Have you ever tried to run paid ads for your agency, only to generate the lowest quality of leads you’ve ever seen, or worse, lose all your ad spend without getting even one booked call?
We book over 600 calls per week for our agency with paid ads. Yes, some are bad, some are okay, some are good, and some are even a few Fortune 500 clients.
So, today, I am going to show you three things:
Why most people never get a single client with paid ads
Why a few people book hundreds of calls per month
The five step process you need to book calls for your business
To start, let’s go over an example of an actual client of mine who runs a pay-per-lead agency in a specific home services niche
When this client first started working with me, they were doing about 7 or 8 calls per week through paid ads. Not a beginner, but certainly not enough calls to build a real sales team and scale up their business.
Their real problem is their messaging. The messaging is what determines the success or failure of ads in 2025 and beyond. It is no longer about the editing, or the targeting, or anything else. All that matters is the messaging.
The problem that my client had is the same problem that pretty much everyone who fails (or succeeds a little) with paid ads has.
Messaging.
Specifically, a few key points:
They don’t have one big idea or piece of propaganda that all of their campaigns were built around
They don’t have the type of offer that actually appeals to the level of client they are trying to attract
They don’t use the same type of language that their ideal client uses
They don’t research the things that their ideal clients like and don’t like
They don’t incorporate enough pain based problems, outcomes and circumstances into the ads
This process simply cannot be ignored if you actually want your ads to work.
My Client’s Situation
I think most people instinctively know that they need to write good ad copy that resonates with their clients but I always see a few key problems that completely tank the performance of the campaigns, and this client suffered from all three:
They don’t speak to the “right” level of the target market. They are going for big businesses (let’s say over $1 million per year) but all of their language, messaging, offers, etc. is essentially targeting low level businesses in the same overall niche. This is usually 100% by accident.
They don’t use the same language that their target market uses. With this, people suffer from the same problem is they do in problem #1. They technically say stuff that targets their target market, but they speak to lower level problems and use lower level language than what they need to resonate with the type of clients they want to attract.
They don’t center their ads around the type of problems, outcomes and circumstances that higher level clients have. Many of the topics their ads are centered around are for low level home service owner-operators who are still working in their business. Not the bigger companies that can actually buy substantial lead volume from them.
We made some key changes about messaging that completely changed the overall ad strategy from one that is low-level to one that is high-level.
Let’s take a look at four of their main ad campaigns before:
Stop relying only on referrals
Stop waiting for the phone to ring
Stop losing customers to the business down the street
Stop having big ups and downs in your business
These are not terrible by any means. They are ads that I would consider better than most. However, if you look at them, do you see that they are kind of low-level and more tailored to a lower revenue business?
For example:
Do big businesses who can buy a lot of leads from them really only rely on referrals? I don’t think so
Are big businesses really just sitting there waiting for the phone to ring? Seems unlikely, or they wouldn’t be big businesses
Are big businesses really just “losing customers to other businesses” like that? No. They are probably the leader in the markets they serve
Do big businesses really have “big ups and downs” or are they methodically planning their marketing budget, sales force, and lead generation quarter by quarter?
When you view it like this, it is easy to see what I mean.
The solution was easy enough. We just needed to change the messaging to appeal to bigger businesses in the same niche.
I will tell you the details of how you can do this for yourself later, but here are some of the ads we came up with together:
Are you struggling to keep your sales team calendars full?
Are you looking to diversify your lead sources?
Are you planning to shop your business to private equity in the next 24 months and looking for more lead flow?
We help roofing companies over $1 million on a pay per appointment basis. Across all our clients, we charge an average of $105 per appointment, 7.2% conversion, leading to a customer acquisition cost of $1,458 with an average job size of $8,215.
Do you see the difference between these ad angles and the previous?
For example:
If a business is struggling to keep their sales team calendars full, it implies that they have a sales team. Only bigger businesses with higher revenue have sales teams
If a business is looking to diversify their lead sources, it implies they have other lead sources and are big enough to where diversifying lead sources is a problem that they are looking to solve
If a business is looking to sell to private equity at all, it implies they are bigger
If a business even knows or keeps track of metrics, it implies they are bigger and more sophisticated
These ad angles are infinitely superior to the other ones in terms of how well they speak to the level of client they want to acquire.
It is not surprising that those 7-8 low quality calls per week turned into 20-30 significantly higher quality calls per week.
So, how do you replicate this for your own business? There are six key exercises that you should do. These are all one-time things and will be the foundation of your paid ad campaigns for the rest of your business life.
Exercise #1: Determining your ICP in one-line
For this exercise, ICP means “ideal customer profile.” This is basically a general description of your average/ideal client.
You need to be able to explain your ICP in a single line. For example, mine is male agency owners between 25-35 years old doing between $500k and $5 million per year. It needs to be that simple. I strongly advise you to do this based on your average client. Of course, no one is stopping female agency owners from working with me, and no one is stopping agency owners 18-24 years old or agency owners 36-65 years old either. They are free to join, and they do. However, that is not my ICP or average client.
It is best if you can do this based on actual data in addition to your own personal experience. Your ICP should represent about 80% of your clients. There will be 10% on either extreme.
Without doing this step, you cannot hope to succeed.
Exercise #2: Determining your big idea or “propaganda”
Every single piece of your marketing and especially your paid ads need to be centered around one big idea. For example, my big idea is that “every problem in your business can be tied back to you not generating enough leads.” Once you have this big idea (which needs to actually be true and relatable. You shouldn’t just make up random stuff), everything becomes tied back to that.
It is often best to write down 5-10 different options. When you do this, there will always be one that “jumps off the page” at you and that becomes your big idea.
Essentially, you will have a different angle for your ad. That angle will be tied back to your big idea. Your offer will solve that big idea. That is the structure of every single ad going forward and your entire marketing system in general.
Exercise #3: Determining the language your ICP uses
One of the most powerful and most important things you need to be able to do is use the same language your ICP uses, and do describe their problems using the same language they do.
This is so important because the mere fact that you are describing problems they face in the way they describe it is a subtle form of social proof that signifies you have done it before. In my opinion, this is more powerful than all of the case studies, reviews and probably fake testimonials combined.
A good example in the Ecommerce industry is that high level ecommerce players do not talk about things like ROAS like low level players do. They talk about Contribution Margin and Incrementality. Every industry has their version of this.
Using the correct language indicates you’ve been there before and it will resonate much better with higher level clients.
Exercise #4: Determining what the ICP likes and what they don’t like
You need to use call recordings, as well as do research with sites like Trustpilot to find what people in your niche like and don’t like. This is very important because you can make ad angles for both. For example, I have been an auto insurance affiliate marketer for about 9 years. I used to be small to mid-sized and now I am one of the biggest in the world. When I was small, all of my ads were based around “get a better price on your auto insurance” which is not a ridiculous or absurd ad angle. It is logical. Who wouldn’t want to pay less, right?
However, I eventually did “actual research” instead of randomly guessing and making things up and when I scraped the Trustpilot Reviews of all of the big insurance companies, I quickly found that “price” or “paying too much” was not even in the top 15 mentions of things people liked or disliked.
The top ones were all around getting screwed, lowballing claims, taking forever to payout, and so on.
Once i changed my ad angles to be based around these, I went from a small-timer to a big-timer almost overnight as it unlocked huge CPL gains and huge amounts of new ad spend.
Exercise #5: Determine problems, circumstances and outcomes.
This is an exercise that I stole recently from Jeremy Haynes. There used to be only five exercises but now there are six.
Simply put, you want to think of 25 different problems, circumstances and outcomes that your ICP faces. The best way to do this is with call recordings, Manus, Reddit and Quora. You need to identify problems they face in their own words, and these problems need to be relevant/specific to the level of customer you are trying to get.
For example, my ICP is agency owners between $500k and $5 million per year. These problems, circumstances and outcomes need to be things that agencies in that revenue range face. I would never make an ad angle around "getting your first client” or “how to start an agency.” That would not make any sense as my product is not designed for those customers, and the people doing $500k+ per year would never click on those ads as they do not resonate with them.
Exercise #6: Write four new ad scripts first thing in the morning
Do this every single day of the week, and then film batches of 28 ads once per week. The daily practice of doing this will make your ad copy a lot better. Make sure that every single ad you write is better than the previous. That is how you get better. Every time you finish up and ad, it should be obvious how it is better than the previous one. If it is not, you have not made enough progress.
I do not like to use AI to write ads, but I love to use AI for feedback on the ads I have written myself.
Create a Claude Project for this, upload popular copywriting books, and ask for feedback based on the greatest copywriters of all time
So, how are all of these things going to make you more money?
Well, for those of you who are running ads, it should be obvious. These six exercises are the key difference maker that separates the agencies who get clients from ads and those who don’t.
You need to understand who your target market is, and write ads that resonate with them, and only them.
If you can do so, you will never be poor again.
If you would like my help, book a call with Lead Generation Academy and I will tell you if you qualify.