Why Cold Traffic Isn’t Buying—And How to Fix It Without Rebuilding Everything

Jeffro (00:03.048)
What if the reason your funnel isn’t converting isn’t the funnel? Today, we’re talking about a silent killer in most marketing campaigns, unclear messaging that completely repels cold traffic. My guest, Jeff Wenberg, knows this problem well. After 15 years in the trenches helping companies like LeadPages, Zipify apps, and SalesMessage, he’s seen what breaks when you try to scale a great offer and how to fix it without scrapping everything.

Jeff now runs Offer Evolution where he helps online businesses, coaches, and course creators rebuild demand for their offer, not by changing what they sell, but by clarifying how they talk about it. So if you’re running ads or sending cold traffic to a page that just isn’t converting, you’re going to want to lean in for this episode. Welcome to the show, Jeff.

Jeff Wenberg (00:43.262)
Hey, thanks for having me. I’m stoked to be here. and that was a great intro

Jeffro (00:47.091)
Thanks, well, you know, have to say, Jeff, you’ve got great taste in names. You’ve got one of the best there is. So congrats on that.

Jeff Wenberg (00:51.022)
Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate it. Likewise.

Jeffro (00:56.05)
Well, I’m looking forward to talking about offers because they are so important and also so hard to get right sometimes. Sometimes they work for a while, then they stop working. And you’ve even said, great offers can actually stall because they’re scaling, which feels a little counterintuitive. But let’s start here and unpack kind of what that means with offers and why they’re so important and hard to get right.

Jeff Wenberg (01:01.506)
Yeah.

Jeff Wenberg (01:08.686)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jeff Wenberg (01:15.852)
Yeah, so I think just, you know, and everything I’m sharing is just like my own perspective. It’s not, you know, a hard fast rule usually, but like the thing that I see is a lot of times people, they put so much emphasis on the stuff rather than how am I communicating about the stuff that they just go hard on, like, well, what kind of bonuses could I add? What kind of templates and worksheets and all of that stuff is important.

But if you can’t communicate why somebody might want all of that stuff in the first place, no amount of products or things you’re adding to your offer are going to get people to buy. if you look at somebody’s book like Alex Hermosy’s $100 million offers, which so many people have read, it’s a great book. But I feel like that’s the missing piece of it is he just goes into his offer stack and all of that kind of stuff. And most people don’t realize that, yes, you need an offer stack but you also need like super clear foundational messaging. So you know like who you’re actually talking to and what problems they’re really trying to solve. Most people just do a surface level and then like, cool, let me add on this $100 million offer framework and I should be all set. And then they go to market with it and they can’t figure out why it doesn’t work. And it’s usually just because like how they’re communicating about all that stuff. People are like, well, I mean, I don’t want more stuff. I want this transformation that I’m looking for.

Jeffro (02:38.023)
Yeah. So what does the process look like to figure that out where you’re missing the mark? Like, do you just have to kind of know because you’ve done it so long or is there actually a framework you can use to figure that out?

Jeff Wenberg (02:48.14)
Yeah, so I mean, like I take my clients through like a framework that I created, but like ultimately, you’re going to know if something’s off if your sales stall out. So a lot of people come to me with a warm network or referrals and that kind of marketing that they’ve been doing and it’s been working. But as they tried to go to like colder audiences, like with maybe ads or trying to grow on social to, you know, have that generate leads for them.

Usually what they say is like, well, I don’t know if something’s just like not working like it used to. I hear that a lot of like, it’s not working like it used to. And then usually when I go look at their sales page or opt-in page or whatever, it’s always like, I mean, I honestly don’t even know what this thing is. Like I can’t even tell and I’m like fairly advanced at marketing. And so that’s likely the issue. that like literally probably like 99 % of the time it’s that.

Jeffro (03:42.521)
So is this the clarity gap that you talk about?

Jeff Wenberg (03:45.526)
Yeah, yeah. it’s just, it’s honestly the clarity gap is like, it’s both for the person selling the thing and also for the person buying it. That’s actually an unintended benefit that I discovered, like with helping clients figure this stuff out is they got super clear on, that’s actually what I’m doing for people. And what was wild is then that actually empowered them to remove stuff from their offer, like taking, you know, going back to that value stack from Hermosy’s thing, they were like, well, I only added that because like, I was just trying to get conversions higher. But now that I’m super clear on what it is that I do and how to communicate it and people are buying it, I’m actually removing more things and just delivering the thing that I really want to do that’s the most valuable to the client. And that is kind of the clarity gap, you know, like fixing it. But the clarity gap is ultimately just like, it’s unclear for people you’re trying to sell to, especially when they’re cold and they’ve never heard of you, like, what is this thing that I’m actually looking at right here? And most people just miss the mark on that altogether.

Jeffro (04:55.729)
So we talked about the messaging, right? It’s usually the missing piece or some level of clarity there. Are there other things that you see with the mechanics of an offer, the landing pages, design, the funnel structure and all that, are those just like smaller optimization pieces or are there things there too that have to be right before it’s gonna work?

Jeff Wenberg (05:14.422)
Yeah, I mean, obviously you have to, you know, have it work, just from like a foundational level. But this is, this is what I’ve seen and you can look at anybody in any industry, every type of funnel works. You have somebody that’s always, it’s low ticket, it’s high ticket, it’s whatever it may be. There’s somebody that’s making it work. And the reason is because they figured out their messaging and then they’ve gone hard on optimizing the funnel. So then what people do is they look at that and they’re like, Hmm Well, they have this kind of funnel or they have that kind of funnel. I’m going to go do that too. But then they don’t do the work that that person did to really like get the foundational messaging elements. Right. And then that doesn’t work. And then they’re like, Oh, well, it must be the funnel. So yes, you do have to have a foundational, right? Like, Hey, it needs to collect emails and it needs to send emails and like just all the basic stuff. But what I’ve seen is just like, if you dial in this stuff and you get people like salivating over what you’re talking about before they even buy.

You could have any kind of funnel and it’s gonna work.

Jeffro (06:16.625)
Yeah. Well, but also going back to the earlier point, like knowing who you’re talking to, if you’re using the same funnel for different types of traffic, right, you’re going to have some hit or miss stuff there. Like, because if you’re referring people warm from LinkedIn posts or something, that’s different than running cold ads on Facebook and those people show up. And even the targeting on the Facebook campaign could be wrong, right? If your ad person is optimizing for lowest cost per click, that might be getting you the wrong people.

Jeff Wenberg (06:27.074)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Jeff Wenberg (06:34.35)
100%.

Jeffro (06:46.405)
compared to the ones that are actually gonna be interested in what you have to offer.

Jeff Wenberg (06:46.51)
Totally.

Yeah. And I always say like the farther away from somebody knowing who you are and like having a relationship with you, whatever, like that could just be they follow you or whatever, the farther away from that you get, the more clear that you’re messaging and what you’re saying has to be.

Jeffro (07:06.596)
Yeah, that makes sense. So can you tell us a little bit about enrollment stories? Because I know that’s something you help businesses with. What makes a story work for cold traffic especially?

Jeff Wenberg (07:10.99)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Wenberg (07:15.66)
Yeah, so enrollment stories are just what I call like the stories you tell or pitches or what however you want to refer to them to move somebody from one step to the next. So you’re enrolling them in the next step of your funnel. And this could be, you know, from an ad to an opt in or an ad to a webinar registration page or whatever. But like you’re telling them some kind of enrollment story to get them to sign up for the thing or opt in or maybe even buy then from there you’re getting them to move to, you know, like maybe a sales call or to buy your product or whatever that may be. So you’re telling a different story at each step of your funnel. And it’s literally just to move them to the next step. And I call them that enrollment stories because like, ultimately you just, you need people to take action and you need to give them the correct info at the right stage. And this is the, you know, right messaging at the right time. kind of thinking.

But what I’m seeing is a lot of times, you know, people are trying to sell the end goal from like the ad to opt into something. And it’s like, no, no, no, no, just keep it focused on the next thing they need to do. And that’s your entire story is based around that. And then what you want to do is connect those enrollment stories to the situations that people are experiencing currently. And so like when we were talking about like knowing who you’re talking to and all that kind of stuff, a lot of pushback I get from clients I work with is like, well, I already done that. And I know that.

And it’s like, you do, but you’re obviously stalled out on sales and things aren’t working. So you’re not going deep enough. Like I said, 99 % of the time this is it. So when I say like, know who you’re talking to, yes, it’s like the demographic information of like males between whatever age and all that like stuff. But more importantly, like what problems are these people having? Like not just like, well, they’re frustrated, but like the deeper stuff.

They’re frustrated because they can’t get their funnel working and they really wanna like be helping people like 24 hours a day, but they can’t get people to see their value and so their business is failing and they’re gonna have to get a new job. You know, that’s like a super specific problem that somebody’s having. And if we talk about that and all the things there, then it pulls people into that. And then when you’re crafting an enrollment story, you can use all of that information to make it hyper relevant to them.

Jeffro (09:32.111)
Can you walk us through just from ads all the way to the landing page, these different stages of the funnel, and give us an actual example of what that enrollment story might be? So pick a use case and just give us the quick snippet.

Jeff Wenberg (09:43.886)
Yeah, so like what I like to do is in, you know, people will say webinars are dead and all that kind of stuff, right. But like, like to just go add to webinar webinar to sales call sales call to program. And that’s simple process. But like, for an enrollment story from an add to a webinar, I would literally just call out what the the person I’m trying to attract is. So like, for me, it’s like online coaches and online businesses.

So it’d be like, hey, online business owner, are you literally throwing your head against or banging your head against a wall, trying to figure out why your funnel isn’t converting? You’ve redone your offer at least like three times. You’ve redone your funnel a couple of times. You’ve done everything that you can think of and all the pros say you should do and still sales aren’t coming in. What if I told you that it was actually something way easier and when you fix this, it fixes all of the funnel stuff that you thought was the issue and then from there, I’d go into what the webinar would be about and what we would be talking about. And so, hey, go over there and click on the link to sign up.

Jeffro (10:42.706)
And then in the webinar, then you can walk through stuff and pitch the actual program. But you got to do it in phases, right? Because otherwise, if you’re running ads and just saying, buy my $10,000 package, that’s going be a lot harder than just getting someone to sign up for a free webinar. Got it. Yeah, that makes sense. But I do agree. I think a lot of people jump to that end goal because the focus is, this is what I’m selling. I want people to buy it. Therefore, I should just try to make a good ad for that thing, right?

Jeff Wenberg (10:45.26)
Yep. Yep. the pitch. Correct. Yep. Yep.

Jeff Wenberg (10:54.764)
Yeah. Yeah. Everyone would be like, no, I’m not doing that.

Jeff Wenberg (11:10.646)
Yeah, yep, absolutely.

Jeffro (11:12.749)
So there’s more steps in between. You gotta make it happen.

Jeff Wenberg (11:15.276)
Yeah, and it’s always just whatever is the next step. That’s what you need to sell, not the end goal. Like you’ll get to the end goal. But yeah.

Jeffro (11:23.383)
Is there any rule of thumb for how many steps there should be though? Because obviously for a higher ticket thing, maybe there’s a couple more. it’s a, if you’re selling widgets, you could probably go straight for the sale.

Jeff Wenberg (11:28.771)
Yeah.

Yeah, I’ve seen all like literally all kinds of funnels and I’ve seen all kinds of funnels work amazingly. And some are super simple, like add straight to the product page. Some are add to some content and then do a product page. And then there’s the multi-step funnel that it’s just like, my God, like how do you guys manage this? What I personally like to do is keep things as simple as possible. And once that starts working and, and you are like, okay, cool. Like I can increase capacity and scale this thing then insert complexity once it’s like, yes, this thing is completely rock solid and I know a dollar in equals this many dollars out, but I usually don’t recommend my clients do crazy complex funnels until they get to that point. And then I’m even hesitant to do it at that point, because most times people just make things, and I’m so guilty of this too, but like we make things so much more complicated than it actually needs to be to like be effective.

Jeffro (12:26.466)
Yeah, and this goes back to what I hinted at in the intro. If something’s not working in your offer, you got to figure out what questions to ask before rebuilding it from scratch and throwing it out like, this is terrible. I need to come up with something completely new. How do you know if it is just a messaging problem versus, that fundamental offer structure is bad or people just don’t want this thing that I have?

Jeff Wenberg (12:36.963)
Yeah.

Jeff Wenberg (12:40.302)
Totally.

Jeff Wenberg (12:48.396)
Yeah. So what I usually do when trying to assess, where is the issue? At this point, a lot of times, just by looking at the pages clients will send me on a first look, it’s like, well, I I don’t even get what I’m looking at here. That all being said, what we would do is look at data. So add to whatever you’re sending traffic to. OK, cool. What’s the click through rate there? OK, on the page that you’re sending traffic to, what’s the conversion rate there? OK, cool.

Jeffro (13:00.727)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Wenberg (13:16.622)
Like if it’s flowing and then all of a sudden it drops off, it’s like, okay, well, they were buying in, buying in, and then it stops. So why did it stop wherever, you know, that could be, um, like one client I saw it was like at the checkout process, like they, was like a multi-step checkout and like, was good. Most of it was like maybe a percent drop between the pages. And then on the last page, it was like, whoa, that’s a huge problem. So obviously we got an issue there and that could be one thing. How do you tell if it’s the funnel verse to offer?

Usually you’ll see like right away like higher up in the funnel like if you’re sending you know like add traffic to a webinar and then you get people clicking through but nobody registering or if you get people registering but like they just disappear after that obviously like there’s something going on there where they’re just not continuing forward.

Jeffro (14:05.357)
You just got to follow the stats and figure out where it breaks down. So obviously if you’re running ads, then you have that data. But if you’re relying mainly on like organic stuff or maybe you’re not tracking it well, just posting on LinkedIn, you’re going to have a harder time knowing what the problem is, I imagine.

Jeff Wenberg (14:07.362)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jeff Wenberg (14:20.802)
Yeah, I would say there if you’re if you’re mainly organic, it would be like looking at the signals of you know, are people commenting DMing me when they do? Do they engage? Are they actually qualified leads that kind of stuff? Because you’ll see like, okay, cool, the people that I keep getting messages from, they’re you know, like, man, they are just starting out and I’m looking for you know, businesses with like 10 plus employees or

Jeffro (14:33.932)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Wenberg (14:47.788)
Something like that, like you’ll see, you’ll start seeing patterns, but yes, it doesn’t make it quite as easy when you’re not running ads, but you can totally do it just by monitoring what happens on the posts that you’re posting.

Jeffro (14:59.446)
That makes sense. So what about, you know, a lot of our listeners are service-based businesses. You know, they might not think of their work as a course or program like some of the examples we’ve given. If they don’t have maybe an intermediate step, like we talked about a webinar or something, and they just want to ultimately come replace your air conditioning unit or whatever it happens to be, should they invent some other step or resource guide to put in between there? Like, what’s the approach in that scenario?

Jeff Wenberg (15:04.449)
Yeah.

Jeff Wenberg (15:08.259)
Yeah.

Jeff Wenberg (15:17.494)
Sure.

Jeff Wenberg (15:25.964)
Yeah, I mean, I think a good, a good way to do it is like, be thinking around like, okay, who am I wanting to serve? So like, like, as an example, okay, like our we have a heat wave going on in Minnesota right now, our air conditioners, like older than like, how long we’ve been in the house, it’s one of those like, please don’t die, you know, and maybe that I would assume that’s probably a fairly common problem.

Jeffro (15:36.128)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Wenberg (15:54.318)
And you could use that to structure your messaging and your offer around. Hey, do you have, know, an AC unit that’s 10 or more years old that has all rusted out and you’re like hoping it hobbles through the summer? You know, like that kind of stuff before it dies and you’re left stranded on like the hottest day of summer. Give us a call. Let us come out and check it out. And we can either recommend some repairs or if you need it replaced, we can, you know, do that in 48 hours or less. Stuff like that, where it’s just like, that then hones in on specific people that are like actively, because like essentially what you want them, or like your service providers, you just want them to jump into like the stories and everything that are already going on in people’s heads. And like, they’re already going down a track. So why not just join them instead of trying to get them to come over to your track? Just be like, yeah, cool. All right, well, that’s what they’re already saying. So let me just join them on that path. And then,

Jeffro (16:44.747)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Wenberg (16:50.734)
talk to them and as I’m talking to them, I’ll bring them over to the side and pull them over. You know what I’m saying? Does that make sense?

Jeffro (16:56.842)
Yeah. Yeah, and I wonder, yeah, yeah, and with AC especially, you know, that’s a very clear problem. know, people, when it’s about to break or they don’t want it to break, they’re very motivated to fix it because they know the pain of not having AC when it’s hot. I’m trying to think of another example where maybe it’s not as much of a need or at least not as apparent. So like if someone’s selling water filtration for your house, like you might, like I’ve never thought about it. My water’s been fine.

Jeff Wenberg (17:06.178)
Yeah.

Totally.

Jeff Wenberg (17:15.32)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffro (17:21.482)
It’s not something I’m actively looking for, but now suddenly some guy wants to sell me filtration. It might be better than what I have, but now there needs to be this extra step of either education or planting seeds of doubt or something. So what about in that scenario?

Jeff Wenberg (17:34.702)
Yeah, so I mean, and this is just me. I don’t know about you. I’d be curious to hear like how you do it. But I would just focus on people I already know are looking versus just like, they’re not even looking or considering. That’s usually where I focus just because it’s like so much harder to like you can do a long term strategy of like, yeah, let me educate and bring some people who are, you know, unaware into the, you know, problem aware stage and all of that kind of stuff.

Jeffro (17:43.563)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffro (17:51.189)
Sure, yeah.

Jeff Wenberg (18:02.092)
I just like to find people that are already looking and then focus on those. And then if I can’t make my business work with that, then go out higher. But yeah, for like water filtration, I would just be looking for people where it’s like they’ve maybe already got like, you know, the under the sink unit or whatever. And they’re like, maybe already aware that that doesn’t really filter out anything other than just like the taste. So

Jeffro (18:11.198)
Makes sense.

Jeffro (18:21.098)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Wenberg (18:29.43)
Then maybe talk about those of like, Hey, do you have an under the sink unit and you’re kind of worried? Like, are you even protected with this thing? And then create some content around that. And then just, you know, be putting that out.

Jeffro (18:41.611)
So you’re kind of finding an anchor that you can kind of springboard off of and it’s a reference point that they’re going to connect with. Yeah.

Jeff Wenberg (18:47.02)
Yeah, yeah, because they’re just they’re already like running this in their head. So why not just join them, right?

Jeffro (18:52.744)
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And obviously it’s going to make your life easier if you do that right. Because then the friction is way low and it’s not like they feel like they’re being sold to, they’re already wondering about it. So that makes a lot of sense.

Jeff Wenberg (18:55.884)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Wenberg (19:01.72)
Totally. Yeah, and usually most people ask like, well, how do I figure this out? And the easiest answer is just talking to people in your market. Literally, you could do maybe 10 calls with somebody or with 10 people, and 10 people is going to be more than enough for you to start seeing, they keep saying something around this, and they keep saying this, and by the time you get to the end, you’re going to notice patterns where you can almost like predict what they’re probably going to say. And then you literally just copy and paste those words and don’t summarize them yourself. Use what they said because us marketers, we usually will take it and then be like, I’m going to make it sound better when it’s like, no, we just want to literally say what they said, because if they’re saying it, probably chances are a hundred other people are saying the same thing.

Jeffro (19:53.716)
Yeah, that makes sense. So before we wrap up, can you ask, do you have an example of a client you helped where they kept the same offer, but just changed how it was positioned, how they talked about it and give us like, if you remember any of the actual messaging, know, distinctions, that would be cool to hear you talk through.

Jeff Wenberg (20:11.372)
Yeah, so I don’t remember the exact messaging and all this stuff. But yes. So had a client where he was essentially he hit me up and he’s like, Yeah, man, just like struggling to figure things out. And I’m thinking about like, just quitting and getting a job. And he had been rocking for rocking solid for a couple years, like, you know, 20k months, like doing pretty well. And it was like, what, like,

Jeffro (20:36.041)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Wenberg (20:40.75)
to me, you’re like the epitome of success. Like, what do you mean? And he’s like, yeah, man, just like people aren’t buying anymore. And I think I’ve like made my way through my audience. And so he told me everything and I was like, well, okay, so it sounds like to me, you’re focusing on the actual person doing the work and like training them. And we just repositioned it to focus it to CEOs of companies that need the result, the people that I’m sorry, that’s like even confusing me.

We repositioned it to CEOs of companies that needed the result. And then we just spoke to the result, not on like, hey, do you want to come learn how to do this thing? It was like, no, no, no, no. Hey, CEOs, if your sales team is closing less sales and your marketing team is generating less leads, have, you know, like that kind of stuff and calling out the CEOs. And then what it ended up being was around data collection and he went from like marketing automation, like learn how to like, you know, do marketing automation to, you know, increase effectiveness of your marketing funnels, to collect data, so you can make data informed decisions that generate more revenue for your business. And essentially, it was like, night and day. And he went from that. And I think in January of like, I’m going to close down to like four months later, like 20 to 25k.

And the coolest thing was, he’s like literally reducing, he’s one of those guys that’s telling you about that he’s like pulling things out of the offer. Because he’s like, I just keep seeing how valuable this is. And my clients are actually like, my god, this is amazing. Like they’re chasing him now versus him having to chase them. They’re like, how can we give you money? How can we sign up? And it’s because he’s super clear on what he’s doing. So then he also has guardrails for if they come with something else.

He’s like, that’s a little bit outside of the scope of our work. I have somebody I can refer you to, or if we need to change our scope, we can do that. But it gives him like bumpers too, which is kind of cool.

Jeffro (22:42.94)
Yeah, no, I love that. He’s still doing the same work. He’s just telling different people in a different way and they hear it in their language and now they’re like, okay, awesome.

Jeff Wenberg (22:45.804)
Yeah. And it’s like exactly. Yes. Spot on. Yep. Absolutely.

Jeffro (22:54.842)
Awesome. Well, thank you, Jeff, for going through all those examples. I think that’s really helpful. This whole conversation has been really helpful. I hope the guys at home and gals have been enjoying this. Hope you guys are taking notes. And if you want more from Jeff, make sure to check out his links in the show notes. He also has an AI agent that he programmed with his framework that he’s going to give away to you guys. So go to factmethod.com slash pitchgpt to get it. And so thank you for offering that, Jeff. I’ve got one last question for you.

Jeff Wenberg (22:58.755)
Yeah.

Jeff Wenberg (23:12.782)
Yeah.

Jeff Wenberg (23:18.776)
Awesome. Yeah.

Jeffro (23:23.374)
If our listeners could only remember one thing from our conversation today, what would you want that to be?

Jeff Wenberg (23:29.998)
keep things as simple as possible and go deeper than you think you need to.

Jeffro (23:37.671)
I like it. That was simple and concise. Well done. Well, thanks again, Jeff. Thanks to all you guys for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, take a moment to leave a review on Apple or Spotify. It helps more service business owners find the show and achieve digital dominance in their industries. But that’s it for now. Thanks again, Jeff. Take care, everybody, and we’ll see you next time.

Jeff Wenberg (23:38.326)
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Jeff Wenberg (23:58.04)
See you guys.