EP 485: When a Facebook Ad Problem Is Really a Sales Problem

Show Notes:

🎯 Why a Facebook or Instagram ad problem may actually be a sales or process problem
⚠️ How slow response times can waste legitimate leads
🪝 Why the first reply should work like a strong ad hook
🤖 Phil’s warning about using AI that sounds canned, irrelevant, or inhuman
📞 Why one unanswered call, email, or message does not prove a lead is uninterested
🔁 How a reasonable follow-up process can keep good leads from being overlooked
🗂️ Why every lead should be tracked from first contact through qualification, booking, attendance, and purchase
💬 How lead conversations can reveal what needs to change in your messaging or process
🔍 Why advertisers should examine salespeople, systems, offers, emails, and follow-up before blaming the ads
📊 How documenting lead outcomes can help identify where the real breakdown is happening
🧠 Phil’s take on using data instead of guesses to improve the lead and sales process
✅ Reminder: every business is unique, results vary, and there are no guaranteed outcomes

Transcript Disclaimer

This transcript was generated automatically using AI transcription tools and may include errors, omissions, or wording that differs from what was intended. I have not reviewed every word, and no part of this transcript should be interpreted as an income claim, success guarantee, or promise of results of any kind. The information is for educational purposes only.

Transcript:

Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Next Level Facebook Ads Podcast with Phil Graham. We help you master Facebook ads and give you an unfair advantage over your competition. Are you ready? Let’s go.
Speaker 2:
What’s up, everybody? Welcome to the Next Level Facebook Ads Podcast, episode 485. I’m Phil Graham.
Today, we’re going to talk about when a Facebook or Instagram ad problem might actually be a sales problem and not an ad problem. You know, Facebook and Instagram ads can generate a lead that’s really legitimate, maybe lots of them, but obviously they can’t just automatically force anyone on your sales team, whether that’s you or whether it’s AI or something automated or emails or you have people regardless. They can’t automatically force someone on your sales team to interact with that lead quickly, or even if it’s quick, even properly or effectively, and it can’t force them to follow up consistently or even have a good conversation that could turn into something good.
So you might be running ads that are doing well on the ad side, and it’s not working overall, so you blame the ads. But however, it might be something on the other side of those ads. And again, it could be salespeople.
It could be your internal systems. It could be your offer. It could be your emails.
It could be an AI agent you have running. It could be a conversation agent on your site. There’s so many things that it could be, but you don’t want to automatically just judge the ad because the ad might be crushing it.
That might not be the problem. So we’re going to talk about that today. But before we do, if you guys need any help with your ads or with your AI, whether that’s one-on-one coaching and consulting, which I think is the best way in the world to learn stuff, especially since it’s specific to you and your situation. So whether you need something like that, or maybe you want somebody to just do it for you for either one of those things, just go to my website, PhilGrahamdigital.com, or you can DM me on Instagram at PhilGrahamdigital.
We’ll set up a short Zoom call and I would love to connect with you. So I want to jump right in and keep this episode short, sweet, full of value and very actionable. And let’s talk about the first key of the ad. And the ad really only controls part of the process. Typically, you’re not doing the selling in the ad. You’re getting awareness, you’re creating interest, and maybe even positioning and pre-selling. But besides that, beyond that, the ad doesn’t control your response time to a lead or a potential customer or a question or the quality of the communication that you have, like I’ve said in the intro or the follow-up. So a great ad, the perfect ad, the best ad in the world typically cannot compensate for a broken sales process forever. Here’s some things that are really important. The response time really matters, especially if it’s like a lead, but even if it’s not a lead, response time is important. But let’s talk about leads. How long does it take before you or someone on your team contacts a new lead because it should be really fast. If it’s not fast, then there’s a problem. Is it minutes? I hope so. Maybe hours, but if it’s days, that is a big problem. It could be a bad lead and there’s other ways to identify that and try and fix it. But I’ve seen situations plenty of times where it was a good lead or a great lead and a legitimate lead, but they lost interest either because it took too long to get to them or the quality of what was sent to them in terms of, you know, whether digitally or a person talking to them was really bad. So response time matters. It’s so important. I cannot emphasize that enough.
Secondly, you got to really look at your first response because just like in an ad, whatever your ad angle is and whatever your thumbnail might be, if it’s a video or your image, that is something where they scan that briefly and they make a split second judgment on whether to stop the scroll and pay attention. Well, a similar situation happens when you contact a lead and respond to them, whether it’s an email or a messenger message or a call or something else. What they say, what you say makes a big difference. You know, there’s so many times, you know, I’ll look and kind of analyze this and critique this for people and whether it’s clients or potential clients, and we’ll look at it and they’ll be like, Hey, how can I help you? You know? And it’s like, well, you already know how, because they got to be a lead based off a certain angle in an ad. So that’s not necessarily the best way you want to start off on a call or an email. So you really look at that first response and think of it like a hook, just like you would in an ad. What is that hook? And again, this applies to whether it’s somebody talking to them on Zoom or the phone or an email or anything else, a messenger, et cetera. Also, I hope it’s a human, but there are situations where you can have AI do some of this. And if you do, you got to be so careful because if it doesn’t sound human or if it doesn’t sound relevant, or if it’s just too canned, you’re probably just going to lose people. And then you just wasted your money. Like you might think you’re saving money because AI is doing it, but no, you’re wasting money. You spent money on an ad, created a great lead and then ruined it, screwed it by using something that wasn’t good to interact with the lead. And you might as well just not even run an ad if you’re going to do that.
So if it is AI, you better make it amazing. And if you can, it’s better to have a human do that. You could have a human use AI to make their job quicker and easier and better, but just be careful because that first response is a hook that’s going to set the stage and the tone.
And don’t always blame the lead. Sometimes it might be you or your salesperson or your system or your AI. You really got to look at that very strongly.
Another thing that can make a big difference is multiple contacts. Like I’ll talk to people that get leads and then they’ll call them or they’ll send them an email or a messenger, et cetera. and they never got a response and they just do it once. Well, somebody not responding once does not really tell you anything because number one, they might just be busy. Number two, they might not have even seen it. It might have went to spam. You just have no idea. So you need to have a reasonable follow-up process that is not stalking. You don’t want to, you know, message them 5,000 times, but you know, you might want to message them a few times, two, three, four times over the course of a week, making sure that they see it, that you get a hold of them. So don’t just do one contact and stop if they don’t reply and think they’re not interested. But at the same time, don’t go overboard on the other end either and do like 50 contacts until they answer you or block you or something.
Don’t go crazy on that end either. And then you also want to be tracking what happens to every single lead. So much like you could and should be tracking with ads, with every single ad and ad angle, what happens? Is it good? Is it bad? You know, what worked, what didn’t? With every lead, you want to track whether they were reached, whether they were qualified or not, whether they booked a call, if you’re doing calls, whether they showed up, whether they purchased what they said, you want to document all that because that information is gold and that can help show you more of what to do and more of what not to do. And really that can make a huge difference.
So make sure you’re tracking that stuff. And then you’re creating a strategy around what you find when it comes to what the leads are doing and not doing. And then lastly, the thing that I would say is you need to really know what those leads are saying, especially the leads that are legitimate.
So whether you have somebody talking to them on the phone or on Zoom, or maybe you’re, you know, using messenger or email, doesn’t matter. However you’re communicating with them, you want to track what people are saying. Because much like Facebook ad comments that we talked about last week, what they’re saying is so important.
And that can help you not only in like what you might put it in an ad in the future, but also help you with what you might say to the next lead. Because maybe you’re saying something in a way that is not as effective as possible, whether it’s in print, you know, on email or whatever, or in person. So make sure you’re paying attention and not just paying attention, documenting what people And then you use that and you have a process for rebuilding your ads when that needs to happen, or even rebuilding your lead system. Because remember, you could have great ads that generate potential customers and clients, and the real problem might be what’s on the other side of the ads. And so you document what you find and then change your lead process or your sales process based off of that data, not based off of just guessing. And then maybe all that is locked in and there is an ad problem, and then you can fix that if that’s the case. So this stuff is really important. Most advertisers do not focus on it enough. Make sure that you do. And as always, just a reminder, it’s always important to point out that every business is unique. Results can vary.
There’s no guaranteed outcomes. So always keep that in mind. And my friends, episode 485 is in the books. Next week, we’ve got a great show. We’re going to talk about why many times your Facebook and Instagram ads don’t necessarily need more variations and more ads. They might need more ideas. So make sure you check that out. Until then, I hope you have a great week. PhilGrahamDigital.com
Speaker 1:
is the website and I will talk to you on next week’s episode. Peace out. Thanks for listening to the Next Level Facebook Ads Podcast. Please remember to subscribe and share this with all your friends. For show notes, more tips, and to learn more about Phil, please visit PhilGrahamDigital.com slash podcast.