The ‘S’ Word that Makes Freelancers and Agency Owners Break Out in a Cold Sweat

In business the very things we should be talking about nobody will bring up.

Well, because it can be awkward. And that is why we’re talking about the actual s-word that makes agency owners and freelancers go into a cold sweat.

Geesh, isn’t that a fun feeling. NOT.

My name’s Jody and I’m from Social Charlie and we help train and recruit ad strategists with high ticket coaches. That s-word, you may not know it, but if you’re an agency owner or a freelancer, I’m sure you do, is scope creep. It has, such a nauseatingly sort of sound to it, doesn’t it?

Scope creep.

Here is what this truly means and we’ll discuss why this is something you really want to look out for and have a plan for when it happens.

Here’s What Scope Creep Actually Is

Scope creep is where, you have a client, you’re doing their work and things just keep compounding. It goes to the next thing, something else is added on, something else is added on. All these pieces just sort of get added on, and chances are, you’re already at the max. Has this really ever happened to you before?

All the time allocation has been spent on the project and processes, but you still know that there is more to be done because honestly, the ads aren’t converting, there’s bottlenecks everywhere throughout the funnel, and ultimately, you’re feeling the whole pressure of it because you’re the one that’s spending the money on the ads trying to get them to work, and you want to do the best that you can for your client.

I understand that. I get that completely. I’m a huge, huge victim of scope creep.

Recently I was talking to a couple of our agents in the CIA, the Conversion Implementation Academy that I have, who also suffer from scope creep. They’re notorious for it, these two. What I realize is that they are always getting on calls with clients that all the time, are building out other aspects for them to help improve their results. Now that is fantastic, but there are limitations that you have as an agency or a freelancer, when you are doing that. You’re likely on a road to burning out, and two, you’re juggling so many plates, that one is going to drop. Or unfortunately, multiple things will get dropped or suffer from lack of high quality attention to detail.

You do not have enough time in the day to spend on all these other projects. And the squeaky wheel gets oiled, right? You go off and pay attention to one that just needs more work, and the others, you’re just spinning, and you come back over here and you’ll spin, spin, spin, and do a quick push over here to keep this other one going, but eventually it will fall. And what that means as a client, is that if you have an agency or a freelancer that are juggling all these other clients, you may be that plate that is going to fall.

I know a lot of agency owners, and a lot of freelancers, and a lot of them are amazing at what they do. They really are, but it’s just the reality of the situation. Anyone that would say this doesn’t apply is delusional. Probably even for yourself as a coach, you get to a place in business where you’ve got so many things going on, you may not get to serve every one of your clients as ideally as you would like. The very same thing happens for an agency or a freelancer running Facebook ads.

There may be another client that’s having a big launch, a big campaign that they have planned out months in advance, therefore, more resources are going over into this launch. Meanwhile, your little plate is starting to wibble-wobble, wibble-wobble, and that is what I found for me personally, was a big challenge as I made the transition into being a in-house ad strategist to an agency owner.

Previously I was a freelancer, went in-house, worked with a FABULOUS company, you know who you guys are, in Canada. And it was the best time that I had to further develop my skills in this whole online marketing space, not just with Facebook ads.

It was such a good quality time where I was able to go from Facebook ads manager to epic marketer. And I give a huge credit to the hands-on experience with minimal distraction much of the credit.

Your skills just go to a whole next level because you’re not just doing bits and pieces here and there, that, you know, it’s a scatter gun approach.

A jack of all trades is a master of none. I’m sure you have heard this before.

You’re going here, there, and everywhere else.

You don’t get time to focus on one project, focus on one client, focus on promoting one offer to one avatar. You’re all over the place, and believe me, I was there as well when I was a freelancer. It is tough stuff. And for the client as well because they’re the ones that are getting bits and pieces everywhere.

From that transition from an in-house ad strategist to an agency owner, it was again amplified with one having to manage teams, okay, and they were great people. I had the best people that I had on board running ad campaigns. It was fantastic but it’s just a whole different dimension.

You’re managing these teams, you get more clients on board, you do more onboarding and do more off-boarding, because that’s inevitable, and you’re just juggling all these plates. And so, as you get someone coming on board, you will, you’ll have like, this is the project, this is what we’re doing. But you want to keep them happy.

And like for me, with my previous experience as the in-house ad strategist, I knew all the elements that needed to go in to effective Facebook Ad campaigns. It was not just running the ads.

Why I Made the Pivot from Agency To Training In-House Ad Strategists

It was always inevitable about going and building a funnel, or tweaking a funnel, or doing another split test for a landing page, or an email automation that’s going in, tracking the email automations and the list goes on. Going in and making sure that the emails are actually being opened, that the money that you have spent on the clients to get people opting-in for the list, you actually want to make sure though that list is then active and opening the emails. There really is no point paying $5, $3, $10 a registration, or for a lead on your email list, and then they’re not opening the emails. Therefore, it’s all these elements that need to be looked at very carefully. And that scope creep is a legit thing that happens to us, as we’re providing a service, because we want to get great results for our clients, but there’s only so much we can do.

That’s why I really made the pivot to go from being an agency owner to training people to be an in-house ad strategists, because I firsthand know the benefit that it has for me. Being able to develop more skills, to really become a strategist and really see what’s going on, identify bottlenecks and what needs to be resolved, and also the benefit to the client. With this company that I worked for, they had a fantastic, fantastic offer, they were very driven, had great messaging, knew their avatar, all the pieces were in play to just scale and amplify it even further with the Facebook ads.

In-House Ad Strategists Don’t Have The Distraction of Scope Creep

And we did $1 MILLION in the first nine months with a webinar funnel as I worked alongside that Canadian brand, so I know how the benefits of having someone in-house who is focused on those Facebook ad campaigns. I worked my guts out with these ad campaigns and I wouldn’t have had time to work on anyone else’s campaigns. They had my complete focus, and we all got the results and enjoyed the benefits of that.

So please understand scope creep is a very real thing, and it is very challenging. I know a lot of agency owners, I know a lot of freelancers, and they all want to do their best for their clients. Unfortunately, it gets to be a real struggle and a real challenge for us sometimes, because, well, there’s only so many hours in the day and there’s only so many people on hand to do the extra work.

Let us not forget about the clients. There are always new strategies, new copy to create, new possible landing pages to build, new things to test.

It is the reality of online marketing.

So if you, as the client were to say, “I would love to do a Messenger Bot now,” well, typically with the agency or your freelancer, they may say, “Oh yeah, I’ll do that for you.”

Right?

There’s scope creep gone out of control for that poor person that’s just said yes to do that for you, because they like you and they want to keep you happy, and they want to get results.

And there’s probably also an element there, like, “I’d love to test this myself and see how it goes,” but you know, so there’s that element of it, or it would be, “Okay, sure, we can build you the bot and that’ll be an extra $2000 or $3,000.

Whereas, if you have someone in-house, that is all on table, and that’s what I did for my clients, it was like, okay, I did the ads, I did Infusionsoft crazy stuff. Infusionsoft, and active campaign, and automations, and tagging, and all the rest of it. All the Zapier integrations, all the landing page builds and Messenger Bots, all the bits and pieces. It was like, “Yep, great, I’ll get in and do that.” And seriously, it was a fantastic experience. I wouldn’t change it for anything.

So that’s just what I wanted to share with you today.

Scope creep. It’s real. It’s a challenge, it really is. And profressionals that truly want to get results for their clients often times fall victim to this without even realizing it in the moment.

And if you’re a scope creep addict, I feel you. It’s tough, it really is.

Running A Webinar? You Need This Calculator (Just Sayin)

Now if you’re doing webinar funnels, then I invite you to head over to grab my webinar profitability calculator. You can get that over https://www.jodymillwood/calculator.

This handy calculator makes it super simple for you to punch in how much you would like to make from your sales targets, and it will be able to tell you how much you can anticipate to spend for your ad budget, how much you can anticipate the spend for a cost per lead, and if that’s going to be profitable. You can change a few other numbers according to your niche, whether you’re paid $2 per click or $1 per click. It is amazing to see the difference that even 50 cents that will make on a cost per click to get someone to click to go to your website.

Be sure to get the calculator and be amazed. You find yourself saying, “Holy cow! If we can get our cost per click from $1.50 down to $1, we can make x much more, or we’ll get this many more people opting in.” So hit over and grab that now. So I’m Jody from Social Charlie.

It’s been great being with you, and until next time, I’ll see you on Facebook.

Jody!