✨⚡ Hey FB Ads Consultants – want to streamline & simplify your CRM life?! Have I got some magic for you. ⚡✨
Over the past 18 months, I’ve been making a pretty significant pivot in my business and during 2018, I’ve shifted all my attention on growing a verrrry specific aspect of my digital marketing jam: Facebook Ads strategy development, implementation & management. Yep, I’ve evolved into a FB Ads Consultant.
It’s the perfect combination of marketing-creative and data-nerdy that my brain needs, and I get the pleasure of helping business owners of all kinds grow their audiences methodically and exponentially…I mean, how cool is that?!
During this process, one of the things I’ve seen FB Ads Consultants (ok, actually most consultants, tbh) struggle with is efficient, leveraged client management. And what I mean by that is systematizing and automating all of the “stuff” that goes into intaking leads, managing those first conversations, creating & delivering proposals, turning around contracts, onboarding clients, and most importantly to any small business owner: getting paid.
My mentor, the unicorn-like Claire Pelletreau, talked me into putting this post together because I’ve been banging on in our private group about how amazing Dubsado has been to answer all of these needs for me. It’s an Ad Consultant’s dream come true, to be honest.
The key? Templates and workflows, baby.
Now, am I gonna hook you up with my affiliate link? You bet I am.
But whether you use it or not (totally up to you!), I think you should check this CRM system out if you’re going to be going through the process of bringing on FB Ads clients and don’t want to spend a ton of time ripping your hair out or performing the dreaded cut & paste…time and again. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
But, let’s get real for a moment: Yes, this does take time to set up. But, once you do, you can get on with all that “working ON the business” that we never seem to have time for. Because we’re sending out proposals and checking on invoices, and other tedious shit. 🤦🏼♀️
So, FB Ads Managers, here are my 10 ninja tricks for using Dubsado to simplify your life.
1. Pull your brand together
Dubsado makes it super easy to establish basic brand elements both inside the global brand settings (add a logo, ico file, your “submit” button color), and also within the forms themselves. For those you can upload logos, images, create pretty divider lines, and other bits that you’ll want to use time and again. You can also choose nicer fonts (think: Canva-type selection) to compliment your brand vibe.
2. Create an client inquiry form
Ahhh, forms. Here’s where things start to get magical. Forms are one type of template you can use in Dubsado to start to systematize those repeatable activities.
This is a great trick. Create a simple form, embed it on your website, and then map the elements from the form to the fields inside of Dubsado and boom – your new potential client just entered THEMSELVES into your CRM. Thanks, client!
Now they’re a lead, and you can take action based on that status without needing to take the extra step of moving them into a separate system.
3. Create proposals & contracts
This involves a couple of steps – figure out what you’re offering, give it a baseline price (don’t worry, you can tweak that part later), and package it up in a way that makes sense for your business.
Set up the proposal and contract that go along with that product or service, and associate an invoice if you’d like.
Then, you send the proposal to the client for approval. They check the box or two that they want to “buy” from you, hit “select” and then they automagically walk to the contract and invoice.
4. Get your contracts signed digitally…and fast
Now, you don’t have to do a proposal at all if that doesn’t suit your business needs, but a contract is always important. You attach the contract to the job and then send it off. The client signs right online and you can countersign; all happens fast when it’s right online and needs no fussing around.
5. Use the client portal to share forms & files
This is also optional but Dubsado automatically stuffs all the forms and such that you use for each client into a separate portal. Clients sign in with their email address (and a pw of your choosing) and they can always review the documents in one place.
You can also set up a pseudo-form called “file uploader” if your client needs to share logos, images, or any other kind of file with you. Again, stored all in one place.
6. Connect your email
I really like this part – I connected Dubsado to a gmail address I established for this very purpose (though you can use whichever one you like). I initiate and reply to all of these client-facing emails right in Dubsado and boom. They stay right there. I don’t need to keep them in my email client, and I don’t have to search like a crazy woman to find communications from my client – they’re all right there.
7. Get paid
Well, this is a no brainer. Dubsado is integrated with Stripe, PayPal and Square with no extra fee (just the normal fees charged by each processor).
Your invoices have the glorious “pay now” button at the bottom and, Bob’s your uncle, the money is right where it needs to be.
8. Get paid on repeat
By setting up a monthly invoicing workflow in Dubsado, you can create a repeatable process that doesn’t require manual activity each month. If my client signs for 3 months of retainer work, I just enter the due dates, the amount due and triggers to send the invoice notification 5 or however-many days before, 1 day before, 1 day after, whatever you’d like – and those keep sending until the payment is resolved. Then it goes again the next time.
9. Create onboarding templates
You know how it can sometimes FOREVER to get your client’s assets and access all sorted out? Well, this kind of template can really help that process. I created an onboarding form that my client needs to fill out before I’ll schedule a kick off call and it’s got everything we need to have a productive, action-oriented meeting.
10. Use workflows to automate the whole new client onboarding process
Another point of magic – you can tie any of these processes together by way of a workflow. And yes, workflows themselves can be templated (so you can attach them to any client job you’d like) or customized by job. I use one to move my clients from contract to invoice to thank you email (I’ll talk about that in a second) to onboarding form to email to schedule the call. All without a single bit of intervention by me.
Bonus Tip 1 (because I’m a rule breaker): Tweak any and all templates, by customer, on the fly
Everyone starts to push back at the word template: But I charge all of my customers different prices. But it’s different from month to month. But I may offer a discount here and there.
Not to worry. Take the templated form, add it to the client job and – before you send – you can tweak any element of the contract or proposal or form or whatever it is to be specific to that client; it doesn’t change your template, just the info for that client job. I use this trick a LOT.
Bonus tip 2: Canned emails
The last bit I’m just starting to make better use of is canned emails. This is especially great for my coaching clients that I need to touch base with twice a week. I can set up the canned emails, add them to a workflow and schedule it, and voila. Away we go.
I also use a canned email after each invoice gets paid so that the client sees a personal note from me, and not just a receipt from PayPal. I trigger that to happen by way of a workflow so I don’t have to worry about it going out promptly.
Ok, this was tough to me to whittle down to 10 tips…as you can plainly see. And even as I’m typing this I’m realizing there are about 10 more I could share right here and now.
But let me just leave it at this. Please let me know if you have any questions for me at all – I’m happy to answer any and all.
(And before you ask, the answer is YES! Of course! I’ll be happy to run your ads or set up your Dubsado system for you! Here’s how you get started…{hint: it’s a Dubsado form! So meta.})
Happy client management, y’all!
Cheers-
P.S. Here’s that link again, just in cases: https://www.dubsado.com/?c=tracybydesign
