Modern Marketers with Blake Beus and Greg Marshall

Blake Beus 0:00 All right, so I sent you a text while you were vacationing, Greg Marshall 0:03 I was at my mountains, I Blake Beus 0:04 didn't even I didn't even know you were up in the mountains. But it was just a random text that I sent you about a thing that which Greg Marshall 0:10 is why my response was so delayed. I got it. Like, I remember getting like, at a random time when I had searched for like two seconds. Blake Beus 0:19 But I thought it was super, super, super interesting. And it was about tick tock and an internal practice they have called heating, like heating something up, right, bringing the heat, bringing the heat and, and my initial thoughts of this is, and we talked about this all the time. But my initial thoughts were this is why you shouldn't try to go viral. Yep. You shouldn't even put any effort into that. Because you may have literally zero control over you could be have, you could create the best content, most entertaining, whatever. And you just might not be one of the chosen few who gets slow, who was allowed to go viral. Greg Marshall 1:02 When you sent me this. And I took a look at the article. I was like interesting that they actually do a practice like this. Because I feel like off camera, we've discussed how these algorithms seems it's like there's it's almost like no rhyme or reason, in a way and organically to like, go viral member and we've done a podcast we were talking about going viral. And it's like, why going viral doesn't automatically increase business. And if you think about it, if platforms, I'm sure tick tock is not the only platform guaranteed, that does heating, right. And if you think about it, they're not going to pick stuff to go viral that has anything to do with selling anything, right? They're gonna pick stuff that gets more visibility, that can drive more behavior for the audience that they want to stay on the platform longer. Right. And so that's why going viral doesn't automatically translate into sales. And that's why if they do heating up, what do you think they do about sales type videos that are promoting Friday holding them down? Probably? Blake Beus 2:09 Right? Probably cold. Yeah, cold. So let's talk specifically about what heating up is, and this particular article, and this article was all about tick tock, but I'm sure there's something similar, maybe not so blatant in the others, but essentially, internally inside tick tock. They would have meetings where they would choose which content and which creators, they wanted to heat up, aka, go viral. Yeah. And they made those decisions purely based on how it would benefit the platform itself, and how it would benefit the growth of their own platform. In general. Now, if we take a big step back, and we talk about algorithms, right, a lot of people talk about algorithms as this like, cold calculated computer software, whatever algorithms are built and tuned by humans for the benefit of the parent company. Yeah, like, that's the whole point of them, it's not to benefit you and me, is to love us. Right? And I'm not. I mean, there's a lot of things we can say negative or positive about social media companies or large businesses, whatever. And I have a lot of strong feelings on that on that subject. But the point is, is having a good understanding of the incentives, why they're doing what they're doing whatever can help you in your marketing efforts play in their sandbox, because for the benefit of you know, you and your your business, but essentially, they would choose which content which content, they wanted to go viral. Yep. And so you could create great content, and it might even be better than the content that's going viral. But if you weren't noticed by the heating up team, and you weren't one of the Chosen of the heating up team, your content can fall flat could just never go anywhere. It could never get Greg Marshall 4:03 anywhere. Well, you want to know some interesting is? Do you listen to the podcast...

Blake Beus 0:00 Alright, how do we start this one off? Greg Marshall 0:02 We're talking about micro lead generate. Right, Blake Beus 0:05 right, right. Greg Marshall 0:06 And maybe I don't even know if that's a name that someone has come up, you know, somewhere else, we're or you want to take credit for it, because technically you call it, which is micro lead generation is, well, why don't you explain kind of what we're talking about with micro lead generation? And how you came up with that name? Yeah, yeah. So Blake Beus 0:25 I mean, everybody in their dog talks about lead generation, getting them, you know, off of social media or off of wherever and onto your email list or your text messaging list. And all of that is great, everybody thinks about that talks about that, always putting effort into that. But there's like a little mini step before that, that you can do that works really well, under certain circumstances, that that should be considered. And it's this micro step, where you're basically basically generating leads that you don't know much about them yet, you don't know their name, you don't know, their email address you met may not even know exactly how many people are on that list. Yeah, but you're putting, you're putting concerted effort into building that list of leads, that you can then follow up with an offer for either, you know, a solid lead generation, or a product purchase offer or something like that. And so essentially, what we're talking about here is building audiences via whatever means that you can, that are much, much, much more likely to be interested in what your next offer is, that you can then target with traffic or with paid ads. Yep. So you're building a list of leads, but you don't know anything about them, other than they got on the list through whatever you were doing to get him on the list. So yeah, that's that's the concept there? Greg Marshall 1:54 Well, here's, here's a question. And you can actually do this both organically and paid. You can, you can utilize content and put money behind it to build this micro audience. But I'd like to get your opinion on. Why do you think not as many people talk about this audience? Proactively building right? Blake Beus 2:13 I think it's because it's it, it's hard to conceptualize what's happening there. It's not necessarily tangible, like an email list, I can go in there. And I can see oh, hey, we got x more leads on the list. My list is now you know, 15,000 people big Yeah, I spent this money to get there. I have all that information about them. And oftentimes, like business owners, whatever they want the hard numbers, well, they should want the hard numbers. Yeah. But sometimes there's these more intangible things you have to think about. And frankly, this used to be way more common. Back in the mail marketing days, the all of that stuff 50 years ago, because you just didn't have access to the data. Yep. But I felt my gut is telling me, that's why we don't have people talking about or not talking about it in this this way, per se. Greg Marshall 3:10 Yeah. And I think with these types of audiences, too, I think you're right, with the tangible, right, you don't have a tangible name, phone number email, to kind of control the, where the direction of the nurturing goes. But the tools that we have available now are, you can actually retarget or run ads towards people who have watched your videos who have liked your posts, or commented, and those people, in my opinion, if you were to define, like, you know, when you have this conversation, should I do paid? Or should I do organic, and there's always like one side, that's like, it's all about pay the others, it's all organic? Well, on the organic side, if, if you're willing to invest the time, effort and energy to build this organic following to grow your business, then that would mean that would mean that you believe that these audiences are valuable. Right? Or else you wouldn't do it right?...

Blake Beus 0:00 So we talked a lot about split tests. Yep. And we've talked about it a lot in the past and everything. And I was listening to a Freakonomics podcast episode recently called, is Google Search getting worse? And in there, they talked with some actual representatives from Google, about some of the things and I wanted to bring up because I thought it was relevant in the fact that the interpretation of the test results is incorrect. And even Google did this. Yeah. And so I kind of wanted to point this pointed out. So it's, it's I don't know if you feel this way. But I literally feel that Google search is getting Greg Marshall 0:40 worse. As far as being accurate. Yeah, what Blake Beus 0:43 you're looking at feels harder for me to find what I want. I don't know. Have you noticed? Is that been similar to you or your, your good, Greg Marshall 0:51 we know what I'm not. When it comes to Google search, and like, maybe I'm looking for somewhere to eat or products or something like that. I don't use it a ton outside of like researching marketing stuff. But it does feel a little bit less like integrated. Like, it does feel like I do have to, like, look a little bit deeper for what I want. Part of it could be the ads above six or eight or 12. Yeah, search ads before he can even get to the camera. And so yeah, you know, I probably haven't been paying attention as close because I'll just keep scrolling. So I find when I look, right. But if you're talking about immediacy, like I'm typing something, and it's not right there, I would say yes, it has gotten worse, because I'm not, I didn't notice I am scrolling more on Google. Yeah, what's the cause of that? So Blake Beus 1:41 there's, there's a lot of different causes for that. One of the things I do for a lot of my clients as I help find solutions for them, right, so, so, right now I have quite a few clients where we have data integration issues, right. So they want to bring their marketing and advertising data, and pair that and merge that with their email marketing CRM, like HubSpot, or or any of those and merge those things together. So they can actually have actionable data. And so, so I deal with a lot of these kinds of data integration things, but I have to do a lot of searching to find, maybe they need a tool or something like that. So I'll search for a tool or an integration system or whatever. And I would say over 50% of the articles that I find these days, are something along the lines of, you know, the top 10 tools for this. Yeah, and it's just regurgitated content. And then at the end, the paragraph is almost identical on all of them, it says something like, so as you can tell, no matter what you choose, you're gonna find a good solution. And it really depends on your needs. And I'm like, I want an opinion. Yeah, I want you to and you could tell that whoever danced, take a stance, and you can tell it, whoever wrote the article, didn't write the article to actually help you make a decision, they probably haven't even used any of the software, they're just kind of regurgitating things. And you're getting a lot more of that content on Google. In addition, you're getting Google adding things like they have, they have, depending on what you're searching, they'll have like a box along the top with some information, or they'll have the sidebar box, like a little widget on there. You see that if I search for like a movie star or something like a little box, there, they'll have like, if you're searching for a restaurant or something, they'll have like a widget with placements and things like that. So what kind of the end result is that when you search for something, you could have widgets, ads, another widget, a thing on the side, and then your organic search results, you literally have to scroll down under everything. Now, I don't hate ads. So obviously, we talk about ads all the time. I think ads are a very, very important part of running a business and marketing and...

Blake Beus 0:00 All right, leads like you were you're talking about, I don't know, a new way to do leads or leads or a new way to at least look at leads. Yeah, so Greg Marshall 0:09 I actually got the inspiration from listen to a podcast yesterday, which I respect, so shout out to perpetual traffic. But basically what they were discussing a case study that they did where I was like, that makes sense, because lead generation, sometimes can be challenging to do for companies, because of the quality of the lead. Okay, right. So you can get a whole bunch of leads, but then they're like, well, these leads aren't very qualified, or they're just kind of looky loos. And that's like, the nightmare of every business owner is to just generate a bunch of like, people that actually are not qualified. And so what they had discussed was because they were in a highly competitive industry, and everyone is offering the same thing, right, like a free consultation, or a free, whatever. Uh, huh. What it was doing was it was attracting and training the audience to get this free offer, it's kind of like not really commit. So what they did is they changed it to where they renamed the offer, and actually added more to it. So instead of just like a free consultation, they gave it a name where it was like a, I think they call it an integrative wellness plan, okay. And what it was was a multitude of things to give them a full plan, right? Not just like, we'll just take a look at you and see what's wrong. Blake Beus 1:31 So it was a free consultation, right? Yep. But now, it's which the consultation, to be honest, is almost always some sort of a sales call it which is fine doesn't mean like, it's a high pressure sales type thing. But it's like, hey, we want to make we want to see if we're a good fit for one another. And here's what here's whatever. But everybody calls that a consultation. Yep. So that still that still exists. And, but this is the consultation called plus, which is more than a plan, it actually maps out like, we're gonna look at this, this, this and that, versus coming for a free consultation, and they gave it a name like, they named it the packet. Greg Marshall 2:10 And I don't think it's 100% Prep, I think they said something like the integrative wellness plan or something like that, right. But then they went one step further, what they did was actually charged for it. And they said, instead of it being free, it's $9, to get to get it going now, to actually do it. And they actually found, they tested the free consultation to that, they actually noticed they had an uptake of like phone calls and actions on the site, people purchasing. And the type of person that was actually coming in, was more like ready to go. So they're just like, well, here's my $99. And we'll go ahead and, you know, move forward. And let's see what this plan is about. And then they were more open to purchasing. Right, right, versus the other one, they said they kept running into the problem of the show rate was really bad with the free consultation, right? Because there's no commitment, right? $100, you will show up. And then the other thing was the person that came in for the free consultation versus the integrative approach, they typically had a bad taste in their mouth, because they just felt like they've come in for this free consultation, and they would do a bait and switch. Blake Beus 3:20 Right. So they felt bait and switch. And honestly, it's like, kind of keeping a finger on the pulse of people out there, your your customers out there. And And if people are starting to feel like these free consultation calls are just a bait and switch. They're starting to look at you or even the industry as a whole kind of like used car salesmen that I was just driving down the road and it said, you know, get into your car for 77 cents. Yep. You know, and everybody knows. That's stupid. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So so they started charging for it, they charge $99 They added...

Blake Beus 0:00 What was our lead off on this one? Greg Marshall 0:01 What was the true value? Blake Beus 0:03 Oh, yeah, the true value of social media. I was like, What did you wrap it up really nice. Yeah. Think of what that was? Greg Marshall 0:10 Well, we were talking about what the true value of social media is and what that means for businesses, because you were talking about how some businesses feel jaded with social media, like God doesn't work, or it's overly hyped or the use of Word, or even Blake Beus 0:27 just people. I mean, you hear all of these crazy stories about social media, Elon Musk kicking over Twitter, that's been this roller coaster ride out of news, meta, Facebook, their stock prices are down right now. And so you, you have this kind of attitude with, especially with advertisers that were or businesses that were maybe a little lukewarm about, about being on social media Anyway, you've seen this attitude from them saying things like, you know, it's not worth it. Yeah. Why even play this this game or whatever. But whatever your stance is, on social media being a net negative or net positive for society, and all that stuff. It's still worthwhile showing up on social media and marketing on social media, for many reasons. Yeah. And yeah, so dive into dive into that, because you were talking about some of the reach out to you. Yeah, Greg Marshall 1:26 someone had reached out to me. And they were discussing, and then there's someone who, they do a lot of advertising and other channels outside of social media. And they had mentioned their struggle with trying to kind of wrap their heads around the true value of is it worth investing in social media? Because he sees other people in his industry, not succeeding? But I told them, I think it's because they're doing it the wrong way. Blake Beus 1:54 And you said, this is a service based business? Yes. What industry was the real estate? Real estate? Yep. Greg Marshall 2:00 So with, like, I know exactly talking about because in real estate, the number one challenge, right is always it's highly competitive. And then, really, what you're selling is the same. So it's everyone is selling the exact same product, Blake Beus 2:17 and the exact same houses even right, like, it doesn't matter which Realtor you are, I mean, that might be your listing. But if I'm representing somebody, any 1000 actors could sell Greg Marshall 2:26 that house. And that's kind of the the challenge that they all run to. So they all kind of are trying to figure out ways to market themselves. And I know what he was referring to. So he's referring to, we were kind of speaking about video. And he's jaded because he's like, Yeah, I've worked with some people who do a lot of video. And it's like, they're spending all day doing video, but they're not making very much money. And this guy makes a lot of money. Yeah. Okay, so he, so he's viewing that light, from an ROI standpoint, what he's doing is working better. What I tried to tell him, which I think he kind of intuitively knows is, it's just another media channel. So you almost have to remove like, the way someone uses something, is the difference on the success of it. Right? Right. So socially, when I say like, they're most likely using it wrong, in my opinion, if you want to reach a lot of people, you have two different ways to do it. If you do organic, you have to fully commit to organic and do it every day, you need to have strategy, you need to invest money, and time and energy into that it's not free, you still need to invest in it. Or the second one is you need to commit to paid ads. But you need to commit to one of the one of those options and preferably both, right if you want the maximal results. And so that's what I told them is what most people do is they are tiptoeing on, both of these are putting their toe in the water for organic, or putting their toe in the water on pain. Yeah, but they're never putting their whole body in for...

Blake Beus 0:00 You were talking about hustlers mentality marketing plan. Yeah. All of that, like, yeah. Well tell me what you're thinking. Yeah. So Greg Marshall 0:08 I think having a marketing strategy is important and kind of knowing how to get your messaging out there. And one of the things I was saying is, even if you don't have a large budget, I think the overall idea is you have to have a huge budget, in order to make marketing work. And that's not based that's not the case, that's not the full story, you either have more time, or more money, if you can do both. That's the optimal. But if you have less money, put more of your time. And if you have more time, he's more money, right? So you try to do a good trade off, and what you're doing but hustlers mentality, I was saying, a strong strategy that works really well from a tactical side is manual outreach, if you're trying to promote an event, or a service, right, and this manual outreach, I actually use this in the beginning of my couple of businesses, and it works like a charm, what you want to do is you want to find people who have the audience you already want, and you just start reaching out every day, you create a spreadsheet, put their name, phone, numbers, emails, and you essentially start working that list. And you want to have an offer that makes sure that the person you're talking to gets a huge benefit. In exchange for sharing the product serves that you have to their particular audience, one of the best ways to do that is to demonstrate how by them maybe donating a product, or a service, or sharing this their audience, they're also going to get in front of the audience you have right or will be going after it right. And it could be kind of have a joint promotion, and everyone wins there. Because every business is lead generating, trying to get more people to write their business. So it allows it allows you to add more resources to a marketing plan on both ends, Blake Beus 2:00 right? Yeah, that's, uh, yeah, that's, I mean, I've participated in some of these, you know, business, lead groups and some, some things like that. And I think that's, that's one of the ways a lot of businesses are trying to do that. But the reality is, is you doing something like that for yourself, or like, owning that whole process, instead of just showing up to a lead generation group is going to be much more beneficial to you and everyone else? But I do, I do want to jump back to what you said, you know, you got either money or time if you have both. It's great. My observation, though, is that there are quite a few times when an organization or a person has money, yep. And then they go out and market because they're like, Well, I've got some money, well, let's do this. But they're not being smart with that. And they burn through a ton of cash, because that's the asset that they have a lot of Yep. And they end up getting kind of poor and miserable results. And honestly, if it's if someone had a stack of cash, and they're just starting out with a business or something, or a new venture, or a new pivot, say they made money in this business over here, starting out with the hustle mentality is still probably a better way to go. Yes. Then it is to drain your reserves upfront. Greg Marshall 3:19 Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things that I think about is a story Daymond John shared where he said, like, he made all his money and FUBU. He was a multimillionaire, he financed that new project through only through money into it thought of no marketing strategy. And he said, he blew it off. And he said, he thought, because he had the money, that that would solve the problem. We all deal with speed up the failure, right? So I like to take that lesson that he shared and think like, even if you have millions of dollars in reserves, you still should have the hustle mentality of test quickly, and in small steps, where you're not risking it. All right, so you're saying, well, let's first...

Blake Beus 0:00 q4 advertising like Black Friday just happened. Everybody's gearing up for q4. And you you were saying? You're getting asked a lot of questions about how to plan and prepare for the holiday season? Greg Marshall 0:15 Well, you know, in a lot of ways we all of us adults never quite fully grow up. Now, let me explain to you how I remember in school when you had a paper and you knew that paper was going to be due months in advance, but then you wait to the last minute to do it. Similar to the advertising strategies, and q4. If you're trying to do it in q4, it's too late and too expensive. No. And I actually recommend if you're going to do you should be planning your q4 advertising. Now for next year, yeah, right. So I usually advise my clients, they should be investing the most money possible in the month of January to about June to July. And the reason why I advise that is because that's when ad costs are the lowest. And ad costs are the most expensive, and q4. So what you want to do is you want to invest heavy early on, build up a big email list text messages, customer base, retargeting audiences. And then when q4 comes, you can keep your ad spent either the same, or even drop it and invest more into sending out the texts and emails. That's how you'll get fantastic returns. Blake Beus 1:28 Right? So and a lot of people don't don't think about this and don't think about what you're how our ad costs calculated. And so I always tell people, it's kind of like the stock market if you're bidding on on sets of eyeballs. Yep. Right. And so the more people that want those sets of eyeballs, the higher the cost is because you have to bid more. Yep. To get that attention. And so if you understand that concept, then you can plan based on seasonal thing. Yeah. But so yeah, you're you're saying spend more, put your dial in your strategy. Do all of that from July, with January, sorry, January to July ish. So you have everything down? Exactly. build your email list, because email, email marketing is cheap. Yeah, this is why it has such a high ROI. Yep. Greg Marshall 2:17 And email, text message, all that stuff, drives the most repeat purchases the most sales and and you pay the lowest amount. And you have to look at as you're investing for q4 early on. Yeah. And if you wait too long, your list will be too small. Your retargeting audiences will be too small, and you won't be able to capitalize on q4. And this is when most people want to really make things happen. So I feel like investing heavy, January especially, is a good idea. So yeah, I personally think January investing in January is the most important simply because that's almost a hangover, all the spin of q4, everyone leaves the market. And so then this your CPMs your ad costs will go down. You're just not competing with as many people as you are, right now the month of November and this specially November, right? Because of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Blake Beus 3:23 So what do you like? Like, because the other thing I talked with people about? And I want to get your thoughts on this? Because I don't think we've talked about this specifically. But should should part of your planning process include what offers you're going to offer in q4, and then also in q1 next year or whatever. And yeah, what do you recommend people? How do you recommend people think about those offers? Everybody's looking for a deal on Friday? What like How should people structure Greg Marshall 3:49 those? Well, I still think you should come up with your offers, and then that will actually drive who you want to advertise to anyways, right? Because you want to make sure you have the list of people that would be attracted to those offers. And then when you think about offers, you have to think like, you know, let's say you're in retail, right? Or you're you're you're selling clothing or products, physical products, you have to think like Okay, can I get shipments in on time? Yeah, to make sure...

Blake Beus 0:00 book a call funnels. You said you want to talk about that. But you didn't want to tell me before the phone before we turned the podcast? Yes. What? What? What about book or call funnels? We want to talk about Yeah, I Greg Marshall 0:10 didn't want to forget, because Because fresh off my mind, I was just talking with a client. And I was like we I feel like we always talk about, there's always like value before we hit the record button. We probably share that too. Yeah, so with the book a call funnel, essentially, if you're in the service industry, and you're trying to get more sales, right? You're gonna have people book a call. Now, the question I always get asked, and what I recommend, is, Well, should I just put a phone number on my ad? And I typically say no. Because if you have, because you're making yourself subject to having the customer call you, which is the last place you want to be in the sales process. Instead, I recommend, of course, you can have the phone number available, but I wouldn't make that your number one objective, I actually would make the objective, have them fill out a form name, phone number email, so that you can control the sales process so that you actually have their lead information. And you can reach out to them versus hoping that they call you or let's say they click your call button, and no one answers. Well, there you go. You lost them, right? Like there's no other I mean, you can't follow a retargeting. But to me, the best for retargeting is having their actual phone number and email to reach out to them. And so with the book a call funnel, there's several things that are important when it comes to this. So I was speaking with a client and I was explaining how the assumption is, you run an ad and the ad kind of does all the work for you. Yeah. And then they buy, but it's actually not, there's actually several steps to measure. And this is how you know, the journey of your success to your book, a call funnel is working. So number one, you have to obviously, and these might seem like not important, but they're extremely important. Okay. All right. Number one is, first, you have to get people to actually click your ad. Right? Yeah. So so if you're getting people to click your ad, that's step one of success, right? And I recommend you break it down in stages. Step two, is, once they click your ad, can you get them to fill out a form? Okay, so until then, if you're getting people to click your app and not filling out your form, work on getting the form better, right? Step three would be once they fill out the form, can I get them to respond in any way back to me via email or text? Right? Okay, that's step three, then you go step four, which is, and to me, this is the most important part of the process is step four. Getting them from responding back to actually on the phone. Yeah, that is the most important part of the process. Because everything else you can fine tune. But if you cannot get them on the phone, nothing's gonna happen. Right. And so that's, that's the next success. And then obviously, the next stage would be get them on the phone, have your sales process. And then after your sales process, what are you trying to move them to next? So a true book a call funnel? Although it seems like it's just add to book a call is a lot more steps than just that. What are your thoughts? I Blake Beus 3:31 think you covered it we're good. With with any sort of a sales process, so many people, and I'm guilty of this, too, we take too big of logical leaps, right? We think our customer is going to do this, and then they're going to enter, they're going to book the call. Yep. There's it the smaller the incremental steps you can make it, the easier it is. And see, I would me personally, I would recommend, most people, if you're paying for ad traffic, don't put the phone number there anywhere until after you've already collected their information. And which is pretty similar to what what...

Blake Beus 0:00 Google Analytics. So I've been getting a ton of emails about me to the changes on this. And I've actually converted a few sites already, from Universal Analytics to GA for Yep. is what they're calling it. But you had some questions about that. Greg Marshall 0:14 Yeah. So actually, I had a client asked me about it last week. And I said, I'm not really the professional and this particular aspect. So I knew I wanted to ask you. So I'm going to literally ask you, because I don't even know what the differences are between, you know, the Google Analytics, and then g4. Yeah. So what is the main difference? Why, why is this shift happening? Blake Beus 0:39 Because Google sets up Greg Marshall 0:42 the Google gods. Google said, Blake Beus 0:44 so I mean, every This is, I mean, it's called G a four. So this is the fourth iteration of Google Analytics. And Google Analytics first came out in probably the late 90s, early 2000s. And so in that time, we've we've had four iterations. And this is the fourth one. As far as why Google decided the way they were doing analytics needed to change. And so they Greg Marshall 1:11 think this has anything to do with privacy. Blake Beus 1:13 I mean, probably, it probably, I mean, you're seeing a lot more things. So the initial way back when Google Analytics use relied heavily on third party cookies, right, and as new privacy standards, get updated, and things third party cookies aren't a thing. So the last version of Google Analytics, which was I believe, they called it Universal Analytics, relied on first party cookies. And essentially, I mean, for most people, third party first party doesn't really matter, most users, but essentially, first party cookies mean that Google Analytics is installed on my site. And when I set a cookie, which stores some information about my session, that cookie is stored based on a domain name. So it would be that Google Analytics cookie would be stored based on my Blake beus.com domain. And as I browse to other sites, those sites don't have permission to read that cookie. Whereas third party cookies, Google would set those cookies based on the google.com domain, and then as a third party cookie, and then as you browse around, all the other websites would be able to see the data stored, or at least some of the data stored in that cookie. That's a very big generalization. But we're starting to see, we've talked about this too, we're starting to see cookieless the future right? Oh, cookies go away. And again, we're moving to a different type of technology that that offers more privacy and offers better isolation of data. Yep. You know, probably, you'll probably see more data being stored in an in an encrypted state, on your computer instead of just in a plain text state. Yep. And this is this is I haven't read their specific why. But if I were to guess these are all the things that you're starting to see. Greg Marshall 3:05 Got it. So essentially, for a business owner, what is it I know, I've gotten those emails? What do they basically need to do in order to switch over? Does it automatically happen? Or do they need to go through a step by step process? Yeah, Blake Beus 3:18 it does not automatically happen. If you have a very simple Google Analytics install, all you really need to do is swap out the tracking code. And it's not just a pixel ID, you actually because Google Analytics will give you some code to copy and pasted some JavaScript code, you need to swap out that code entirely. And you're, you're good to go. You can actually run them in parallel. So the site's I've converted, we just put both on there. Okay. So to start gathering data in one or the other, any cons to that to running both? Yes, you might have a slight decrease in site speed, but we're talking about that significant 10th of a second, maybe not Not, not a big deal. Okay. The other problem you're you're going to bump into is, if you have a complicated Google Analytics install,...

Blake Beus 0:00 So I don't even know what we're talking about today. You wouldn't even talk with me about it before we started. Yeah, that's Greg Marshall 0:05 because that's because I wanted to make sure we didn't miss out on some of the Golden topics. So, today I had mentioned to you just last week, and in fact, it might already be active, because in a couple ad accounts yesterday, I saw, so Google has decided to remove on Youtube Keyword targeting, over asking me yeah, all really are content targeting. So you can't you can't do placements, keywords or topics for conversion campaigns. What's just weird? Yeah, they just removed that. So like everyone, and like, the Google ads, YouTube faces like, This is unbelievable. Like, how are you supposed to actually target if you can't target the content, you know, contextual targeting? And I thought, well, that's interesting. I wonder why they would do that. I have a couple of guesses. I mean, my guess would be probably that, if they're trying to increase revenue, and you take away like, high performing, you know, campaigns, then you have to spend more to get the same result. Right. And so that's my guess, I mean, and it's probably accurate. And so yeah, there's no incentive for, if you think about it, if you own that business, there's no incentive and having campaigns where you could get like, $2 conversions, because then you never spend more, right, you know, your budgets really low. But if you have to spend to get, you know, $100, get a conversion, then you have to keep spending over and over again. And I think that's kind of the same thing that they did with forcing Display Network ads, on the video campaigns, I think it's the same concept, like just, it's a way to get more advertising. And in addition to that, I had noticed Facebook has this new feature that says, Would you like your ads to be a multi multi advertiser channels or something like that, what that means is, if you don't uncheck that box, they'll put your ads like on Instagram next to other people's ads. So it's just like an ad feed. It's not actually a feed. So it's like you're competing against other ads, it's like a, I was thinking about it, it's like, like a swap meet. It's like, everyone's kind of selling the same thing. And you're all in the same area. So it can devalue your ad, but it can make it seem like it's being seen by a lot. And I thought this is interesting that they're making a lot of these changes. And then another change that I saw on Facebook was they changed, at least on my on all the My Accounts, which is a lot. They changed the default setting, to instead of like, especially on conversion campaigns, instead of showing costs or conversion, or leads or whatever. The default setting is reach impressions and engagements. And you actually have to like, search out how to put the conversion as the default setting to see your performance. That tells me multiple things. Either clients are starting to like fall off, because they're not seeing the conversions that they want. So it's almost like they're trying to convince you of something else. Yeah. But having that as the default. Yeah. And so yeah, so quite a few changes happening. And I know a lot of advertisers are like, What is going on? Like you're essentially taking away all targeting, but in my opinion, I think the entire time targeting is going to go away anyways. Yeah, like, if you think about it, the trend is maybe six years ago, five, six years ago, you can get ultra targeted, right. And then each year, they've removed more and more, you know, due to privacy. And really, it's just, I think it's a money grab. Yeah, but at the end of the day, you're gonna have to play by these rules anyway, so you have to get good at it. No matter what, it's not like advertising is gonna go away. You just gonna have to play by those rules and adjust. And I think I have seen quite a few comments with people online. Right, saying like, this is, you know, terrible...

Blake Beus 0:00 Okay, so we were just barely talking about. I mean, everybody talks about data driven and all of these things. But we, we were talking about some unique situations where a lot of business owners, they've been through the the brand voice message, the customer avatar thing that they they put in that work, which I don't think is a bad thing. But then it's almost like they get a bit locked in, in that area. Stubborn. And and convinced that that that because they did that work, which is great, that that's what we need to stick with when the customers are voting with their dollars in a different direction. Maybe you can clarify what I'm what I'm getting at? Yeah, Greg Marshall 0:45 well, I think one thing, and you know, I've think we've all fallen prey to this before, but being too overly focused on like, what you want the message and the image to be versus what the customer reacts and pays for. Yeah, and some examples that I would use is, oftentimes I see. And it's normally the individual that's very brand centric, right? Especially if they want to present a high end brand, right, they become so obsessed with how everything looks and feels to them, that they're actually focusing on the wrong person. Yeah, you need to focus on the customer who's going to buy it. And where this is coming from is actually I've run a bunch of campaigns where I've seen where the business owners is like dead set on the vision and the brand, and everything has to look a certain way, yet those campaigns perform very poorly. And then when we switch it up and do it more in the way that the customer responds to, the business owner is unhappy with how the image brand and voice looks. But the customers are responding and Blake Beus 1:56 buying and buying. And so they're, they're happy with the money coming in. Yep. But they're not happy with the images or the video because they're not pro quality. Yeah, or, or any of those Greg Marshall 2:09 are, they don't look as a very specific way, maybe the way they envisioned and I go back to, when I when I first started doing my fitness business, we initially wanted to go after like this high end. And I think a lot of changes is high end highly motivated, willing to spend a lot of money type of client. And we kind of just kept pushing that over and over and over again. And we noticed we had no customers, no one would pay us even though we were like we deserve the high paying customer we deserved this is the best product out there. No customers where we had people like beating our door down, saying can you help us lose weight? Can you help us get fit, and this is the exact thing we were trying to get away from. And we finally caved in because we're like, well, these people are literally like throwing their money at us asking us can we help them? Maybe it's time to make a pivot and make a change. And when we did that, we started seeing great success. And so I say that because it is very common, in my experience, especially if it's a newer business owner. Or maybe someone that has the habit of comparing themselves to other bigger brands, where they get so locked in on how everything needs to look that they don't do enough testing, to see what gets the customer to buy. And then how do I do more of that? Right? And that's kind of the point of this topic is to almost tell you make sure you're not making this mistake where you're doing it a certain way, because you want it. But the customer or the market is not actually even paying for it. Blake Beus 3:49 Yeah, I mean, this is when I went to college, I have a degree in Business Information Systems. And I had a bunch of business classes with that. And it was it was one on one, it's like, marketing one on one, you are not your customer. Yep, you are not the one going in there and buying this thing to fix this problem. You've already solved the problem. Yep. So you are a completely different person than your customer is. And so the best way to figure out what...

Blake Beus 0:00 It's been a couple it's been a couple of weeks. Yeah. You've been traveling. I got COVID. Yeah. And then we're back. But yeah. So you you read something on Facebook's documentation. Yeah. Greg Marshall 0:14 And I surprised you and I never redacted. Blake Beus 0:17 Yeah. Because usually their their advice is bad. Yeah. Every time I've talked with a Facebook rep, the advice has been at the grid has not worked and when I've tried it, but so I wanted to pick your brain on what this was, well go over it, it Greg Marshall 0:32 almost. So basically, what it was, is, in the documentation, I was just making a training video for our clients to help educate them. So when they onboard, they understand what to expect when they're running ads, because a lot of our clients either have run ads a little bit in the past, or none at all. They've just started running businesses, and then know that they need to advertise on social now. So what I looked up was interesting. So the in the documentation, I read it said, you should only have one ad per ad set. What? And I so I had to check a couple times, because I was like, this is facebook.com documentation. And I had never seen this before. And so when I was reading it, I thought, well, this is interesting, because a lot of the accounts that I've had the most success with, I've always used this tactic, but did horizontal scaling, while using the existing post IDs, we even did this with you. Yeah, yeah. And the interesting part was, in the documentation, I should find the video that I created. It said like, the problem, especially when you're running the ad is, the more ad you have, the longer it takes the algorithm to learn, because it has to it just has that many more testing points. Sure. And so what I thought was interesting about that, though, was when I first started that, I was like, okay, that's the opposite of what I've heard, in many ways, cases, where they say when you're testing ads have multiple ads running to see which one works. Give it enough information. So the algorithm has something to work with. Right. And I thought, That's interesting, because that's essentially mostly what I thought and mostly what you hear. Yeah, right. And so this is like a contrarian thought. And the funny thing is, as I started analyzing a lot of the accounts that have scaled really big, we actually used the single post id and did heavy horizontal scaling, with no multiple ads in the ad sets, only one. And so at one point, I remember getting yelled at actually by a client, because they didn't like how I set it up. But it was working, which is I had a campaign. And I had like, 20 ad sets in there. Yeah. But all the same ad. Yeah. And it was running, and it was absolutely crushing it. And I was, but they're like, well, people are gonna get tired of seeing this ad or whatever. And they were overly concerned about this. And so I stopped doing it, right. And then the account starts and not, you know, goes well. And the sad part is this has happened multiple times where clients have this same objection. And then we try it, where you got a bunch of ads in there. And it just, I've just never seen it work when it's like a ton of different ads. Blake Beus 3:31 First of all, it it always kind of blows my mind when something's working. And the clients like, Oh, I'm afraid it might stop. Yeah, maybe work. So instead, let's turn it off in advance some Greg Marshall 3:41 all. Let's make sure it doesn't work. Blake Beus 3:45 Make sure because the most surefire way to make sure your ads don't work is to turn them all off. Yeah. Right. Like, and I just don't get it. Taking a step back with with messaging. I know a lot of people are concerned Well, what if What if people get sick of it, and they get annoyed? And I think that's a very common thing that business owners think they constantly think I don't want to be that annoying advertising person. And we take a step back. I don't know if you've you've...

Blake Beus 0:00 scaling like everybody, every client there, they always get nervous. Yeah, anxiety when they when it comes to scaling, right? So you found something that works. You're spending maybe 100 bucks a day or something. And now you're telling them alright, let's do 200. Let's do 300. Let's, yes, let's do this. And then they have a ton of questions as they do do that. So what happens? Yeah, Greg Marshall 0:22 so, and it's normal to be nervous. I don't think that's abnormal at all right? Right. Because no one wants to like spend more money and risk losing. So typically, what happens? So number one, scaling, all that really means is do more, right, get more sales than you're currently getting, or more leads that you're currently getting. And typically, what happens? So here's usually the concern or the misconception of scaling. So let's say something is working really well, like $50 a day, right? Really, really low spent, and you're getting a good return. Let's say you're getting a four return on adspend. No, nice, right? So let's, let's just pretend that's happening now, if you haven't scaled before, or you're new to it, and I have made this mistake, okay. So I'm not like excluding myself, it is very easy to believe as well, if I spent 50, why don't I just spent $5,000, and I should get the exact same return of what I'm currently getting now of a Forex, right? Unfortunately, that is not how it works. And it pretty much I don't want to say it's impossible, but close to impossible to keeping maintaining that ratio that return as you spend more. And the reason for that, and Blake can probably attest to this is the audience, right? So the way these algorithms work, is when you're spending low spend, you're like forcing the algorithm to work harder to find that little pocket. That's a perfect match for your offer. But then what happens when you expand that audience? Blake Beus 2:01 You will you start, you start having to boil over into the the people that aren't perfect for the fit, and that's fine. Yep. There's more of those. And that's a good thing. Yep. Because there's, that's a much, much, much bigger audience. But instead of finding the people that are ready, right now, you're finding maybe people that are going to be ready, tomorrow, next week, or even a few or even in a few weeks, or maybe the offer is not exactly what they need. And they're comparing a couple of alternatives. And it takes them some time to make a decision. But all of that drives your costs up. Yep. And so people, in my experience, people start seeing the cost per acquisition go up, yep. Which means their row as return on adspend starts coming down, and they start panicking because they think this is a trend, that's eventually going to mean, I'm losing money. So I'm spending all this money and I'm losing money. But in reality is a good thing. Greg Marshall 3:04 Yep, in my eyes anyway. Well, and one of the things you have to keep in mind is, in my experience, okay, so I'm just speaking, in my experience, when you scale you actually, so people, I think incorrectly focus on the wrong part of the scale. And you should be thinking about the second sale, you're gonna give them the upsell, how many more orders they can make, and really focusing your energy on that. Not the the advertising part. Because it's inevitable that the cost per purchase, and the row ads is going to go down, the more you spend, but if you if you only focus on the advertising part, what's going to happen is you're going to get scared every single time it goes up, and you're going to retract or, you know, go back to what you were doing. And you're not ever going to be able to grow that and get more customers that you're looking for. And so that's the mistake that I see constantly is when they're trying to scale going, what worked out for x and 50. How do we make it work at $5,000 a day for x? Let's just keep looking at the ads over and over and over again, which is actually the...

Blake Beus 0:00 I've heard this term float floating around zero pixel tracking, Greg Marshall 0:03 or as you call it, zero pickle, Blake Beus 0:05 zero. I'm full of it today, everything zero pickup pixel tracking. And I like I like that term. And it's something we've actually talked about, we didn't have this catchy term, sure term for it. But let's, let's take a step back and talk about the problems with iOS 1415. And upcoming 16, I believe, and why that's relevant. So what what, what problems did iOS 14 put in place that everybody freaked out about? Yeah, as advertisers, so Greg Marshall 0:41 basically, you know, you just couldn't track as accurately anymore. And there was just so many targeting options taken away. So much data collection taken away, the reporting is way off. And because of that, that does impact advertisers spending, the confidence of how well your ads are doing. A lot of it can be psychological, if you're not looking at your actual numbers, and just, you know, change, people hate change. And I think iOS really put, you know, really put advertisers, businesses marketers in a tough spot, at least for a little bit, because of how everything was done in the old days, right, when the wild wild west of targeting and tracking and just plugging, there's just so many more steps now you have to do to try to get cleaner data. Yeah. So that's basically what happened. Blake Beus 1:34 Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I know, people tend to dislike change, or change throws people off. But especially in the advertising world, I feel like when change happens, it's, it's, it's a huge opportunity to level up, because, you know, some advertisers are not going to put the extra effort in to, to learn the new, learn the new way things are working, right, live live in the new world. And so they're gonna fall behind and new, you know, advertisers that are willing to be a little bit scrappy, and try new things, and whatever can contend to get ahead. Yep. So one of the things, you know, zero pixels. So I guess I'll talk really quick about the pixel just to give people a background and why zero pixel is even a thing. So how it used to work is you could install this tracking pixel on your website. And the tracking pixel was literally just a one by one pixel image, a lot of people don't realize that that's all it was. But when when the browser would load that image, you could also append some additional data, like which click ID they used when they clicked on the ad, or the browser ID of the person. Or if you've previously identified that person, you could even pass their email address and some other things back into Facebook system, or Google system, or whatever. And so you could connect the dots between data and events that happen outside of Facebook, we'll talk specifically about Facebook, outside of Facebook, you could connect the dots with what happened with a specific Facebook user and some things along those lines. And that was great for advertisers because we could track this person was actually the person that bought this thing, this person in Facebook world was the person that bought this thing over here, you could report that back, your ads reporting was nice, you could see how much you spent, how much you made, the dollar amount, amount, how many sales you had, or how many leads you had, and it was great. When iOS 14 came around, they said we are going to block third party tracking. And what that meant was any stuff that happened outside of Facebook, they're going to block reporting that back into Facebook, and it's a data privacy thing. In the grand scheme of things, most people probably wouldn't be okay with how much data collection Facebook was doing at the time. Maybe not even be that much data tracking they're doing now. But it was good for advertisers. Yeah. So when they did that mobile devices make up? I don't know why on it on most websites, I look at these days, I would say mobile iOS devices make up probably 50 to...

Blake Beus 0:00 So we were talking about going viral. And we we've talked about how going viral is not the solution, not the solution, right? Like, like, a lot of people want to, they want to go viral, viral and everything you want to have that content that just takes off. But I think the words you used were going viral is not what you think it is. Yeah. Or something along those lines, right. So like, why why do you say that? Well, I Greg Marshall 0:26 think, well, it's, what I do want to say is, I don't think it's not valuable. But it's not what you think like, going viral is not actually going to get you all of the sales that you think you're going to do. But there is a way to use it. Right? So most people have the idea that, well, if I can get this video or this post or picture, whatnot, seen a couple million times, then that alone will generate more sales. And I just haven't seen that to be the case in many instances. But there are ways to capitalize on that. So I know you said you had someone that recently had a post go viral. Blake Beus 1:07 Yeah, so I have an office at. They call it a creative studio, that it's an old parking garage, they've converted into a bunch of different studios for artists and things and I kind of got in super early on they weren't entirely sure if it what what if it was going to be for artists or something else, or kind of working spaces. And so I'm, I'm the soul, not like artists sculpt or whatever, I just have my corner office and I just work out of it. But I like being around the creative energy. And I oftentimes talk with him about marketing and things and they have questions about all of that stuff. And we'll one girl she does. She she does these amazing. One one of these artists in name's Sarah Austin. Anyway, I'll mention her because you should go like check out her stamp. But she had, she does these amazing wood colored pencil drawings. And she had a real that went nuts. And she had four or 5 million views. And I think when she had that post go viral. I think she only had a few 1000 followers. Yeah. Right. So that was a big deal. Yeah, she's super excited about it. Got a ton more followers, I think her follower count went up by almost 20 grand. Yeah, like that. Super cool, like very exciting. And I was talking with some of the other artists there. And you know about that, because they all want to go viral and everything. And, and it turns out, she didn't really, she got a lot of followers got a lot of kind of traction and things. But none of that really converted over into sales. Yep. Right. And so none of it turned into selling of her art or anything along those lines. And so we were just kind of chatting about that. And I mentioned this to you. And that's where we kind of came up with this, you know, idea. Now, now she's putting into play some, some sort of a sales process, putting together some offers that she thinks might resonate a little bit more with the Instagram crowd maybe be a little bit more of an impulse purchase. And kind of exploring that a little bit. So it hasn't been a bad thing. But it's also like you go viral is super exciting and cool and everything, but it doesn't, it doesn't always translate over Greg Marshall 3:25 into sales. Well, it's actually a good lesson, too, for if someone goes viral, they themselves can actually see that just being seen more, doesn't complete the actual sales cycle. Right, right. And so here's here's basically what Blake was talking about. She's coming up with offers and things like that is now what you can do is retarget. So anyone who watched that video, right or engage, you can retarget them with an ad with a direct offer. That's that basically sells something related to what that video was. Because one of the things that happens, posts that go viral on social media are never sales oriented. That's like the opposite of what the platforms actually want. And so if you go viral, it's not going to be something where you say hey, by the...

Blake Beus 0:00 messaging 2.0. So last week, we talked about messaging. And we gave a lot of different ideas concepts on on messaging. And I know a lot of people think messaging. It's boring talk, right like to talk to me about algorithms or, or targeting or stuff like that. But as we've mentioned, many times messaging is becoming more and more, it's more important, always been important. Yes. But with changes in data collection and privacy rules, which are only going to get more restrictive things like targeting and that are going to become less effective. Yep. And so messaging, which I feel like we're seeing this all the time is becoming more and more and more important to you. So you wanted to follow up on on on what we talked about last week, with some tests and things you've run this week? And give us kind of a rundown on what you're seeing with messaging. Greg Marshall 0:53 Yeah, so one thing, and the reason why we're harping so much on messaging, if we could sell you on messaging is king, you will actually be able to control your, your success, right in the future when it comes to your business. Because this is the one lever that if you pull it will give you the greatest return. Alright, so what I want to talk about as a client as a direct test, so $1,000, the offer really didn't change much. The targeting didn't change much. And they spent $1,000. Got no leads. Blake Beus 1:27 Yeah. And so they brought you on to kind of be like, this isn't work. Yeah, like we spent 1000 bucks got zero leads. When you told me this, the first thing I was like I asked was, what was their lead form broken? Oh, that's Greg Marshall 1:39 exactly what I thought I couldn't believe it. Because it is so unbelievable to think. Even the worst of that will get you one leave for $1,000. Right? Yeah. $1,000 like something's got to be brought. So the first thing I did was I looked at the targeting, are they even targeting the right areas? Yeah. Are they who are they targeting? Is it? Are they like their landing page? Is it working? Are they saying it to a page? Oh, everything worked? Okay. $1,000.00 leads. So what we did was we, we swapped out the what she was saying. And the ads so we still so ad number one was selfie style. And number two was selfie style. So at least our videos like style video. Yep, selfie, just offering the service zoek. We did that. And so there was no change in like how look, we didn't like increase the production, or make it look totally different. We same format. What we did was we changed the words on what we said. And we made one major shift that I think may have influenced the success of this. We made sure that the message was all about the feelings that the customer on the field versus ad number one was about what we did, okay, okay, which may seem very subtle, but it makes a massive difference Blake Beus 3:02 was this in was was what industries it's a fitness industry. Okay, Greg Marshall 3:07 so one, one add number one was about leveling up, we do CrossFit. We can get your nutrition plans, we can do all that, right? That's showing the business. And number two was about how they feel. So what are your customers always say when they come in? Well, they're looking for a place to feel included. They just moved here. So they don't really have a gym to go to. They want to be a part of a community. They want to be able to go with friends and family. And you know, so I said, switch all the messaging to that, and talk nothing about the other stuff. Yeah. So we made that shift. And to essentially put on steroids. What we did was the background of the video. I said do the videos in front of the places where your customers live, because this is a local business. Okay. So instead of just saying, Hey, do we live here? We said, like right behind right behind her was like the main shopping center. Okay, that's a very Blake Beus 4:06 recognizable thing. Vengo ooh, that's cool. I have never thought about that. So I Greg Marshall...

Blake Beus 0:00 We want to talk about hooks like you this is something you brought up about it. And you were talking with me before we turn this on it was the the importance of add hooks, and you had some new ways you've been kind of thinking about add hooks. Yeah, thinking about how hooks work when you're working with clients, all of that. Greg Marshall 0:17 Yep. So here's, here's a kind of a quick backstory. So when I first started running advertising, like Facebook, basically, and even email marketing back in the day, all you had was your ad copy and your ad hooks and, and what you put in the ads, right or in your messaging. And so I feel like I got really good at that. Okay, back, you know, back in the day, there was no such thing as pixels and all this other crap, right, and algorithms. So basically, back back, when you would create the messaging, you would spend a good amount of time really trying to write a good ad hook, and then good ad copy to follow that. And that's what made good ads. And I will say I had a lot of success running these ads, purely focusing on without using AI, or any, you know, sophisticated interest targeting none of that. Just good old fashioned ad hook ad copy, with a good ad creative and picture. And we were we were discussing that. I believe messaging is underrated, when it comes to how to get your ads to work. And the reason why I say that is because I see a lot of clients, I see a lot of people out there that when they push their ads out, they're so focused on the targeting, they put almost zero effort in the messaging. And so they may be actually in front of the right person. But because their messaging is not compelling. It's not it's not going to work, right. And that's the part that's the art and the skill of selling and marketing and how to make money basically, when you're running things is to actually have things that compel people to want to take an action. And so add hooks, is probably the most important and most overlooked thing. Because if they never actually stop, then everything after that, whether that's the captions below 100 email, your video will not be seen, right, therefore doesn't matter. Right. So then if you were to actually isolate, which is the most important thing, it's the ad hook, because without it, no one consumes the rest of the content. And you almost don't have to be so perfect on the content, as long as you can get them to stop and look at Blake Beus 2:46 Right, right. Right. Right. So, I mean, like, so many of the people I've worked with in the past, you're right, they focus on the targeting and the mechanics of the ads. Like why do you think so many people are focused on on those things? And then the ad, hook or angle or ad, you know, tends to just be an afterthought? Like, why do you think that is? Because I feel like that's pretty universal? Greg Marshall 3:12 Yep. I think well, here's my theory. My theory is they're bad at sales. And, and but think about the others. Yeah, this isn't a knock on people, because you can learn to get good at it. Right? What I'm saying is they're bad at sales currently, right? And they've never actually probably sold in person, or understand the fact of what you need to do to actually get a sale. And a lot of people have negative beliefs about selling, right, and that transpires and how they write their ad copy, or how they sell their stuff online, the same bad habit you might have in person is going to move on to the internet. And so for example, you see someone at a tradeshow. You ever see those booths where they're just sitting there? And they're not doing anything? Yeah. And no one's basically going Yeah, no, yeah. And no one's buying anything, right? It's not because their products bad and the person across product is good. It's that the other the tables, I have all the people, they have the ad hook they're selling, they're figuring out a way to get your attention to stop to go ahead and take a look at their products,...

Blake Beus 0:00 Okay, common mistakes with messaging, this is what we decided to talk about. Right? Okay. So you're on the phone with clients all the time helping them run ads and everything. Let's just start talking about these mistakes, like people make mistakes with AD messaging all the time. And I feel like sometimes people are so worried to make a mistake that they maybe don't even run ads. So there's kind of like a flip side there. So how do we kind of help identify those mistakes and then demystify it so that people can start running their ads and not like overthink every Greg Marshall 0:32 Yep. So I think, you know, one of the big mistakes, that's that's made when you're doing messaging is having the messaging be too like bland. That's number one, meaning bland, like there's nothing exciting. Like, I always like to use Dan Kennedy's example, he says, he gets a direct mail piece from maybe an insurance broker that just says, Hi, my name is Bill and I sell insurance call me. And then he makes fun of it says, Man, I can't wait. You know, like, there's nothing enticing, right? So that's number one. The messaging is too bland. Number two is not even having a call to action. Yeah. So like not being specific. Have you know, I talked with a client last night we're, that's what he was running into is he's doing as Brian Tracy, I don't know if you've read some of his stuff. But Brian Tracy talks about tap dancing around everything, but asking them to take action. Oh, really. So you would say you know, you do all this? We can our product is this. It's so nice. It'll help you do this. And then there's no ask. Then the customers kind of left with Okay, so what do I do next? Or and you've already lost them once they have to like, Blake Beus 1:40 this. Brian trait I've never heard of does he actually teaches this as is like a method of No, no, Greg Marshall 1:45 no. I'm sorry. So Ryan, trade Tracy is making fun. Oh, he Blake Beus 1:51 points out. Don't do don't do that. Gotcha. Gotcha. So Greg Marshall 1:55 sorry. Brian. Tracy was like, no, no. So he he teaches that a lot of people are afraid of the rejection part, subconsciously. So they end up doing all these things, except actually asking them to, Blake Beus 2:07 I get that I get that, especially if it's like your thing. Yes, it's way easier to be to deal with that. You know, rejection, rejection, I was gonna say regression, yeah, thinking of programming. When it's not, your it's not your baby, right. And so you might be an expert in the field, and then you decide to split off and create a side hustle, or start that business or whatever. But now it's your baby. And it's hard to go out there and get rejected. So someone's unintentional behavior might be to just dance around with correct without actually being direct and say sign up now. Greg Marshall 2:43 Yep. And that's, you know, that's, that's another conversation. And that's, you know, you can run into that, especially if you haven't done sales or stuff like that before, and you're not essentially used to the rejection. Or you just take it maybe a little more personally, you can work your way out of that. Because it's not like you stay there forever. And you either have or you don't, it's more of just you just have to train yourself to be okay with the rejection. But that's another big mistake is not actually having a call to action. Yeah. Or a clear call to action. Yeah, simply because most likely, it could just be you're worried about rejection. And but that's an easy fix. Put it out there. And eventually, you'll see doesn't hurt when someone says no. Blake Beus 3:27 So let's really quick because if, like sometimes I think it's easy to talk about concepts, and the people get hung up on the actual implementation. So real quick, just on calls to action. Let's talk about Facebook ads, YouTube ads, and then maybe Google search ads, just to kind of how, how do you put a call to action each of those because the format's...

Blake Beus 0:00 Recap of last week we did some testing. Well, you did some testing about what we talked about on our last episode. Yep. About being where customers at being okay, spending a little bit more money from a CPM perspective. Yeah. Give us a rundown on on what we talked about last week. And then let's talk about your tests that you ran and what you found. Greg Marshall 0:23 Yeah, so. So basically, to recap, last week, we were talking about how this individual is talking about data, and really researching where your customers at, you know, and focusing more and more on where they're actually at, versus what the advertising platforms recommend that you do, which is to put the ads everywhere, right, and that, technically, it is cheaper when you do it that way. But in a way, it could actually be more expensive. Yeah. Because if you're wasting money on placements that aren't converting, or your customers aren't there, then it doesn't matter how cheap it actually is. And so with the tests that we ran, last week, I ran one on my account, and I ran a couple on some clients accounts, after analyzing what actually works for for the specific offers, right. And I found that by running them on the placements that their customers are actually on, including mine, you get a lot, although the CPM is slightly higher, you're actually getting I think more for your dollar, because that dollar is not being spread out to so many different platforms, right? That the customer that you really want to see it is not actually seeing it as many times as they need to be right. And so that's what I found is although you technically and there's all these prompts, especially in Facebook, that will tell you your cost per result is going to increase if you don't use all the placements. just disregard that, because this is where you have to think, Where is my customer? And right, how do I show up in front of them regardless of the cost, because you have to work out your math anyways on cost per acquisition to revenue you're making. But if you're not actually in front of the customer, then you're essentially wasting money. So therefore, it's more expensive. Blake Beus 2:14 Right, right. So let's define CPM. And I know we define this a lot. But if someone's just hopping in right here, CPM is cost per 1000. Impressions. So what what is an impression specifically in that context? Greg Marshall 2:28 Meaning so an impression when when you run the ads is when someone sees the ad? Okay, so that's, like, if they're scrolling, and they just see it, they don't have to do anything. Okay, that's the impression. Blake Beus 2:39 So here's the question I've always had in regards to impressions that I've actually never looked into. And I'm curious if you know the answer. So let's, let's talk about Google Display Network, right? Those are the ads that show up on someone's blog, or whatever. So if I'm running some ads, in the Display Network, very, very cheap cost per impression, like the CPMs are very, very low. Yeah. I, I'm a user, I hit the blog, and I see the same ad four times on that blog. Does that count as four impressions? Yep. Okay. So that's why the cost per impressions are so cheap, because one person is causing four impressions. Yeah. Which basically cuts the cost cost of that impression. The CPMs in the reporting by 75%. Right, like, Greg Marshall 3:28 yep. And so that's basically how they counted. Yeah, if you're, so if I'm reading, you know, espn.com, and I see one of your ads on there. But I see it four times, because maybe it's placed at the top, and then he scrolled and maybe it's within the article, that's going to count as two impressions and more if I keep looking at it, right. And so, so impressions are great. And I do, I do see some value in them. But I believe where the impression is happening is more important, in my opinion, then, you know, how many times you're seeing right? Blake Beus 4:00 So you're saying it's worth paying more? From a...

Blake Beus 0:00 All right, so you were talking to me about all sorts of things. You tell me what you wanted to go over today? Because like you've got a better plan on today. Yeah. And what I do? Greg Marshall 0:10 Well, I listened to a podcast yesterday, I want to give credit to the guys names. I think it's onic or UNeek. I can't remember exactly how to say it. But he had a podcast with a gentleman that was on there. And he was talking about data, and how he uses this software or this thing that he created, you know, 11 years ago, on how to predict buyer behavior. Okay. And he says, what he he worked on the Donald Trump campaign. Oh, what other political campaign Blake Beus 0:38 in the 2016 20 2016? Yep. Interesting. And so Greg Marshall 0:43 he kind of shared what he does, to help people win the elections, he had, like, over 1000 wins, really, in politics. So sounds like he knows what he's doing? Blake Beus 0:57 Well, I mean, I will say, politics is where you get some of the most sophisticated advertising especial, especially presidential politics in America. And so even though you may not like a particular candidate, or you may prefer whatever all of that aside from an advertising perspective, there's a lot of interesting strategies that can be learned by looking at how they're doing their online ads, because they have massive budgets, they have huge incentives to do a really good job, they have access to some of the most intelligent advertisers and creative advertisers out there. And so it's a good place to learn, oh, great strategies, Greg Marshall 1:36 what he shared was, basically, what they would do is figure out, they come up based on the research data that he had 10 to 12 different messages that most likely would work based off the data. And then they would test those 10 or 12, to then figure out which one or to resonate the most, okay, and then from those one or two, have 100 Something variations of those one or two messages. So Blake Beus 2:05 when you say one or two messages, not talking specific wording, but you're talking like angles, right, but I believe, a message angle, and then you just find a bunch of different ways to say that exact same thing. Correct that, okay, that's what it sounded like. If I were to sum up American politics, advertising and the messages they're getting out there, I would put it kind of in that realm, and that there was a handful of messages. And they just say that over and over and over again, but in different ways. Yeah, they say it in, in debates, they say it on commercials, they say it in interviews, they say it in press conferences. But if you notice, it's almost always the same small set of messages set in a different Greg Marshall 2:45 way. Well, and the interesting part about what he said was applying it to business, he says what you would do is, you have to figure out first what platforms your customer is actually on. And then know their customer, you know, know your customers very deep. And so he used an example of a chair company that was running, I guess most of their ad spend on Facebook, to sell chairs. But then he asked them why. And they said, We don't know, we just started on Facebook. And so he said, alright, and he uploaded their data on who buys chairs, and found out that Facebook was number four, as far as traffic sources, where that buyer was okay. And number one was Pinterest. So he said, if you're putting on your dollars at the number four platform, versus putting it the number one, you're not going to be as efficient. So he talked about how most businesses do this, they don't actually know exactly where their customers at, and dedicate their budgets to the right message and where they're actually at in the platform. And my question to you was, I've noticed, like in the E commerce world, Facebook, Facebook ads works extremely well. Right. And I always found that the placements newsfeed like the newsfeed is where all the conversions come from. Yeah, but...