Joe: 00:00:00 Hey everybody it’s Joe Troyer and welcome back to another show here at, show me the nuggets and I brought back Rob Warner for part two of twos. For now we’ll say part two. I’m sure there’ll be a three at some point. Uh, my, my partner here at invisible PPC and uh, we talked a lot last time about starting a new PPC agency, selling PPC and Google search and tracking. And we talked about, got into a little bit about setting expectations and then prospecting. I think we left off with smart niches and then kind of setting some expectations in terms of what your markup should look like. And a, and Rob, I just want to first and foremost thank you for coming back on and spending a little more time with us.
Rob: 00:00:47 Absolute pleasure. I’m sure we’re going to have some fun.
Joe: 00:00:49 Yeah, man. For sure. So, um, I’d like to focus on, I think we kinda left off on the prospecting side, um, just with kind of getting our foot in the door. So I’d like to talk about kind of converting clients, if you will. So when it comes to looking at the successful agencies that are working with invisible PPC, what are the core strategies that you think they’re using to, to convert their clients?
Rob: 00:01:16 To me it’s all about setting a future vision for your client. And that can present itself in a couple of different ways. So let’s walk through a couple of example scenarios cause these scenarios play out over and over again and they’re just the same conversation in different variations. So conversation number one is if you’ve particularly talking about Google ads, you’re talking to an existing advertiser, that advertiser today ha is getting an outcome from their ads that they are unhappy with. Otherwise they wouldn’t be talking to you. Even if they’re not unhappy, they are at least curious. They may be benchmarking where they’re currently at. They may be looking at ideas to say is what I’m getting okay? But more often than not, it’s people and pay. It’s I’m spending X dollars and all I’m getting out of it is Y I don’t think that’s what I should get expect for my business.
Rob: 00:02:16 So in that case future and what you’re saying is where could that account be in the future? And so what you’re doing is you’re looking at what are the, what are the pain points today? So you’re typically going to be reviewing the account, you’re looking for problems, you’re looking for opportunities. And so if we deal with all these pain points and we translate them into actions and outcomes, then this is the deliverable you get at the end of it. This is the kind of result you can expect. You can then match that expected result that, you know, cause you’ve got evidence to support it now against their vision. And so for me to sell into an existing advertiser is incredibly easy thing to do, cause you go, here’s where you are, here’s all the things that are wrong with it. Here’s where we think it should be.
Rob: 00:03:03 Do you like that? And if they like the outcome that, that’s kind of it. Um, if you, one of the great benefits of that kind of process isn’t in the unpacking the problems and identifying the opportunities. You’re reaffirming expertise anyway. So you’re in fact by doing the process, you are, you’re confirming your position as the person who can deliver and what you’re also doing is, and we’ll talk I’m sure like about retention, but you’re actually future pacing retention. What you’ve actually doing is, you know, as a service provider that the outcome that you’re offering, you can get, you’ve proven it. So that conversation and that conversion process is a relatively simple one and it will always end with this is where we are, this is where I want to go. If you agree with that, here are the next steps. It allows you to move, transition, seamlessly.
Rob: 00:04:03 If you want this outcome, then first sign here, then send us money, one of your processes. So it’s a seamless close. I often find in that conversation, prospects will close themselves before you even get to a having to close them because they’ve found, you’ve told them what the problems. I’ve told them what the solution is. I just want you to get on with it. Um, um, you know, if you’re in an ambulance bleeding, you don’t, you don’t wait. The paramedic doesn’t say, okay, here are the next steps I’m going to put a bandage on you. Just kind of get on with it. Similar conversation, different angle. Um, new advertisers, they have not run anything today. They’re brand new to this. We typically like to do what we call a market analysis, which are essentially future estimates. Um, and we can do this a couple of, different ways.
Rob: 00:04:55 Last time we were here, we spoke about our smart niche program when we know what the few, what the expected outcome is. Essentially it’s a way of presenting an expected outcome based on what we know is likely to happen if they were in Ads and while which our conversation essentially is around matching their need in terms of ROI versus our expected outcomes. If they match during that conversation, again, it’s a very easy transition to move them into it, um, without trying too hard. But you’ll notice both of those approaches are essentially grounded in evidence. Yeah. That, to my mind is the best way to have a conversation around pay per click ads and anything else in digital marketing space because you’re not, it’s not a guess, it’s not an aspiration. It’s grounded in evidence and expectation. Um, and that makes it far, far easier. Um, you’ll often come across people who are relatively cynical.
Rob: 00:05:51 You know, they’ve, we’ve find me a prospect out there who hasn’t had an agency in the past who hasn’t, doesn’t believe they’ve been burned by an agency. Yeah. Yep. These guys are like Unicorns. They’re very, very rare to find. Um, so you should go into any conversation expecting to have to present evidence. We’re in a, in a world where digital marketing is relatively mature or it’s a very new industry, it’s actually a very mature industry in many ways. Most people have bought at least once. So evidence is definitely the way to go. Avoid the hype, present evidence.
Joe: 00:06:26 So would it makes sense Rob, when there’s a smart niche vertical, that everybody takes the data that’s available inside of smart niches and expectations and using that as kind of their market analysis, so to speak. Here’s where you’re at, here’s where we think you can go. Does that make sense?
Rob: 00:06:48 Yeah, completely. I mean, you could not use it, but that would be insane. Um, yeah, if my, my view is really simple. If you want to present an outcome that’s outside of the parameters that are in there, then you’re kind of gambling a little bit. Um, because they’re proven and they’re not to say that they’re best case, that kind of thing. Which case. And if you think about average case that we see, you’re gonna hit that money nine times out of 10. And so that’s the purpose of that. If you want to move outside those parameters, there are times when it’s achievable, but selling something, you know, if you, if, if smartly says you’re going to get a CPA in the range of 40 to $60 and you go out and promise your clients 25 expect a bumpy start to that relationship.
Rob: 00:07:34 Um, and it might not ever last to get to a point where it’s smooth. And I’m making an assumption here that we’re dealing with clients who actually care about their outcome. Yeah. Let me just pull an edge case just worth mentioning. Um, we do from time to time get the clients who it isn’t about ROI, it’s about an ego play. And so the slight twist on this is if you come across one of those guys and they’re not ROI driven, we sometimes see them they present themselves in and ways such as, I just want to make sure my ad shows up all the time. I just want to make sure I, my ad is above this guy’s ad. You know, those kinds of conversations. Data is not going to be your friend anymore because they don’t care about the dates and they care about it’s an ego play. Um, it’s like buying a big billboard and my billboards are going to be bigger than his billboard. It’s the same kind of thing. If he’s got, if he’s got a 20 foot, I, we’ll have 50 foot up lights and bells on mine.
Joe: 00:08:32 And I’m curious, I’m curious, rob, when you, when you see those types of clients, how often does it a quarter later become about the budget?
Rob: 00:08:43 yeah, always transitions. They always transitions.
Joe: 00:08:46 Yeah. Yeah. And I can say without doubt. Every time I’ve had a customer like that, it’s yeah, I want, you know, as much impression share as possible. I want my average position to be one or 1.1. Um, and then a quarter later they’re complaining that they didn’t get the ROI that they want. And it’s like, I mean, you kind of forced our hand. What do you expect?
Rob: 00:09:10 Yeah, you’re dealing with people. And the best way I can describe it, um, and I don’t mean to be rude about it. It’s got medical conditions, it’s a little bit bipolar in terms of the way they behave. Um, and what you gain from them as you get. It’s very kind of flip flop kind of approach. And one day it’s all about impression share. The next day it becomes about ROI. The day after bit comes about something else. You dealing with somebody who’s typically got an impulsive, strong personal character traits. And so that’s driven generally by ego and emotion and the hard clients to retain. Um, in my experience, they’re the guys who on day one will call you and tell you you’re the king of the world. And on day two will call you and tell you’re an idiot. Earlier I did nothing different between day one or day two. What’s changed? And the only thing that’s changed is the contents of their head. Yup.
Joe: 00:10:04 Oh, a hundred percent. Okay. So most people are doing some type of market analysis. To recap the smart niche program and people enrolling in that, uh, is, is definitely a no brainer to be able to get some, uh, expectations in terms of what’s possible in the vertical. Um, and be able to show the customer, here’s where you’re at, here’s where we think we can take you. Um, if smart niches isn’t available, rob, how would you advise somebody about doing a market analysis, right? Like what are the three or four things that you would look for inside of the account or where would you point somebody?
Rob: 00:10:42 Well, it’s really interesting actually. so inside our smart niche program we’ve actually got a calculator that people can do for themselves and that calculator will show them how to estimate outcomes in a market. So that’s a really nice thing to do. If they can do that, that kind of takes away any, um, doubt and gives them evidence based outcome so people can do that for themselves and figure it out. Come back. If we back up a little bit from the detail, let’s look at just kind of what I call the first principles of this situation. And let’s use some common sense. Look at the market that you want, you want to make the sale in. Is it a market where the first place you would go to to buy it as a buyer in that market, would it be Google, you know, is it something you’re likely to search for?
Rob: 00:11:29 You know there are certain things which I would describe as impulse buys or things that are sold rather than bought. Do you want to many other things where you walk into the store and they’ve got a kitchen gadget that you never knew you needed but it’s going to juice your potatoes in three seconds and do all this kind of crazy stuff and you go ha, never knew I needed one of those, but now I’ve seen it. I don’t think I could live without it. They’re usually these little TV screen demos, like those kind of thing. That’s how I would describe it. A product that is sold rather than bought, so you have to ask the question, is this product or service something that is bought or searched for and there are ways you can prove that. Follow our guide and get some data on it to see if it’s actually searched for in the first place.
Rob: 00:12:12 Second thought is if it is searched for, where would I buy it? If it’s a $10 item available on Amazon, there’s a pretty good chance that’s going to be a terrible thing to PPC because anything that’s available as a commodity that you can Amazon prime, that’s where the market’s gonna go for it. There’s no margin in running ads for small ticket items or less. They are repeatable consumables that you will buy over and over and over again. In which case you might be able to justify it in a lifetime value basis. So you’re looking for things that you can’t, for example, a replacement roof. You can’t just walk up, go to Amazon, and an older roof is a bit more involved there. You know custom kitchen design. Sorry,? Who knows the way those guys are going, if I’m sure if it pays us, has gotten to deal with it, that’s exactly what you’ll be able to do. You’ll upload a picture of your house, they’ll go to that. Here’s how much your bill is going to cost.
Rob: 00:13:12 So the Amazon test is a great practical tests as far as I’m concerned. You’re looking at things that are personal, things that have a high service value involved in them, things that have a brand associated with them that you control. Again, if you are just one of a thousand people who all say sell the same item at roughly the same price, it’s not really PPC play and margins come into it. So it’s coming to common sense. It’s are people searching for this thing? If they are who was in that space already and can I compete with them and win and just do some Google searches. You know, if you see that your top competitor is Amazon and Walmart and Costco, you’re probably in trouble. Don’t go there. Um, if on the other hand, it’s two local mom and pop shops or you may be a local mom and pop shop, then even the game, go for it. Um, and you know, that’s my sort of common sense approach to it.
Joe: 00:14:09 100%. Yeah, I think that that’s a good high level overview. Um, let’s assume that somebody has a current existing Google account, right? Um, what are your thoughts on kind of high level the top three or four things in terms of a market analysis or just an analysis of their account, right? If you have five minutes to look at a Google account before a pitch, right, and you’re going to take them here to here, what are you going to look at? Like what are the big, you know, what are the big levers?
Rob: 00:14:39 Number one, tracking, uh, 50% of the accounts that we see have tracking set up and 75% of them have done the set up properly. So if you can’t track it, you can’t measure it. So Yup. Anything with his own list of view, if tracking is set up incorrectly, that every other conclusion we draw out that account is highly suspect because you’re basing it on inaccurate data. So first thing is what’s the tracking set up? Second thing is I want to look at the keyword strategy at a high level. So I’ll pick the cat and pain that’s got the biggest spend. I’ll dive into the ad groups that are in there and the things that I’m looking around for those set, my sort of alarm bells off are, is it broad match keywords? If it’s broad match keywords, I would call that an amber flag. It’s not a definite red flag yet, but it’s pretty close to it.
Rob: 00:15:33 And how many key words are in each ad group? You know, if you’re seeing more than a dozen keywords in an ad group, that’s a pretty good chance it’s off. So those two things, first and foremost are things I’m looking for. I would caveat that, that next thing I’ll check out is a negative keyword list. Have they really built out a negative keyword list that might become trolling those broad match keywords and helping it work? There are some markets where that’s a good strategy. So then my initial go to, I then want to see the ads that are running and see how well those ads have been tested. And the final thing, so if last one is tracking is one keyword type and volume is two. Ads is number three. I want to see plenty of ads running to be tested. Number four, and this actually in many respects, much to my annoyance, is the biggest lever as goal is where the sending the traffic, is it a really good well built optimized landing page or is it the website is the website and it isn’t really focused on conversion. There’s your biggest lever right away.
Joe: 00:16:40 Yup. 100%, I can’t believe more people, um, aren’t really pushing negative keywords. Like that’s the one big thing for me. That’s always, if they have tracking set up, it’s like, holy crap, great job. Right? But then always I find so many holes with negative keywords. I remember a client, um, sold like supplements for dogs for like joint supplements and it was literally, um, you know, showing up in Google for marijuana related searches with joints. Um, so the same customer, completely unrelated, but another huge negative keyword issue. A rapper TI came out with a song called Flexin and that was the company name. And so it was spelled different, but both huge negative keyword issues had literally tripled their budget. Um, and we’re getting no more conversions just because of those two negative keyword issues, and I was able to do what you just said, right? Here’s where you’re at, here’s where you should be. Just by taking out the negative keywords and figuring out like the, this isn’t good. This is where all the spends coming from, you know, in the next 90 days, here’s where I can get you right and I just backed out the numbers.
Rob: 00:17:55 It’s insane, isn’t it? It’s insane. Those things, I mean, I give you one story, one tip back to sales conversion that comes out of the conversation that’s really relevant. The example is we had a client who had an industry they’re in now, but one of their products was the same product name as a Nike Shoe. It’s like, oh dear, the negative keyword list ended up being insanely long just because people were trying to buy shoes and was like, what do we do? We give upon our brand and our product or we figure out the way to handle this. We figured it out and we handled it with this huge negative keyword list. Um, but that was a big issue for them. The other tip that comes out of this, circling back to sales closing, just cause a great example.
Rob: 00:18:44 You know I said about highlighting the pain and the problems. Do, if your prospect into a plumber in San Diego for example, do a Google search or look through their search terms for worst plumber in San Diego, if they’re Ad shows, you won’t have to try too much harder than the rest of the sale cause you go, hey, we found a bunch of problems and did you know you’re showing up for worst plumber in San Diego, that guy’s getting fired that morning. 100%. That’s how you combine data and emotion.
Joe: 00:19:18 I’m curious on a, on the branding, on the negative keyword play with the, with the shoe, how much money do you think that that cost at that brand?
Rob: 00:19:28 Uh, it was, it was thousands and it was absolutely thousands.
Joe: 00:19:32 Was that something where they name the product after the shoe was out.
Rob: 00:19:35 The shoe came second. The product came first. So they got a long established product. Um, and they knew nothing about the fact that shoe even existed. That wasn’t their world, that it was, I can’t remember what it was, but assuming home related. So with like a, a manufactured item for something you put in a home, like an install of some sort and it just had just had the same name and it was a terrible clash. But what they, they argue it was, what do we do? We’ve got thousands of these things installed in there. It’s on all our boxes. It’s on all the manuals. People know what it is. So people in the market would recognize our name. It’s just now clashing with the shoe. Um, and of course as suggesting to Nike that they changed their product name, um, is unikely, I feel to be successful. But that budget was about $10,000 a month and this was their best selling product. So you can imagine the amount of money every month going into margin. The success of that campaign manifested itself almost entirely on our ability to manage, manage, manage that negative keywords and manage that because that was how we won or lost.
Joe: 00:20:44 So one thing I want to point out is that, um, I said that I’d gave them 90 days, right? To fix that. Just in terms of me setting expectations, right? I mean, for those of you guys that have added negative keywords to a campaign, like, you know how easy that is? Like I had to manage it maybe for a couple of days to get out all the variations, right? Um, but, but understand like that’s what setting expectations is, right? And I believe that just so many people are like, yeah, I’ll fix that tomorrow. And then when it doesn’t happen right, then, you know, they’re in a world of hurt. Um, or if it does happen, they’re in a world of hurt.
Rob: 00:21:19 no, I agree. 90 days is my goto period for any PPC chain. One thing to bear in mind as well, Google, and we’ve tested this, um, in a sort of formal way and we’ve tested it anecdotally inside our business. Obviously we have so many accounts. If you go into a Google account and you make thousands of change on the same day that are out of the ordinary, Google’s got AI running on those accounts. It kind of flips a bit. And so weird things can happen. So our process is very much around revolution or evolution rather than revolution. Uh, we find if we start making those changes and we drip feed them in over, in some cases, weeks, uh, we get a much better outcome than if we suddenly hit them overnight. What the benefit, the upside of that is, of course your client starts to see benefit almost immediately, but they don’t think, oh great, I’ve hired these guys and everything in 24 hours. Rob: 00:22:19 What do I need them for an ongoing basis. So they’ve clearly made the gains. It’s done. Yeah. So managing the expectation and delivering it over two, four, even six weeks, depending on the scale of the chain, is a really nice way to do it. You don’t freak Google out, you don’t freak out applying out and you enhance your value with the client because you say, look, we’re two weeks in, we’ve got all of this done but we’ve still got to load more to do and it’s a great future patient thing. So when we talk about retention and the expectations where retention starts,
Joe: 00:22:51 Oh, 100%, 100% and I think we hit on that last time, but you know, Facebook and the mentality with Facebook is very different than the mentality with Google. Like that’s what that makes me think of. And when, when I speak with a potential prospect, right? And they’re running Facebook and that’s their main traffic source and now they want to run Google. I like quite literally wanna run the other way. Um, just because expectations, expectations are night and day difference, right? Like a 24 hour test and then lets scale to the moon, right? Like, and that’s obviously not how it works.
Rob: 00:23:29 we had a conversation last week with a Facebook agency. Um, and the thing I’ve found whenever we’ve worked with agencies who specialize in Facebook is they panic and start jumping into our accounts and making changes sometimes. And it’s like, dude, it’s been like 40 hours. Get off our case. And they go, I can’t believe you’ve let this run 48 hours without changing it. Are you guys crazy? You incompetent? No, we do Google. It’s not Facebook. These two things are not the same. Um, and getting that mentality across, it’s really hard for somebody to specialize in Facebook where you mark or manage by the hour in some cases. You know, you may micromanage a Google account by the hour if you’re running at speed, you are booking.com. You probably do. Um, but you don’t own the vast majority of small, medium sized business accounts. Um, and so stopping the Facebook guys freaking out is a bit of a challenge.
Joe: 00:24:25 Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Cool. So let’s, um, let’s move now. I think that was a good point into onboarding and retention. And I kind of want to group these together because I think that retention really starts in the sales process and we’ve talked about that, but it’s a big key in onboarding. Um, but then I want to talk about kind of the long term, fast forward to the longterm kind of retention plans. Um, and I know that rob, that you spent more time on this than, uh, most agencies and I know that you’ve got a lot of value to give here. So what are the three or four things in terms of onboarding that we can start with that we can do to set expectations, uh, and, and really make sure that we’re thinking about retention from the get go?
Rob: 00:25:06 Yeah. So first of all, just say you’re absolutely right. A retention starts during the sales process. It gets reinforced during the onboarding process, and you then deliver it into your, your transition into your ongoing management. Think, just think about psychology for a second. If we think about people we’re dealing with, when we buy something, we all get a little dopamine hit. We all get the, yes, I’ve just bought this thing. It’s going to be the best in the world. It’s kind of a transformative for my business. An hour later, buyer’s remorse start setting in. And that’s not because anything bad happened, but that’s because we are human beings. We’re programmed to them, worry about what we’ve just done. Have I done the right thing? I haven’t got an email from these guys yet or these can we trust them and they’re worth and all these doubts and things.
Rob: 00:25:56 So during any client relationship, and particularly during onboarding, you are managing the client’s emotional state and their perception of you as a business. If we forget the actual steps that have to take place for a second, what we’re doing is state management when managing their state of mind and their perception of us as a business. Yeah, and we know that we’re dealing with a worsening state of mind until we go live. You think about what there is and there’s a gap. They say yes and they pay money. There can be a gap. That can be three days, five days. It can be weeks in some cases before first results starts to appear. The longer that gap and the more silence that lives in that gap, the worse they feel you. And even if you ultimately deliver, the longer that’s taken, the worst they feel, it’s really hard to recover from that even if you do an awesome job.
Rob: 00:26:53 Um, so a bad onboard process in 90% of times will lead to a poor client retention outcome cause they, they lose trust, they lose belief. So if we know that that’s the case and we know that our customers are going to go through this process and this mind shift, our job becomes managing that mind shift preemptively. So during onboarding, it’s all about future pacing. Again, this client may have never bought a digital marketing service before so they don’t know what the future looks like. If you don’t tell them your version of the future ahead of it happening, guess what? They make up their own version of what the think was supposed to happen or what the friend said happened to them in their business. Or if it had an agency in the past, what happened last time? Um, so we have to future pace exactly what’s coming, why and what to expect and keep pointing out the value.
Rob: 00:27:54 And I like to do that as multichannel as possible. So if you can use phone calls, emails, video calls, text messages, if that’s how your client likes to communicate, the more multimodal you keep that communication, the better. Every single piece has to go. This is what we’re doing next, this is why it matters for you. This is what you need to contribute to it. And if I’m asking you to contribute and I’m telling you why I’m asking you to contribute and then this is what’s going to happen next. And so everything is circling forward and that needs to be tight, right to the point at which the campaign goes live. So if it’s got your form, we’re going to book in a call, book in the call, going to build a tracking, built tracking then test your campaign and keep stepping them through it.
Rob: 00:28:37 And you’ve mapped this out and I would urge everybody listening, whatever business you’re in in the digital space, map out day by day by day, what messaging you need to get to your clients, what channel you’re going to use to do it and what you’re going to do if something changes or goes off plan. Have a plan, have it documented so that it happens by design, not by accident. Um, and if we plan this in advance, that’s where we live. That’s where consistent service lives. That’s good process. When we’re live, again, will they still be repeating the cycle, we’re getting into a further future pacing exercise. Today is live. We’re going to have a conversation two weeks and checking in where we are. Then we’re going to have a conversation in the four weeks. We can send some reporting out then and then and keep future pacing towards outcomes.
Rob: 00:29:27 Remind them of where they are in that journey. If you ideally can tell them what the journey is going to look like to your 90 day outcome. You know, remember that 90 days you mentioned, let’s zoom in on that day 60. We want to be future pacing at their outcome. We want to be looking forward. Um, so they’ve got a plan for the future. Um, so that is how we approach, we’ve documented, we plan it, we know what the schedule is, we control it. We tell them, because if we control that, then they’re working to our plan and we’re not trying to second guess what theirs might be that because bear in mind if they’ve got a plan as to what they’re expecting, they’re not going to tell you that. They’ll tell you when you’ve got it wrong. They’ll tell you if you do something or don’t do something they were expecting to happen.
Rob: 00:30:18 That’s the first time you find out about it. And to me that makes a big difference. And I think the other final thing I would say, and in addition to the plan communication, the expectation setting, there’s one of the things that’s worth doing as well. Think about what client win looks like from your Business. What are the points of which you can interject a celebration with your client, your campaign’s live is a win. Maybe send them some chocolates. You’ve got your first lead, maybe that’s a win. You’ve made your first sale. Maybe that’s a win, whatever it is, look for reasons to celebrate with your client because if you can celebrate with them, you become part of their team, um, on their own value that they even value the fact that you’ve noticed it happened. Because you knew they got the first lead, they go, Oh God, these, these guys are on the ball. Um, yeah, they’re on it. So you think about that in terms of how you can demonstrate that and celebrate. So does that answer the question Joe?
Joe: 00:31:14 Yeah, definitely. And I think what you just brought up there at the end, it makes a whole lot of sense too. I think a lot of business owners are so removed from the day to day operations that they don’t know a lot of times what you’re doing or they don’t know that you’ve even achieved that result. So you bringing it up and saying congratulations to them really is like highlighting what you just did, not what they just did. Right. Um, and I think that that’s, that’s a huge win. Um, but the framing there I really liked instead of saying, hey, your campaigns live, yeah, that’s a win and you need to communicate that. But you just got your first lead is, you know, it feels a little different, right?
Rob: 00:31:54 Yeah. It’s their win, it’s not yours. They don’t care how clever you are. They care what you do for them. So if you, if you celebrate their wins or recognize them, it shows you’re invested in it, it shows you’re paying attention to it and it shows that you give it them. And that’s a, that’s a massive thing. Um, so I definitely advocate doing that.
Joe: 00:32:15 So celebrating their wins. Recently I saw that we just helped somebody celebrate a win. Can we talk about that broad strokes, just to give somebody an example in the slack chat the other day,
Rob: 00:32:28 Jolt my memory, I’m just going to trends on through flights.
Joe: 00:32:34 So the invisible PPC slack chat. There was an industry magazine that one of our clients just got mentioned in, right. Um, got some press. Yeah. And so I never seen how we handled this invisible and I just thought it was cool and was a good perspective or good example of this.
Rob: 00:32:53 Yep. So in that one, it’s great feedback by the way. Um, so thank you for prompting me what we’re talking about. Yeah, they’ve got a industry industry award. Um, we’ve been working closely with them now for three and a half and half, actually five years, um, as an agency partner. Um, it’s been a big relationship during that time. Um, and so what we’ve done is there are two key principles in that business. So we’re sending them both gifts, um, because when we flag it, we have a channel dedicated in invisible PPC to client wins. So it’s on our team. Our team have a responsibility.
Rob: 00:33:28 If they become aware of a client when or they see something that immediately to put it in that channel and as appropriate, we will send gifts. Um, and sometimes you should a phone call. Sometimes it’s a Well done. Sometimes in this case we will say in really nice gifts. It’s a big deal that they’ve won. Um, the gift itself in medication, it doesn’t matter. We want to make it personal. We want to recognize it and want to make it appropriate for them. But the fact we’ve taken the time to do it, it’s kind of what matters the most. Um, one thing I will say when you’re sending client gifts, don’t expect thank you. You nearly always will never get them. I’m like, doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all. Don’t be offended, upset by it. Don’t think about not doing it next to time. They’ll notice even if you don’t get a thank you.
Rob: 00:34:12 And one thing I like to do as well is send gifts that clients can share with their team. If there’s more than one person, that business you can make the whole business. You may have two different, two or three different points of contact in that business. Make everybody feel good. Gifts are sharable, a great. Um, and I like to do that a lot. Um, Joe, can I circle back to one thing that we didn’t mention but as just kind of as a result, like thought process popped into my head that I think is valuable. Whatever digital marketing service you sell, be it PPC, be at Facebook or whatever else is just about everything we do is intangible. And that you might see it in a shopping cart outcome. You might see it in the phone ringing more, but people don’t, we assume that cause we’ve generated say 50 leads for a client, they know that we generated 50 leads.
Rob: 00:35:04 They don’t oftentimes they just think the phone’s busier. Um, that don’t make the connection. So think in your business how you can make the intangible tangible. So, and at the point of event, not subsequently afterwards, you know, a rapport, the end of the month because we sent you 50 phone calls and how often do you post to seeing this? How often does the client go, Really?, I wonder which 50 day word did they convert. Did they do anything? I ask the person on reception what they, what they thought. So what can we do at a possible, as we put a call, whisper on, so it says this is a PPC call. Answer it now. Um, it makes the intangible more tangible. Send them an SMS reminder when a call comes in, send them an email, show them copies of the ads, you know, anything that brings to life, that intangible thing.
Rob: 00:35:58 But I often describe our business when people say, what did you do? I say, we sell disappearing pixels because that essentially is the value of the word. It’d be crazy disappears the moment somebody uses it. Um, which is a strange kind of idea, but it’s just a good reminder of how intangible the things that we do are, you know, I sell SEO rankings. Really, how do I translate that into value and let’s move that point of connection as far forward in the process to real time as possible. It’s far more valuable than a report or any kind of thing you can do subsequently. Yeah. Um, Eh,
Joe: 00:36:35 I have a good friend of mine said, um, he did some research and the number one reason that, that people stopped working with an agency is indifference. Um, and for me it comes back to this conversation, right? It’s like, what are you doing for me lately? What are you doing for me now? Um, even if you’ve done a good job, it’s like, yeah, well they did a good job. It doesn’t mean that they are today. Right? So, I think it’s, it’s communicating the wins, but it’s communicating everything else in between is, is important. Uh, and, and sharing and showing your expertise and that you’re staying in front of the market and you know, what’s happening, uh, is, is ultimately what’s going to the combination of those things is what’s going to get you to, uh, you know, keep walking, keep the clients longterm.
Rob: 00:37:21 Yeah, absolutely. Great. One of the great way to think about it was one of the expression, one of my colleagues used him previously, which is you sell the Christmas tree, um, that’s your core service. But actually people care about the decorations, the bobbles, the lights. And so doing the core just isn’t enough. You have to decorate it really well and make it look beautiful. And people appreciate the whole thing, far more of McCall that you actually just do for them. So educate them, train them, make it tangible, make it real. Um, show that you’re engaged in the conversation. Show you’re engaged in the relationship.
Joe: 00:37:58 Definitely. Any other thoughts on onboarding or retention before we move on? I want to get into retargeting.
Rob: 00:38:07 No, I think you’ve got the gist of what my thoughts on that. I think the key thing is, and I reiterate it, is have a plan in place and also have a plan to handle, um, deviations from it. If the, if something goes wrong, have a plan for when something goes wrong cause it will from time to time and it’s no use burying your head and hoping it goes away. It will go wrong. And when it does, use demonstrates your client that you’re on of it, on your communication almost as a branch. You have, this is the happy day communication plan and it branches off in there. Everything’s on fire plan. Have that planned out with all.
Joe: 00:38:47 Yeah. And you’re going to have deviations or you’re going to have changes to any plan. Um, you know, you don’t want to have massive changes to the plans or they’re not probably gonna work, right. But you’re going to have deviations and you definitely need to plan for them.
Rob: 00:39:01 Absolutely
Joe: 00:39:03 love it. All right. So, um, on, on the, uh, on the last show we talked a little bit about retargeting and that last episode. Um, so can you talk a little bit about maybe some of the results that we’ve had with retargeting and visible and why at the highest level, people agency should consider selling retargeting and any business should potentially consider retargeting.
Rob: 00:39:32 Yeah, it’s on you as you know, this is my favorite topic of the moment right now is retargeting because, um, it’s coming to the most valuable thing that many people don’t do. And it’s so it’s a strange thing. We all get focused very much as business owners on that front end generation piece, that front end, getting traffic to our website, getting people to our door, we don’t do very well is what happens once they’re on the inside manage or they convert. And so retargeting, as we’ve often described, it’s kind of like your silent salesman. Um, it’s the doing the heavy lifting of marketing and selling for you 24, seven, wherever your prospect happens to be. I mean, can you imagine that? If that was us, that was a physical store and somebody walked into your store, have a look around, picked up a few items, walked out without making a purchase. Imagine you could have somebody walking around with them going, look at this. It’s on special right now. Hey, don’t, if you forget, we’ve got a five year guarantee
Joe: 00:40:35 And reminds me of the guys outside doing like the spinning signs and stuff, right?
Rob: 00:40:39 Well imagine that guy was following you around for the next six months. Um, now that sounds kind of creepy and is, um, but the principle’s the same and that’s the way I like to think of it. You know, if that would be a physical store owner’s dream come true, but it would never be a reality and it’s impossible to do. Whereas in digitally, that’s exactly what we can do. That’s exactly what we can do. And so, you know, not everybody makes a decision in the moment. The vast majority, 95% plus of people who visit a website will not make a decision to inquire in the moment. And that’s where retargeting comes in, they’re for the 95% we can actually help the five become customers. We can help the 5% through a customer journey, but the bigger opportunity lives in the 95% who don’t. So when you talk about results that we see, typically we see a 20% little flit, 20 to 40% uplift and the number of inquiries through a website just by adding retargeting.
Rob: 00:41:46 And the best part of that is a, we get 20, 40% more inquiries, but B, the incremental cost of doing that I can’t say is actually zero, but it’s pretty close to it. Um, most of our clients who are spending on PPC ads, uh, most 10% more often, 5% of their budget is spent on PPC, on our retargeting rather. And you generate 20% of their inquiries. Now that’s a hell of an ROI. That’s one heck of an ROI. And particularly as you were going to spend the money on the front end to get the people to your website, that’s why you’re in PPCs, why you will Facebook ads. And let’s why you pay for SEO, whatever it is you’re paying for to get people to your front door, then paying a little bit more, we’ll get you a 20 to 40% better outcome.
Joe: 00:42:37 Yep. Yeah. 100 percent. What do you think is the easiest way for an agency or a marketing director at a company to pitch right? The boss, man, retargeting.
Rob: 00:42:56 Um, we could go for the standard phrase that you and I have shared several times that I will, I’m going to throw your own phrase back at you and credit you for it. Um, which is retargeting is the only advertising that makes all of their advertising more effective and that’s really it. It’s whatever we are already doing. This will make it better. Wherever our traffic comes from this, we’ll make it more powerful. So as a page, as a one sentence elevator, that’s as simple as it gets. Um, yeah, referring to my previous comment, if all 20% 20 to 40% more leads for 5% more spend, that’s a hell of an elevator pitch. Definitely.
Joe: 00:43:39 Yeah. I think that those two options are, I mean, you can’t go wrong using either one.
Rob: 00:43:45 Oh No, absolutely. No, the first one’s slightly more flippant, but it’s absolutely true. The second one makes it slightly more quantifiable. Um, I think the three is the third one, which is a slightly different tack, which is we get to control the brand narrative that people see about our business after their first point of contact with us. And we can control that on Google for up to a year and a half. Now, very few businesses get the opportunity to repeat their brand value and messages in front of their prospects on an ongoing basis. Or if they do, they might get a search result and SEO result where that’s not a narrative control. That’s just look and you hope the right result comes in. Um, we, we’re all about controlling that message.
Joe: 00:44:34 Yeah. I think it’s great because like you said, it doesn’t matter what anybody’s doing, it’s just an added benefit to every advertising medium. Right? So it’s not biased. It doesn’t care if you’re doing Facebook ads and then you’re running Google retargeting, right? It doesn’t, you know, or vice versa, right? Like it just works, right? It just helps everything.
Rob: 00:44:57 Exactly. And I think if a business recognizes that it wants to attract this as to its website in order to generate inquiries or sales, it must also recognize that it’s in its interest. Having invested at that pace to make it as effective as possible. You know, if you’re going to, let’s take a scenario, say a bit with this as a $10,000 budget for a month of spent. Whatever, you’ve spent on SEO, PPC content, it doesn’t matter. Wherever they’re spending their money on search to drive traffic, wouldn’t it make sense to divert five to 10% of that into something that we know is going to increase the outcome 20 to 40% overall outcome, we’ll get 20 to 40% better. Um, if I was the person in charge of that spend, I certainly would want to allocate that five to 10% because that’s where my win lives. That’s how I look good to my boss and more money to do that.
Joe: 00:45:56 100% and we can see that happening, right? Uh, or kind of unfolding as we talk with more and more Facebook media buyers, right? Like that’s a huge win and a huge opportunity for them when they see what we’re doing with retargeting. It’s like, wait a second. Yeah. Like we need to add that to the campaign just to give it some stability, right. To, to even out the, the big wins and the days that aren’t much big ones.
Rob: 00:46:19 Exactly. Exactly. And I think the thing is as well is we think of this in terms of, um, lead generation or initial sale. It’s actually a phenomenal strategy for existing customers. If you have products or services that can be bought more than once, or that should be bought more than once, isn’t it surely in your interests to get those messages in front of your best buyers. So we can retarget customers and we can retarget people who inquire but don’t become a customer, you know, then that, that group of everybody, if you think about where our money lives, the biggest opportunity by volume usually is the 95% of ones who don’t convert. The biggest opportunity by value probably is once you’ve gotten to convert, getting to repeat by, and in the middle of that you’ve got people who are in the decision making process. If you think about those three separate audiences, that’s a great place where money lives.
Joe: 00:47:22 100% yeah, I mean, lifetime value of the customer is amazing. Um, yeah. Obviously we’re in such a review driven marketplace as well, right? Making sure that, that we, we talk about our brand and that we highlight those reviews and we look at remarketing and retargeting as an indoctrination almost to our brand and what we want them to think about us and we control, as you’ve said a few minutes ago, that narrative, right?
Rob: 00:47:50 Go ahead. Sorry. I say three things. Here’s what we’ve got on offer. We want to show you what we’ve gotten off of the day. Here’s a reason to engage with us. Number two, our brand value is, here’s why you should trust us over our competition. Here’s what we stand for. Number three is reasons to believe as where we use reviews and testimonials from customers. You know what? We’ve got y what we stand for, why should I believe as you put those three together, it’s a pretty potent combination.
Joe: 00:48:21 100%. Yeah, I like that breakdown that, that gives a lot of context around the situation. So just cognizant of time, we’re almost at the top of the hour here. Can You, can you explain rob kind of our thoughts or our thoughts I guess, but, but how we do retargeting because how we do retargeting is very different than the vast majority of the marketplace. And I think to, to conceptually help people understand when we start talking to people about doing retargeting, it’s like how many of you are doing retargeting? Everybody’s hands go up and by the end of the conversation it’s like, so how many of you are doing retargeting? And nobody puts their hands up. Right? Exactly. Okay. So can you give a little bit of context to our doing retargeting and why?
Rob: 00:49:09 Sure. So the way we do retargeting is we’ve coined our own phrase called Omni targeting. Um, and that gives you a pretty good indication of our philosophy and that we want to be omnipresent for our prospects. Um, and to do that, the first facet of our approach is it’s multichannel. We want you to be everywhere as a client. Um, and that means in a place like Facebook, Instagram, Gmail, youtube, Google display, even linkedin or potentially Twitter and anywhere else, we can get ads in front of our audience. Remember, we’re dealing with humans who consume content possibly in the same way you do, possibly slightly different. Everybody has their go to places where they act, interact online. We don’t know what from where they are. So we need to be omnipresent for the weeds to be everywhere. So the first thing is Omni channel. We then try and make ourselves Omni relevant.
Rob: 00:50:04 And the way that we do that is we have, um, good branded messages. We want different mix of messages. We want to be telling them the kinds of things we just said. They, here’s what we’ve got. So we run, we’re actually four types of ads. The offer ads, the, here’s what we’ve got. We run the branded ads, which are, um, here’s what we stand for. We run the, um, review ads and here’s why you should trust us. And finally we run seasonal ads, which allow you to stay in prospect’s minds in a way that’s timely to them at the moment. So it could be 4th of July holiday, it could be Christmas, it could be new year’s, but seasonal as that are irrelevant. And the way that we do that then is what we call Omni rotation. We don’t want prospects seeing the same ad a thousand times.
Rob: 00:50:54 It’s highly expensive to run. It’s inefficient, it’s boring and it’s ineffective. So our creative process means that friend of typical client will generate upwards of 150 ads that we’re running at any one time. For them, that’s a heck of a lot of ads. 150 ads gets us means that we can rotate frequently. It means that the same ad is only ever seen a few times. And so it doesn’t become annoying. The person doesn’t become blind to it. And we also kept the frequency so they’re not seeing too many ads on a daily basis. And by putting those things together, so we’re on the channel, we’re rotating, we’re relevant, we’re on multiple different device types. We stay really well in front of our prospects minds in a way it’s highly, highly efficient and it controls that narrative. And that for us is the key to it. And nobody else does that, by the way.
Rob: 00:51:50 I don’t know anybody who does it that way. Uh, and let me just explain why is I’ve got time to do that. Yeah. It was a really simple reason why nobody does this. It’s a lot of work as a just just to generate 150 different ads, create all the audiences, synchronized ads across all the audiences, video and images and things. Very few people, the biggest brands are willing to take the time and effort to do that. Most people, when they sell everyone in be targeting, they’ve got an ad. I go, well, I’ve got an ad on Facebook or on Google, and that’s it. Uh, and that’s not the best way to do this. So we know that the Omni outcomes are compared to normal outcomes are significantly higher. And for all the reasons you just explained
Joe: 00:52:36 100%. So do you think that there’s a place, and I’m curious, I’ve never asked you this. Do you think that there is a place where retargeting doesn’t fit?
Rob: 00:52:49 yes to a degree. There are places where I can see it being less valuable. Um, so if we think about why it works, it works because 95% of people don’t convert on the first visit. So if we think what does convert on the first visit? Um, typically things like emergencies. You know, you need an emergency plumber but implies that you probably are going on the water. You need somebody in there now. A three month retargeting campaign is unlikely to be successful. Um, if you look at the conversion rates on those kinds of niches, emergency locksmiths, emergency plumbers yet to degree that generally where you’re going to see a lower return. Um, our side of that, I can’t think of anything where it would be a definite.
Joe: 00:53:39 On the locksmith. I would agree, right? Like windows should be a lot smaller. On the plumber though. The emergency plumber, chances are if you’re calling an emergency plumber, you’re ending up with some water damage, which is going to lead to a ginormous bill to you or your insurance provider, which is going to lead to probably some not so great feelings. So I would argue on plumbing actually in emergency plumbing specifically, uh, that the brand ads and review ads and testimonial ads, uh, the, I think it would be highly important for a probably a 14 day, seven to 14 day window.
Rob: 00:54:26 I think you’ve give me an idea
Joe: 00:54:30 because it’s like, it’s like the retention play. It’s like it’s the feel good play versus the blowback. What do you mean this is $15,000? Right. Um, so that’s curious that, that’s very interesting.
Rob: 00:54:46 Yes. Yeah. it’s exactly that. It’s exactly that and I think so, yeah, I agree with you in terms of there are sideways moves you can make on it. I think from the point of view of the emergency plumbing service itself, it’s difficult. But if you think in a larger sense, you’ve got the right kind of customers. Absolutely makes perfect sense all day long that you could do other types of retargeting to other services. And that’s where many businesses don’t think about this. They think about what’s immediately in front of them. I mean we’ve, we’ve done, we’ve used even for let’s say training companies to existing customers to get them to show up for the training they’re provided, to get them to consume the content they’ve already paid for, to retain that feeling of brand value that’s massively valuable for people. And because it’s your existing customers is ridiculously cheap. Um, you can’t assume that people are opening your email all of the time cause there’s a pretty good chance they’re not. So if you want to stay in touch with them, retarget them. Um, yeah, I mean they’ll stay, they will stay loyal customers for longer.
Joe: 00:55:55 Yeah, for sure. Email open rates obviously are down not to be a Debbie Downer, right? Like we need to be hitting people on as many platforms as possible, right? I can put out an email and get x amount of clicks and I could put out a youtube ad, for example, just on one platform and 10 x that number of clicks. Right? Um, and costs me very little because I would be using an audience that I already have.
Rob: 00:56:20 Yep, exactly. That’s my mind. That’s one of those great that if you think about it that way, in a few, send me, if you’ve got, let’s say you want to communicate for me for even two to three minutes, that’s going to be, let’s call that 500 words. If you do a shoot of short, quick, informal video, then retarget with me. I’m probably going to watch that when I get a break in some convenient, you send me a 500 word email, I’m probably not reading it. Um, and so, um, yeah, a 500 word email feels like hard work. A three minute video seems like fun. So again, think about the mindset of the people that you’re interacting with. That retargeting is not just about that front end acquisition, although it’s hugely important. It’s about an entire customer life cycle.
Joe: 00:57:10 So as an agency owner, um, rob, or as a business owner, where does retargeting fit into an Omni targeting fit into the overall marketing strategy? When do you think that it should come? Does it come at the end? Does it come at the beginning? Does it come at the middle? Does it just come as soon as possible? Right. For people sitting here saying, okay, great, I see the power of this, but where in, how do I implement, what would you say?
Rob: 00:57:42 There are two predecessors that you need to have to make retargeting successful predecessor number one is traffic of any description. So even if you’re starting a new campaign, you’re gonna drive traffic today, that’s box checked. You can do it if you have that traffic. So even it was day one of your PPC campaign, the second thing that you need is thoroughly built out tracking. And that’s why most business owners drop the ball. Most agencies dropped the ball. And why we invest so heavily in our tracking processes. So, um, if you have those two things in play, you can start soon enough because why wouldn’t you want to start maximizing your chance of converting a customer at the lowest possible incremental cost as early as possible. You know, you’re going to spend the money on other stuff anyway, make it more effective.
Joe: 00:58:37 100%. Yeah, couldn’t agree more. I think the sooner the better. As long as, like you said, tracking is placed in place and there’s enough traffic for the pixels to fire and for the ads actually run it.
Rob: 00:58:49 But as we know that the need to be big, I mean 30 30 users, 30 unique users in 30 days is an audience big enough for Facebook to run. A hundred is big enough for Google to run. So let’s not misunderstand. This doesn’t need to be months of delay time. You could turn a campaign on today, build an audience. By tomorrow I’ll be showing ads. It can be that simple in some campaigns.
Joe: 00:59:13 Yeah, 100%. Awesome man. Anything else to kind of wrap it up? Uh, I to put a bow on things. I’m trying to go through my questions and kind everything that we went through. See if we’re missing anything here. I guess. If somebody wants to learn more about Omni targeting, where’s the best place, I guess for us to put in the show notes. Just the link to the site probably, right?
Rob: 00:59:34 Yeah. Okay. Jay, just to the putting a bow on this. Sorry, I’m stumbling for a second. No worries. Yeah, I think so. For me, Omni targeting is something that I’ve ever just about every business around should do. Um, I think it can be the difference between a failing or breakeven campaign becoming a highly profitable campaign for business owner. And so agencies need to think about it from a retention perspective. Um, I mentioned earlier about how you can make your campaigns more tangible for clients. We talked about call whispers, SMS messages, emails. There is nothing more tangible to a client who inevitably will visit his own website than seeing his or her own ads all over the internet and Youtube and Gmail. That’s a highly powerful engagement tool. They will see those ads. Uh, they will see the fact that the ads change, they will see the outcomes.
Rob: 01:00:46 So as a retention play, it’s a great thing to have for a client. They want to get a better result and they get to see themselves everywhere. You’ve achieved two major things with that one simple low cost service. And that to me just makes it the ultimate thing that every agency ought to offer. I can’t think of any time of agency, whether you’re selling PPC, SEO, Facebook ads, content. I can’t think of a server, even reputation. I can’t think of a service where this doesn’t make it better. And therefore, if you value the right outcome for your customers or you are the customer, you want to be demand and that you do this, you know, if you’re the customer and your agency needs to do it, if you’re the agency, you need to offer it because, um, there are wins there for your clients and if you got their own best interest at heart, look after them.
Joe: 01:01:35 Yeah. And I think you just said something important too, right? Even you as the agency, right? You should be doing this, right. You should be, you know, showing, showing yourself off and staying in front of mind with every prospect that you have with every current customer that you have with every past customer that you have. You should be reengaging them and staying top of mind. Uh, and ultimately you know that this allows you to do that for, you know, a penny or two of you. I mean, you can’t beat it.
Rob: 01:02:03 Exactly. Exactly.
Joe: 01:02:06 Awesome man. Let’s go ahead and wrap this thing up. I really, really appreciate you being here another hour. Very, very well spent. I know that these are probably going to be two of the most popular episodes so far. So rob, thanks so much man. And I’m sure we’ll have you back shortly on Show me the Nuggets.
Rob: 01:02:20 Then it becomes Rob and Joe show and that’s kind of going to be boring for everybody, but thank you for having me. I’ve had a blast as always. It’s always great fun to think these things through and articulate them, so I appreciate having me on man.
Joe: 01:02:33 100% talk soon. Awesome brother.
