Unlocking the Power of Targeted Campaigns

Is cold outreach really dead? Join us as we uncover the latest insights with Jason Fisico, the CEO and founder of Fizzy Media, who argues that traditional cold outreach methods are becoming increasingly ineffective. Jason takes us through his remarkable journey from offering free services to agencies to leading a media company that has generated over $100 million in revenue for clients. Discover why cold outreach is falling by the wayside due to inefficiencies and stringent spam regulations, and learn how modern technology in online advertising provides more targeted and effective solutions. 

We also dive into the intricacies of maximizing online marketing strategies, where Jason reveals the power of platforms like Facebook and Google for hyper-specific targeting. Learn how to create compelling ad campaigns that drive traffic to distraction-free landing pages and the critical role of well-crafted copy. Additionally, we explore the role of AI, including the popular ChatGPT, in marketing. While AI can streamline processes, Jason emphasizes the irreplaceable value of human oversight to ensure resonant and effective messaging. Whether you're a seasoned marketer or just starting out, this episode is packed with actionable insights to elevate your marketing game.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Elevate Media Podcast with your host, chris Anderson. In this show, chris and his guests will share their knowledge and experience on how to go from zero to successful entrepreneur. They have built their businesses from scratch and are now ready to give back to those who are just starting. Let's get ready to learn, grow and elevate our businesses. And now your host, chris Anderson.

Speaker 2: 0:24

Welcome back to another recording of the Elevate Media Podcast. I'm Chris Anderson. Today's going to be a good one. You've heard of cold outreach. You've heard of bringing cold leads in via marketing. We're going to kind of hit a switch up or a change up. Today, we're going to be talking about how cold outreach marketing is dead. We're going to be talking about how cold outreach marketing is dead. So we've got the CEO and founder of Fizzy Media, jason Fizico, on the show today. He's produced well over $100 million in revenue for his clients before starting Fizzy Media, and so since then, the team has worked with some of the biggest brands in their respective niches and we're excited to dive into how cold marketing is dead. Now, jason, welcome to the LVB podcast today. Hey, thank you. Thanks for having me. This is really awesome, absolutely, man. So, yeah, what got you into the whole marketing world? Like helping brand with their marketing.

Speaker 3: 1:22

Yeah for sure. So when I started out just like a lot of people, I started out with free work I saw this opportunity where I could work for some agencies if I just pitched them. So I pitched a couple of agencies. I found one that was willing to take me on for free. I did my 100-hour and I learned so much. It was to the point where that agency the two co-founders sat down with me after hours and they kind of like worked with me and taught me a couple things and I think they kind of just like felt bad. But I was like, oh my gosh, I'm learning so much, let's keep doing it. So I did that and then I ended up having a little career in the agency space, um, doing free, and then also did freelancing on the side. So, um, a lot of great learning opportunities, um, that have led up to where I am now.

Speaker 2: 2:18

So that's really awesome. And you know, I think that's. You know, sometimes you got to pay those dues, right? You know that's right to elevate, like you know, we were doing the free, the fee, uh structure where we would do it for free just to build a portfolio and show what we could do, and, um, you know, that's it. Yeah, yep, so I get that, that and that's cool because you do learn a lot more, because you're so much more invested and like there's so much more on the line that you're trying to take it all in and, um, you learn pretty quickly what works and what doesn't. Uh, we have to put it that way. Um, but that's cool. So you know, this perspective of cold, uh, cold outreach marketing is dead man. Where did that stem from and why do you think that's the case? It's something I do.

Speaker 3: 3:00

Uh, I say that a lot and it and it gets a lot of people to go crazy. So I just think we have all this technology in the online ad space that it almost doesn't make sense to spend too much of your time on cold outreach. Cold outreach the game is you have what they call targeted lists, which really they aren't too targeted. Then you reach out to them in volume and then you hope that a really, really small percentage actually book a call. But the thing is the thing with cold outreach whether it's DMs or it is cold email there isn't a lot of pre-framing that you can do as well, because the game is you send them to a quick landing page or you just quickly get them to a calendar. You get them the book and then, on the sales calls, either you or your sales team has to spend the first 30 to 40 minutes explaining what the offer of it is before they can get to the pitch. If they explain the offer in 20 minutes or 15 minutes, that only gives them a few minutes to decide.

Speaker 3: 4:16

Okay, this is what I think the offer is and then this is my decision on whether or not I like it, whereas on the ad side, you can hyper-target them and then you can spend a lot of time pre-framing them by sending them through an elaborate funnel that actually gives them all the messaging they need before the call.

Speaker 3: 4:37

But it also allows for you to do more complex automations and different things, where they see a lot of emails and texts long before any sort of call or anything, or if you're selling something directly from a landing page, whatever it is right. The only time I've seen cold outreach really work these days is really for very small brick and mortar, when you're trying to reach out to restaurants, for clients like B2B. Basically, you're trying to reach out to restaurants or you're trying to reach out to freelance contractors, but the results have still never compared to where ads are now, and the reality is we're seeing a decline just across the board for people who are doing cold outreach methods, because there's a huge crackdown that we're seeing on how many messages can you send out and how many times you can get put into the spam, how many times you can get put into the spam until your emails are getting banned from Gmail or Outlook, whatever it is. So there's just too many complications and at this point the results aren't there.

Speaker 2: 5:58

So your kind of perspective is kind of dangle the bait out there. Let them decide to take the the bait into the funnel and they're almost automatically warm, because they saw the thing and they took the action on it for sure, for sure.

Speaker 3: 6:16

So the big well, the biggest thing is the only way to get the kind of leads you want and, more importantly, the kind of leads you want and, more importantly, the kind of clients or customers that you want is to properly pre-frame them. Gotcha, but when you're doing cold outreach, you don't have that luxury to pre-frame them, because you're already playing such a high volume game just to get a small amount of people in Right. And so your biggest objective there is quick conversion and then forget the pre-framing. You just kind of you get them to do whatever it is and then you just hope and pray that they're the right kind of person.

Speaker 2: 6:58

Okay, so walk me through kind of what that would look like if someone were to do this right. Maybe they've got an ad in place and someone clicks on that ad. You talked about a lot of automation. You can use it for the funnel. What does that kind of look like? High level of that process of someone seeing their ad to buying or getting a call, whatever that end result is?

Speaker 3: 7:21

Yeah for sure. So there's three core processes. I say three, there's really four, but the fourth one, when I tell you it, it shouldn't even be a core process, it should just be embodied in everything you do, gotcha. So number one you have the ads. So Facebook and Google account for 70% of online advertising worldwide, right, so that's pretty important because what that means is they have the world's data, right, they have so many data points to go off of for reference. So facebook and google ads that's number one. You have that.

Speaker 3: 7:56

You can hyper target people. You can find people who are looking exactly for the kind of products or services that you were selling. Or you can, uh, you can target people who Facebook and Google have identified to interact with companies just like yours. Right, that's the game. And you can get it so hyper-specific. If you want men 30 plus who have a certain income level and are looking for a product or service, you can do that at volume.

Speaker 3: 8:23

And then number two of that is you send that traffic somewhere. You don't send it to your website, because there's so many distractions, there's so many different links, there's so many ways they can go off of the site, like if they click on your social media, whatever that is. So you don't do that. You send them to very simple landing pages where every single button leads to one call to action, if that's to book a call or to get to the next page so that they can buy a product directly off your landing page. Whatever it is, you send them to landing pages, right? Number three of that once you collect some sort of information maybe it's their name and email, or maybe even get their phone number Once you collect some information can then automate, like following up with them until they go and take a desired action, right. So this could be a one week sequence, this would be two weeks, three months a year. You, you, you can do that endlessly. And the automations, um, that we integrate for our clients, it's email and SMS, yep, right Now.

Speaker 3: 9:27

That fourth element, which really shouldn't be an element, it should be embodied in everything you do, is the copywriting. I tell people this all the time. I've seen countless people. They'll spend 10 grand, 50 grand a month or, if they have a small budget, two grand a month and they and that's like their whole marketing budget and they don't think at all about copywriting. But the thing is and you've seen this too.

Speaker 3: 9:56

So many of your competitors will have ugly websites, ugly landing pages, ugly ads, but they're going to continue to run those all year round because it works. And why does it work? They have their messaging dialed in. So the first person you should ever hire is a copywriter, and so what's embodied into Fizzy's service is we hire the best copywriters, right, and then everything else comes in place after that, right? Right? If we have the best messaging experts who know how to research your audience and write to their exact pain points, everything is going to work. Yeah, now we'll sprinkle in people who can make beautiful landing pages, sprinkle in people who know how to media buy, sprinkle in people who know how to do the automations, and then not only does it work, but it's beautiful. You know, like it's literally that simple. It's that simple and, yeah, and people love it, like we're getting great results for our clients.

Speaker 2: 11:00

So, you know, does the length of follow-up matter or is that kind of depending on the market, like, is there a good, I guess, cadence that you have found that works for following up on an average, you know?

Speaker 3: 11:49

for sure. Yeah, so, and that's a good question, because there's multiple ways to target that. But, dude, the biggest thing is that that first week, after they give their information and they're getting followed up, that is the most crucial you should be hitting them every single day, but you don't need to do that manually. So if you have a hundred people coming to your pipeline or a thousand, that's the importance of the automations it's going to do all that for you, so that first week you want to hit them every day.

Speaker 3: 12:18

After that you can hit them every two days, every three days, and then sprinkle out, and so the craziest sequences that we've ever built, you know, we're talking about like six months of follow-up, yeah, but by the time you get to like month six, you're following up every like three days, every four days, yeah, or something like that. Right, you can get as complex as you want, but I've had many clients where they have a lot of success with just that one week follow-up and then after that they do an email blast like once a week, right, that's if we're going like just minimum, complete minimums. Sure, that works wonders, you know, yeah.

Speaker 2: 12:58

So how do you do that follow-up? Well, because you can. You can come off as spammy. People get annoyed, they opt out. So how do you make it where they continue to receive those texts? I think text text, specifically sms, because I think that's the the thing that's going to be growing even more in the future. But even with email, because they get so the emails get so lost a lot of times even if you do it correctly. But how do you?

Speaker 3: 13:30

not opt it out. What is a good way to approach it, to provide value and top of mind, and all that For sure. I'd like to both, actually, because email follow-up is very important. I'd say more important, because long long term, your email is what is going to make you the most money, you know. So, email follow-up, what a lot of people do.

Speaker 3: 13:48

When they do the follow-ups, it's like hey, I saw you didn't book that call and book a call now. Hey, by the way, I I hit you up yesterday, um, you didn't book a call yet. Book a call now. Hey, were you still interested? It's like that's, that's no way to do it, right, that's, that's a quick way to burn your list before you've even built a relationship. Yeah, so the better way to do it is hey, so you showed some interest in this and I just want to tell you a quick story. Yeah, hey, you showed some interest in this and you know what I? I actually have, um, a client who was in the same position as you and this is blah, blah, blah. Or like hey, you showed some interest in this and chances are, these are your pain points and this is what we've done to overcome those pain points. And at the very bottom, it's like hey, you know what? If you want to learn more, how about you jump on a quick call? Right, yeah, if not, no worries, continue, right, yeah, it's not no worries, but continue enjoying this content. Right, it's?

Speaker 3: 14:44

It's not pushy, it's getting a lot of value, and the whole point of your follow-up should only be one one objective. It's this. It's a mindset shift, it's you're just shifting their mind. And if it takes a few months for you to do that, great, because at the end of the day, they're going to come back to you and give you all their money, right? And and of course, they're only going to do that if your service is actually good, you know, right. And then SMS is quick one-liners. It's like hey, I sent you a quick email. Hope it provides you some value. Have a great day. Okay, hey, I saw you showed some interest a few days ago. If you were still interested, I actually just sent you like a really important email. You check it out whenever you're free, no worries if you're not interested, okay, just like that. It's not pushy, but it's like it's very value focused.

Speaker 2: 15:34

Okay, that makes sense, cause you know SMS costs per, you know character or whatever, and so keeping it short, so just adding values through the whole time, is there a point where you just switch to, like you know, the kind of hard schedule call, like is there, do you do that ever? Uh, like, hey, you know, we've been talking to you for a while now, let's dive into, or whatever, or has it continued to to always be value and just kind of have that call to action at the end?

Speaker 3: 16:05

all right. So my style is always just value and that has just always worked. We get, we get the best click-through rates possible on all of our emails. You know everyone wants that golden, like five to seven percent click-through rate on their, on their emails. Yeah, where, um, after they open five to seven percent, actually click the link and go to the desired destination. Yeah, um, we, we, we max those out like crazy with that simple process. And then, of course, the only time where we're, uh, really aggressive is when, um, they've already booked a call and we're sending call reminders, because the day of they get like five reminders. You know, but we've done ab tests and time and time again, the more reminders you send them on the day of, the better your show up rates are sure, absolutely now, with that, do you schedule?

Speaker 2: 17:00

do you have them schedule like a, an actual, like a zoom call, or are you just on the phone talking, cause I have people go back and forth on what's better on these.

Speaker 3: 17:10

What has worked the best is, uh, we tell them hey, we're going to call you this time with this number that you, you gave us. Hey, we're going to call you this time at this number. Hey, uh, just finishing up a call, but we're going to call you this time at this number. Hey, just finishing up a call, but we're going to call you at this time at this number, and that's it. But if the team feels like they get better results with a video call, google meets not Zoom. No, not Zoom. Why is that so Zoom?

Speaker 3: 17:37

There are a lot of different technical difficulties that could happen, zoom. There are a lot of different technical difficulties that could happen. Well, for one, if you are reaching an audience, that is, you know they're not as tech savvy and they haven't downloaded Zoom, done any of that they have to go through the process of downloading it first. Then they click on it right, and then they have to make sure they're clicking on the right button or the right link. Google Meets. You send them that link. It is stupid easy to know what to do, you know. So it's so much better to automate Google Meets. But again, what has worked for us time and time again, and, mind you, you, I myself have generated 30 000 calls. Uh, my team has generated a whole lot more. Um and phone calls is still the best way to go in terms of conversion rates and close rates and all that's just simpler for people, even those you know.

Speaker 2: 18:36

This is all always better in my opinion, but I think, yeah, just phone calls easier because they could be wherever.

Speaker 3: 18:42

If they forgot, they could still go, sit in their car and still focus and talk to you and yeah, you don't need to be tech savvy to receive a text that says, hey, we're going to call you and then you expect the call at a certain time. You don't need to be tech savvy absolutely no, yeah, I agree on that.

Speaker 2: 18:55

So because we go back and forth and we actually give them the option to choose um phone or zoom um, and you know, it's just basically up to them on that point. But um, no I because I think that's interesting, because because even with you know everything, you know with covid in the past and having to go like a lot of people in virtual, I think also they're almost a little burned out from zoom uh now. And so I think, phone calls just again, another reason why phone calls are simpler. In that regard, how have you seen, with this, like this process you've talked us through right now automation how have you seen a shift with it? With the AI boom, with chat, gpt, what has changed for the better? What has become an issue with it? Or have you seen any of that?

Speaker 3: 19:48

Yeah for sure. So everyone is I shouldn't say everyone Most people are getting really, really lazy and almost becoming too dependent on AI, and that's ultimately where we went. Don't get me wrong we use AI ourselves, but we still always have a human touch, right? So, because if you're writing these robotic automations, that it just sounds like it's this automated message, versus a human reaching out and genuinely saying hey, you know, I'm really excited for a call. Yeah, right, like that's. That's why we win A lot of people.

Speaker 3: 20:28

They have chat GPT right out the scripts that writes out their landing pages and all of that can't um account for. Is that? It doesn't necessarily um like hit on those exact pain points that your audience is is feeling yeah, and that is the bread and butter of what makes marketing work, right? Like I said, ugly landing pages, ugly social media, ugly lads, but great messaging, and you're always going to win. They use chat GPT for their messaging. That's where they fail.

Speaker 3: 21:09

I've seen it too. Where have you ever heard of Be Human? I've heard of it. I haven't used it at all. Um, do the dual follow-up for them and then have a basic conversation with them, with the prospects and like. I feel like it's just over complication and people are focusing too much on how can I get less work, um, like on my plate and have aid more, right. But where it's going now, where a lot of people are going, is they're letting ai do too much, to the point where it's taking away from what is actually working. What works is great messaging, simplicity and a better user experience. Now, if you're overcomplicating all that with AI, then you're doomed. And I've seen people too where, because they implement all this AI, so many automations are breaking in the background that at the end of the day, it's hurting their show-up rates, it's hurting their conversion rates, it's hurting their opt-in rates. So I don't know, I feel like use AI with discretion. Yeah, simplify your process and have your user experience. Just so easy.

Speaker 2: 22:35

Yeah, and that's what you need. I think we're not at the point where ai is like better than humans. Basically, will it get there? Uh, you know, we'll see um, and that's a different story for another day. But where we are now, I think, yes, I think people are are thinking it's at that point. But um, you know, just like I think just recently they put on chat gpt on the bottom like um, things might not be accurate, maybe checked, important things like. So now they're like. And then there's, I forget, an article or something saying like it was plagiarizing or it's like giving fake. Yeah, but it did it so like confidently that people were believing it and it was, you know, fake information and it's like whoa. So there's a lot too with that going back and forth, so you have to be careful about as well for sure.

Speaker 3: 23:26

Yeah, so I mean chat gpt has its uses, right, like sure, we. We've had um, like contracts, where a lot of the different clauses, probably like 70 of the contracts, were created by, uh, chat gpt. Then we have a lawyer, go look at the the contract and the lawyer's like, yeah, this is perfect, where'd you, where'd you guys get this template? We're like oh no, we had a lot of it right. Or another use case is like um for, like you know, for ad copy, right, like on facebook ads mainly, or um, or for blog posts, right, we'll have chat gbt. Um, you know, uh, write up some, some samples. Uh, give us some ideas for openers. Uh, things like that help help expedite the research. But then we still have a world-class copywriter come through and um and then use some of that framework and then write it better, like write it better and then also use our own knowledge of the pain points of the target audience and then make it really good. It just speeds up the process, but it shouldn't replace the process that's right.

Speaker 2: 24:31

yeah, it's, it's a tool, it's not, it's not the whole process, like you said, and I think that's what we have to be careful of. And, um, it definitely has its place, but definitely something that has to be used wisely. Um, exactly, because, yeah, you, you can tell when people post. And it's crazy, man, I you know there's marketing companies that I see doing posts for their own company and you can, so you could tell the copy is just straight from chat gbt, like this how it's worded, and like what's said and stuff, and and then it's like what like one like, and so it's like I don't know that's for me that wouldn't work.

Speaker 2: 25:11

I don't want that.

Speaker 3: 25:12

Well, here's the problem, though% of people who are not marketers themselves don't know that, and that's why I go down to my most important point, which is the first and most important person that you should be hiring for your marketing efforts is a copywriter, because even if you don't have the budget for advertising or the budget for high production social media, if you have a great copywriter, you will speak to your target audience.

Speaker 3: 25:43

They will almost feel like they are being called out. When you are speaking about the problems in the industry, or talking about your solutions for the problems in the industry, they will feel called out. But if you don't have that great messaging, you can reach hundreds of thousands of people and feel like you're spending thousands of dollars in marketing and be like yeah, marketing doesn't work. I've worked with all of these different agencies, but marketing doesn't work. And here's the thing the reason why people say that and why they go through that, when they say, oh, I spent 50K on marketing, I've worked with all these agencies, it's never worked is those agencies have no regard for their messaging. They're like oh, yeah, we're the best at advertising, we're the best at building landing pages. That's great, but the lack of messaging means it will never work.

Speaker 2: 26:27

Right, yeah, messaging is huge and it's something we're even, you know, continually trying to improve and you know tweak and dial in and all that, and so it is something definitely focus on to get that down, because you've tried to speak to everybody. You speak to no one, right, at least you and I probably heard that. But how narrowed down do you, you know, get your clients to go with messaging, or how you know how, like specific Like you know, like specific, like you know, because sometimes you can get in the weeds with them, like, oh you know, I serve men with brown hair and you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 3: 27:06

So so it how we do it is. We go okay, what is your biggest package and what is the target audience for that? Typically by asking that one question what is your biggest package or what is the target audience for that? Typically by asking that one question what is your biggest package, or what is your biggest, your most expensive product it already narrows down for us, like already very hyper specific, right. Like for one audience, for one of our clients they have a consulting package, right, and it is, you know, five figures a month, really expensive, right? You're basically buying a car every month. That's how expensive it is, right. And so the only kinds of companies that can really afford that is either a seven-figure company with high profit margins or eight and nine-figure companies, right. So you're talking about the 1% of America, because a seven-figure company is already the 4%, but a seven-figure company with high profit margins, you're bringing down the percentages really really low, right. So how do we attract the 1% of America? We can't narrow it down to hair color or anything like that, specifically, because 1% is already a small amount, right? So that's what I mean.

Speaker 3: 28:25

Like we say, hey, what is your biggest package, what is your biggest product? And let's go after that, because this has been proven time and time again. Like I told you, we generate well over over 30 000 calls and we've seen what's worked the by going after your biggest products. That is by far the easiest way to be profitable in the marketing, but also to scale. Yeah, because, too, when, when you were going after a much uh, more affluent audience, you're no longer playing a game of hey, how about I give you 50% off? Or is this in your budget? Is that okay? You're no longer playing that game. You're now playing a game of here's our product, here's our service. This is how much it costs, and then it's just a matter of whether or not they like you. That's it, and so it's a much easier game. It's a lot easier to sell to a 1% audience than it is to sell to the bottom 50%.

Speaker 3: 29:33

And then also, when your marketing costs are, say, $10,000 a month and you're selling a $20,000 product, you only need one sale to be profitable. Just imagine if you have it dialed in and you're getting 10 of those sales every month. Your profit margins and your return on ad spend just looks so beautiful. And so that's the game that we play. It's like oh, you're selling this, this, that that's cool. Oh, you have a $10,000 product.

Speaker 2: 30:03

Let's sell that. You know what I mean. Yeah, a hundred percent. I think that's a good clarification because I think people starting out who are you know a lot of melissa, the show, you know, and we were there, you know get in the weeds of of that target market. Right, you know you got to have the avatar and, uh, the details and everything about that individual and for some I guess that could that works for some markets.

Speaker 2: 30:24

But, yeah, knowing kind of what your top package is and who buys it and why and what are their pain points and folks, yeah, yeah, is a crucial, huge piece to it. So, you know it's it's been awesome. Um, a lot of great information, uh that you, you know, gave to the audience from. You know the whole kind of funnel system getting into the automation process, adding values through it, through you know, the landing page, then the data collection, and give value to the audience with this. If people want to connect with you, find out more about what you do, who you are, how you can help, what's the best place for them to go, Well, first off, thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 3: 31:09

This was really fun. The best way to find more about Fizzy and our team go to FizzyMediacom that is, f-i-z-z-i Mediacom, and you'll find everything you need to know right there.

Speaker 2: 31:22

Cool, awesome. So, yeah, everyone check them out, get connected with them and, yeah, just continue to learn and get us help if it's right for you. And again, jason, thanks so much for being on the Elevate Media Podcast today. Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 1: 31:35

Thank you for listening to the Elevate Media Podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. See you in the next episode.