[Top Agency Series] Leveraging Digital Marketing Agencies for Media Buying With Liana Ling

Liana Ling is the President of Power Up Strategy, a firm specializing in media buying for companies. With over a decade of experience in digital marketing, she offers vital expertise in managing ROI-focused campaigns across platforms such as Facebook, Google, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Beyond running her agency, Liana is also the CEO of AdSkills, a company that trains media buyers. Her career in digital marketing follows her tenure as a litigation and corporate lawyer, a background that provides a unique perspective to her work. Recognized as one of the top Facebook ad buyers worldwide, she focuses on generating optimal ROI for her clients.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [04:22] Liana Ling introduces Power Up Strategy and AdSkills and what they offer
• [05:40] Liana’s professional journey to becoming an agency owner 
• [07:24] The reasons for joining AdSkills 
• [10:16] Liana explains how she became a coach 
• [13:50] Tips for work-life balance 
• [18:10] AI productivity tools and software Liana recommends
• [20:28] What are the impacts of AI? 
• [27:05] Liana’s insights about entrepreneurship through franchise
• [33:24] Building rapport and trust in sales
• [38:38] Power Up Strategy’s customer success stories 
• [44:05] Using Messenger ads for lead generation

In this episode…

In today’s world, digital marketing has become the backbone of businesses, especially media buying. But do you have the expertise to effectively and efficiently navigate this space?

According to Liana Ling, media buying is an essential component of digital marketing and involves purchasing advertising space on various digital channels. It helps attract potential customers and increases brand awareness. But with so many digital channels available and managing programmatic and social media advertising, media buying can be complex and time-consuming. She shares her journey running her digital marketing agencies to help businesses effectively target their audiences, optimize their ad spends, and get the best ROI for their campaigns.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Liana Ling, President of Power Up Strategy, to discuss her journey running two digital marketing agencies. Liana talks about Power Up Strategy and AdSkills, life as an agency owner, how she became a coach, AI productivity tools and software recommendations, and how to become an entrepreneur through a franchise.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Liana Ling on LinkedIn
• PowerUp Strategy
• AdSkills

Special Mention(s):

• Second Bite Podcast
• Justin Brooke on LinkedIn
• Three Boudoir
• David Klein on LinkedIn
• Grant Cardone on LinkedIn
• Lewis Schiff on LinkedIn
• David Schloss on LinkedIn
• TD Bank
• Reclaim AI
• Slack
• Zapier
• N8N
• Revealbot
• Magai
• ClickUp
• Business Brilliant: Surprising Lessons from the Greatest Self-Made Business Icons by Lewis Schiff

Related episode(s):

• “God, the Devil & Tupac with Justin Brooke Founder of IMScalable” with Justin Brooke on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Building a Great Team and More Helpful Insights with Jason Swenk Host of The Smart Agency Master Class Podcast” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Growth Through Acquisitions – What is Your KPI and Northstar? With Jason Swenk” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Most Valuable Advice When Selling Your Agency With Todd Taskey of Potomac Business Capital” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Sweet Process Series] How to Save Hundreds of Hours a Month Using Top Productivity Tools with Adi Klevit of Business Success Consulting Group” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments: 

• “I like to purposely try and learn from the best in the world that I can get access to.”
• “You have to treat your network like your portfolio, you want to have a diversity of it, and you don’t want to be hanging out only with your high school friends.”
• “AI is not about coding all the time — it’s about your imagination.”
• “A lot of problems arise because of communication problems — AI helps bridge that gap.”
• “AI is making us even lazier — it’s supposed to aid us, not make us redundant.”
• “You can use failure as a stepping stone to success and change your attitude toward how you can embrace failure like a gift.”

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:01 

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 0:22 

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder of inspiredinsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today is no different I’ve Liana Ling of adskills.com and powerupstrategy.com And Liana, before I formally introduce you, I like to point out other episodes people should check out of the podcast. Now, since you are now the owner and CEO of AdSkills. People can check out the past episode, it was actually Justin Brooke, who is the original founder of AdSkills. And it was it was very fascinating there. Also since you are a multiple agency owner and basically help agency owners train with AdSkills. Now, Jason Swenk is a great episode, I did two episodes with him. He talked about how he built his first agency to over eight figures and sold it and then now he runs a group for agency owners and one of the things he does is they’re buying up agencies. And so he talks about valuations and things like that, Todd Taskey also, he has a Second Bite Podcast and helps pair agencies with private equity. And the second bike is sometimes the agencies he sells make more on the second bite than they do on the first one private equity sells, and there’s a good one Adi Klevit, who is a systems person, she basically is a done-for-you SLP service. And that episode we geeked out on productivity tools, software is what we like to use to stay productive and be more efficient. So check those out, and many more on inspiredinsider.com. And this episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream 100 relationships and partnerships and Liana is actually going to share her strategies and how she connects with people and how she networks there’s going to be fascinating, and basically Rise25, we do that all by helping you run your podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast we do the strategy, the accountability and the full production execution. Liana we call ourselves the magic elves that work in the background to make it look easy for the hosts in the company. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. And I’ve found no better way over the past decade to profile the people in companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you’ve thought about podcasting, you should if you have questions, go to Rise25.com. And you can always email us at [email protected]. And I’m excited to introduce Liana Ling now we met because of two people Alex Makovski and Joe Foley. And they were all at a Perry Marshall event in Chicago. And we all had dinner and I fortunate to sit across from you Liana. And just by chance and we had a great long conversation at dinner. And here we are. So Liana Ling is CEO and founder of Power Up Strategy. Power Up Strategy, they do media buying for companies, they provide expertise on managing ROI focus campaigns, when we’re talking Facebook, Google, Instagram, Pinterest, probably anywhere else you can buy ads. She’s also owner and CEO of AdSkills. And we’ll talk about kind of the transition from actually being an AdSkill student to coaching an AdSkills to owning AdSkills, and we mentioned was founded by Justin Brooke. They help train media buyers, when anyone talks about, hey, how should I train my team? Or how should I train myself? I’ve seen just threads and people just say, AdSkills, check out AdSkills, and that’s what people love. So Liana has an interesting background she has over a decade of experience in this digital marketing space. But she’s a former attorney. So she brings a unique perspective to the world of digital marketing. And she’s been recognized on the top Facebook ad buyers globally. And she consistently focuses on ROI for clients. So Liana, thanks for joining me.

Liana Ling 4:10 

It’s great to be here. Thank you.

Jeremy Weisz 4:12 

So let’s start off just talk about Power Up Strategy, what you do and then we’ll talk about, you give a little bit of a summary of what AdSkills does.

Liana Ling 4:22 

Sure, so with my agency Power Up Strategy, I work mainly with visionary business owners who have online businesses and it tends to be info product or coaching and I like to say that, I help them get as many clients as they want period and most of the time we’re doing that through the paid media channels there and yeah, I’ve been fortunate to meet and work with some amazing entrepreneurs throughout the years just kind of doing that and supporting them.

Jeremy Weisz 4:52 

And then AdSkills how would you describe AdSkills?

Liana Ling 4:55 

Yes, well AdSkills, AdSkills is very close to my heart. AdSkills is the place to be if you want to learn how to drive traffic, mainly paid traffic, we are starting to cover more organic traffic as well, because I think that’s important. But if you want to be a media buyer or you are a media buyer or a media buyer agency, and you want to get better, AdSkills is the place to be to level up your skills inside of there and grow.

Jeremy Weisz 5:21 

You made a rapid fire of your agency journey a little bit and maybe just start off with the lawyer piece. And then take me through because I know you owned an agency through a franchise and then you started your own agency. Take me just through your journey a little bit.

Liana Ling 5:40 

Sure. So I started off my professional life as a litigation and corporate lawyer. And once I had made my way into in-house, which is kind of like retirement, I guess for some lawyers, that’s what they call it. Right? I was in-house counsel at TD Bank. And after I had my second child, I was made redundant there. So that’s a whole other probably episode we could get into. But after I went there, I realized that I really was this frustrated entrepreneur inside of me. And for me, the best way to get into that was through a franchise it was through somebody that I knew through TD Bank who matches people that with franchises. So I actually bought a digital marketing franchise to start off with because I knew nothing. I did not know how to sell like I knew nothing. I didn’t know about marketing, I didn’t know how to sell anything. So that was the best choice for me. And I like to think that I outgrew the franchise to be frank, and I wanted more. And that’s when I started venturing more out into being like a hired gun CMO, I kind of did that I did SEO, I did web design, I did all these different things until I figured out what I was really, really good at. And I ended up doing a lot more of paid media on social media, especially with Facebook. And that’s how I found my way into Justin Brooke and AdSkills sphere where just some of the golden nuggets that I learned specifically from Justin just kind of catapulted me to the next level really changed my life.

Jeremy Weisz 7:09 

We’ll go back because I want to hear about the franchise a little bit what you liked what you thought needed improvement. But talk about the AdSkills journey for a second. You came in, what were some of the things that were interesting to you from a course perspective.

Liana Ling 7:24 

Sure. So I think it’s also important to know why I went into there, because that really frames my entire focus. I’ve actually not been doing, I took a break from doing ads. And my friend David Schloss says like, you’re good at this, you should just do it again, knowing I was kind of going through this identity crisis. So I purposely try and learn from the best in the world that I can get access to. And that’s was I was like, who says do Justin Brooke, I keep hearing like he trained Mollie Pittman, he trained all these other people who is he as I didn’t know who he was. And I that’s how I found him. And he had a certification course where you can get certified. And to me, what was great at the time was included, I can’t remember how many days, but it was a certain number of days where you could have access directly to him, like you could just DM him. And to me that was worth it. So I jumped into there. And that’s what I loved about it. You’re going through all the course material in there. And like I wasn’t a newbie coming in, but I know that I value. There’s always like a little golden nugget, right, that can make all the difference. And that’s what I liked about Justin stuff, because he was sharing, it didn’t feel like he was holding anything back. It wasn’t like, hey, here’s how to do like 80% of it. But the 20% you got to pay even more to do something else. He just gave everything. And then he kind of berated us and said hey, nobody’s DMing me because honestly I was pretty intimidated. I didn’t know what to do. So I just started DMing him.

Jeremy Weisz 8:49 

If you’re intimidated as a litigator, I don’t know.

Liana Ling 8:54 

He’s got quite the presence, right. He’s got quite the presence. And so I was like, wow, what am I going to say? So I just started sending him stuff that I’ve been working on. I thought, okay, like, I have a lot to learn. And he was he said to me, these are really, really good results. So yeah, I had no basis for comparison. And that’s how it started. I just asked him questions. I asked, How can I get better and I just I really took advantage of everything that was in there. I hadn’t done that before. I was one of those, when we just buy stuff and we’ll look in Okay, this looks interesting. And then I’ll do it because goes on your digital shelf. I’m this one. I took advantage of everything in there. And I think I even got it on a scholarship because I said, hey, I’m in Canada, is there any way I could pay on a longer payment plan? And they’re like, yes, so that’s how it started. I actually bought it twice. So I finished the program once and then they offered it again. And the second time they offered it they also included this pipeline of leads coming in and me having this lead gen background. I know what it costs to get leads for b2b Yeah, so that to me was the no-brainer. And I got like another session of just being able to DM Justin. And so I took full advantage of all of that as well. So I went through it twice.

Jeremy Weisz 10:13 

Wow. And then you became a coach.

Liana Ling 10:16 

I did, but it wasn’t just like that. It wasn’t just like that. One of the things that I have been doing for many, many years is every single day, I set aside about 10 to 15 minutes, and I contribute in certain groups. And I figured out how many I could handle at any time. It’s basically like three, maybe four, but to me, it’s more three. And what I do is I go in there, and I’d see if I can add value by answering questions or sharing something. And then I also make sure I ask questions. So I think a lot of people go into online communities and think, oh, I’m just going to answer a ton of questions. But asking questions also shows people what you’re working on. And I also just think it gets makes you more visible and the people running it. They love when people ask questions. So why wouldn’t you do that? Right. So I had figured out through trial and error that my clients tend to be in the paid communities. So I will on purpose, join certain communities, but I also want to make sure they’re not connected. So this is something I learned when I was working with Louis Schiff, in business owners council was he said, you have to treat your network like your portfolio, you want to have a diversity of it, and you don’t want to be hanging out only with your high school friends. So I joined different communities and made sure that they were very different. And as a consequence of that just people think that I’m really connected, because I know people from different worlds and I connect them. So that was my mindset going into AdSkills, and I just kept showing up every single day. And over time, right? Well, this is also if you want to get closer to somebody running the community, Justin and Sean, I noticed they’re like, oh, you’re here you’re adding value people seem to like you. And at first they invited me to participate in something and just kind of speak and share. And it went really well. And every time they asked me to do something, Justin told me they got a ton of just positive responses from people. So that’s how I eventually became a coach in AdSkills, they actually ended up hiring me to run the whole pro program, he wanted me to be the face of the pro program because Justin didn’t have the bandwidth to do that. And like he said, I was one of the only people where I just kept showing up, but also that I had always had such great positive feedback whenever I would just do anything there. So he felt it was a really good fit. And that’s how I became a coach inside of the AdSkills community. By the way, I’ve done something similar in other communities I’ve been in to where I became a coach or I became a mentor. Again, it’s because I showed up and delivered value and just really tried to kind of elevate the community in any way I could.

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