with to really trim that down and get to the point, make it really clear.

Lukas:   I like that. Because if you put yourself in your potential customer's shoes, you've got to imagine that, say they do a Google search, they might be literally thousands of websites. So it's already overwhelming. And if they get to a website that is just about the business and you're not sure how it connects to you, you're going to move on. But if you get to a website that says, this is the problem you have. You go, yes. That's the problem I have. This is how we solve it for you. Awesome. And this is the value or benefit you're going to get from us solving it for you. And then you really got to get some good conversions from doing that.

Amy:   Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. That's really good. I've really enjoyed this process of going through and helping bookkeepers to develop their … Get clear about their marketing message and basically what Lukas just mentioned, that is exactly what we do. We held the bookkeepers look at the problems that they solve and the solutions, and I mentioned this in probably like every single podcast ever since I started, but whenever I ask a bookkeeper, list the top five problems that you solve for their clients, they always list the solutions. Only one person has ever listed the actual problems. And it's quite funny. It's just like a natural thing that when you say, what problems are the client's having? Then they start to list, we do bookkeeping, we do payroll, we do all this stuff. And so helping them to get really in touch with what they actually, the real benefit that they're giving to the clients.

Lukas:   Yeah, I think I had first Aha moment with this exact thing is when I had my health food company. Even with my master's in business, I just thought I knew what I was doing. So I guess my first thought was, well, the problem I solve is we give really healthy delicious food to people. But that wasn't it at all. What we did was we gave busy corporate people back their time.

Amy:   Yeah. So different.

Lukas:  That's what we solved. So what happens was most of our clients were actually working in the city. Fitness was a big part of their life, but they didn't have time, by the time they got home it's seven o'clock and they wanted to go and work out. It's 8:30, they didn't have the time to cook and prepare these great meals. So what we actually did was give them back their time through those healthy meals. So, that was how you can think about it a little bit differently.

Amy:   Yeah, that's great. It's really good. So I've got a couple more questions before we finish up. So one person has said, I've been running Google ad words for quite a while and I've been getting three percent click through rate, but nobody's getting in contact with me. What do I do?

Lukas:   Yeah. This is actually a really good question and I'm glad someone asked this because this is probably one of the most common questions that I answer with my coaching clients. Where they come to me and they say, Lukas, I'm getting all these people click on my ad, but I'm not seeing any results. So either people aren't inquiring or they're not buying the product or taking up the service. And so what, I'm going to have to explain first of them is it's not the ad. So if you're getting a good click through rate, which means the amount of people who see your ad and click on it is high. It means your ad is actually doing exactly what's designed to do.

Amy:  That's working.

Lukas:  Designed to attract people to take action. And so it's not actually the ad itself. What it is, is where you're sending people. For example, a very common mistake that can be made is people create this great ad, a lot of people clicking on it, but you're sending them to your homepage.

Amy:   Homepage, yeah.

Lukas:  And what happens is if I'm a potential customer and I get to your homepage, I'm very confused on what action I need to take. Is this service right? Or is this service right or do I click here? Where's do I get the contact page? What am I actually doing here? And so it's really important that what I try and do with my clients is we create dedicated landing pages, which simply means a website page that is just designed for that one ad. So what happens is it's a very smooth journey when someone clicks on the ad and they get the information that they need knowing that they might have never seen your business before that know nothing about you, you can really articulate what you do, how you help them to benefit that you give to them. And then you can ask for one clear action at the end.

Amy:   That's perfect. That's actually great because that's anyone who's listening, who's thinking, oh, I've actually loved to do ads, but maybe they're a little bit scared to niche into one area. I guess this gives you the ability to niche into more than one if you want to because you could build a strong landing page.

Lukas:   Yeah, that's right. So if you're doing Facebook ads, you could do one ad for, let's say small business owners earning 200,000 and they could have their own page. You could do another ad that's for businesses only a million dollars. But the page you send them to is going to be very different in their language. The benefit give them and how he helped them.

Amy:   Exactly. Yeah. Because I have a few clients who I have worked with, with websites and they say, oh, I want to work with start ups but I want to work with established businesses. So we just build the page and it says click here. If you're an established business, click here. If you're a start up. And it sends them to a tailored page, and speaking in the language of someone with established business, you're going to speak to them very differently to someone who has no idea what they're doing. They're just starting out.

Lukas:    That's fine. And they potentially even have very different problems.

Amy:   Very different problems.

Lukas: Yes, you might give the same service, but the problem they might have with 10 staff doing their bookkeeping, it's very different to someone who is just themselves and they just want someone to take over that bookkeeping. So the problems are different. Service is the same, but the problem is different. So you want to speak to them differently.

Amy:  Yeah, that's right. And it really just comes back down to knowing your target market and understanding the message, the marketing message. And also you mentioned much earlier, but I'll bring it back up again, about having a clear action to take.

Lukas: Yes, that's right. So I think one of the most important things with your marketing is you have to give very clear actions you want people to take. This starts even in the ad itself. So if you do a Facebook ad for example, at the end you want it even say, click on the button below to go to the website. Or click the button below to buy this product or whatever action it is. So you need to be very specific and outline exactly what you want people to do. And then if you look at someone clicks on the ad, if they go to your website page, on that page you really just want to have one clear action.

Amy:   Yes. This is probably one of the best things I've ever learned from you. This has changed the way that, even the way that I design websites for my clients because you want to have, it's so clear like, this person lands on the page, where do you want them to go? And to have that one goal for that one page to have a goal.

Lukas:  That's right. And I think even sometimes, another common problem I see is even on your website pages is, the experience for people is they start at the top, they scroll all the way to the bottom and then that's where you want them to take action. And so sometimes what you might find is if you go back and look at your website is, if you scroll to the bottom of the page, there's no actual button or action to take.

Amy:  There's no way to go. It's like, I'm at the end.

Lukas:   They're like, do I scroll back up to, do I look at the menu, where do I go from here? I don't know. But I think even what I've done with you, Amy, is on your landing pages, we've taken off the menu. There's no menu, there's no navigation. The only thing you can do on that page is give your details. You can't click out of the page. You can't look at anything else. You can only give you details or literally leave.

Amy:  Yes, that's right. So for those of you who are in the bookkeeping project, I already shared, I shared that landing page with you last week. So you'll be able to see that the page that Lukas has helped me to develop off the bookkeeping. And so yeah, that's really been such a huge shift for me to realise because what I used to do is, I used to think, give people as many options as possible. So I'd have like 10, maybe 10 different places for them to go. I'd have a link here, I'd have a link here, and a button there and a blog post here. It was just all over the place. And now I'm looking at my some of my other pages on the Savvy site now, and I'm thinking, oh, my goodness. I just-

Lukas: People will get confused. They're not sure what to do.

Amy:   They don't know what to do. So they'll just, maybe they'll click on something randomly and then they'll forget what they're doing. And they don't-

Lukas: That's right. Even in marketing, there's a, I guess principle, if you like, on consumer psychology where you don't want to give people more than three options. Whether it's to buy a product or options on your homepage. If you have more than three people find it really hard to choose the best option, and typically they'll just leave. They'll just go.

Amy:    Exactly. And if you've got a business owner who is already overwhelmed, like maybe they're up late, they're doing their accounts and they're like, oh, I can't do this anymore, I'm getting a bookkeeper. And they Google the bookkeeper and then they just get confused.

Lukas:  This is too hard.

Amy:    We want to eliminate the confusion.

Lukas:   That's right. And then if you add in the fact that if they googled you, there's probably a thousand other websites. If yours is too hard, they're going to leave and go look at your competitor.

Amy:  Yes. That's right. Do you think the way the website actually looks plays an impact in this? Or do you think, because I know with the whole Russell Brunson click funnels thing is like, they reckon that the ugly pages convert better. But do you have an opinion about like how the page actually looks?

Lukas:  Yeah, I do. For me, it's not necessarily how the page looks. In terms of it's not being the coolest design or ugliest, what it is, is how you present the information and what the information is. And what I mean by that is, if someone gets to your website, is it very easy to actually read the text for one? A lot of people just start writing these big long paragraphs. People look at it and sees too hard.

Amy:   Well, that's right. And a lot of people are on mobile or when they're doing these things.

Lukas:  Yes. So it's on mobile.

Amy:   That's right. We design all of our sites on mobile first, because what happens is once you jumped to the mobile or something that looks like a brief paragraph is actually like a whole screen full of text.

Lukas: That's right. And so I want to say, do even one swipe through that paragraph, they're going to leave, it's going to be too hard. So the first thing I'd say is definitely making sure everything is very easy to consume and read. And the second one is the information. The information has to be part of the customer journey, that we spoke about where you're not going, this is my business, this is what I do. I'm awesome. This is your problem, this is how we solve it. This is what you're going to get back from our solving it for you, as a quick example. And so if you speak to someone, you understand them, you understand their problem and you can help them, then they're definitely going to convert higher. It's not going to matter if it's the most beautiful looking website or the ugliest or anything really. If you have those two fundamental parts, you're going to get a high conversion rate.

Amy:   Yes, that's right. Yeah, that's right. I guess just to clarify for those, and I did talk a little bit about conversion rates in the last Webinar in the last podcast, but just so you know, so when Lukas says conversion rate, what he's talking about is, conversion is basically when someone reaches a goal. So the goal might be people that click on an ad, people that go from the ad to fill out a form. So filling out the form could be the conversion measurement. And then obviously we talked a little bit before about the sales conversion, which is once they've met with you, how many people saw the proposal and then pay you. So, that's really good. But the really good, and so I've just got one last question. And it was really just someone was asking about click funnels. So I think what they're asking is, do you need click funnels or some fancy software?

Lukas:  The program?

Amy:    Yeah.

Lukas:   No, you definitely don't. So again, if you really just stripped back, the only thing click funnels is, one, it's a funnel that you do need. Do you need click funnels? No.

Amy:  No. That's right.

Lukas:    Really the principles behind it is what you need. So what they do is they create a landing page. So you do need that. If you create your own landing page and then you're sending your potential customer to the next step, which is the same as the click funnel. If you send them to the next step. And then obviously the sales inquiry stage, you to get the same conversions if you like. The program is really just there to make it-

Amy:    Simplify it or-

Lukas:               Probably is make it easier. So you just go, I'll just take this funnel and I'll change it to-

Amy:                Maybe fake funnel for dummies. No offense to anyone who uses click funnels.

Lukas:   Yeah. You just change the text and the images. I do the exact same process with my clients and with my own businesses where I create a funnel, but it's literally just a page on my own website. But they go through the same journey they would if it was a click program.

Amy:  That's right. And I just, I love designing, I just love building landing pages just directly on the website because it's so much more flexible. I tried click funnels a few years ago and I just ended up getting frustrated with it.

Lukas: It can be so disconnected at times.

Amy:   It's more about understanding the funnel behind the click funnel. Understanding the concept of what's actually happening there behind the scenes.

Lukas: Yeah.

Amy:  That's great. Yeah, that's great, Lukas, thank you so much. It's just like, I don't know, I find this topic so interesting. So I guess our listeners are probably, for some of you, you're probably thinking this is like brand new to me. I've never heard any of this. And then obviously we've got some people … Obviously, I've had people ask me about click funnels and conversion rates. So we do have listeners in our audience who are already quite savvy with this type of thing, which is really good. I guess we've got the whole spectrum of people right there. So, yeah. I guess what I've been thinking is that we could run a little online workshop for people.

Lukas:  Yeah. It's a good idea.

Amy:   Yeah. I don't know how you feel about that, but I think what we could do is get together, maybe our listeners want to jump on to, like one hour online session with us and we can actually help them to craft that marketing message. Help them to be able to- 

Lukas:   I'm definitely up for that. I think it'd be very helpful to be honest.

Amy:  Yeah, that's right. A lot of the bookkeepers that I do work with, they do struggle with, like I don't know what to say. So obviously the first side of it is working out, I don't know who specifically I want to target in my ads or who I specifically want to work with. But I think really, putting together that message might be something that you might be able to, I guess, the two of us putting our skills together would help them.

Lukas:  I like that. And that's exactly why you need to start.

Amy:  Great. Great. Okay. Well, yeah, so for those of you who are listening, if you're thinking, I'd love a little bit of help from Amy and Lukas on this topic, I'll put a link in the comments and you can jump on. We're going to … We'll just run, it will be very casual. It'll be over Zoom and you'll be able to jump on. So what we'll do is we'll actually work you through a set process where we'll be able to help you to draw out that message. You can ask absolutely any questions of us that you want. Anything else you can think of, Lukas, that could include for them?

Lukas:   I think it's really important to craft the right message because your ads are really going to fall short if you don't really nail this. So I think for me is really identifying that target market and creating that marketing message that is really going to attract your ideal client. Because as we touched on, what you say in that actual text of your ad is really going to attract or repel people.

Amy:    Yeah. That's right. And there's some people you want to repel, isn't there?

Lukas:  Yeah, absolutely is. I mean, I run a service based business and there's definitely people I want to repel from that business. And I do, do that in my marketing. So when I do my ads, I make sure that some of the language and things I say does actually repel those people.

Amy:    Yeah. That's great. Yeah. I think that will be really good for those are that are at that beginning stage of working out, what do I actually say? And the good thing about it is that once you've crafted that marketing message, it's not like you just have to use it for Facebook ads or Google ads. You can use that through any of your marketing messages. So whether you did flyers, or whether you send emails to accountants, or whether you just put the copy on your website, basically-

Lukas: And emails.

Amy:    Emails, exactly. That message. Once you've got really clear about that message, you'll be able to use that across all of your marketing. And then once you've got that in your database of resources, you can draw on it at any time. That's what I love about. Once you've created these messages, you can copy, paste, tweak it a little bit. You got it there so you're not always having to do that ground work again.

Lukas:  Also, Amy, I'm just thinking if there's people listening to this podcast or maybe a little bit more advanced, and we've spoken about a lot of, I guess marketing funnels, maybe is there something we could do for those people who want to implement a marketing funnel or something like that?

Amy:   Yeah. Yeah. I think there definitely are listeners who are into this stuff because obviously the questions that were coming through were actually more advanced questions, which surprise me in a way. But yeah, we could definitely do something. Maybe we could help them set up a marketing funnel.

Lukas:   Yeah, I like that. That's good.

Amy:   Yeah. Great. So if you're, I guess if you're at the other end of the scale, maybe you've already figured out your marketing message and you're at the point where you're thinking, I just need to set up my marketing funnel and get it done. Then Lukas and I would be happy to run a workshop on that to help you to set that up as well. So be a similar scenario, a group session where you can come and ask questions. Maybe you've already half built a funnel, we can give you some advice on how to finish the funnel. Maybe you're already running ads to that page. We can help you optimise what's happening on the page and help you to figure out some of those things.

Lukas: That's right. I think it'd be perfect. Like the question we had earlier around if you are running any ads or SEO where you're getting people go to your website per se, but no one's actually opting in or becoming a lead or inquiring. I think this will be perfect for you.

Amy:   Yeah, that's great. That's great. Obviously, if there's anyone who's like, okay, I've already tried all this, I don't have time for this stuff. Obviously, we can set it up for you. I'll put some links in the comments, in the show notes and you'll be able to … Just get in touch with me and Lukas, we're happy to help you whatever level that you're at. Anyway, thank you Lucas for coming along. It's been very interesting listening to your expertise and hearing everything about Facebook ads and Google and how it all works.

Lukas: Thanks, Amy. I really appreciate again, you having me on the podcast and hopefully I did provide some good insight and knowledge around online marketing.

Amy:   Yes, you definitely did. I'm pretty sure, probably the listeners are maybe in a little bit of information overload, like there's so much good information there. The good thing is our podcast have a transcript and we also do a nice little summary for everybody, so we'll put it all into our blog post so you can remind yourself and go through there if you need to collect any of those tips that Lukas gave away. So, thank you again, and thank you all for listening as well. Thank you for tuning in. Hope you have a great weekend and I'll see you next Friday.