risk graphics

THE 4 TYPES OF CREATIVE TESTS THAT DRIVE PROFITS

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Everybody wants results from digital marketing.

But what works for you and your business and your customer is different than what works for everyone else.

You can try to follow formulas and systems, and they’ll work to a point, but there is always testing and looking at results and optimizing.

Sometimes you find something awesome and creative that drives huge results…

But new creative often doesn’t work.

It’s risky to try new things.

Testing and learning is expensive.

Not testing, not creating, isn’t the answer either- you’ll never get noticed- you’ll never learn- but there’s a cost to learning.

And too much creativity and novelty is risky.

So how do you manage risk while testing and trying to achieve great results?

The more you spend on digital ads, the more you have to be aware of this.

As we attempt to expand while continuing to get good results, it becomes more and more important to manage risk around creative testing.

How Do You Maximize Profits With Ad Spend Allocations?

You have to make creative decisions and allocate your ad spend against creative in a way that balances the need for two things:

#1 Profitability (high results or low costs of any kind, regardless of the KPI we use for it at the time): any goals we have for appointments, revenue or cost per new customer must be achieved at the same time that we create and learn.

#2 Novelty: to push forward our KPI’s, we need varying degrees of novelty in the creative. It’s the amount of novelty, the degree that it diverges from what has been proven to work, that increases the risk, increases the cost of testing and lowers profit while testing.

At times, we work with a simple system of allocating ad spend between:

A. BEST: proven ads (and when I say ads, we may also mean landing pages, depending on how traffic distribution is set up) that achieve our best KPI performance so far. We allocate a certain amount of ad spend to this- as much as possible, to try to achieve the overall KPI goal- while leaving a certain amount of spend for the “TEST” group. In the beginning when nothing is proven, it’s all TEST. And the definition of BEST changes as the KPI’s improve.

– vs. –

B. TEST: new ideas that are unproven. Many of them will not perform and will be discontinued. Some will end up in the BEST group.
As a rule of thumb, we can recommend a ratio of anywhere from 50:50 to 80:20 BEST:TEST.

However, in more complicated situations like TPW, I recommend we look at more groups, as shown in this image…

#1 OLD Proven Creative
Proven profitable, or best performing creative so far
Keep in mind that the definition of proven is relative
KPI’s improve over time, and the definition of what’s best changes
Best investment for ensuring KPI goals

#2 NEW Slight Variations on Proven Creative
e.g. changing one bit of text or one image in an ad or landing page
Lowest risk of poor performance for new creative
Highest assurance of profitability for new creative

#3 NEW Bigger Variations on Proven Creative
e.g. a big landing page layout change, or changing multiple things at one time
Medium risk of poor performance for new creative
Medium assurance of profitability for new creative

#4 NEW Totally New Creative
e.g. totally new ideas, themes, messages, formats and customer pathways unlike previous tests
Some amount of totally new is required, but because its overall performance is, on average, the lowest, it should be allocated the least amount.
Highest risk of poor performance for new creative
Least assurance of reaching KPI goals

An example spend ratio could be…

ProvenCreative:SlightVariation:BiggerVariation:TotallyNew
60:25:10:5

The idea is to put spend in every group to allow for diversity but to allocate spend conservatively to reduce KPI performance risks.

It’s critical that to use this 4-category system for new ad, landing page and other tests as you go forward and increase ad spend.

If you don’t do this, you risk spending too much on the riskiest creative, and while you may learn a lot, you will not at the same time produce satisfying results.

Airport Revenue Digital Marketing & Social Media Keynote Interview with Brian Carter

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In March, Brian will be speaking about how to drive more visits and revenue with digital marketing and social media to airport operators and concessionaires like Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks and TGI Friday’s at the annual Airport Revenue News conference in Orlando. Here’s an excerpt of his interview with ARN!

Ward: What are some key mistakes that you see companies making?

Carter: I think one of the biggest mistakes is opinion versus facts. We now have data – we can test whether the customer likes our branding. If you listen to the wrong information, or your information is out of date or you make decisions that are based on opinion rather than fact, eventually you’re headed for disaster. The companies that are winning today, that are disrupting categories and established companies, are using technology to make customers happier than they ever were before. When your opinion is wrong and out of whack with the facts, you’re not going to be able to make your customers happy.

Read more of Brian Carter’s interview on airports and digital marketing more here…

Why You Shouldn’t Listen to Marketers Who Don’t Implement

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What’s the danger of working with strategists who don’t implement? They can get stuck in theory, or third-hand information that’s speculative, not based in fact.

You need marketing and sales results and you don’t want to waste time or money.

You can’t afford to go on theories that sound good- you need best practices based in data and experience.

What’s Your Source For Marketing Best Practices?

I’ve always wondered where social media generalists get their strategy ideas from. New articles? Blog posts? Rumors? I’ve seen repeatedly in the last decade situations where the most insightful case studies were not published because a company didn’t want to give away the competitive advantage they had discovered. Not all the best tactics and strategies will be in the public domain.

That means that strategists who don’t implement anything will only know about the most average and common approaches- not the most powerful or cutting edge ones.

I remember when writing one of my books, an editor questioned something I called “a social media best practice.” As an editor with an academic writing background, she wanted an academic reference for it.

In other words, she was asking, “What other book or blog post corroborates your claimed best practices?”

I had to reply, “It comes from our experience getting results for real clients.” Our day-to-day experience working with 10-20 clients at a time over the last 10 years, is usually richer and more useful for answering specific strategy questions than the blogosphere, which often seems to be based in nothing but opinion.

Marketing must seem like a weird industry to academics. In medicine, research is done independently with government grants, or is funded by huge companies. Practicing doctors based their clinical approach on that research and other doctors’ clinical experience. But in marketing, we don’t have nearly the research industry, so we rely much more on very small case studies and opinion. And the marketing ecosystem changes much more rapidly than the human body could ever evolve. It’s a moving target. So, the more of research you can do and experience you can gain in-house, the more effective marketer you will be.

Working with clients forces you to be oriented toward what really works (because you’ll lose the client if you’re wrong) and to keep secrets (because clients don’t like you to give away their competitive advantages).

When people hire us, they’re paying us to implement what we’ve found that works, and to avoid what we’ve found to be dead ends.

The Upshot

If you’re not working with people who implement digital marketing tactics daily, you won’t have access to the most powerful strategies- you’ll fall behind and miss opportunities. If you want to be a market leader, you need to find the smart people who are working on the gnitty gritty of digital marketing every day.

UNMUTE Your Business

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A life, business and marketing lesson I learned from my first voice lesson with an OPERA SINGING teacher. Yes, really! Oh, and James Brown. Make it funky!

What happened? Singing!

  • I went and got my first singing lesson
  • The first, most basic thing he taught me was to hold your head up and keep your mouth open really wide.
  • It was really uncomfortable! 
  • It was just me and the voice teacher in the room- but people who don’t even exist are making fun of me… There’s no one there making fun of me but in my head people are criticizing me.
  • He’s trying to teach me to create this ideal singing sound in my vocal cords… to get those cords to vibrate freely. There’s a certain tone a really good singer has. It’s very open it’s joyous.
  • When people sing with that natural, free, open tone, a joy comes through that listeners resonate with. It emotionally impacts them, the way that one tuning fork will cause another one to vibrate to the same frequency.
  • He says “stop that.” Stop what? “You’re bringing your head down and constricting your vocal cords.” I’m closing off my voice making it harder for myself to sing! 
  • I’m muting myself. Why am I muting myself? Why am I automatically subconsciously choosing to turn off my own voice?! Isn’t that the ultimate self-criticism? It’s creative suicide. It’s personality suicide. why am I making it harder to express myself and why is it so hard for me to open up and not want to make fun of that?

What did I learn? Express yourself!

  • I’m a marketer with an ad agency. I write books. I’m a keynote speaker. I do some comedy with that. There’s a lot of creativity in my life. I’ve done music. I’ve done a little bit of visual art.
  • But I shut off a lot of that creativity. I’ve been in business focused on profits, results, analytics and all that left-brain, practical stuff.
  • The way that I showed up trying to sing said something about where I was at expressing myself in other areas. The way that I tried to sing says something about how I’ve been showing up in business.
  • I muted my singing voice and I’ve been muting myself in business. I haven’t been writing books. I haven’t been putting blog posts out. I have been doing videos or podcasting.
  • I’ve been conflicted about how I should show up and how much of myself should I let out.
  • What I learned in marketing is that to affect people psychologically, to get those business results we all want, you need creativity. You need creative people. You need to express yourself.
  • If I want to achieve full impact in business, I have to express myself and ship it without worrying about how it’s going to be received.
  • I’ve also learned that as an author and speaker trying to brand and promote myself that, when I hide my light under a bushel, when I don’t put myself out there, when I’m afraid to be myself, I’m less powerful. I’m blah, I’m like everybody else. I don’t stand out.
  • Plus being more creative and expressing yourself is essential to achieving your full potential.
  • I was just watching a James Brown documentary and he talked about you know be yourself put yourself out there being you, being weird, being unique, loud and proud. 
  • There’s only one you. One of the most valuable things you have is who you are… that’s your gut instinct, what your heart says. Even when it’s different, express it. Speak your peace.
  • The right people will hear your honest, confidence expression and respond to you positively. Who cares about the other people?
  • If I want to really sing and really express who I am, stand out and find the people who wrote resonate like a tuning fork with my particular expression then I have to sing out.
  • Ignore the critics. There are a lot of people out there when we’re growing up or even now as adults who seem to want us to conform. To be normal. To be like them. To be mediocre. To stay quiet. They may not intend to suppress personal expression. It may be a kneejerk subconscious reactions sometimes to be critical or sarcastic or judgmental. If it’s subconscious, who cares? They may not really mean it. If they do mean it, why would you care what a mean person thinks? Don’t take critics personally.  And don’t let fake or past critics live in your head. They aren’t real.
  • I learned I need to hold my head up and express myself. I can’t mute myself or turn myself off.
  • Keep your head up and keep your mouth open expressing who you are.

How is that a change for me? I’ve done it before but I got stuck!

  • I’ve been really stuck. I’ve been overthinking it. I’ve been trying to figure out systems. I’ve been learning a lot of stuff and working with clients and keynoting but
  • I haven’t been creating a lot of business content. I haven’t been finishing blog posts. I haven’t been finishing the editing of videos. I haven’t been diligent in finishing my book ideas.
  • This isn’t who I am. I wrote 5 books in four years. I’ve a written hundreds of blog posts. I’ve created tons of videos. I’ve written thousands of stand-up comedy jokes and routines since 2006.
  • Somewhere in the last few years, I became afraid to be myself- afraid that, if I express myself, I will lose business.
  • Looking back, it was just time to reach a new level of expression.
  • I had compartmentalized business. I thought business was different from creativity or that personal development should be separate from from business. I’m finding I can’t live that way. I can’t keep business creativity and personal development separate, because they’re not. I also think that it might be helpful to other people if I combined them too and showed how my creativity and my personal development helps my business and my marketing.

What I’m committed to doing:

  • What’s brought me out of that- I’ve been on this path… I read The Artist’s Way (highly recommended- one of my top 100 non-fiction books of all time) and I started doing “Morning Pages” which is writing 3 pages every morning in my composition book. Sometimes it’s less, sometimes it’s more, sometimes creative, sometimes it’s journaling, sometimes I’m learning things… and it’s it’s helping me evolve. I’m building a creative studio. I’m taking these voice lessons. I’m making music.
  • All that stuff doesn’t seem directly related to marketing or business but it is really related…
    • It’s about who I am- knowing and expressing that instead of being a frustrated, unconscious drone.
    • It’s about Expression, about creativity and inspiration and feeling motivated.
    • How I show up as a marketer with ideas and energy for clients and my team.
    • The skills I bring for that work to get the business results they need.
    • The presence, power and confidence I can bring to a keynote speech.
  • I’m a learner. I need to be stimulated. I need to go out find new things.
  • I’m going to continue to take the singing lessons and see how that affects my expression.
  • I’m writing music and discovering what I have to say the world and how that affects what I want to write in a nonfiction book.
  • I’m committed to doing these videos and expressing what’s going on in my real life and how that relates to business…
  • I’m showing up as a real person to express, to not be afraid to show you who I really am, to not be afraid of judgement or of losing business as a result of that.
  • I’m holding my head up, opening my voice and singing my heart out.

My Challenge for You Is…

Take a look at how this relates to you:

  • Is there some other thing in your life like this- a limitation holding you back?
  • A stuckness that might be hurting your business as well? 
  • Is there is there something in your golf game that you have trouble with it that relates to your business or your marketing?
  • Is there something about how you go to the gym and work out- where you overdo it or under do it or your challenges there that relate to the way you do business?
  • Is there a problem you have with your your spouse or your significant other- with the way that you approach that relationship that shows up the same way in your business?
  • Take a look. It may be there for you. It may not be.
  • You may find inside there you may find there’s a block. Something you’re doing that you’ve always done that way, and if you can break through that you’ll get to the next level. You’ll get what you really want, whether it’s profits or more freedom or a more enjoyable experience of your work…
  • Don’t be afraid to to look at yourself and face these challenges.
  • If you’re like me you have always been growing. You’re always daring. You want more… and that has to come from inside- not just out there in business.
  • Find that inner limitation that’s limiting your business so you can take it to the next level

I hope that was helpful to you!

3 Simple Steps to Build a Social Media Marketing Sales Funnel

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Originally posted on SME

Are you looking for a smart way to use social channels for lead conversion?

Are you tracking and leveraging your target customers’ path to buying your product?

Collecting fans and followers is one thing, converting them to paying customers can be quite another. That is, unless you have a customized sales funnel in place.

In this article you’ll discover how to put together a marketing and sales funnel with the right channels and key trackable metrics. You’ll also find advice on how to test and tweak your funnel for maximum boost.

Why Is Your Marketing and Sales Funnel Such a Big Deal?

Social media marketing is about using social networks and tools to guide prospects through a series of steps–a funnel–to get them to take the actions you want (e.g., becoming a fan, sharing their email address or buying your products or services).

There are tons of social media tools, networks and options that include everything from Facebook and Twitter to landing pages and email marketing to SEO and ads. Each of these social marketing channels is one more way to guide your prospects through your sales funnel.

marketing channels

Use varied social marketing channels to guide your prospects through your sales funnel.

With all of these marketing channels at your disposal, how do you decide which ones fit within your sales funnel?

To answer those questions, you have to know who your potential customers are and how you can reach them most effectively. You also have to know your company’s goals, how you’ll measure those goals (i.e., the metrics you’ll analyze) and what your target numbers are for those metrics.

Without those key facts, your marketing and sales funnel will be skewed. Excessive focus on one part of your funnel can cause problems elsewhere. If you focus only on owned media like follower numbers and email addresses, you may have trouble with conversions. Or, if you only focus on brand awareness and neglect email marketing, you’ll likely miss out on sales.

Every decision you make about how to create brand awareness, garner engagement and make conversions and sales should be a reflection of your funnel.

The rest of this article shows you how to build, track and test your marketing and sales funnel to give your company the big results it wants.

#1: Define and Implement Channels and Jobs

Did I mention you have a ton of social marketing tools at your disposal? Frankly, it can be overwhelming to think about using all of them at once as part of your marketing and sales funnel. So don’t.

Start by determining what your high-level sales path should look like. In the example a little further down, I’m using Awareness, Repeat Visibility and Engagement and Sales.

Next, prioritize the social channels and tools your audience is already using and that you’re familiar with, then organize those by their primary function (or job). For example, Facebook is great for raising awareness and driving leads, but not for converting sales. Email blasts are excellent for conversions, but not awareness.

As you’re deciding which marketing channels go where in your funnel, consider which ones are most relevant to your short-term and long-term goals, what each channel’s strengths and weaknesses are and what job you’re expecting that channel to do.

marketing funnel concept

Use your funnel to organize your channels and hold each accountable for its role in the process.

As you see in the illustration above, you may have channels that overlap; for instance, different kinds of social ads in the Awareness part of the funnel. In addition, each channel may have different facets (e.g., Facebook ads versus Facebook fans). Each facet builds upon its own functions, as well as the functions of other networks, to lead to your ultimate goal: sales.

Your funnel should be stable, but not inflexible. If your company cares more about email marketing than its number of followers, adjust your tactics accordingly.

For example, instead of using Facebook ads to increase brand awareness and gain more fans, jump straight to an ad campaign targeted at list building. Create an ad that sends leads to an optimized landing page on your website where you ask them to share their email address to access content, a download, etc.

#2: Assign and Measure Key Metrics

Any bottlenecks in your funnel will slow your momentum or stop it completely. Depending on where the bottleneck happens, you could miss out on brand awareness opportunities, growing your owned media lists or conversions and sales.

To measure the health of your funnel, you need to assign key metrics to each stage. That usually looks something like this:

marketing funnel channel metrics

Set a key metric for each tactic in each part of your funnel to quickly diagnose where the funnel is anemic.

With your key metrics in place, look at each tactic in each funnel section and set any industry benchmark standards.

Use these benchmarks to compare your company to your competitors and your industry as a whole. How do you stack up? Look at which of your tactics and funnel sections are best or worst compared to industry averages and adjust as needed.

Speaking of benchmarks and comparing, are you making the most of your analytics and tracking what you need to track? Awareness metrics, Facebook Insights and Google Analytics all have flaws, but I have a few tips for you.

If you’re tracking awareness, I suggest looking at impressions instead of reach. Tools like AdWords don’t give reach data and Facebook’s reach data is inaccurate.

Have you noticed that you’re getting inconsistent results from your Facebook Insights? Start exporting your Insights data to an Excel spreadsheet so you can consistently track and compare the right metrics and get a better idea of how your tactics are working long-term.

You’re probably using Google Analytics on your website, but if you’re not using the Google URL Builder or event tracking, you’re missing out on a lot of useful data. Google URL Builder allows you to customize URLs for posts and ads so you can track visitors from social networks and how they move through your site.

yoast wordpress plugin

Yoast’s Google Analytics WordPress plugin tracks events.

Event tracking gives you information about button or link clicks, which is especially useful if customers have to go offsite to buy your product. If you have a WordPress site, you can even install this plugin that automatically creates event tracking for you!

#3: Test and Tweak, Then Test Again

The number-one thing you can do to boost your results is test everything. Every good idea you think of is something to test.

As you test, always think in terms of your key metrics and make use of your analytics to find out what works and what doesn’t. Let’s use Facebook as an example.

You can constantly test your Facebook success by trying a variety of status updates. Which has the best engagement rate—photos, text, links or video? Does your audience prefer news or funny videos or memes? Take the time to analyze your previous and current posts to see what worked and what didn’t.

If you want to find your engagement rate for a given post, I suggest dividing its total engagement (likes, shares, comments, clicks, etc.) by total post impressions. If you’re using Facebook ads, the Facebook ad display algorithm shows which posts get the most engagement.

post engagement metrics

Pay attention to which posts your fans respond to.

The key is to look at your best and your worst posts. In both instances, keep an eye out for differences in post type, topic, colors, sentiment, message and graphic style.

What do your 10 most engaging posts have in common? What do your 10 least engaging posts have in common? Just knowing the commonalities of those top and bottom posts can help you dramatically boost your post engagement.

When I went through this exercise for a client, their page had a month-over-month increase of seven times as many likes, comments and shares and 31 times as many link clicks!

Are you using ads? Then you definitely need to be testing!

Ads burn out fast, so it’s important to create and test ads weekly. If you have the budget for it, you can create, test and optimize new ads three times a week or more.

If you’re using AdWords, create new ads until the point of diminishing returns. Check actual search phrases to see if you need more negative keywords. If your AdWords manager is slacking, get an AdWords Audit.

google adwords

Do you use Google AdWords?

Not sure which channel ads to spend money on? Compare your options. Run Facebook, Twitter and even Reddit ads to see which works best for your audience and gives you the best awareness or conversions for your money.

A Quick Note About Content Calendars

A lot of brands use a content calendar to create a month of posts (for Facebook, Google+ or any other channel) ahead of time and then submit it for review. This seems organized and diligent, but in practice I believe this approach makes you less likely to improve your posts and get better results.

Every month you need to analyze your key metrics and learn from any mistakes. It’s hard to implement those lessons when you’ve already assigned content for the next month (without the benefit of analysis).

In place of content calendars, I recommend submitting examples of types of posts you want to test or creating your posts daily, or at least weekly.

Conclusion

Customers like to make decisions on their own terms. In most cases, they’re looking for a relationship with a company, not necessarily a hard sell. You can use this human nature to your advantage.

Take note of the social channels your audience is using most, then use those channels to guide them through your sales process.

Set up a funnel that allows leads to jump in wherever they need to. If your funnel is stable but flexible, you’ll be able to adjust its use to fit your customers’ behaviors and needs—and make sales.

Your biggest sales results will come from constant measuring and testing. Be prepared to make changes quickly and match your customers’ reactions to your efforts. You’ll be seeing intensified results in no time.

How to Learn Facebook Ads: Our Recommended Course of Study

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Do you or your employees need more Facebook ad training?

As we’ve scaled our digital marketing agency to hire more employees and handle more clients, we’ve also gotten better at training our employees in Facebook ads. Here’s what we recommend to you- the same process we send our employees through:

#1 BEGINNERS: First start with this Google spreadsheet I created of recommended videos from Facebook’s own “Blueprint” training. Facebook has some great introductory training. But you don’t need to look at all of it in the beginning. These are the most important modules a beginner needs.

#2 INTERMEDIATE: More intermediate for getting results is my Amazing.com Facebook marketing course, “Social Marketing Profit System,” taken by over 1,800 students. SMPS is part of their entire training platform which has a bunch of other courses, but you can just sign up monthly, take mine and decide whether or not to stick for their other courses after that.

#3 ADVANCED: The advanced course is my Facebook Leads and Sales Machine course. People tell me it’s too much if you haven’t done blueprint or the SMPS course first. But this is the mac daddy when it comes to getting professional results from one of the most powerful ad platforms in the world.

REPLAY: Why Retargeting is Even More Important than Email Marketing [Facebook Live Show]

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Episode OCHO of Live Online Learning (LOL):

To be sure not to miss future live shows, opt in here to join the email list so we can keep you notified!

Here’s what we talked about, in addition to attendee live questions we answered:

 

  • What is retargeting?

 

      • It’s the best way to stay visible to your hottest leads and best potential customers. It’s a best practice to getting quicker revenue and profits.
      • Retargeting is when ads follow you around- have you ever viewed a site or product and then you see it everywhere? It’s stalking you!
      • Showing ads to people who’ve been on your website or viewed one of your products or services- if you include custom lists it’s also visibility to your opt in email lists and contacts

 

  • Why retarget?

 

      • Owned marketing- these are people who are now in your audience, similar to email subscribers or fans or followers- they haven’t opted into a list but they did show interest.
      • How few people buy or take action right away
        • What’s your bounce rate? That means the % of people who only view on page on your website and leave right away. The average site has about 50% of visitors bounce, without viewing a second page. For many sites it’s as high as 70-90%. Many businesses haven’t optimized their websites behaviorally to get users to stick around and view multiple pages. Retargeting is a great way to bring them back.
        • What’s your ecomm conv rate? 1-2% Reverse it. 98-99%. That’s the % of people you’re losing who forget about you within 1-3 days. Retargeting keeps you top of mind.
        • What’s your email or lead gen opt in rate?  3%-20% Reverse it. 80-97% That’s the % of people you’re losing who forget about you within 1-3 days. Retargeting keeps you top of mind.
        • If you’re working hard or paying to get that traffic, how do you feel about losing most of the people and them promptly forgetting about you? It sucks, right? Retargeting fixes this.
      • Retargeting is like email but better
        • Do you email market? Have you grown a list and done follow up emails to them?
        • Only 20-30% of people open emails
        • 97% of people use cookies, don’t block them, and can be retargeted
          • Advertising on Facebook and Instagram, you can reach 72% of Americans, 69% of Canadians, 68% of U.K.
          • Those ads will get a substantial message in front of people, like a short email- but in front of 2-3x as many as those who open your emails.
        • If you have an email follow up sequence you need a retargeting ad sequence
        • Best practice is to do both email marketing and retargeting (website and custom lists)
      • People need to hear about you 7 times before they’ll buy. Or is it 17 times. Or 27 times? There are different numbers quoted out there- who’s right?
        • Who cares. It’s more than one time! Most people don’t buy the first time they hear about or visit a brand.
          • Sometimes the first time you go to a website, you’re distracted by something or you get pulled away or you’re not focused on their message or you don’t have time or you’re resistant- but over time with repeated exposures to the marketing message, you hear and “get” the message, or hear about the value and how they solve your problems and the unique benefits of their offering and eventually you come to want that thing.
        • Retargeting helps you stay top of mind until they’re ready to take action so that you’re their first choice when they buy- are you worried about competitors getting all the sales?
          • Without retargeting, when your prospect is ready they might see your competitor’s ad or marketing, and you miss out on the sale. They visited you 3 weeks ago, but your competitor is luckier in their timing (or perhaps your competitor is retargeting) and you lose the sale.
      • Familiarity increases affinity (in social psych it’s called The Familiarity Principle, aka The Mere-Exposure Effect)
        • Studies show that the more we’re familiar with a person or brand, the more we like it.
        • For not very much money you can look like you’re everywhere to the most interested people- they don’t realize you’re not advertising to the whole world this much, so they think you’re a huge deal.
      • One of the two best converting targeting options
        • Along with email subscribers, these are your hottest potential leads.
      • Just spending $1 a day on retargeting means you’re in front of 100 of your best prospects a day- instead of zero of them.

 

  • How do you set retargeting up?

 

      • Facebook Pixel code from Facebook goes on every page of website, every landing page, in your ecommerce cart, checkout, everywhere! (in AdWords it’s called remarketing and it’s in the audiences section of “shared library”)
        • This cookies every user that goes to the site, and grows a list of people who can see your ad. If the cookie is on their computer, Facebook can show your ads.
      • Also custom audiences are similar, and are built from email lists and phone lists- so combining web traffic and opt in lists, you can reach just about everyone who knows your brand

 

  • What kinds of retargeting ads are best?

 

      • Ad type depends on goal-
        • Conversion for ecomm or lead gen with landing pages
        • Leads ads for lead gen with
        • Video views (also can drive traffic)
        • Post engagement
      • Variety- it’s best to have more than one ad, so that people don’t tire of it- when the audience is small they’re going to see it more frequently
      • Things to put in the ads
        • Lead magnet- grow your opt in email list with an ebook, checklist, quiz, etc
        • Sales: Offering related
          • Benefits- what does it do for them? If there’s a lot of this, use multiple ads to get them all across
          • Problems- what problems does your offering solve for them?
          • Unique selling prop- how are you better or different than the competition?
          • Discount- offer a special/secret discount

 

  • How not to be annoying or creepy

 

    • Maybe don’t run ads that acknowledge that you know they’ve been to your site- because they don’t always know how they’ve been targeted
    • Watch your frequency, don’t go above 3 within a week- when your retargeting audience is small, you have to have a smaller budget. It’s often around $10 CPM, rather expensive to do small retargeting audiences but worth it- so if you only have 1,000 people in your retargeting audience early on,
    • Ad variety
      • Have 5-10 ads in the retargeting ad group so Facebook has a number of ads to choose from to deliver variety to people. Pause ads when their frequency is above 3 in a week (unless they’re converting so well that you don’t care!)
    • Exclusions
      • Exclude people who’ve bought- don’t annoy them by showing them the thing they’ve already bought- create an audience of people based on the url of the purchase confirmation page and exclude them based on that or the purchase conversion

REPLAY: 5 Marketing & Sales Funnels Mistakes 99% of Businesses are Making [Facebook Live Show]

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Episode SEIS of Live Online Learning (LOL):

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Here’s what we talked about, in addition to attendee live questions we answered:

  • What IS a Funnel?
    • You may have heard of clickfunnels but that only covers a small part of the whole sales and marketing funnel
    • AIDA: Attention –> Interest –> Desire –> Action
    • Ads –> Landing page –> Content –> Capture/owned media (email/retargeting) –> Sales process
  • What is YOUR Marketing and Sales Funnel?
    • You have a sales funnel even if you don’t know it
    • It’s the steps people take to buy from you
    • Map it out or you won’t know how to improve it
  • #1 Mistake: Too Many Steps in Your Funnel
    • People won’t go too far out of their way
    • People want it to be easy
    • People are easily frustrated
    • How many steps do people have to take to buy from you?
    • How many clicks?
    • How many form fields to fill out?
    • Why the fan-getting process doesn’t work
      • Extra step
      • Fans don’t see posts
      • Still have to pay to get visibility
      • Fan buyer overlap is small
  • #2 Mistake: Not Getting Enough People Into Your Funnel
    • Most businesses aren’t reaching enough people
    • How many people do you need?
      • Do the math
      • Ubiquity
    • Cold traffic
    • Retargeting to get them back
  • #3 Mistake: Not Getting Shares and Virality
    • Don’t sneeze at free exposure and traffic
    • Get more people from the people you already get
    • Is your content valuable enough to get shares?
    • Is it the kind of thing people share?
    • Does it make them look good to share it?
    • Is it easy to share? Share buttons?
  • #4 Mistake: Not Creating and Testing Enough Ideas
    • How many funnels have you created?
    • Are you split testing landing pages?
    • How many new ads have you created this week?
    • If you only have one idea for your funnel, what if it doesn’t work?
    • Russell Brunson says on average with a new business idea they have to try 7 funnels before they create one that’s profitable!
    • When we split test landing pages in lead gen we get 5x the leads
    • Too few ideas leaves you vulnerable to failure and going out of business
    • More ideas means bigger results and profits
  • #5 Mistake: Don’t Be So Inbound and Anti-Push That You Never Close Any Sales
    • Without customers, you go out of business
    • Does your funnel, content and lead magnets pre-sell them?
    • Does it make the sale easier and more likely?
    • Do you ask for the sale or tell them to buy? Are you using calls-to-action?
    • Sell fearlessly. If your thing is valuable and helpful, and you’re focusing on their pains and problems and they’ll welcome it.

 

REPLAY: How to Go Viral and Sell More with Memes [Facebook Live Show]

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Episode CINCO of Live Online Learning (LOL):

To be sure not to miss future live shows, opt in here to join the email list so we can keep you notified!

Here’s what we talked about, in addition to attendee live questions we answered:

  • What are MEMES?
    • “An element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.”
    • “A humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users.”
    • Not unlike cover songs or music sampling by hip hop and EDM artists
    • By nature there is some conflict with copyright and intellectual property, but the law supports music sample and hip hop- memes are very similar.
  • Why use MEMES?
    • Results
      • Big engagement
      • Free shares (viral)
      • Traffic, leads and sales
    • People love them, tap into what they already like
    • Quickly recognizable
    • Fun
    • Easy to create
  • How do you use MEMES?
    • Use a site that makes making them easy
    • Choose ones everyone knows or will make sense even if they don’t know a lot about memes
    • Learn more about them from KnowYourMeme http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/popular
    • Avoid memes that could be considered offensive or racist!
    • Put the text all at top or bottom so it doesn’t violate FB ad 20% rule
    • Fit your sales message into the formula
    • Put a link in your post so they can take action on your website or landing page

REPLAY: 5 Biggest Lead Gen Mistakes [Facebook Live Show]

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Episode TRES of Live Online Learning (LOL)… as usual we debuted a cool cheatsheet (8 Tips for Lead Magnets That Sell) AND gave away a seat in my Facebook ads course.

To be sure not to miss future live shows, opt in here to join the email list so we can keep you notified!

Here’s what we talked about, in addition to attendee live questions we answered:

  • Why build a list?
    • Most people don’t take action right away first time they come to your site- what % of your visitors become customers the first time they come to your site? How long do they spend on your site the first time they come? Often it’s just a couple minutes.
    • You have to build a relationship and take time to tell the whole story of
      • your value proposition,
      • your company,
      • how you can help them,
      • how you’re different,
      • why they should work with you
      • And you need to capture their info so you can continue that relationship.
    • Historically email marketing is the highest profit digital marketing channel, period.
    • Along with retargeting, it’s hard to do profitable digital marketing without email marketing and lead gen.
  • Do you have an email list?
  • What should leads cost?
    • List some of our results
    • Home furnishing client: 84% reduction in cost per lead through customer analysis to discover ideal customer profile, plus ad and audience testing.
    • Self-help author: 32-cent quiz leads and $3 ebook leads.
    • Staffing company: job applications at 75% lower costs than CareerBuilder.
    • Travel and hospitality: 10-cent B2C leads.
    • Marketing services: $1.82 B2B leads through combination of ad testing and personality quiz.
    • Musician promotion and mentorship website: 7x the new users mainly by testing 80+ images and 15 audiences.
    • Microsoft partner cloud hosting company: $29 B2B leads from CTO’s and IT sys admins.
    • What are your leads costing you?
      • If they’re free, you’re probably not advertising which means you can’t accelerate your volume. Very few companies find free ways to drive enough lead volume.
    • How do you drive down lead gen or email subscriber costs?
      • Smart advertising and testing- having an optimization process to drive more action at a lower cost- ours is called A.C.T.
      • Conversion optimization through split testing
      • Great lead magnets- creating and testing 4-5 of them at least over time
      • Have you analyzed your audience with facebook audience insights?
        • Targeting helps a ton- if you’re in front of the wrong people, you may not get leads, and even if you do, you won’t get sales
  • How do you get more leads? Are you getting enough leads? How many new leads or email list subscribers are you getting a day?
    • Are you giving people a reason to give you their contact info?
    • A newsletter isn’t good enough
    • Are you split testing your landing pages
    • Do you want five times as many leads?
    • List the x times we got from each kind of testing
  • Are leads good enough or do you want sales
    • Are your leads becoming customers?
    • What’s the lifetime value of your leads? (how much revenue does the average subscriber bring you?)
    • Are you reaching enough people? If you don’t get enough leads you’ll never get sales-
    • It’s possible to get leads in a way that doesn’t make them think of you as someone to buy from- they get the thing and forget
    • They maybe get the lead magnet and don’t even read it
    • You might get an email but not have a follow-up sequence to engage and educate and warm them up
  • How being a thought leader increases the power of your lead gen- they want you not just one of you
    • Is it hard to sell the leads you get?
    • Maybe you aren’t differentiating yourself enough
    • How are you different or better than your competition?
    • Do you know who your competition is?
    • Does your lead magnet position you as different and better?
    • Start selling before they talk to a salesperson
  • 10 Lead magnet types
    • What kinds of lead magnets have you created?
    • Quiz, checklist, ebook, case study, webinar, free report, whitepaper, swipe file, cheatsheet, toolkit
    • Whitepapers are boring but credible and highly shared on linkedin
    • Quizzes are the most shared type of lead magnet on facebook
    • Checklists and ebooks are good on fb, li, twit- so doing quizzes, checklists and ebooks is a good way to hit all three.
  • What you need to do great lead gen
    • Advertising (traffic source)
    • Lead magnet (reason to give up contract info)
    • Split testing landing pages, with platform like unbounce, leadpages, clickfunnels, optimizely, optimizepress (or maybe skip this with fb lead ads)
    • Email provider like aweber
    • Email follow-up sequence