Todayâs guest is Traci Reuter, founder/CEO of Divine Social, and
Divine Social has a passion for supporting businesses in growing their brands through authentic, meaningful social advertising.
Traci has an uncanny gift for looking at any businessâs mission, vision, and message, and mapping out the right strategy to get their brand in front of the right people at the right time.
With 25 years of experience in sales and marketing, Traci knows her stuff when it comes to
Combined with her tactical knowledge of social advertising, Traci can write the recipe for any brandâs success, and sheâs here today to share some of her greatest secrets behind mapping out your own powerful social advertising strategy.
Show Notes:
- Find out why itâs time to double down on advertising
- Learn why Traci believes there are three main types of videos you should be creating
- Learn how you should be putting most of your effort into one of those videos
Transcript
Jesse: Happy Friday, Richie!
Richard: Happy Friday, Jess. They fly by.
Jesse: They sure do. Itâs another social distancing
Richard: Because we actually have another fellow podcaster here with us today. It is going to be good. Plus, she really likes getting into the strategy and the psychology of it, and we sometimes get a little lost in tactics. So thatâs going to be interesting to get to learn from her today.
Jesse: Yeah, so for people out there listening, if youâre ready for some social media strategy, just
Traci: Great. Thanks for having me.
Jesse: Of course. Yeah. And it is Friday, itâs happy hour day a little early on the West Coast, but yeah.
Traci: Iâm on the East Coast, itâs pretty darn close to happy hour right now.
Richard: I listen to your show; I sometimes wonder if happy hour is going on any time.
Traci: Well, just as a side note, we have only ever been live at an actual happy hour one time. And then another time, we actually did drink quite a bit of wine. But thatâs it for the entire four hundred episodes. Theyâve all been with water or smoothies or something healthy.
Richard: Thatâs good. All right. So we wonât get lost down the rabbit hole for people that are trying to figure out what theyâre talking about. So one of the things. A lot of 51ÊÓÆ” customers are just getting started. Now, we have plenty that are making thousands, hundreds of thousands, and some of that are even into the millions. But what weâd really love to learn from you is just maybe the way they should be looking at social in general. And then weâll get into how that can turn into ads, but just how they should be thinking about their customers and the customer journey.
Traci: Yeah, yeah. I love talking about that. I
But the conversation always comes up like how does social play into paid social, and how does it all work, and does it matter? And if weâre going to talk about Facebook, specifically Facebook and Instagram, it absolutely does matter. And Iâve done several videos on our YouTube channel talking about being a good social citizen and how that plays into your actual ad success. I mean, we can talk about that because being a good social citizen does play into the customer journey.
Itâs about providing value, putting out content that people really care about, showing up on a regular basis, like just being even if youâre a company, being a good human, being human, and using social media. That way, it actually really will impact the success of your ads when you really want to start scaling them.
Richard: Yeah, I love that you say it like that, like being a good human. Because sometimes, when people mention, like add value, itâs sometimes hard to get your mind around. What does that actually mean? Does that mean Iâm supposed to be sitting there with a whiteboard and like, OK, hereâs how you use it. Do you know what I mean? Like youâre a teacher adding all this immense value where sometimes adding value is just, wow, thereâs other good people out there doing good things.
Traci: Or making somebody laugh. I think about one of our biggest clients. We were just getting ready to launch TikTok ads for them. And theyâve been having really great organic success with TikTok. Theyâre an
And sometimes we have to know that itâs OK. Like not every single post. Now itâs different. Weâre talking about putting money behind it. Right. But every single organic post doesnât have to be like you donât hit a home run with it. You donât have to, like, try to get an Academy Award with a repost you put out. You just have to be human sometimes. The other day I got stuck watching it because it just cracked me up. And sometimes we just need that. More than ever, right now.
Jesse: Yeah. Now, thatâs great. Thatâs good. It sounds like a low bar. Just be human, right. Like, be a good human. OK, yeah. And now youâre on social media, and everybody has a social media profile of their own. What do you want to share? Yeah, thereâs the baby pictures and stuff like that. But like we share good things and make people laugh, be who you are, and thatâs a good place to start. If youâre listening, do some good stuff out there.
Traci: And part of the reason I say that is because there are a lot of people that weâre all entrepreneurs, weâre all business owners. We are not running nonprofits. I think we can all agree weâre here to make a profit. We have to be profitable. I have a client. I love this. Their philosophy in their company. They call them the triple bottom line.
The first one is to make an impact. Itâs how many people can they reach and impact with their message? They actually sell books there. They do have books. So theyâre not traditional
A lot of times, we go into our marketing, so much pressure to win and succeed and to be profitable that we almost become a little manipulative in our social post because weâre trying to squeeze out as much juice. Every lemon is possible. And if we could just take a deep breath and keep that first, letâs just show up as a good human. Thatâs actually one of the things, qualifying points, to work with us is you have to be a good human, or we pass because thereâs a lot of that.
We saw that these last several months with whatâs happened in the world with people like all of a sudden are running funnels for hand sanitizer. Itâs just stupid. Like you could argue with me that you were trying to serve the greater good. But letâs be honest. Like, we were just trying to make a buck, right? Not that thereâs anything wrong with it. We all want to make money. We just want to show up well.
Richard: Well, especially right now in the direct to the consumer world, you can do things. Weâve talked about Amazon on this show, and I know you know about Amazon as well. And why not be in all places if you can, like, be in front of your customers as many times as you possibly can. But we want to do and be what gigantic corporations are afraid to do.
We can actually be human beings. We donât have to be this big corporation behind the board. And so being human to making people laugh, they donât have to be afraid of that stuff. Not only will it make them appear more human to other people, but we need laughs right now. Thereâs a lot going on that people are feeling them, feeling human, makes them connect, and makes them want to be with you even more.
Traci: Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And the storytelling. Now is the best time ever to start telling stories. You know, Amazon canât tell that story. They canât tell those things. I am fully guilty, Iâve got my account thatâs hot and on fire on a regular basis. Every day Iâm like, gosh, I got to stop. I got to break that habit. Amazon, Iâve worked with so many businesses that build their entire company on Amazon, and they donât own the customer relationship.
If you donât own the customer relationship, you donât own the customer journey. You canât control it. You canât guide it. You canât direct it. You canât be a good human in it. Iâm constantly trying to be mindful, and Iâm starting to do this. It took this virus to make me do this where I stop and go. Let me go find a website. Let me go see if I can buy direct from their website and stop this madness.
Richard: Someoneâs sitting there right now, and theyâre starting their
Traci: Yeah, itâs a great question. So the first thing is, I think weâre alluding to it is to start by building your store. I canât stress that enough. Start by building your own store and really resist the temptation to get that easy traffic from some of these. I mean, we could do a whole show on that. Right. So the strategy, hereâs how we break it out. And this is actually the methodology weâve been using for the last five years, and I call it the three pillars to successful social ads. But it can apply to organic social. It can apply to most of your marketing. You could probably even apply it. Itâd be a little harder to do it to email marketing, but to social and to paid social.
Itâs essentially three pillars or three buckets. You always want to be thinking about growing your audience. So audience building is number one. Number two is going to be engagement. And number three is going to be conversions. And itâs important to understand that conversions are number three for a reason. When we operate, we donât operate from that perspective of I want to be a good human. I want to add value. I want to show up with transparency. I want storytelling. I want my brand to have a personality. If we donât start from that point, we tend to start straight at that conversion piece. So all of our social organic posts buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff. In our ads, we only show up to buy my stuff like thereâs nothing else. If you think of those three buckets, audience building, engagement, and conversions, those three together, when if you think of it, the sweet spot is in the middle.
So the first one is audience building. So audience building is going to be a lot. Audience building is really important. This is if you look at the customer journey, so just google customer journey, you can see everything. It typically starts at awareness and ends at advocacy. Somebody whoâs like a raving fan of yours. Well, in order to even start a customer journey, like thereâs actually a point before, itâs like when people are unaware, completely, and utterly unaware, theyâre not in your ecosystem at all.
So your social ads, your social posts, you want to have some that are very specifically designed to bring new people into your ecosystem. Use the analogy of a campfire. If youâre not stoking the fire, if youâre not putting wood on the fire, the fire is going to go out. And so audience building is incredibly, incredibly important. And most people overlook that, especially when it comes to paid social. Itâs very much overlooked on the social side, but itâs crucial. But thatâs getting new video viewers, getting new fans on your page, getting new people to engage with your stuff. Thatâs audience building is very, very important.
Jesse: The way you look at it from a
Traci: Start showing up, start putting some information out, show some behind the scenes, show some history behind the company. You show what makes you different, whatâs your unique selling proposition. Start showing that Facebook and Instagram, and I get asked this question all the time. Should we go somewhere else? Should we jump ship to YouTube ads? And the answer is depending on how big you are; if youâre just getting started, start with Facebook and Instagram. The world is still there. I donât care how many times Mark Zuckerberg bumps his head when he wakes up in the morning; it doesnât matter. Itâs still the best place from an
Once you start getting into scaling, then depending upon what youâre doing, we want to start talking about some other platforms, but Facebook and Instagram. So start posting. From a paid social standpoint, a lot of newbies are not going to think to do this. But one way to do really good audience building on the cheap, if you will, is to have a video ad, to have a video ad where youâre testing out your targeting. Youâre trying to find the sweet spot of your audiences where itâs really designed not necessarily to sell but to basically introduce what you do to some new people. And thatâs a way to start the audience building. And I like to go down the rabbit trail. I think the secret to a lot of our client successes, especially the ones that weâve scaled from small to really big, has been the investment in audience building, which is very, very counterintuitive for a lot of people.
Richard: Everyoneâs trying to sell things, so Iâd imagine so. I have a question for you relating to that. So even though youâre trying to build a new audience, the metrics that youâre going for on Facebook. So are you basically referring to when you would go for video views as opposed to going for conversions on your website when you place that ad?
Traci: If I have a limited budget, Iâm just getting started, and Iâve got this great video that weâve produced to introduce people to what weâre doing. Iâm probably going to run it as a video of the campaign. Every objective in the Facebook platform, it is basically asking Facebook, hey, put this ad in front of people who are going to do this specific thing. So a conversion campaign is like putting this in front of people who are going to buy for me. A video of you is put in front of people who are going to watch this video.
There are two very different things. And asking somebody to buy before they know anything about you unless you have a very impulse type product, youâre going to start paying a really expensive cost per conversion. Facebook is a place for discovery. Itâs not a place for intent. If you want to go
Jesse: Makes perfect sense. It does make sense. And I think weâve said that in different ways. And hopefully, people are listening like, all right, no, hereâs somebody else that said it in a slightly different way. We didnât set this up before the podcast. This is how you do it. You have an audience first, and itâs cheaper to build an audience than it is to get that sale. But obviously, of course, you want to sell. This is all a way to get the sale, but you need to build an audience first.
Traci: If youâre really bootstrapping it on a shoestring budget, you could take a couple of hundred bucks a month and put a video of your campaign together. While youâre trying to get your store straightened out, youâre trying to get out all the stuff that you need to do to have a good conversion experience. You could be building audiences in the background while youâre getting all that stuff together. Because so often I see people who are there waiting until everythingâs perfect. And then by that point, theyâve spent so much money, and theyâre so desperate for a sale, and they have no audiences to put it in front of when they could have been using all that time. They can just slap up a good video, put five, 10, 15, 20 bucks a day on it, and they could have thousands of people that they could be retargeting to. So itâs a huge thing to do for sure.
Jesse: For sure. Now, when you say slap of a good video, are you talking like, for everybody out there listening, do they have to have a fancy camera? Or you can just pick up your phone and make a video, and how much are you editing it? And Iâm saying this to try to get people to pick up their phone and make a video. Now, what do you need to do here to get this video going?
Traci: Money love speed. You can quote me on that one. Money, love, speed. And so donât worry about being perfect. I think perfection sometimes in this business is the kiss of death, and overproduction can be the kiss of death. You know, people spot that sort of thing. It doesnât blend into the news feed. Weâve got some clients that have very highly produced videos that do amazing. And then thereâs that one that they use their camera, and the lighting was just OK, but it crushed it. As a marketing professional, this is all we do; I canât tell you how many times we think, oh, my gosh, this is going to be the best thing ever, and it isnât.
And you just donât know whatâs going to perform, and youâre better off, if youâve got a product that youâre selling, turn the camera on, tell a story about it. If youâve got a cool founderâs story, turn the camera on you, or have your kid or your neighbor or friend turn the camera on you. Just start telling the story. I mean, think about Shark Tank, right? Like thatâs what people love so much about Shark Tank. Itâs not just a negotiation. Itâs the story.
People love the stories behind those entrepreneurs that come out that try to get funding. We donât want to lose sight of that. Weâre running content on a social platform. A lot of people donât put money; they donât put ad dollars behind that type of content because itâs not a conversion campaign. However, thatâs a mistake because what youâre doing by putting some money behind it is youâre amplifying it, and amplifying content is the fastest way that I know to build audiences quickly.
Thatâs how every one of our clients, when we started running their ads almost five years ago, their max budget was like fifteen hundred dollars a month and today itâs five hundred thousand a month. And we spent the first probably three years really building audiences, building audiences, creating engagement. They were making money. They wouldnât stick with us for that long if they werenât making money, but it wasnât to the degree that they are now.
Jesse: So it took some time.
Traci: Yeah, it took some time.
Richard: I love the idea of doing that while youâre building out your store, too, because itâs getting your voice out there. Itâs like almost when Star Wars goes into a theater back when we used to go to theaters. Itâs not like they just said itâs in there and go today. Thereâre wrapped buses, and there are billboards, and thereâve been ads on TV, and theyâre building this anticipation. Yeah, a lot, a long time.
I mean, sometimes a year prior to the launch. And a lot of people, even though I know this already, I keep sometimes forgetting that when youâre doing an ad, it doesnât even matter. You can have one as your mom could only like your Facebook page. And it doesnât matter because theyâre not even there. It doesnât mean donât build that over time. Like, of course, you want to build that over time. Right. Because then you can retarget those people who like that page, and there are all kinds of different ways. So in these campaigns, after you do these and youâre just going for video views, do you then remarket to the people who watch those videos?
Traci: Oh, yeah. Yeah. The way we look at audience building is itâs a couple of things, right? So itâs new fans. Maybe weâre running depending upon your budget. You might be running a campaign to get legitimate fans. And the worst advice Iâve ever heard, and I just have to say this is you donât want to run campaigns to get fans into cheap countries just so you look good. Like that will actually hurt you. That will hurt you long term. So whenever you run a like campaign, you actually want to run it to people who would actually be fans of your business, like you want to run a legit campaign. So new likes are audience building. So that could be new Instagram followers. That could be new Facebook fans. Video views are audience building engagement, post engagements, people commenting, liking, sharing, thatâs audience building, and then website traffic, people that click over.
Because sometimes, if you have a limited budget, you may still put on that video in the text, the copy of your ad. Put the link to your website so they can go. If they want to go find out more, they can. So those four things we constitute audience building. Any kind of ad that we can do thatâs ballooning up, ballooning up. We call that level two traffic. Level one traffic is people that have never heard of you. Thatâs truly cold traffic. They donât know who you are. They know nothing about you. Thatâs level one. We measure
Anything that falls into that category, we can then retarget, and sometimes we retarget it right into a conversion campaign. Sometimes the customer journey is longer depending upon the price of your product. And I think about a great
But thereâs a stage between audience building and conversions, and thatâs the engagement piece. How do you keep somebody engaged with you when theyâre not ready to buy it? And so often, we give up on, we think, our social post. It didnât sell one hundred units. So it was a failure. No, not everybody is going to buy the first time they see it. In fact, itâs like two percent of all people buy the first time. I used to run a division of AT&T back in the day,
Now itâs like the average adult gets hit with over four hundred marketing messages a day. So if you think that youâre going to convert somebody on the first try, that wasnât possible twenty years ago or rarely possible twenty years ago. It sure as heck isnât now. What we do is we actually build up advertising. Funnel is taking this whole customer journey based on the price of your product. Chilipad, the reason I brought that up is because they are an expensive product. People typically donât buy right away, and so they do a masterful job of having engagement content along the way to keep. Oh yeah, remember, you want this, and you want this.
And, you know, they use testimonials, and they use all these different strategies to get somebody like me. Last year was like; I canât take it anymore. And I finally bought it. It worked. Yeah, but it took months. It took months before I was willing to pay that because it was who pays fifteen hundred dollars for a mattress pad? I still think, if it wasnât so amazing, I think I was nuts.
Jesse: So that makes sense. Itâs a more expensive product. If itâs a 30 dollar product, you probably donât need these multiple levels. Theyâre going to make their decision and move on with their day. But yeah, with a more expensive product, they get introduced. This is the second pillar of yours, the engagement. What type of videos or content is different from that first one? What is the difference between that type of content?
Traci: A lot of itâs going to depend on the size of a company that you are. So if weâre talking about a new startup, if youâre smaller, itâs probably going to be maybe part two to the first video. So maybe itâs a
So now theyâve met the brand. Now, it might be more
Youâre just trying to get people to buy from you. So sometimes you have to slow down and really think, what does it look like for somebody that now is aware of my product, but they donât think itâs going to solve their problem or they donât think itâs going to meet their needs. What information would I want to tell them at a cocktail party or what I want to talk to them about if I could? To help them understand why they want to move to the next stage of the customer journey.
And thatâs really a lot of time. Thatâs how we help our clients come up with what that content should look like. So it could be a video. We heavily, heavily do video ads, but sometimes do blog posts. We try to hit people in all the different areas. Some people like to listen; some people like to watch, some people like to read. And so we try to have a good mix if the budget permits it. If your budget doesnât permit it, stick a video. Itâs not going to let you down. Yeah.
Richard: So in that particular case, instead of going for video views, are you now switching the goal of that ad?
Traci: Yeah. Again, itâs going to vary, but a lot of times, we might want to now get a traffic campaign. We want them to click on the site; we want to get them on to our shop. We want to get them looking at some stuff, and we might switch it up. A lot of times weâll test it because sometimes weâll try to send people to the shop, but theyâre not ready yet. Itâs not really getting us the result we want. And so in that case, we might switch it back to a video view campaign because we want those people to watch more.
Sometimes we could do a reach campaign. So a reach campaign is essentially saying, Facebook, we want to reach as much of this audience as we can. And so maybe weâre not actually trying to; we already know they watch videos because they watch the first one. Now we want to make sure we get the message in front of them. Weâre not so much concerned about whether they watch it again? We just want to remind them of who we are. So, you know, thatâs where an agency like ours or having somebody
Jesse: Got it, and I get thereâs not like the perfect answer for all scenarios. Yeah, it depends is always the answer in marketing, and I get it.
Traci: Think about what you want the person to do. I know ultimately we want them to buy, but sometimes that. We want them to buy, but sometimes your budget isnât big enough, right? Youâve got to have the 50 conversions for the algorithm to really learn. And if youâre not spending enough money, youâre not going to get that, and youâre not going to ever get the full power of the algorithm behind you.
So you kind of have to think like, what do I want these people to do? Knowing that some are going to buy. Like our client that I mentioned already, that we scaled to five hundred thousand over the last four years a month ad spend. We convert online campaigns for them. Itâs crazy. So it can happen high up in the funnel, but sometimes it doesnât. And so you have a plan for that whole process.
Jesse: Now, we talked a little bit about audience, talked about engagement, I believe it was the second one. And now weâve been hinting at it. We do want to sell stuff. So how do you shift up the different campaigns youâve been working on? And again, it depends. But how do you get them to buy?
Traci: Yeah, well, I mean, the conversion campaign, thatâs the fun, right. We all want to see the money come in, the cash register going. But this is now going to be way more product heavy. Typically, itâs OK at the beginning top of the funnel to have more storytelling. But as you get further down the funnel, you get further down the process. You really need to be your product, the hero. Sometimes we use video. Sometimes, weâll use a
We ran traffic for a while for a supplement company, for a kidâs supplement company. And we did a lot with animated GIFs, showing no additives and
And so thereâs got to be a compelling call to action for them. Whether youâre using a coupon code to get somebody on your email so you can get them their first offer, whatever it is at that point, the conversion campaign, thatâs it is what it is. Itâs conversion. And we can use all sorts of things. We can use all sorts of different creative assets. You can use dynamic product ads with your catalog. I mean, thereâs so many different ways to do conversions. I donât want to get too geeky because I will.
But itâs pretty simple. I mean, if you just really say, OK, look, I got three things I need to do. I need to build my audiences. I need to engage with them, and then I need to ask them to buy. And if you think that way, itâs going to dictate how you create content for your organic, and itâs going to really help you get the most out of your paid social. Itâs huge.
Richard: Just real quick, Iâll forget this one. A lot of people have said the algorithm, if youâre doing an organic post and then you have a link out to a website, they suppress that as opposed to if you donât have the link, maybe youâre just talking about it in the video. One question is, do you see that to be true? Have you seen that from an organic standpoint?
Traci: I havenât seen that they suppress it. I mean, letâs just be honest. Facebook wants you to keep people on Facebook, so they do reward that. I donât know that they suppress that necessarily. Weâve got clients that post links all the time.
Richard: Well, and the reason Iâm asking that if you see it in organic is because no matter what, I could still imagine since they get paid for ads. Oh, they probably donât care at all when it comes to the paid ad, or at least a lot less. Thinking that out, maybe you are just going for likes. If you have your logo or you have something in there, maybe they look it up, maybe they donât, or youâre just going for video views in the beginning. And then maybe youâre getting more engagement moving on. But when youâre going at least in, I can imagine any of those phases.
If you have your link to your website, you could still end up, like you said, getting a conversion, even though youâre not going for conversions. Yes, because of the links in there, they thought that video was funny, whatever, they click. And just to learn a little bit more about you. And who knows if itâs priced right and itâs something they need, they might just get it right away. But if youâre paying for it.
Traci: Yeah, put your link in. Absolutely. The bigger your budget gets, youâre going to want to test taking it in and taking it out, things like that at the beginning. Absolutely, the thing is, with your organic, if youâre relying on
Our client does a
Jesse: And seven percent is good.
Traci: Itâs amazing! Yeah, I probably didnât say that. Seven percent is
Jesse: I agree. You are downplayed now that is usually youâre looking at maybe one to two percent of people who follow you, like you, actually see these posts. So you do have to pay at the end of the day. Mark Zuckerberg, if youâre listening, weâre helping you out here. You do have to pay for social ads. Thatâs just the way it is. Yeah. Going back to you, you had these three phases, the third phase, the conversion part. The thing that strikes me is that that part is easy. If youâve done the initial steps like if youâve built the audience, which is probably the hardest part, you get them engaged.
And now the conversion part. The behind the scenes is all the different remarketing. Youâre marketing to video watchers, people who visited the site. People who are followers. These are all options that are hidden in the Facebook Ads Manager. But the conversion part is the easy part. Hereâs the product. Hereâs a price. Maybe itâs a lifestyle shot. Maybe thereâs a coupon. If you can afford the coupons, thatâs to get them to buy. But that was easy. You did all the hard work ahead of time in the beginning.
Traci: Itâs funny that when youâre just getting started, people always ask how they should manage their budget with this. Our big clients, the ones that got big budgets, theyâve got a lot behind them. Weâre running eighty percent of their budgets to audience building and engagement and 20 percent to conversions. And so often when we take over a client thatâs been running ninety percent conversions and maybe 10 percent the other two, itâs usually bumpy, Iâm not going to lie. And I always tell them, itâs going to be bumpy for a little bit. They donât like that shift. They want the money coming in.
But once we flip that, we flip that, and we really start just pumping up the number of people coming into the ecosystem on a regular basis. Thatâs when we start to see the magic begin to happen. And it takes a little while. But 80/20 is how we do it, even for some of our smaller clients, if they can buy into our philosophy and hang in there with us. But that just goes to show that our methodology works, and most of our clients have been with us for
Jesse: Yeah. The 80/20, I get it as I run the ads for 51ÊÓÆ”. Well, thatâs tough because you really want to see these campaigns with these great cost per acquisition numbers at the end. But I can tell you that at 51ÊÓÆ”, on our Facebook advertising campaigns, thereâs a lot of campaigns that are the first touch, the cold traffic, level one, whatever you want to call it, the numbers are not good at all.
Traci: Nor should they.
Jesse: Theyâre not going to be.
Traci: Yeah, we actually have key performance objectives for each stage of traffic. So the performance objective, the KPI on cold traffic, should not be conversions. We shouldnât be judging success on that. And itâs hard when youâre small. It really, really is. And thatâs the fun part for us. And we work with a business, a growing income business because we can start to educate them and help them understand what the KPIs are while theyâre making a profit. And then they can start making big company decisions with smaller budgets and get to that big company that is faster.
Jesse: Yeah, look at the blended number; I guess weâll just remind everybody. Look at the blend.
Traci: And cash flow is an issue, right? Youâve got to know your numbers. I canât tell you how many income clients we work with. They donât know their lifetime value. They donât know their cost per acquisition. They donât know, they just say, I want 3xROAS. And itâs like, OK, based on what? We want 3xROAS too. I want 3xROAS, and I want to be five foot ten and one hundred and five pounds. But based on what? I donât mean to be disrespectful, but sometimes 3xROAS is the wrong metric to determine the success of your business on top of the funnel.
Richard: It brings me back to that marriage analogy in the beginning, even though you want the sale
Traci: What are you waiting on? We like to say that we are the ad funnels that weâre architecting an intentional plan to get these people to fall in love with you. Like we are intentionally architecting this process so that these prospects fall in love with your brand because weâre not just trying to get one sale. Weâre trying to get repeat sales. Weâre trying to get
Iâve got this unique position where I have a marketing degree, I run a marketing agency, but I have a sales background, and I know sales psychology and how it works. And so our clients that can have the intestinal fortitude, if you will, to like say, yeah, weâre going to do this, and weâre going to make this happen. Weâre going to commit to this. Weâre going to have a big picture view of our business, and they reap the rewards. We see it over and over again. And itâs fun. Itâs really fun. I like talking strategy because tactics change, but the strategy doesnât.
Jesse: Very much so. And speaking of strategy, this podcast can probably be live in, say,
Traci: Yeah, it really is. I wish in a perfect world you were listening to this in September because I would say, crank up your audience building budget really, truly. And itâs not too late, like in October. Itâs not too late to do that. But I would definitely say I would probably, our clients, if I look at how they have their budget, Iâd say probably at least sixty percent of their full yearâs budget gets spent in the final quarter. So keep in mind that it is going to be more competitive. Itâs going to be more expensive. Things are changing this year.
I would definitely, if you can, if your budget is limited, I would definitely go hard in audience building right now. If you donât have an
Then what do they need to know to get to that point, and what might they need to know before that? And what are they thinking in their lives or whatâs happening that could make them want my solution or whatever the product is? Thatâs what youâre going to create your video around and get it up and put as much money as you possibly can, build audiences from those video viewers, and then retarget the heck out of them come holiday time. But thatâs what I would do. I would go hard on audience building, audience building, and engagement.
And if your budget is limited, just utilize that video, that video campaign to do both. Right. It doesnât have to be funny. Donât try to be like the next
Jesse: Yeah, makes sense, I like the extra push here, and Iâm with you a hundred percent. Weâve talked to a lot of different people. People are gearing up. This is going to be a big year. People donât want to go out and shop. Theyâre still going to be buying presents. They still need it. Itâs still the holidays. So, be prepared. And yeah, ad prices were probably going to be a little expensive. Youâre going to wish you had built this audience previously.
Traci: Yeah, well, let me just add. If you feel like, gosh, I just donât have the money this year, itâs been a hard year for us. Weâve been very fortunate. Most of our clients are in the creative spaces that weâve in. Our clients have thrived this year. But if youâre in a tough situation and you canât do that, I just want to encourage you to get a plan to run ads. 24/7, 365. Because the biggest mistake that you can make is to not show up
Itâs like, hey, I donât care about any of you until I want to make money from you. We said at the beginning, none of us are nonprofit or ministry or whatever. Weâre a business. Show up. And I think thatâs really, really important. It breaks my heart when I see these
Jesse: So, yeah, it makes perfect sense. Donât launch your first advertising campaign on Black Friday.
Traci: Oh, my God, no. Not on Black Friday. Take your money, go to Vegas, do something different.
Jesse: Yeah, thatâs the best way to advertise, but if youâve already been doing it. Thatâs another way of looking at it.
Traci: Thatâs a great point, Jesse.
Jesse: Yeah, awesome. Richie, weâve learned a lot here from Tracy. I hope everybodyâs listening as well. Do you have any last questions here that you think where weâre missing? What else, what am I missing?
Richard: I donât really know if this would be a question is more as a noticing whatâs been going on in the world, the environment weâre in right now, learning from Traci right now, and making a statement and seeing if she agrees with the statement. And that is keeping in mind that a lot of the people that are listening to this show are just getting started. And it might even seem like a lot to say fifteen hundred bucks to some of these people, I would guess. And Iâm wondering what your thoughts are on if while everyone else is going for conversions, donât sweat it. Thereâs going to be so many people online this year. Youâre just getting a start. Youâre hearing this in October. Just keep going for the video views. There are more people online.
And if youâre funny, back to our comment a few minutes ago, put your link in there, and maybe even do something zig when everyone else is zagging and say, you know what, weâre just getting started. This is crazy in this world. Everything thatâs going on, if youâre interested, take a look. Here we are. Weâre trying to build it, and you know what I mean. Just like donât overthink it too much. Just start doing the advertising and start at the top, be human, recognize whatâs going on. Donât be afraid to say whatâs going on. Stand for something and put your link in there.
Traci: I would agree, thatâs not bad advice at all. Thereâs a lot of pressure on
In our reporting to our clients, I have a specific tab that specifically shows the growth of level two traffic. How many people in this last week or this last month did we move from Never heard about you to Engage with you on some level. And if that number is growing, we know long term the health of the clientâs business is going to be really strong. So just donât put so much pressure on yourself. But if youâre a big company and you havenât been putting as much in there as you need to shame on you, wake up, put some money in. Letâs make it a good season. Two different messages for two different people, I guess.
Jesse: Now, thatâs perfect. Tracy, this has been great. Now for people listening, if they are interested in hearing more from you, if theyâd like to work with you, how can they get in touch with you?
Traci: Yeah, so a couple of ways. I actually have a
If youâre running three thousand dollars or more in ads and you want me to look at your stuff to see how you might shift to this three pillars strategy. I donât want to look at it to give you the
Jesse: All right. Now weâre listening. You have to have your next steps. Get working on the cold audiences. If you want to talk to Traci, you know how to get hold of her. You know thereâs the course. Richie, what else am I missing here?
Richard: Thatâs it. Ready to get to work.
Traci: Letâs do it.
Jesse: Exactly. Itâs the holiday season 2020. Weâre going to turn 2020 around. It has not been the best year, but the end of the year is going to be fantastic. All right. Thanks very much, Traci.
Traci: Itâs great to be here.
Jesse: Thanks very much.