Spicy Takes on Digital Marketing, with Jason Wojo

[00:00:00] Tim: What happens when your digital marketing stops working? Most people will blame the algorithm, or they'll decide the thing they need to do is just spend more money on ads.

[00:00:08] My guest for today's episode takes a much harsher view. He argues that more often than not, the ads themselves are not the problem. The ad spend is simply exposing that the underlying offer behind the ads is weak.

[00:00:22] What's up, creators? Today, I think we're gonna have to grab the fire extinguisher because I'm sitting down with Jason Wojo, the person behind Wojo Media. Jason has built his business around paid advertising, sales funnels, and lead generation and conversion. And as you'll see in today's conversation, he has a very direct style. Some of his takes are a little spicy.

[00:00:41] Now, I don't agree with every way that Jason frames his ideas, but I think it's important to have conversations with people who bring a different perspective to the table. We don't have to agree with every thought or conclusion that they have to learn something useful. In fact, sometimes listening to people who have a different viewpoint can help challenge us to think more critically about our own offers, messaging, systems, and assumptions.

[00:01:06] In this episode, Jason and I have a really good conversation about the trust problem in online marketing, why ads can't save a weak offer, the role of low-ticket products and webinars, and how paid traffic and organic content can fit together as part of a long-term business strategy.

[00:01:24] So whether you're working on your first or next product offer, creating a new digital marketing campaign, or if you're simply curious about a different perspective on digital marketing, I think there's a lot of useful ideas here to consider. So with that, let's get into it.

[00:01:42] Tim: Jason, welcome to the show. 

[00:01:44] Jason: What's up, Tim? Thanks for having me. 

[00:01:45] Tim: I'm excited to talk to you about digital marketing today, and I just wanted to start with how did you get started in digital marketing ?

[00:01:52] Jason: Yeah, so the way I started was pitching local businesses when I was living in New York. I did like seven-day free trials. And that was back when, like, doing free trials was, like, a huge thing. I did that with barbershops, local restaurants, local brick-and-mortar, and then I built a small client base. Then I moved to Orlando and, basically started doing like more like brands and people virtually, not just like in person.

[00:02:13] And then that's when I started really building the agency out and trying to find like what offers were the best. But I alway- I, I just started with local brick-and-mortar. That's the fastest way anybody who's running an agency, if they wanna hit like 10K a month pretty quick, if you just did like cold call, going to people in person, barbershops are low-hanging fruit.

[00:02:28] I would stay away from restaurants 'cause the margins are low. But I would do like painting companies, roofing, solar, cabinet coating, interior design firms, architecture firms, stuff like that that's like they'll pay 500 bucks a month to 1,000 bucks a month for like social media management.

[00:02:43] Tim: Right. 

[00:02:43] Jason: So like that was the easiest low-hanging fruit for me, and then I just, you know, got cash. Saved it 'cause I was still living at home, and then basically just moved out and then took that money and started running ads for myself and getting clients. 

[00:02:54] Tim: Amazing. Yeah, assuming that, you know, you can scale up and you can, continue getting those clients.

[00:03:00] But, it- one of the things that, has happened these days is, you know, trust has gone down in- 

[00:03:05] Jason: Mm-hmm ... 

[00:03:05] Tim: So what has the trust recession done to your industry right now? 

[00:03:10] Jason: It's actually affected it a lot. A lot of these like small coaches who coach coaches how to coach coaches, they have basically faded out. And the whole trust factor is based on people being burned too many times 'cause Here's the thing. Okay, this is the blunt, honest answer, is that most people don't run a real business, so then they buy things from people who tell them how to run a real business, and then their business is still, you know, it's still crap, and then they don't get the results they want, and then now they're like, "Oh, the online coaching and consulting space is trash."

[00:03:40] Tim: Right. 

[00:03:41] Jason: If you look at the stats, Tim, 89% of businesses fail within five years, okay? Yeah. And then of those businesses, the 11%, only 2.5% of them make a million dollars a year or more. And out of the people who make a million dollars a year or more, 61% break even or lose money. So now we have people who have an 11% chance of basically surviving, using the surviving funds to try to make the million dollars a year for only less than half of them to actually keep any money that they make.

[00:04:06] Tim: Right. 

[00:04:07] Jason: And that's why the, the, the trust recession just, like, was a rubber band willing-- it was just bound to snap. So, you know, now it's like people have bought so many programs and masterminds and consulting offers to where everybody is really just selling the same thing, just repackaged. Right. That's really what it is.

[00:04:22] So it's like, "Hey, run ads." Okay, cool. Your ads are not converting. Well, is it because the offer? No, it's 'cause the ads. No, it's actually 'cause your offer and your team and your systems and your overall establishment- Yeah ... is trash. But they don't wanna say that because if I go in an ad, Tim, and I'm like, "Hey, we'll run your ads," okay, that's sexier.

[00:04:41] But if I go in an ad and I'm like, "Hey, let's go through, like, your systems and processes and, like, your employee maturity models and look at your leadership and see who your CFO is and CMO and look at your, like, senior managers and directors, like let me evaluate them, 'cause that's really your bottlenecks.

[00:04:55] Who's your sales manager?" No one's gonna click on my ad because it's boring. 

[00:04:58] Tim: Right. 

[00:04:59] Jason: They just think that the problem is lead generation and how do I make more money fast without having much friction, and that's where the world has went to, which has built the trust recession, 'cause everyone now is just fiending for more money without, you know, as much work or stability or foundation.

[00:05:12] Tim: Yeah, you see that a lot in, content right now, like advice being repackaged. Mm-hmm. A lot of it's the same, but, And, and the other thing you said about people trying different masterminds, skipping from one system- Yes ... to another, and I always say, like, a lot of systems could work, but you have to put the work into that system and-

[00:05:30] Jason: really- And most people don't. They just, they just want the plug and play, and it's funny you bring up the whole- Mm-hmm ... content thing, okay? Free content was only really made-- So this is gonna be very controversial to say, but free content was made for poor people, okay? And I'll explain why in a second. Free content on your feed was made so that all the people who have nothing going on that are poor can watch it and hike up your views, and that's just the way it was.

[00:05:52] Right? You look at guys like Hormozi who post a bunch of free content, not a lot of their followers are highly established business owners. 

[00:05:59] Tim: Right. 

[00:06:00] Jason: Look at the book launch. They sold two and a half million books to a bunch of people who won't even read the book anyway. Same thing with content.

[00:06:07] It's like, "Hey, we're just gonna feed you with free content that we know you won't implement because you're poor." So now we have poor people fueling the content to get more engagement to get to more poor people, and only a small smidgen percentage of them are actually gonna implement and then buy something high ticket on the back end.

[00:06:22] Right. And that's the way... Like, we know that if I post a 13-minute YouTube video, no one's really gonna get to 13 minutes, not a lot of people. 

[00:06:29] Tim: Mm-hmm. 

[00:06:30] Jason: But the people who do get to 13 minutes who don't wanna implement it are like, "Hey, dude, just do it for me instead." Right. It's easier that way. So, like, you know, free, free content was just made to keep poor people poor because they know they can't implement it, then they hop on a sales call and they can't afford the 15, $25,000 package.

[00:06:48] So now they stay in the free content wheel. So it's like that's really how that whole thing came apart. And now because the free content isn't helping them take action 'cause we're in a trust recession, now it's harder for them to go on the phone and spend that kind of money because financing's harder to get.

[00:07:03] Interest rates are ridiculous. People don't even manage their money that well. If you looked at Black Friday, 96% of what people bought was all financed. Credit cards, Affirm, Klarna, all that, people don't have as much money as you think they do. So now we're at the mercy of people's trust and them trying to not make a buck off you and being integrity-based, which is harder.

[00:07:22] Tim: So brings up, uh, an interesting follow-up here, so what is the role of a low-ticket funnel then in, in that system? 

[00:07:30] Jason: The role of it is to build rapport and build brand and build trust. If I sell something for 27 bucks to somebody, I better over-deliver on the 27 bucks so that- ... people then can sit there and go, "Okay, this $27 product really was worth 500 bucks. I like this person." Yeah. "I will then message them and see if they have something higher ticket that I can buy." And also it's there to self-liquidate ad spend. Because as the trust recession climbs, the cost per customer goes up, so we have to be able to liquidate that ad spend on the front end so that we're, our, our CAC stays-

[00:07:58] relatively low. So like that's the whole game about that. Low ticket is harder to sell now because the cost of ads have risen. 

[00:08:06] Tim: Right. 

[00:08:06] Jason: So now, like that's why we transition a lot to webinars and having like good longer VSLs that build more rapport and trust and credibility, so that we can get better clients, and better clients turns to better referrals, and better referrals turns into better affiliate partners, and all these things walk up the ladder, and that's why it was a lot easier for us.

[00:08:24] Tim: I've really noticed, it's probably affecting low-ticket sales, but even when it comes to freebies, I'm a lot more reluctant to give out my email now because- once you've been through so many of them, you realize, a lot of them are the same. A lot of them are not particularly good value. I know it was free, but still it costs you the time to go through it, and then it extends to the low-ticket part of the, ladder there, if you will. You're more reluctant to spend that 27 bucks 'cause you've done it before and hasn't, hasn't over-delivered.

[00:08:51] So how would you structure the low-ticket funnel to make it successful in this, this environment?

[00:08:56] Jason: The way that I would do it now is I would only run it to retargeting. I would not run cold traffic to it. I would send all the people who are dropping off my booked call funnels and webinar funnels and retarget them all to low ticket, because if they- Didn't take action on something that was a free booked call, now I gotta get them to get a little bit of skin in the game, which would be the low ticket.

[00:09:14] Right. So I would just retarget on the low ticket. You can run cold traffic for it, but you gotta, you gotta have a good AOV. If your AOV is too low on cold- 

[00:09:20] Tim: Hmm ... 

[00:09:20] Jason: you're gonna run into this churn basically with ad spend in hopes that they upgrade to high ticket. So if you're, if you're breaking even on the front end on cold traffic on low ticket, I'd be spending so much money it wouldn't even be funny.

[00:09:31] But if you can't do that on the front end and your AOV is not great, now you have to get them to obviously go to high ticket quicker. So the sales cycle's gotta be shorter. 

[00:09:39] Tim: Right. 

[00:09:39] Jason: Which means that your low ticket has to be overvalued and overwhelming for the prospect to buy high ticket quicker. 

[00:09:45] Tim: You mentioned webinars, and I'm interested in that 'cause I'm reluctant to often to sign on to a webinar.

[00:09:50] It's a big commitment often. Sometimes it's like 30 minutes, an hour, if you don't know the person well. 

[00:09:56] Jason: Mm-hmm. 

[00:09:57] Tim: Is it, it must be harder to sell the webinar in a way, but is that a better way of pre-qualifying the leads? 

[00:10:04] Jason: So what we're seeing with the webinar right now is that it's out-beating all the other funnels that we have.

[00:10:08] That's why we have a whole done-for-you webinar offer around that. The webinar is basically, this is the pitch. If you go online and see a 30-second ad, and then you click on it, go through an application, book a call, you're somewhat qualified. 

[00:10:19] Tim: Yeah. 

[00:10:20] Jason: But if you listen to me live for an hour, that is 60 minutes- Right

[00:10:24] of you listening to me. You see people in the room who might be testimonials. You see live clients coming in. You're getting their, their buying questions answered. That's a better quality lead than a 30-second ad, click to app to book call. Sure. Now I'm going click to opt-in to basically days out, then you show up, and then you stay for an hour.

[00:10:41] That is a better quality lead, and it only took me one hour of my time, not 40 hours of calls the whole week. 

[00:10:47] Tim: Yeah. 

[00:10:47] Jason: And that's how we're beating the trust recession, to say, "Listen, I'm not gonna try to pressure sell you in a, in a 30-minute call. Let's get you on a one-hour webinar. See my ecosystem, see the brand, see the credibility, see the story, see me in person live."

[00:10:59] Now you're gonna sit there at the end and say, "Okay, cool. Like, now I trust this person. They spoke. They answered my buying questions- Mm-hmm ... my big objections. Now I can actually go to the next piece of this, which is a book a call." Now I'm definitely gonna show up to that because I stared you in the face the whole hour.

[00:11:12] It's way easier that way. 

[00:11:13] Tim: True. How, how are you getting people to sign on for the webinars and show up? 

[00:11:17] Jason: It's ads. All ads. I mean, when we have clients who have organic bolt-ons, then yeah, we're gonna use your email list, we're gonna bolt on Instagram stories, CTAs, and then push you through, or you have a Facebook group, school group, whatever, push them through.

[00:11:29] But 90% of it's mostly cold traffic. 

[00:11:32] Tim: How do you create something that would be a high converting, I guess, landing page for the webinar? Let's say it's a webinar. 

[00:11:38] Jason: So most of the webinars that we've ran, it really comes down to the results-driven promise of what makes the high converting opt-in page.

[00:11:44] Okay. So, like, all the ones that have result-driven promises and timelines do better. The webinars that talk about, like vague crap like, "Here's how to..." Like, we, we had a client who was doing this whole, like, "Here's how to get into your chakras and get more mindset and motivation." Like, no one cares about that.

[00:12:00] Right. We, we just wanna make more money, like just straight blunt. All the ones that talk about how you can add X amount of money per month and make X amount of money per month in X amount of days, those do the best because they're mostly B2C or they're B2B- Right ... that could be a little bit broader than just one niche.

[00:12:15] Tim: Okay? Right. 

[00:12:16] Jason: So like, you know, if I said on, on a webinar opt-in page, I'm like, "Hey, here's how to build a one-hour webinar that lets you sell one to many." Okay, cool. But what if I said- here's how coaches, consultant, service pros are selling more money one hour live per week than they do the whole month"?

[00:12:34] Tim: Right 

[00:12:35] Jason: It's a better headline Start selling the result- Or- Right? Yeah. You gotta sell the result. Yeah. No one cares about the fictitious piece. We just care about getting a result. 

[00:12:42] Tim: Universally, I see, like, with content creation, it's often like, quit your nine to five, right? That, that's the result- Mm-hmm

[00:12:48] they're selling. 

[00:12:49] Jason: Yes. 

[00:12:51] Tim: Understanding that is definitely key. Then ha- then I guess building in the credibility that you can actually do it, you know- Mm-hmm ... social proof. And I think this is where some of the, people, as you say, they're starting out in business, that- that's the gap that's missing a lot of times.

[00:13:05] You can have an amazing result you're selling. You can have, you know, a landing page that's well optimized to sell that, except if you don't have the credibility to actually sell it. 

[00:13:14] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:13:15] Tim: Is that where you'd say, like, you kinda have to almost go with more of that in-person cold call approach, build that first, then make the transition to digital marketing as a scaling strategy?

[00:13:27] Jason: I like cold outreach. I would just rather people really get down the really good offer. If you have a really good offer, you don't have to worry about selling that much, to be honest. Like, you could give a really amazing- offer with good fulfillment to a crappy salesperson and still make money.

[00:13:39] Tim: Mm-hmm. 

[00:13:40] Jason: But if you have, if you have a decent offer, you gotta have a better salesperson, because the- Right. Right ... decent offer has decent competition, 'cause other people can do it for probably better. So if your offer and results driven promise are actually fulfillable upon, you're gonna have a better business, 'cause you could sell it like it's night and day.

[00:13:57] Tim: So what's, some tips about, like, that initial outreach? Let's say we're selling, we're, we're selling a product, we've got emails going out, and we wanna, you know, improve our, we wanna improve our open rates, we wanna improve our- or uptake 

[00:14:11] Jason: I mean, the biggest thing with, email is gonna be your segmentation and your domain authority.

[00:14:16] So like, if you are running email marketing and your subject lines are not getting high open rates, your bodies aren't getting high click-throughs, now Google's gonna look at your domain and say, "Hey, your authority's low. We're gonna keep putting your stuff in a promotions tab or spam." 

[00:14:30] Tim: Hmm. 

[00:14:31] Jason: So email's not always about high open rates.

[00:14:33] You're only looking for high open rates when you're looking to see how good your domain authority is, 'cause if your domain- Right ... authority's trash, you're going to spam, which is then now other people are missing on the emails, right? Mm-hmm. And then also with email, it's all about segmentation. If you are not walking through segmentation and managing that, then your deliverability's gonna be off and you're gonna be emailing the wrong people the wrong offer at the wrong time.

[00:14:51] Tim: Right. That's a, that's a g- another great point. It's, it's, credibility, but also, like, the, the target market, right? Knowing exactly the ideal customer and targeting the ad or the landing page right at them. Do you think that this system, can it work for physical products as well as services, like the, ads, the landing page, the...

[00:15:09] Is, is it essentially the same approach? 

[00:15:11] Jason: Yeah, same approach, just really comes down to the messaging and the offer. Like, if I have an e-com store, you don't need to have the craziest landing page. You could use regular product pages from Shopify. But i- if you look at it this way, if your offer's not that great, you have to use a longer form sales page to convert people.

[00:15:25] But if your offer's good, you could run them to a crappy page and it will work. 

[00:15:29] Tim: Right. 

[00:15:29] Jason: So, like, that's the way that it is. It's like, hey, if it's a simpler offer, faster action people on the buying behavior side, then it's easier without a full custom lander. You don't need that.

[00:15:38] Tim: So what advice would you give to people who are, early stage creators trying to get into the business and build up, their ability to scale? 

[00:15:48] Jason: I mean, biggest thing I'd say is your organic and brand needs to be aligned with your offer.

[00:15:52] A lot of people have a good brand, but their thing does not align with their offers, and they're selling too many things, and they're scatter brand. You gotta sell one thing to one audience, then from there you'll find your bolt-ons of other offers you can sell, 

[00:16:04] Tim: right? 

[00:16:05] Jason: Also, if you want proof of concept, if your offer and funnel can't run on at least $1,000 a day, odds are, it's a trash offer.

[00:16:12] It's not scaleable. So you could spend money, 100 bucks a day, 200 bucks a day, your offer looks great. But if you're not spending 1,000 bucks a day and it's, and it's crumpling, it means it's not scalable. 

[00:16:21] Tim: Hmm. 

[00:16:22] Jason: You wanna have that four figure per day ad spend to have- the scalability behind it, so that you know that your cost per leads are fairly consistent.

[00:16:29] Your CPA shouldn't be rising that much. It should be staying consistent. So it's like that's where you start to see the elasticity, in like your ad costs. 

[00:16:35] Tim: Then I guess that's where the work comes in, right? Like constantly iterating the offer, testing,

[00:16:40] Jason: Yeah. And that's where you start seeing e- e- elasticity for sure. Like if you're, if you're spending a thousand bucks a day and your cost per acquisition literally doubles, that's not good. It means that the size of the audience and the urgency behind their buying action is just not, it's just not a blue ocean enough.

[00:16:55] You wanna be a blue ocean. You don't wanna be a pond. The only way that I would wanna be a pond is if I'm doing like PE or like acquisition. You know, like- Yeah ... that's where if I have a small pond of agencies that I want to acquire that have 50 plus team members, that's a freaking, that's a puddle. I mean, like I would wanna go into that knowing that my CAC is gonna be freaking high, but the wins will be massive lifetime value.

[00:17:14] So it's like I wanna go into a blue ocean. 

[00:17:16] Tim: All right. Well, Jason, who is your ideal customer and how could they get in touch with you if they want to work with you? 

[00:17:23] Jason: Our ICP is coaches, consultants, service providers, and then course and info sellers. Those are like our four buckets that we do the best in.

[00:17:31] Okay. As far as how they can reach out to us, they have two choices. They can go to Instagram @thejasonwojo, or they can just go to wojoadvertising.com and they can, you know, check out our done-for-you webinar offer. That's like our hottest flagship offer right now. 

[00:17:42] Tim: Well, thank you, Jason. I really appreciate your time today.

[00:17:44] Jason: Yeah, of course, man. Appreciate it.

[00:17:45] So as I was saying in my introduction, even though I might not frame the ideas the same way, I think there's a couple of important points coming out of my conversation with Jason Wojo.

[00:17:54] And the first is that when an ad is not working, the ad itself may not be the problem. Paid ads will put your offer in front of a bunch of people who have never heard of you before and are not invested in what you're doing at all. And that will expose gaps very quickly. It's not like getting a 5% conversion rate with 100 of your closest followers. Maybe the offer just isn't clear enough, compelling enough, or differentiated enough from all the other ones out there. Maybe the landing page positioning, pricing, or customer experience still needs work.

[00:18:27] Jason is not wrong about any of this, and I think this is where a lot of creators can get stuck. When it feels like things are not working, it's easy to wanna jump to the next platform, product, course, or shiny object. But sometimes the better move is to stick with what you're already doing, figure out what's broken, and fix it.

[00:18:47] Now I'm gonna switch that up and say oftentimes the thing to do is to keep going, because many times we'll underestimate how hard it's actually going to be, and so when we run into barriers, we tend to change too soon, and that limits our growth. That limits our ability to really move the business forward. And yeah, I've done this myself. That's why I'm telling you this based on experience.

[00:19:11] Second takeaway is about free versus paid learning resources, and I definitely wouldn't say that free content is mainly for poor people. There's a lot of free content out there that can entertain us, introduce us to new ideas, help us discover new people whose work resonates with us, and give us a starting point when we're just still figuring things out.

[00:19:31] But I also do think there's a point where piecing together random pieces of advice from different creators all over the place and trying to create a coherent strategy out of that becomes counterproductive. In fact, sometimes the thing we need to do is invest with someone who has a coherent system, who has more experience than us, and then just give ourselves time to, you know, learn and apply that system consistently over a period of time before we go chasing the next one. And I mean, you can still add stuff, but maybe just not right away.

[00:20:04] And I've got lots of real examples where this has worked for me. Dan Thomas's Social Boom Club helped me to reach my first thousand followers on Instagram. Lyndon Chastain's Amplify Elite Club helped me to make meaningful progress on my YouTube channel. And Shimmy Morris's Design Hub helped me to improve my print-on-demand designs a lot more than casually consuming free content.

[00:20:28] Now, it doesn't mean that every paid program is worth the money. It doesn't mean you should stop learning from free content, and it definitely doesn't mean that there's one universal system that works for everyone. However, it does mean that when you find a creator or mentor or program whose approach fits your goals, stage of business, and the kind of work that you wanna build, it can be worth going deeper instead of continually starting over.

[00:20:53] So this is the question I'll leave you with. Are you giving your current strategy or offer enough time to improve, or are you just switching too soon when things become difficult? I know it's a tough question, and it's one I have to ask myself sometimes, too.

[00:21:07] Thanks to Jason Wojno for joining today's episode, and thank you for listening. I really appreciate it. If you found it helpful, hit follow or subscribe wherever you're listening, and we'll see you in the next one.