Is the Unify My Marketing Show, where we believe every business deserves to look more professional, have a clear message and strives to become an industry leader. I am your host bear, Wade, and I want to hear from you, what are your marketing questions? You can submit them to unify my marketing.com and I about anything, anything marketing related. So if it’s about your website about, uh, you know, paid advertising about, uh, your photography, uh, producing videos, I want to hear from you. So submit your question at unified, my marketing.com. Don’t forget to subscribe to your YouTube channel. And also anywhere you listen to podcasts today, we’re kicking off the show with a question from April.

(00:51):

Hi, there I’m April from Midwest thermography solutions. We do medical thermal imaging, and you helped me make a great promotional video. And I want to utilize that on social media as an ad. And I was wondering what your biggest piece of advice was to make that ad successful and to help people learn more about thermography and bring them in the door

(01:14):

April. Thank you so much for your question. I really enjoyed making your video, and I can understand that now that you have it out there, uh, how to get more eyeballs to see it and more people that you could help, uh, to see it. And so the first thing I want to make sure you do, uh, is to have a clear call to action on your website. If people don’t understand what they do, they will not buy or book with you. So make sure your website is clear. It’s easy to understand, and it has obvious buttons that are your direct call to action, which is a book, an appointment or a call now, uh, kind of, you know, call to action. So P so you can get people lined up and in the door. If you have a video with no direct call to action on your website or in your social media post or in your ad, it’s not worth sharing.

(02:04):

So make sure you have a direct call to action, ready to go, uh, beyond that, you want to make sure that when you post the video as an ad and you can boost a post, which will be to only the people in your, uh, direct, um, you know, that are following your Facebook group, which I don’t know how much that’ll, you know, they’re already in your group. So if you want to remind them, that would be fine. But the thing I, you know, that I think you should consider is running paid ads and paid search. And we are going to talk with a specialist. I am not a specialist in this. So we are going to talk with a specialist in, uh, ad placement later on in the show. So stick around, but those are the, you know, that’s what I would recommend you do.

(02:46):

I think you could post it to your social media feed, you know, email it to your current database. Hopefully you have a database and this is all part of the brand steps. Do you want to make sure you have a database and you’re continuing to reach out to them, remind them of your service, but also provide other value. So if you have other health related things that you can share, make sure you continue to reach, uh, reach them, you know, on a monthly basis, you could do it on a weekly basis, but that might be a little too much. I would start with a monthly, you know, and don’t call it a newsletter, but have some reason why you’re reaching out to them and providing a service. So, um, so make sure you have those in place, then you can go out and start ads.

(03:25):

And I think the way you could do that is, well, we’ll talk to Josh, but I think the way you could do that is, you know, have them when they watch the ad and they click learn more, you could, auto-populate a, um, uh, contact, um, form. So it just says right there, and it auto puts in their information for you and all they click submit and that’s really handy. So then you can get them, uh, in your, in your database to continue to reach out to them. So we’ll talk to Josh in a little bit, but, uh, that’s where I was. If you aren’t making a big enough impact in your industry, selling enough products, booking enough of your services, then I want you to consider signing up for our five day challenge. It’s called from bland to bam. And this starts April 5th through ninth, 2021 from 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM central standard time. Now this is an online challenge where we’ll meet together on our Facebook group. I’ll walk you through the major brand steps and also work with you on your particular marketing challenges. This is only a one hour investment per day for a week, and you’ll come out of it with a brand that will help you grow your sales sign up today for the unified brand five day challenge@bearway.com. And while you’re there, submit your question, what marketing questions do you have? I’d love to hear from you and help you grow your company.

(04:44):

Robert submitted his question at our website and this question is, this is my situation. I want to draw traffic to our website rather than customers buying my products on Amazon. Could you help me with that, Robert? I totally understand. And my, I guess my first question is why, uh, why do you want to sell on your website and not Amazon people are already on Amazon and maybe it’s because you don’t want to take the cut, the financial cut that it would, uh, that you would lose in, um, associating or selling on Amazon. But there are so many people already using that as a search tool. I consider, I think you should consider selling your work on Amazon, but besides that, if you want to just be strictly on your website, then consider paid ads. And we’re going to talk to Josh here in a little bit.

(05:34):

You’re going to sense a theme here. It’s all about paid ads and driving traffic who are searching for what you offer and driving them to your website and, and, uh, convincing them to buy, making it easy for them to buy. So consider that, make sure your website has clear branding, clear photography, and a clear call to action so they can easily, uh, buy your products. We’ll drive, we’ll talk with Josh and, and figure out how to drive traffic to your website in just a little bit up next. We have a question from Chad. Chad, what is your question?

(06:07):

Hey, Brandon, my name is Dr. Chad doles and I’m with health source of Baldwin in the St. Louis area. Um, I had a quick question for you mainly about posting videos on social media, whether it be Facebook, Instagram, whatever it might be. Um, so we do try to be as active as we can on social media posting videos. And my question is how do I get better interaction with those videos? Is there a certain ways to post those videos? Um, is there things I can add, whether it be texts within the video, um, really anything to gain more traction, um, from people that may be scrolling through their feed, uh, to really hopefully direct them to our webpage, to be potential patients if they, uh, grab onto our video. So, um, any help you can give me with that would be fantastic. I really appreciate the help. And thank you for taking the time to answer my question. Bye

(06:55):

Chad, thank you so much for your question. And, you know, I think the best thing is to make sure you continue to post your video on your social media profile. You’re gaining new, I assume you’re gaining new followers more often, so they haven’t seen that video. And I know the video is evergreen, so you can continue to post it and I’d do it maybe once a month, just remind, you know, and maybe during certain seasons of the video that I produced for you. Um, and I also produced April’s video is, uh, you know, it, it’s a summertime spring, summer and fall type video, so you don’t post it in the winter, but, um, that is something that I would consider, you know, have you, have you considered do is schedule it out and make sure it, uh, reaches your social media profile, you know, every so often make sure it’s on the front of your website to, uh, especially now in the spring, you know, lots of people are wanting to be active.

(07:46):

They want their body healthy. And so consider getting on the front of your website. And also when you send out emails to your database, make sure that video is there and you keep sharing your story with them. But next, you know, uh, in full transparency as a video, I have a filmmaker background and as a video producer, I produce the videos for April and Chad and I, you know, I give them video when it’s done and they don’t really know what to do with it. So as a service provider, we are launching a new service called unified reach, and it is a way to then take your videos, your content, and get them in front of new possible, uh, potential customers, people that are looking that have your problem and are looking for solutions. So I want you to check it out@unifyreach.com, but this is the time where we need to get Josh, our, our paid advertising specialist in here. I am not a specialist by any means. So, uh, Josh, thank you so much for being on the show. I have a ton of questions for you. The first one is, can you just give us a quick overview of how paid ads work? So we have a general idea

(08:56):

Of, uh, you know, how the thing works. Yeah. We can kind of go from there.

(09:00):

Yeah. That’s a, that’s a super loaded question for sure. Um, and it goes down, yeah, it boils down to marketing is marketing, but this is the digital aspect of it. So there’s, uh, dozens of marketing ad platforms out there. Um, you probably know several Facebook that encompasses Instagram as well. Obviously Google, um, Twitter cure, Quora, all, all these will have their own marketing platforms. So once you get into the backside of them, it’s kind of the same essentially. Um, you gotta know who you’re targeting, what people are you trying to reach. Um, and then you’re creative. And then, you know, just setting up the ads to actually reach those people with that said creative with whatever goal you have in mind, because with marketing, we always have goals, right? What’s, what’s the goal of this creative you’re going to make? Is it to drive them to your website?

(09:40):

Is it try to drive consumer sign up, things like that. So it’s just a digital way of doing that. Um, and these platforms are made, they’re actually pretty sneaky because with all the data that’s actually out there that we can target people really specifically, um, and that’s do a lot of, and then re target them through cookies or like Facebook pixels, um, which the Facebook pixel just really quickly, that’s just a little code snippet that you insert onto like, say your website. Um, and then when say I go to visit your website, um, that marked my cookies or whatever. So then next time they know that I actually went to that website so they can kind of follow me around the internet with ads, to me. Um, that’s really the really, really high level. I don’t know if you want me to go anymore.

(10:21):

Uh, well, I so know that that is super helpful. Um, so what’s the difference between, I guess you said a pixel, which is like a piece of code that you put at the beginning, um, of your website and then, so what’s that, how’s that differ than a, um, like a Google cookie? How is a pixel? Yeah. Yeah. How’s a pixel different than a cookie. Yeah.

(10:45):

It’s pretty much the same thing. It’s just different, um, kind of different terminology for it. You know, the pixel is Facebook’s way of tracking your cookies. That’s just face how Facebook does it. Um, and then kind of has its own thing as well. Um, obviously when people will go, so your, whatever, your web browser on your see those,

(11:02):

When I go to a website, you know, at the bottom NOI says, do you want to accept cookies? And so what that’s telling me is would you like to be tracked? Would you like to

(11:11):

A little bit, yes. That’s, that’s kinda what they’re asking for. They’re wanting your data so they can see where you’ve been on their website and say, say it’s e-commerce sites. They want to see if you clicked or add something to your cart, but never checked out. So it’s a way to kind of see all those things. Yeah.

(11:23):

Um, right. And, and from a, uh, website, uh, you know, um, host, it’s nice that, you know, if somebody is going to our website, we know where they go and what they’re interested in and can continue to feed them ads. Um, I know that, I know that, uh, a big thing to focus on or, or a place to start can be retargeting ads. I don’t know if that’s true, is that true? I’ve heard that from other people that it’s an interesting place to start. Um, but what are your, what’s your advice on that?

(11:54):

Uh, retargeting is super powerful for sure. Um, a lot of times, um, whenever, so as we all know marketing funnel, we might, or like, you know, you have your marketing funnel, which are the top of the funnel is your awareness and the consideration decision. That’s kind of a condensed one, but whenever somebody doesn’t know about your brand or they’re looking for a solution they’re in the awareness stage. Um, so this is a type wherever you’re, you’re sending them ads that are basically just to show them what products you have. Just talk about your brand in general. So this might just be ads to get impressions. This might be ads just to get clicks to your website, um, might be ads to watch part of your video. You can also retarget by how long somebody watches your video. But anyway, so once that first action is taken, yeah, once that first action is taken, then we consider them moving down the funnel into potentially a consideration stage. Um, so this is kind of where we retarget to. Um, like I said, this is all layman’s terms for sure. But once they have visited your said website, or they have taken what action you wanted to do, um, then you can show them new ads specifically to those people that have done that. So that’s what you’re retargeting them with more assets, more content, more ways to, so they could learn about your product and hopefully with the, obviously the end result being them to buy your service. So you’re [inaudible]

(13:02):

Yeah, yeah. It’s so it’s not just, um, taking the fact that they’ve been to your site and then stocking them everywhere they go. It is, you kind of can work on the journey of, well, they were interested in that, so let’s show them the next step. I see. That’s that’s a smart, that’s real smart. That’s cool. Then you can. Yeah,

(13:20):

For sure. And there’s yeah, I’ve seen some pretty interesting one says to myself, so like on Facebook you can retarget if they’ve watched. So like for video, we know video movement is widely are huge. Now when it comes to advertising, cause it, it stops when people are scrolling through Facebook and stops thumbs and they’re scrolling through Instagram. So say somebody watched your video for you can, you can set the time on this for like over four seconds and you can retarget them with a new video that continues them down that journey. And then if they don’t watch it for longer than four seconds, you can send them another video to try to get them to, you know, continue down the customer journey. So there’s a lot of cool things you can do. Um, and then like, you know, Facebook and the pixel set up, like I said earlier, if they, if they add something to their cart, but they don’t check out, you can hit them again and be like, Hey, we saw you left something in your cart. Um, or tell them more about that specific product that they didn’t purchase. So maybe it might drive that purchase to as well.

(14:10):

So what makes, I mean, you kind of mentioned a good creative, which is a good copy, good photography or a good video, a good headline, right. I assume as is part of it. Uh, but what, what are your tips for a successful ad? And I’m sure that varies, but, uh, have you seen a commonality that no matter the industry that, um, would be good for us to know?

(14:34):

Yeah, for sure. I think number one is knowing your goals, what’s the goals of your marketing campaign going to be in general? That seems really simple, but if you don’t know the goals of like, what are you trying to do with this marketing campaign? You’re just going to be spending money. You might, you might be increasing your vanity metrics. You might be like getting clicks to your website, but if it doesn’t relate or correlate revenue or whatever your end goal is, then it’s not going to be effective, obviously. So number one is knowing your goals. Number two is knowing your target audience. Like I said, these platforms are very powerful. They can really, you can really narrow it down to, you know, demographics, age, everything you potentially want, interest intent, things like that. So know what your target audience is. Um, and you already hit on number three is clean, creative with strong call to actions to make them actually take those actions. Right. Um, yeah. And then just kind of tailor them to the, what, like this kind of goes back to knowing your target audience, where are they at in your funnel? Is, are you creating ads to drive them from the consideration to the actual decision and making the purchase stage, or you just want them to know about your brand? So I think that’s also very important to know.

(15:34):

I see. And so I have a Dell I’ve dipped my toe in advertising or in paid ads and my God, there are a trillion variables to manage and I’ve done a really good job at wasting some money doing it. And so I have a question which is, you know, can, can the average person do this or is it just something that you need to find a professional?

(16:01):

Um, I think it’s really relative to, uh, how interested you are in it. What’s your risk tolerance? What’s your, um, are you, are you okay with failure? I mean, honestly, um, a lot of this stuff is going in there and trying it, um, like I said, a lot of the platforms. So once you get to the backside of the platforms, they’re, they’re quite similar about how setting up ads are and how about, um, you know, setting up your audiences, um, setting up your budgets. Uh, you don’t have to spend a million dollars on these as well. You can, if you want to do it yourself, you can test it. You can start dipping your toe into it. So to speak with a relatively small budget, say five to $10 a day, even if you’re just looking to see if you can actually drive some traffic to your website. So, um, yes, it is doable if you’re interested in learning it and there will be a cost incurred as you learn it. Um, that’s obviously why people do pay specialists to do this for them, because it can kind of, you know, um, curtail some of that ad spend to begin with. But, um, like I said, it really comes down to if you’re really interested in learning it yourself or if you want to, you know, start implementing the campaigns quicker.

(17:03):

Yeah. So I, we will put a link in the description for, uh, how people can reach you. But, uh, if they, if for some reason they are looking for somebody else, what would you recommend? What, or how, how would we find the right person? Because I I’ve looked, um, for this service myself and I can find, uh, overseas help or, um, and, and, and for me, it’s, uh, that’s not good or bad. It’s just kind of, you know, uh, uh, where a lot of marketing takes you, but also, um, how do I, what qualities are we looking for in an ad specialist?

(17:43):

Yeah, I th um, well it always comes back to put your money where your mouth is. So, I mean, they have, have proven results. That’s what I always look for, for sure. Case studies references. Um, yeah, like if you had a $10,000 a month budget, I could spend that in a, in a, in an hour. Like, but it doesn’t matter. It’s not, yeah. It’s not, if it’s not helping you whatsoever, it doesn’t matter if I can spend your money. And so, um, a proven track record for sure. Um, it really in a wide array of potentially for certifications, you know, there’s all the Google ads, certifications, things like that, which are always good to have really shows that they’re taking the time to learn and increase their knowledge. Um, I mean, it’s just gotta be a proven track record and showing some results.

(18:25):

So I know that, uh, Facebook with their, uh, or w um, Facebook’s having an Apple or having this, uh, current, uh, um, battle, I guess, with, uh, people’s attention, how is that changing? And maybe you could give us a little more context to it. Cause I, I just know there’s a software update for my iPhone, but tell me maybe what that means. Um, yeah.

(18:49):

Yeah. So that’s a, it means a lot of things, honestly, and Facebook ads are always changing too. Like, you know, just a couple of months ago, you could have like say you have a really clean creative with the learn more button on your creative, but it’s a non functionality button, but now you can’t even have those on there anymore. So they’re always looking to increase. Yeah. They’re always trying to make it, they’re always and try to increase the user experience for the actual app user or the Facebook user. Um, so their first and foremost, um, um, I guess I can’t think of the word right now, but they’re, there w what they’re worried about most is user or customer experience. They don’t really know if they care about advertisers, but they want their users to come back to that app, obviously. So they’re always, yeah.

(19:26):

Yeah. So I’d say, um, it also changes Facebook and just in general, as an advertiser changes with seasonality depends on seasonality and competition, because the first three to four months leading up to Christmas, you’re going to pay more for advertising, which people are pilot highlighting with holiday specials and things like that. Um, and then obviously, you know, everybody’s all concerned about privacy and data privacy these days, kind of probably what you were talking about there. Um, like, so right now I just have my Facebook account pulled up right now. And there’s a headline on here that says prepare for iOS 14 changes coming soon. It’s basically meaning that there’s probably more, uh, yeah, there’s poor data protections. That’s Apple and Android are doing so you might have fewer and fewer targeting capabilities. Cause they’re going to hold back that data from sharing it with Facebook. So it’s always a learning game and always a learning curve, for sure.

(20:12):

Yeah, sure. Uh, maybe you could, uh, tell me a little bit of the differences between, uh, spending my ad budget on Google ads versus Facebook or Instagram, you know, those social platforms, um, help me wrap my head around why I’d want to do one over the other if I have a limited budget or, um, you know, maybe you could help direct us a little.

(20:35):

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, I always like to say kind of, if you have a limited budget kind of really own whatever budget, whatever platform you’re going to try to put your money into. So don’t, don’t spread it out. Um, it’s kind of like, uh, the book essentially is, I mean, now if you’re working every sense, every single way, you’re not gonna make any headway unless you’re going straight forward in one direct way. So I would say put your budget into a one platform and try to really grow your following. If you are trying to grow, say Facebook followers or Instagram followers, um, I would, I would suggest owning that platform before moving on to another one. And if you do have a relatively decent budget, though, there’s a caveat to that because, you know, you can get really good target audience and traffic through like say Google display network.

(21:16):

You can get really low cost per click, which is once again, that’s an, um, a vanity metric if it’s not driving results, but there is, there are, as you can get really, um, low cost per click for that traffic, which then you can retarget to on Facebook. So you can kind of do it. There’s there’s ways you can do it through both, but as a newbie starting out, I would just say, get comfortable with, if you’re going to do it yourself, start out, I would start to just use one platform and get comfortable with it before you kind of branch off to other ones.

(21:44):

Okay. That’s a great tip that’s that’s cause it seems like it would be totally overwhelming to try and do all of them. So that’s, that’s good. And what are some of the key, you know, I said, what are the key metrics? Uh, what are the things that I’m supposed to be measuring other than sales? I assume that’s the biggest thing, how much I’m spending and how much I’m making. Um, but how do I know if it’s starting to work? You know?

(22:05):

Yeah. Um, so metrics, so this kind of goes back. I’m not saying I sound like a broken record here, but knowing your goals is your goal just to increase awareness, um, is your goal is to increase consideration things like, excuse me. So like, if you’re, if you, if your main goal is to just increase your brain awareness, um, you might be looking, you’re just, you might just be interested in impressions. You might just be interested in traffic or cost per click, things like that. But if you’re interested, when it comes down to it, like you said, it comes down to the bottom line when it comes down to you’re worried about conversion. So maybe number of conversions per day, uh, cost per conversions, that’s a huge one. Um, and then also ROAS return on advertising spin. So that’s kind of like ROI. So you kind of can get to, if I spend $1 while I get my money back, will I make money? So, uh,

(22:48):

I have seen that term R O S um, but I didn’t know what that stood for. So I appreciate that. Yeah,

(22:53):

That’s correct. Yep. That’s, that’s a big one, especially when it comes down to the decision stage. So, and that, that, that, that is your ROI right there. So, um, kind of depends on your goals though.

(23:04):

Yeah, right? No, I, I mean, Y um, I guess I always am, maybe I’m too pragmatic or, or cheap or something, but it seems, it seems like I’d want to be only measuring my, uh, my ROI, you know, more than, uh, impressions, but impressions must be worth something, uh, because they still offer it.

(23:26):

That’s a great question, too. A great statement, I should say, but I guess that really depends on the life cycle of the sales and it really depends. Yeah. The sales cycles. So it’s like, I’ve worked, I currently work for some brands that have a, you know, it’s a six month sales cycle and we’re selling $35,000 food franchises. So, um, you definitely have a longer, a much longer funnel. So you, that, those, that just awareness and building that trust and that consideration is, is a very important, um, because if you’re just measuring ROAS, things like that towards the end of the funnel, and you might not necessarily get people to that decision stage, if you don’t actually get them through the awareness and consideration and building that trust with edutainment. Yeah,

(24:06):

Yeah. Right, right. It’s kind of just reminding you we’re here. Yeah. Even if I’m not sure. Yeah, perfect.

(24:14):

Or people aren’t ready to make some purchases, they might not even want to make the purchase six months from now, but as long as they’re still long as they see you and still know you’re out there, then they’re aware of you, then that can be very important towards that decision stage later on. So.

(24:29):

Cool. That’s great. And so, um, what do you have any suggestions for a quick win for my, for the audience here who’s watching? What could they do to, uh, get into it and, and have a quick one?

(24:43):

Yeah, no, I would say, um, this sounds simplistic, but just try it. Um, like I said, if I make a $20 bet on yourself, just about 20, just spend $20 in budget, just get an ad set up, boost the post, just try something. You’ll see how relatively easy it is. Especially if you get into the ads, say if you’re doing Facebook or Instagram, you get into the ads manager platform. Um, I’ll send, I’ll send you some links to that can show you how to get into that after this. So, um, yeah, just, just get in there and try to set up a campaign, just make it for impressions or targets or something. And you just put a maximum budget of $20. Um, you have some creative, um, and then just launch it. I think that that will show you how it is doable for anybody to actually try to get in there and try that.

(25:26):

Um, and then I think the other quick win I would have, um, so a little more specialized, I think. Um, so there’s also like within Facebook, one things that we use quite a bit is Facebook lead forms. Um, because, so, so save a lot of websites. They’ll drive you from say Facebook ads to their website, where you fill out the lead form on their website. But Facebook forms since Facebook already has all the information about you. If you click learn more, you stay within the platform, it fills out all the information already knows about you. Then there might be some other questions that you want might want to know about that lead. Um, so yeah.

(26:00):

Is there a really easy for them to, I have been, uh, the victim or, you know, I’ve been on the other side of that knowing, uh, how easy that is, where I, I, it auto-populates my info for me. And then I just click. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a really way to grease the wheel. Yeah.

(26:18):

Let’s make it super easy to get, um, to submit leads or to get late sometimes, you know, as with anything, not all leads are going to be great and you’re gonna, you know, you’ll, you’ll have some bad ones in there, but when it comes to, like, if you need some customer contact information right away, if you want to, you know, start reaching out, th this does definitely decrease the, the, the funnel. So, um, Facebook lead forms would be a good one to look into too

(26:38):

Facebook lead forms. Okay, great. And, uh, I appreciate all of your, uh, insight here. And, um, I know this is, you know, we could make a whole series on, on this, so maybe we’ll have you back shortly. Uh, once we have follow-up questions, but Josh, thanks so much for meeting with us. And if people wanted to, uh, engage in your services by clicking the link in the description, how else could they find you?

(27:00):

So, um, yeah, co-founder of active, tied marketing. Um, you can definitely find us active ty.com. Um, we, we all, we always stress that with every project we do, we treat it like our own. So, um, uh, everybody says that, but we try to actually live live through it. So active tide marketing, or active tide.com.

(27:18):

Perfect. Perfect. Well, thank you so much for being on the show and, uh, yeah, hopefully we’ll have you back and you can teach us some more, but thanks for the offer. Thank you very much.

(27:27):

So what questions do you have for your marketing? Where are you stuck in growing your company? I want to hear from you submit your questions to bearwade.com while you’re there. I highly recommend you check out our brand quiz. If you’re stuck in converting your viewers into paid customers. I want to hear from you. So submit your question at bearwave.com and Hey, remember, don’t just check all the boxes when it comes to marketing Unify it. We’ll see you next time.