EPISODE 216 WITH MICHELLE KOP: UNLOCKING THE POWER OF DIGITAL MARKETING FUNNELS

Ready Yet?! Podcast Episode 215 with guest Michelle Kop: Unlocking the Power of Digital Marketing Funnels

Transcribed with Descript

Erin Marcus: All right, welcome, welcome to this episode of the Ready Yet podcast with my guest today, Michelle Kopp. And what I am really looking forward to hear, Michelle, and I mentioned this to you for a second, is your take on your subject matter, because it is something that while I have an MBA in back in marketing and a background in marketing, and I know all about alchemist language and sales, like, I know the content side of what you do.

Erin Marcus: But creating digital marketing funnels with ads and those types of conversion situations, um, makes me crazy. And I think it’s because my background is so much in more of an interpersonal version of marketing. So I can’t wait to have this conversation with you and get people some actual tactical information that they can use and then also learn more about you as a business owner.

Erin Marcus: So before we get into all that, why don’t you tell everybody a little more officially who you are and

Michelle Kop: what it is that you do? Yeah, thank you so much, Erin. So my name is Michelle Kopp. I’m the founder of Level28 Media, which is a Google ads, uh, lead generation marketing agency. I am a pay per click advertising expert and I primarily specialize in Google ads.

Michelle Kop: Um, so essentially what I do is I help my clients get placed on Google, not the organic way. That’s, that’s called SEO. Um, I help my clients get, uh, placed in the paid section of Google. So that’s called pay per click. Um, so I work with a bunch of different, um, local clients like. Uh, lawyers, dentists, doctors, um, architects and so forth.

Michelle Kop: Um, and essentially what I do is I get, try to get them as many phone calls and form submissions as possible, which are essentially just leads. Um, so I build funnels, um, and essentially, you know, write the ads. Uh, create the landing pages and then direct all of that traffic over to the landing pages to get the leads to call my clients.

Michelle Kop: So, um, just boiling it down. That’s essentially what I do, uh, from a 10, 000 foot view.

Erin Marcus: Love it. I absolutely love it. And I think, you know, one of the things I’m very much a proponent of is having a client acquisition system that has a variety of short term active. strategies, long term passive strategies, right?

Erin Marcus: We want to make sure that nobody has all their eggs in one basket. So I’m very much. In favor of having that. But that being said, I think in the thought leader market in the service based business, especially when you don’t have a geographic parameter to, you know, to your business. I watched so many people do this so poorly.

Erin Marcus: So, I would love to hear from you, like, what are the most common, you can take this from either angle, like, what are the most common mistakes? Or what is the thing, we can hit both sides of this. What is, what should you absolutely be doing, and what should you absolutely stop doing, if you’re trying to use this.

Erin Marcus: strategy tactic to grow

Michelle Kop: your business? So that’s a really great question. I’m going to start out by saying you need to have a sufficient budget. Um, I have so many, uh, people, uh, reaching out to me, potential leads wanting to work with me and they’re not funding enough and they’re wondering why they’re not seeing results.

Michelle Kop: coming from Google. Uh, they’ve been trying this for years, but they’re just not feeding Google enough funds in order to really see results. Uh, so they’re just going at it with like 10 a day, hoping that they’re going to see, you know, a million dollar ROI. Right. And then they’re, they’re thinking that, Oh, You know, maybe if I just put in pennies, then I’ll get a million dollars coming back.

Michelle Kop: That doesn’t work like

Erin Marcus: that. Well, and so let’s stop there and dive into that a little bit more, because I think there is so much truth to that. And when I’m listening to you describe it, it feels like You’re either in or you’re not in. And if you’re going to do something halfway, it seldom works for you.

Erin Marcus: Yeah,

Michelle Kop: exactly, exactly. You have to be ready for it. And to be ready, you need to have a sufficient budget. And the way that I describe it to people that approach me wanting to work with me, but they don’t have the budget, is if you’re only putting it in just barely enough, just hoping that things are gonna You know, the ball’s gonna get rolling.

Michelle Kop: It’s kind of like driving a car with barely any gas in it. You’re gonna kinda go somewhere, but you’re not gonna really, you’re, at the end of the day, you’re not gonna go anywhere. Like, it’s gonna end up, you’re gonna end up needing to fuel up. Um, so, that’s Well,

Erin Marcus: and also, the thing that I do know to be true is advertising.

Erin Marcus: Because that really is effectively an advertising situation versus you know, a more active strategy such as speaking or networking. There is amazing, amazing, huge ROI to be had. But to your point, it’s still a percentage. Right? It’s still, the math is still the math. If you have a dollar to put in, okay fine, even if you double it, that’s only two dollars.

Erin Marcus: It’s not going to be this magic bullet million percent

Michelle Kop: return on investment. No. And just like the name of your podcast, Ready Yet? You have to be ready. You have to be ready. You have to be ready.

Erin Marcus: That’s all, so what should people do to get ready? What if we backed it up a step if they’re on the verge of having the budget, what could they do to tip their scales in their favor?

Michelle Kop: Um, so, so if you’re starting to, you know, get the budget, then I would say number one is to make sure that your operations are in place. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve worked with small business owners that, you know, I’m getting them phone calls, but then the front desk person isn’t answering and that’s like the most fundamental thing, right?

Michelle Kop: Because if you’re paying for leads and you don’t have the right systems to convert those leads into paid customers or clients for you, then what’s the point? You invested all this money, but then the backend systems are broken. So please make sure that. You know, you’re going to have a, you know, a strong operations, uh, set up because what happens is when you’re running advertising, not just with pay per click advertising, any type of advertising in general is it starts to magnify the issues or the strong points in your business.

Michelle Kop: So if you have really good operations and we’re getting the leads coming in, wow, you’re, you’re going to be seeing a really great return. But if on conversely, you know, if you’re, if you don’t have strong operations, it’s just, everything’s going to go down the sink.

Erin Marcus: Absolutely. And I talk about that with a lot, like, so I do business strategy.

Erin Marcus: So we always look at all these different columns in your business, whether it’s finance, legal, team building, client fulfillment, marketing sales, whichever one, basically, whichever one isn’t up to speed becomes an anchor for your business. Exactly. And, and, yeah, like, if you’re, if you feel like you’re, that’s a great advice.

Erin Marcus: If you feel like you’re on the verge of ready to be really investing in advertising, spend the time and effort dialing in your client fulfillment in your back office so you don’t waste your money.

Michelle Kop: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Erin Marcus: Nice, nice. So, what are some of the current, like, the trends seem to change a bit in that, in that Like more quickly in the online space than offline.

Erin Marcus: What are, what are you seeing now is really what is working or is not working

Michelle Kop: either way? I think the hottest topic since around this time last year is AI with Chad GPT coming out. Um, I think There’s just so many people in this, um, in this industry. A lot of them are, are scared that AI is going to be taking over their jobs that because there’s, you know, chat GPT, Google Bard, um, and so forth, writing content and being able to being able to produce things really quickly in a matter of seconds and can essentially take ads and then put them into, into Google.

Michelle Kop: And then just like Google run it. run, run on its own. But the challenges, you know, with what I’m seeing and what, you know, where I’m, you know, with my own experimentation is with chat GPT, it still requires a human to like review the content. It’s still, it’s not ready to go. It’s going to give you ideas, but it’s not going to, you know, it’s not going to be exactly ready to, to, to take live You know, customer facing.

Michelle Kop: Um, it’s still going to require some finessing. So in terms of like the trends, I’m seeing a lot more digital marketers leverage it to their advantage. Um, and I’m also seeing Google start integrating, um, AI into their platform to where Google will say, Hey, I’ll write you the ads. So It kind of bypasses the need for, you know, an agency or a freelancer to like have to write the ads for you.

Michelle Kop: It’s like, oh, hey, Google can do it. Um, and you don’t necessarily need to hire a third party. Um, however, the problem is Google doesn’t understand your business. It doesn’t understand your customers the way that you do, they don’t understand the pain points. So they’re going to be using a lot of, they might just be scraping your website and putting together, you know, some word vomit and putting it, you know, you know, on Google.

Michelle Kop: Um, so that, that’s what the challenge is. It’s, you know, they’re trying to make it easier, but at the same time, the quality of the content that they’re producing with AI is definitely not something that, you know, Um, would be, uh, I, uh, it wouldn’t be, uh, approved by me or anyone else. Right,

Erin Marcus: exactly. It’s not going to be as effective.

Erin Marcus: I think what you’re going to see is, God only knows how, but you’re going to see even, like you’d think this would even be possible, you’re going to continue to see an increase in the noise. Right? And increasing the volume level of what’s out in the marketplace. However, to me, there is an opportunity to stand out.

Erin Marcus: Because everyone’s stuff is going to look the same. Exactly. There, there’s stuff, because, right, because what we know about these tools is that they’re pulling old information. And just rearranging it a little bit. If you really are the top percent of your market and you, I just wrote my ebook called connect as a human first, you’re going to stand out even more.

Erin Marcus: And there is no information. You know what you said about it would never get past you. There’s no information that’s not available out there. There’s no new information that hasn’t been available for years. The difference is in the expert’s ability to interpret that information and apply it to somebody’s situation.

Erin Marcus: And AI is not. Really ready to do

Michelle Kop: that yet. Yeah, exactly. And I’m telling you, like with a lot of digital marketers, there’s a lot of fear right now, just, you know, the ones that are afraid that AI is going to take away their job. And my response to that is if you’re afraid that AI is going to take away your job, then you might as well just go start looking because AI should just be there to help you, you know, to, to help with like the bait covering your bases, right.

Michelle Kop: Um, in terms of giving you ideas. But AI is not going to be there to make critical decisions. Um,

Erin Marcus: I love using, and I do that a lot. I use AI to get past a writer’s block. You know, what are the number one, you know, what are the main things, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it’ll tell me, and then I’ve got like a list of 12 things.

Erin Marcus: And I can pick the two or three that resonate with me. And now I can go and do what I need to do. Right. So it’s helping things more efficient or effective or get the ball rolling. Exactly. But it’s not at the point where it can replace people. So how did you even get

into

Michelle Kop: this? So I actually got into this for my very first internship.

Michelle Kop: So, you know, backing it up, maybe about like 10 years ago, I was in college and I got, uh, I got an internship at a small digital marketing agency. Um, and I call it buffet style marketing. Cause I did social media. I did pay per click, which is what I’m doing now. SEO content marketing. I was touching everything.

Michelle Kop: Um, and. What I really liked about pay per click advertising was because it’s like so performance focused. And, you know, the fact that I could see the leads come in and, you know, I could see myself making an impact on clients businesses, that really like, that really lit a fire under me. Not to say that the other areas of marketing didn’t.

Michelle Kop: But, um, this one in particular, being able to, you know, get my, have my clients call me and say, Hey, I got like 10 phone calls today and I converted three and I could see that I’m making an impact, uh, pretty quickly. Um, so then I was like, okay, like, this is what I want to do. So I went on to go, um, work at, um, Saatchi and Saatchi, which is the advertising agency for Toyota.

Michelle Kop: So I worked on Toyota for about two to three years, um, and that was quite an experience because I went from working with really small companies on lead generation. And then I’m working on like a massive account, like multi million dollars. Um, and You know, and then from there, you know, moved over to another performance marketing agency.

Michelle Kop: And then at the start of 2020, um, I decided that I wanted to go out on my own and become a freelancer. So this is before, you know, COVID officially hit, this is around like, you know, uh, the beginning of March. Um, and then I was like, all right, I’m going to do this. thing. I quit my job and then there was a, there’s a lockdown.

Michelle Kop: And I was like, Oh my God, maybe I made the biggest mistake of my life. But it actually turned out to be, uh, the best decision I ever made because now I get to have my own freedom and I get to do this and work with a lot of small business clients and see the impact I’m making on their businesses.

Erin Marcus: Nice.

Erin Marcus: So one of the things I tell people is like, let’s shorten people’s learning curves. What did you do in that, you know, in the last three, four years that you’re like, yeah, just don’t do this. I tried this. It doesn’t work. Like, what were some of the failures that we can share with people to say, yeah, that doesn’t work.

Erin Marcus: Don’t do that. Are you talking

Michelle Kop: about in business

Erin Marcus: or yeah, for you and your entrepreneur journey here?

Michelle Kop: Oh man. Okay. So let’s see. I tried this and it didn’t work. Um, let me see. Anything that’s coming to mind right now? I think hiring, um, you know, like hiring, uh, sometimes like, um, well, uh, in terms of hiring, just moving too fast to hire, like bringing on, you know, help and not really like doing your due diligence to like fully, you know, Because in my industry, it’s very like technical, right?

Michelle Kop: So what I would do differently is make sure that whoever I, uh, hire on to help me, like put them, like give them a little test or something to just see, because, you know, looking at a resume or someone’s LinkedIn, even though they might have the paper experience. Experience when it comes time to actually perform, they might not actually know how to do things.

Michelle Kop: Yeah. So that was one of the, you know, one of the challenges that I experienced. And then, um, yeah, I think that that was probably like the biggest, um, the biggest thing, like in terms of like mistake that I made was, you know, just hiring too fast, um, and, you know, not, and, and not really do my due diligence to fully like, you know, vet them out.

Michelle Kop: Yeah.

Erin Marcus: And it is hard. I mean, that’s hard because a lot of times too many small business owners hire under duress, right? We hire under duress when we’re freaking out and we need, you know, you need somebody which is just going to make you kind of make those mistakes.

Michelle Kop: Yeah, exactly. There’s actually another thing that came to mind too.

Michelle Kop: Um, and you’re probably going to laugh because I think anyone, any other entrepreneur that’s listening to, you know, would laugh at this because they’ve probably been in the same boat, but charging too little in the beginning. Yeah, or even offering like free, you know, work. Um, it’s just, you need to value your time, especially as a freelancer.

Michelle Kop: Um, you’re paying for your own insurance. Everything’s coming out of your own pocket to operate your business. So you really cannot, um, afford to just be giving stuff away for free. And You know, it’s, it’s the fact of the matter is a lot of people are, you know, encourage that when you start out. Um, I don’t believe in that.

Michelle Kop: I believe at least you should be charging something just to, you know, get your foot, you know, in the door and actually. Or

Erin Marcus: having parameters around it. I did. I literally started this business with free coaching, but it was too, but, but there was predetermined, like I’ll give this to three people. I’ll give this thing to three people.

Erin Marcus: And they stayed on as paying clients. You know what I mean? So, it’s one thing to get some experience. You came with experience. But the other thing is that you were saying about charging too little. I think the trap that a lot of people get into, when you come from having a job and a career, and you have an hourly wage, You’re like, well, if I’m making more than what I used to make an hour, I’m doing pretty good.

Erin Marcus: But you forget that you’re really only doing client work 20 percent of your hours and the rest of the time you’re building your business and marketing and sales and leading the team. So you can’t just charge what you would have made for 20 hours a week.

Michelle Kop: Exactly, exactly. And actually, I found this out, you know, when I was working at my last agency, they took my hourly rate and multiplied it by three.

Michelle Kop: And then that’s the rate that they were showing to the end clients when they were like, Oh, hey, like, if you want Michelle to help you with your account, you know, on an ad hoc basis, it’s going to be her hourly rate times three. And I was like, Oh, they’re, you know, the clients are okay with paying those rates.

Michelle Kop: And if I go on my own, I should be, you know, I should definitely be charging those rates too. Great.

Erin Marcus: And it’s really simple business math. At the most simplest base of business math, if you just, and that’s where this times three comes from. If you do a third, a third, a third, a third for operations, a third for team, a third for profit, you’re, you’re pretty solid.

Erin Marcus: And so that’s where most businesses were just taught, take labor costs and multiply it by three and you’re pretty much okay. Especially for a small business model. Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. So flip side, what are you the most proud of?

Michelle Kop: I’m so proud of there’s a lot of things. So, um, number one is, uh, building a, uh, building a YouTube channel.

Michelle Kop: I just passed a thousand subscribers and I actually started this. It was like a pet project that I started, um, at the beginning of the year. Um, so it wasn’t something that I started like at the beginning of my business. Um, but essentially my goal was to build a content engine, um, and just Keep producing videos.

Michelle Kop: I posted every single week, uh, since the beginning of 2023, um, and yeah, I just surpassed a thousand subscribers as of today, so.

Erin Marcus: That’s fantastic! That’s, that’s huge. Congratulations. That’s good. Thank you. It’s one of the things that I love about meeting people through this platform, whether it’s a YouTube channel or a podcast that they have.

Erin Marcus: The level of commitment it takes and discipline and having your shit together truthfully to regularly create content, to me it tells me where you are in your business. Yeah, like I can make assumptions about you and how you have your ducks in a row because of those milestones.

Michelle Kop: Yeah, yeah. So at the start of my business, I was using Upwork in order to in order to attract clients.

Michelle Kop: Well, actually, it wasn’t necessary. I wasn’t necessarily attracting clients. It was more of like, you know, there’s a job board and then I apply. And then I get the job that way, right? And then I built a profile there. I’ve been there for about three years, uh, two, three years, but I started noticing things dry up in terms of like leads coming through.

Michelle Kop: And I knew that I needed to start diversifying. Um, so that’s why I decided to go the YouTube, uh, content route. And, you know, with the YouTube route, you’re attracting people into your universe. It’s like, uh, It’s like a magnet, right? And the people, they see your content, they like, they like you, and it’s allowing you to build a level of authority.

Michelle Kop: So when people come to you, they’re already pre positioned to buy versus on Upwork where people are going because they have a need, but then you have to go through like several rounds of interviews to get a job versus here where it’s like, they’re already coming to you and they’re, you know, ready to like, you know, make a decision because they’ve already

Erin Marcus: experienced you.

Erin Marcus: And that’s one of the reasons I really. like video for long form content. It’s the reason we do the podcast, not just in audio, but also in video, because that amount of content, especially on video, you’ve gotten past no like and trust so that by the time they reach out to you, they

Michelle Kop: it’s, they already know you, they know

Erin Marcus: you.

Erin Marcus: It’s like a confirmation conversation as opposed to a flat profile on Upwork, which is rather two dimensional. And. would never go as far as what you’ve created on YouTube to show your expertise and show your personality and show, are we a

Michelle Kop: good fit? Yeah. It’s pretty amazing. Cause I was having a conversation with a lead yesterday.

Michelle Kop: He called me and I was like, so what’s your budget? And he was like, well, I watched your budget video and I did the calculation based off of that. Yeah, so the fact that he like actually sat down to watch me teach something and he’s like, I love your videos, by the way, and the feedback that I’ve been getting from people is really great.

Michelle Kop: So it motivates me to want to do more. And in terms of like the leads coming in from it, I’m getting like at least one to two leads like a day coming from YouTube. Just it’s these people are just coming organically and especially

Erin Marcus: with right. And especially with what you do, because So what you do is very tactical in nature, it’s something people don’t understand, and I’m sure, because you’re successful at it, you have a process to it.

Erin Marcus: And I would say for any subject matter expert, if you can turn what you do into a process and teach people how to do it, then you’re one, you’re giving away amazing amounts of free information, which I’m a huge fan of give out into the business universe. And then the business universe gives back to you.

Erin Marcus: So I’m a big fan of that approach for marketing, but you’re also cultivating your own clients by helping them get their ball rolling. And then they come to you when they’re. When they reach their threshold of what it is they’re able to do on their own. Yeah,

Michelle Kop: exactly. And I’ve had, you know, some clients that have watched my videos and they’ve taken the advice, they’ve tried doing it.

Michelle Kop: But then they reach out maybe like two to three months later, like, Hey, I did this, but then I don’t know what the heck to do after. Can you write what you’re like, they only knew how to do. And the thing is, like, when you can learn only so much from a video, and if you learn what you need, and you don’t need to, if you don’t need me, then that’s fine.

Michelle Kop: But you know, you implement something and you know, you’re kind of stuck after that, then reach out and I’m more than happy to help. Love

Erin Marcus: it. So tell everybody if they want to continue this conversation with you, tell them what your YouTube channel is so we can make sure that they watch your budget video before they call you.

Erin Marcus: And then what is the best way to get ahold of

Michelle Kop: you? Yeah. So you can go ahead and go to YouTube and type in a Michelle cop. That’s Spell K O P for the last name and then level 28 media. That’s my company. Um, so that’s the name of the YouTube channel. Um, and then in terms of contacting me, you can just go to my website, um, level 28 media.

Michelle Kop: com or you can email me at Michelle at level 28 media. com.

Erin Marcus: Perfect. You’re not hiding. It’s awesome. Thank you for chatting with me. I think this is an important topic and I hate to see. Small business owners who do have to be careful about what they’re spending their money on. I hate to watch them waste it.

Erin Marcus: So go watch Michelle’s information, learn about how to do this the right way. Thank you for sharing your time with me today and your insight. And I appreciate you

Michelle Kop: joining me. Thank you so much, Erin.