B (2:33)

What we're looking for from you, John, is some guidance as to how to increase our sales. We would like to double our business within the next couple of years.

A (2:43)

There's a ton of market and I got A ton of ideas. Paul, I'm excited to share.

B (2:47)

Your sales today are what, 2.5 million?

A (2:50)

I think this could be a double. And I think, frankly, this could be even more than a double. So let me walk you through a couple things that I'm seeing. I'm going to look at your Meta ads today and your Google Ads. Where are most of your customers coming from? Are they coming into the store or are they finding you online?

B (3:05)

We're seeing it mostly through the showroom.

A (3:07)

How do they even know the showroom exists? Are they walking by you on the street or are they finding you online?

B (3:12)

Initially, they would be finding us online or they would hear about us through the designer community or the general contracting community or the architectural community.

A (3:24)

So it sounds like referrals, trade referral, and then the other piece would be online. And they go from online to your showroom, but they start online.

B (3:34)

That's right.

A (3:34)

Okay, so with that in mind, I want to just actually take a look at what you're doing on Google and Meta. This episode is brought to you by my Playbook website selling machine, available right now@johndavids.com playbook here's the truth. Your website is either making you money or it's costing you sales every single day. And most businesses just aren't optimizing their websites as they should be. This leads to fewer meetings booked, lower average order value, and just a whole lot of people clicking away as fast as they arrived. That's revenue you're losing. You can change all that right now with the insights in my Playbook website selling machine. Grab your free copy@johndavids.com playbook so who runs your meta ads today is run

B (4:24)

by my marketing manager.

A (4:25)

And do you know anything about it? Like, I'm seeing four ads here. It looks like you've got one video and a couple image ads. Can you tell me about the strategy or what I'm looking at here on the page?

B (4:37)

So what you're looking at here, John, is a new product platform that we just launched over the last couple weeks and it's called Design Solutions. We've prepackaged these solutions for the client so it's easy for them to decide, yeah, I like it or I don't like it.

A (4:54)

So, Paul, I love the explanation you just gave and it sounds like a really useful product. The challenge is this on the page doesn't tell me anything that you just said. So I think right away the really quick thing that we could do. And I'm going to show you step by step how to do this, do a much better job telling the story. And all the differentiation, I mean, your business is piggybacking off of Ikea and there's a whole IKEA culture and there's sort of Ikea avatars and Ikea memes and Ikea personalities and IKEA visuals. And of course we have to be careful not to step on trademark or IP type stuff. But I think that right away, from a storytelling standpoint, there's a lot more that we could do over here. How does Meta do, Do you get a lot of customers that come in through these Facebook ads?

B (5:39)

Yeah, we get a fair amount of traffic through that.

A (5:41)

And do you know the actual cost per lead or cost per acquisition coming from Meta?

B (5:47)

We figure it's up around $209 per client.

A (5:51)

And then what is the average customer spending with you?

B (5:53)

The average client will be spending somewhere between four and six thousand dollars.

A (5:58)

Okay. So I mean right there, and that's revenue, not gross profit. But right there you've got a 20 to 1 return on that ad spend based on those numbers.

B (6:07)

Yeah.

A (6:08)

So let's take a look at the Google now. So you've got looks like two ads running on Google. And do you get a lot of traffic from Google?

B (6:15)

Yeah.

A (6:16)

Do you know if you make more from Google or Facebook? Any idea?

B (6:20)

We make more from Google.

A (6:21)

Okay. So my suspicion, if we looked at your ads dashboard, my suspicion is that you're getting a lot more from Google. And probably if we dug into the numbers, I would assume a lot of the people that would come in on Facebook are not coming in because the ads aren't telling the story. So what I want to do is just share something with you. The format that we find works the absolute best here is one called the story funnel. And essentially the way you want to think about it is telling a story about the avatar that you have. So the real key to really any kind of meta advertising, and when I say meta, really what I'm talking about is short form video. So whether you're on YouTube shorts or Instagram or Facebook, you want to be able to tell a story and that captures the attention of the ideal customer really quickly. And it doesn't even matter. You really shouldn't even talk about your product to begin with. You want to talk about the feeling that they have or even better, the aspiration that they have. So a lot of the time when I make content and when people see my content on Instagram or Facebook or YouTube or TikTok, they'll say, oh John, you're telling Stories about successful businesses. And what I always say is, I'm not telling stories about successful businesses. I'm telling stories about the kind of people my viewers want to be. So if you think about the aspirational view of your customer, let's describe the customer. Him or her? Who is the customer? Is it a man or a woman who buys from you?

B (7:48)

It's going to be a woman between or a female between 35 and say, 55.

A (7:55)

And why is she coming to you?

B (7:57)

She would understand that she can upgrade a cost effective solution like Swedish or like Ikea with the Swedish door product, do that in a timely fashion and be able to do that cost effectively.

A (8:11)

Okay, I get the logic, but give me the emotion. Why is she coming to you? Does she hate her kitchen? Did she just get married? Like, what's going on?

B (8:20)

I love it. Well, she, she hates her kitchen and it's time to upgrade her kitchen and she wants to be able to deliver a great solution so that she can be proud of it. And when her friends come over that they're, they're seeing that she's got a fantastic kitchen and it's, it's a great place to congregate it.

A (8:40)

Ah, Paul, you just hit it. You just hit it. When her friends come over, she wants them to know that she has a great kitchen. So there's status involved here, right?

B (8:49)

Yeah.

A (8:49)

So it's a woman, she's 35 to 55. Their status. Is she cost conscious?

B (8:54)

She's probably cost conscious because her husband's pushing her that way.

A (8:58)

Okay, so her husband's pushing her that way. I'm guessing you've had people in the showroom where the wife wants one thing and the husband maybe is pulling back.

B (9:04)

I've been selling for, since I was a kid and I pay attention to all the signals and people's personalities and it's amazing what you pick up and what you see. Yes.

A (9:17)

Yeah, I hear you. So you're selling to the woman. She wants something because she wants to live in a beautiful home and also wants to impress her friend. Her husband is cost conscious. Anything else you can pick apart there Are there certain. Let's, let's look at this. Who does she follow? Who does she like? What does she watch on Netflix?

B (9:34)

Oh, you know, she's been following all of the design shows.

A (9:38)

Is there a particular celebrity or public person that she might watch or see or look up to?

B (9:44)

Joanna Gaines, I think is one. In the U.S. you know, in Canada, there's Brian Bombler and his wife.

A (9:51)

So this is the kind of understanding of who's buying and the emotion around it that I think is really important. So let's go back here to the story funnel. The way to think about this is you are going to tell a story that the avatar is going to really feel impassioned about. So the story could be something like a short video. And we've got a picture of Joanna Gaines or a picture of a beautiful house or a picture of a before and after. And we say this house looked like this two weeks ago and now it looks like this. And guess what? It only cost $10,000. Or we show a picture of a house that maybe Joanna Gaines has designed or some avatar has designed. And we say this kitchen was totally destroyed. But the good news is we were able to bring it back to new here. And guess what? This is almost all Ikea furniture. So we're starting with a hook that brings people in and speaks to that particular avatar. But what I always like to tell people about the story funnel and what makes it so magical is that if you get the story right, you can sell them anything. You can sell anything. So once you have this avatar, once you know that it's a 35 year old woman who wants to impress her friends, her husband wants to stay on a budget, you can sell her a vacation, you can sell her a trip to Disneyland, you can sell her a new car, or you can sell her an upgraded IKEA kitchen. Does that make sense so far?

B (11:06)

Yeah, makes great sense. Can you shed a little light on your description of an avatar?

A (11:11)

Yeah, when I say avatar, another way to think about it is an icp, an ideal customer profile. Okay, so it's who exactly are we talking to? The reason I get into detail, like how old is she? I'll ask, what kind of car does she drive? How many kids does she have? You said right off the bat she wants to impress her friends, which is like a real. That's, that's the real insight. Because now that we know she wants to impress her friends and to her status is having a nice kitchen. Because to somebody else, status might be having a nice car. To somebody else status might be I'm having dinner with my kids every night. So what, what is status to her? And you said it. You nailed it on, on the head right there. It's having a beautiful k. So now we go to step two. Once we have their attention, we want to drive to something that's valuable and free. So the way to think about it, the reason it's called a story funnel is because we start with A story. And then we have to move that person into a funnel. Step two here is we want to drive to something of value because we want them to be attracted to our funnel. Do you have assets today? Do you have things that you could give people that are valuable?

B (12:13)

Right, when you say assets, you're talking about marketing assets. Are you talking about marketing assets?

A (12:19)

So one example would be we have a home design guide or here are our booklet of 10 IKEA design trends that you should know about.

B (12:30)

We do have an ebook and we do have some blogs.

A (12:35)

The way I would think about it is something that is actually valuable because people are going to make a really core decision about any business based on their free thing. I'm not going to buy your paid thing if I don't like your free thing. What I would do is I'd come up with the story. So let's say the story you're going to tell is this beautiful home that you just designed. And if you want to get a home a look, a kitchen look just like this, here is our exact blueprint to get what we just did for them. You just saw in this video. Here's the blueprint for it, or here's our 10 favorite blueprints for 2026. So that becomes your free thing. That's what you're driving to. And then, and here's the real core, and this is what makes this so dangerously powerful is you have an offer that you give to qualified leads. So what you're going to say is when they fill out that form to get that free thing, you're going to say, hey, do you own a home? Hey, are you thinking about redesigning your kitchen in the next year? Ask some questions that are qualifiers for you. What's your annual income, what's your budget, whatever that is. And if it's someone that fits the qualification, you then offer them something like a one to one design consultation. And then what you're doing effectively is moving them from total cold prospect into warm sales meeting. And you're doing that over the course of just a few seconds. And I can tell you this exact funnel and of course it has to be high quality, but this exact funnel we use with pool builders and they will literally sell $75,000 pools with Meta ads. We do it with roofers and they sell entirely new roof installations for industrial buildings with this exact type of funnel. So this is the kind of thing I'd be doing going back to what we saw a minute ago on your, on your meta. I think telling the story better when you said you wanted to go from two and a half to four or five million. I think you got a million bucks sitting on the table just with meta ads. This episode is brought to you by my one minute marketing roadmap, available@johndavids.com roadmap. In 60 seconds, you'll get a custom report showing you how people are finding your brand, where you're losing them, and how to fix it. We used a decade of data from Influicity and layered in AI to give you a real action plan.

B (14:41)

Plan.

A (14:41)

It's fast, it's free, and it might just change your business. Go to johndavis.com roadmap and get yours right now. The second thing is I would create some type of vsl, a video sales letter, because you are such a great ambassador for the brand. Have you ever recorded a video just talking about the products, the business, that sort of thing?

B (15:04)

Not really. And it's interesting that you bring that up because talking to my marketing manager last week about this, I said, you know what, I need to become a better ambassador for our product line. And I've referenced one of your podcasts where you're talking about Ryan Reynolds. But what's interesting about Ryan Reynolds, that, you know, you talk about the unfair advantage. And I'm thinking, well, if anybody's going to tell the story, it's going to be me.

A (15:33)

So the way I would think about it, a video sales letter is essentially capturing the attention of that, of that exact ideal customer. It's identifying the problem and the pain they feel right now and then moving to the solution. And here's why we developed this thing and then it's handling their objections. So why would they say this won't work? Why would they say, this is not for me and sort of smacking those down? So if I were to look at a VSL for you, let's just take the offer of we can help you build a more beautiful kitchen using Ikea and then all of our upgrades. When someone comes to you, let's say they don't have a designer, are they coming to you because they have an IKEA kitchen or because they want an IKEA kitchen? Or is it both?

B (16:21)

Two prongs. One is they may have an existing IKEA kitchen that they want to upgrade. Number two, they might be getting a new kitchen altogether.

A (16:30)

Which customer do you like better? If you could only have one of

B (16:33)

those two, the one building the new kitchen.

A (16:35)

Okay, are you looking for a new kitchen and do you actually feel embarrassed about the kitchen you have have, but the problem is. And you're going to highlight the pain points here. So kitchens are expensive. Everything has gone up in price, especially with the economy as it is today. And also, who has the time to design a kitchen from scratch? I got to hire designers, I got to hire specialists, contractors. I got to get so many quotes, I don't have time for this. I got to take my kids to soccer practice. I got to do carpool, I got to make lunches. I got to. I'm planning a trip with my girlfriends for my 40th birthday. Who has time for that? Well, that's exactly why we do this at Swedish Doors. Here's Mary. She had this kitchen. We made this, and it only cost this much money. This is Jane. This is what her kitchen looked like before. And just six weeks later, this is what it looks like now. My name is Paul. I've been doing this for this number of years. And the reason Swedish Door makes kitchens that can go on top of your IKEA is because we want to make beautiful kitchens that are retainable. So you can have a kitchen that makes your friends go, oh, my goodness, where did you get this from? Give me your designer. When they come in, they'll be so surprised by how good of a look that you have. And the quality is second to none. So it's that kind of video. And then you drive to an offer. So this video sits on a landing page. It can be four to five minutes long. It's great if you could mix in some raw testimonials as well, the people talking about how beautiful their kitchens are. And then you drive to an offer. And the offer could be something like our spring special and our fully laid out kitchen. Remodeling starts at X dollars. So it's a specific offer that you're driving to. If you think of a funnel, as you have your story, you have your landing page, you have your free thing, you have your vsl, and then you have your drive to a sales meeting. Or you could just say get your free one on one design consultation, which we only do if we know you're qualified. So we're only going to not going to waste our time unless you're qualified. That is the exact kind of funnel that you could, that you could have that I think would very, very quickly start to be your biggest driver of revenue. I think it would be Google for the strong intent, driven, and I think it would be Meta and Facebook and Instagram for all the others that you're creating this demand.

B (18:46)

So Meta and Pinterest is how you

A (18:49)

said for the vs, Meta would be Facebook and Instagram.

B (18:52)

Okay.

A (18:53)

And then Pinterest. I think you could have another strategy. Are you on Pinterest today as well?

B (18:56)

Yeah, we are.

A (18:57)

So Pinterest is really good. We use Pinterest a lot when it comes to fashion and apparel. And Pinterest is really easy to use as an ad platform. It's of course, organically it's good as an ad platform. It's very much a visual. I mean, people are going there to basically shop. So I think it's good. I think you'll have more success though on Meta.

B (19:15)

On meta. Okay, so you say you've used this type of approach with other companies, whether they're, you know, roofing companies or landscapers.

A (19:26)

Pool builders.

B (19:27)

Yeah. Do you have any examples just to give me a better idea of how to create a vsl?

A (19:33)

Yeah. So the VSL itself is actually a separate thing. The story funnel, the videos I was talking about are more the actual ads, the stories. I mean, the easiest thing to do, Paul, would be to go to my Instagram or my Facebook or my TikTok or whatever platform of your choice. Short form video platform of your choice. Those are all the kinds of stories you tell. So the way to think about it is who is my, I'll say Avatar, icp. Who is she? What is it that she aspires to? And let me tell stories about that. The really nice thing about your business is that you already have case studies. How many, how many of these kitchens of these door packages have you done in the last 12 months?

B (20:14)

Maybe 400.

A (20:15)

Okay, 400. So a lot to play with here. What I'd be doing is I'd be looking at pick your favorites and I would be telling those individual stories. Every single One of those 400 probably could be an ad. We'll write a quick one together right now. Can you give me the name of someone you sold to? Just the first name of somebody?

B (20:32)

Say Kim. Let's say Kim.

A (20:34)

And how much did Kim spend with you?

B (20:36)

Say $12,000.

A (20:37)

$12,000. And what did she get for her 12,000?

B (20:39)

She got an all walnut kitchen package, including an island with a range hood, some nice legs for island.

A (20:47)

And what would that have cost had she not gone with you? More than 12,000.

B (20:52)

Had she got that done as a custom kitchen, it would have cost her probably somewhere in the 25 to $30,000 range. Now you also have to bear in mind that she had to go and buy the Ikea cabinetry, which would have cost her probably somewhere in the four to $5,000 range got it.

A (21:09)

So she spent 17,000, let's say. All right, so I would have something I would open up on a video and I would say, this is Kim. This is her new kitchen. And get this, it only cost her 12,000 bucks. Let me tell you why. That's the hook. That's super quick hook and it's a very visual hook. You're showing the photos in rapid succession as you show that Kim's kitchen looked like this before you can see crummy countertops, old range. The breakfast nook was built in 1986, but we put these in and the base of it is actually all Ikea. And you flash the IKEA things really quick on screen as you say that and then you say, and she got walnut. This, it was island, it was a range, it was legs. And as you're saying that, you're showing the price tags and all of that, had she gotten it custom done, would have been over $25,000 easy. But she got it for barely 17,000 bucks. In fact, I can show you how to do it yourself. Click here to download our 2026 style guide. Now that's the ad. You make 400 of those, Paul. Not really, but eventually you make 400 of those. And they're all scripted and they're all the same and they're all edited and you're telling those individual stories. What we're talking about here is demand creation. I didn't know that I wanted this walnut kitchen and that I could get it for $12,000. Paul just told me I could. And now I want to know more. So that's what you're doing on Meta.

B (22:33)

Okay, yeah, I'm catching.

A (22:36)

This episode is brought to you by Influencity's new tool, the AI Ads Generator, available now at johndavids.com ads. Great ads aren't about luck. They're about leverage. The brands that win are the ones who can launch faster, test smarter, and outspend everyone else without wasting a dollar. That's exactly what the AI Ads generator gives you. Instant ad copy that speaks to every customer and feeds the algorithm high performing variations your competitors can't keep up with. It's like strapping a jet engine onto your marketing. And right now it's free. Yes, it's free. Go to johndavids.com ads that's johndavids.com Ads I'll end with this, Paul. The reason I think this would work so well for you in particular is because you said that most people are actually finding you Online. It's coming from the trade referrals which are going to keep coming in. We haven't even talked about that. There's probably a lot you could do there as well. But I think to get to the goal that you laid out at the beginning of our conversation is we want to hit four or five million dollars. If you get really good at this platform, which you're effectively not using today at all. I know you have four ads running, but you're not using it to its full capabilities. There's easily a million or 2 million bucks sitting here. Do you sell outside of Ottawa too? Can people buy from you all across the us? Yes, Paul, there's a lot more than a million bucks here. I mean you.

B (23:59)

There's no question about it.

A (24:00)

I think there is so much margin here. And you know, for everyone listening, Paul's numbers are fantastic. I mean, you've got a $200 CAC. Someone is coming in for $209 and spending upwards of. What did you say, $4,000?

B (24:14)

Yeah, 4 to 6,000.

A (24:15)

4,000 to 6,000. I mean, whatever your gross profit is on that, I'm sure it's really good. You've got lifetime values that are, that are really strong. Five to $10,000 average order value. So there's so much good stuff here and there's probably. Do you have good margin to play with? Yeah, yeah. So you've got good margin. You've got a product that is of high quality and you've got this totally untapped channel. These are high class problems you have.

B (24:42)

You need a kitchen.

A (24:43)

John, we're going to talk after this. Okay? Paul, this was awesome.

B (24:48)

John, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure meeting you. You know, you've been once again super fruitful with your, with your information.

A (24:55)

So you have it, guys. There is so much blue sky opportunity on meta ads, on Facebook, on Instagram, probably on TikTok, on YouTube, on Pinterest. Also, pick your platform, go all in. But you have to understand there is a difference in quality and getting things done right. Not just saying, I'm running ads, we're there, you can be there. But you need to be doing it really well. The difference between doing meta okay and doing it right really, really well could be millions of dollars for Paul and it could be millions of dollars for lots of you too. My name's Jon Davids. Get my best stuff to your inbox@johndavids.com. If you're spending more than $50,000 a year on marketing, I've got something for you. It's a playbook I wrote called how to Build a Social Media Selling Machine. You can grab it now for free@johndavids.com Playbook. This is the nine step formula we use for our clients at Influicity to turn their social media channels into reliable revenue engines. Grab it right now@johndavids.com Playbook.