What is the silo problem and why does it hold back high ticket sales?
Whether you sell high ticket services, info products, or you're raising capital for a fund, there's a limiting belief that holds most people back from paid ads. You exist inside a silo. What you think is possible comes entirely from what you've seen, who you're around, and what environment you operate in. If nobody in your circle has signed a $100K client from a Facebook ad, you probably don't believe it can happen. But it can. I had a friend in the smart home space - projects between $20K and a couple hundred thousand - who didn't believe it until he started getting pitched by agencies who were doing exactly that for other businesses.
Your buyer also exists inside a silo. They live in a specific environment - family situation, financial position, mental state, goals. Your job is to articulate that environment so precisely in your ad that they feel like you're speaking directly to them. That's the whole game.
How should you vet an agency for high ticket paid ads?
If you're going the agency route, do volume. Interview as many agencies as you can. The best agencies in the high ticket space are partners, not service providers. If they leave and your entire marketing operation falls apart, you built your business on a one-legged stool that someone else owned. You want someone who's either there for the long haul or who builds the system and teaches your team to run it internally.
The agencies that know what they're doing will ask you deep questions. What's your average cash conversion cycle? What does your sales team look like? What funnels are they used to? What's your existing avatar? If an agency isn't asking about your avatar, that's a massive red flag. Even two businesses in the same vertical will attract completely different buyers based on who's running them. A single guy flexing a bag of money and a family man with a wife and kid can sell the exact same hotel investing offer and attract totally different people with totally different motivations.
Where should you start with your customer data for paid ads?
If you're an existing business, look at two things in your customer data. Front-end cash collected and lifetime value. Cash collected tells you which avatar pulls forward the most revenue the fastest. LTV tells you which avatar gives you the most total enterprise value. Those might be different people, and you need to decide what you're buying for - building the moat or generating cash immediately.
Once you know your target avatar, your whole job is to describe their world. Where do they live? What do they think about? What's their family situation? What keeps them up at night? If you can paint that picture accurately in your ad, the right people will respond because they feel seen. The wrong people will self-select out. That's what makes high ticket paid ads work - precision in articulating the environment your buyer actually lives in.
Why does proof and partnership matter more than case studies for high ticket?
When evaluating agencies, understand that the best high ticket agencies often can't blast testimonials everywhere. They work with clients under NDAs or their results are so material that sharing them would compromise the business. Look at ad spend instead - am I trusting the agency spending $10K a month or the one spending $100K? And how many clients does that represent? One client or fifty? The best agencies in this space carry themselves with a quiet confidence. They're less emotional in the sales process because they understand they're working with people who think more logically about big decisions. If someone's trying to close you in one call with a massive future-state pitch, that should tell you something.