Podcast: Download (Duration: 37:02 — 34.2MB)
Get Notified Of Future Episodes Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | Blubrry | TuneIn | Deezer | Anghami | RSS | More
Time was, James had five separate podcasts with five different co-hosts. Now he has just one show, to which he invites guests to return multiple times. It’s a strategy born out of logistical challenges and the desire for a more streamlined approach.
That’s one of the reasons for Charley Valher’s many returns. The second reason is James’s genuine admiration for Charley’s work. Their longstanding partnership is not only a business collaboration but a reflection as well of James’s belief in Charley’s business model, innovation, and growth.
Their catch-up today revolves around current effective strategies in the digital advertising world, against the backdrop of a challenging year marked by societal and economic shifts.
By focusing on “what is working now,” James and Charley aim to explore practical insights and strategies that are proving successful in the current online marketing environment.
Table of contents
1. Working: massive ad investment
2. The typical bare minimum ad spend
3. Max returns, minimal spend – agency ethics
4. From podcasts to paid traffic: a strategic shift
5. When strengths and skills find their niche
6. How sub-niching elevates ad spend ROI
7. When broad targeting meets smart algorithms
8. Adapting to change: reviving segmentation techniques
9. How conversion pixels transform ad strategies
10. Tailoring pixel tracking for enhanced ROI
11. Why sales matter more than leads
12. Integrating skills for superior results
13. The resurgence of live events
14. If you’d like to work with Charley…
Working: massive ad investment
Charley highlights the significant role of ads in achieving business growth, referencing his expertise in managing substantial paid campaigns across various platforms – Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, AdWords, and TikTok.
The approach involves a substantial investment in marketing agencies and ad spending, with the ultimate goal of generating a meaningful ROI through business expansion.
James recognizes Charley as an expert in ad-driven growth. And just how big are these campaigns?
Charley’s experience running his agency, ValherMedia, has led him to manage ad budgets in the multiple seven figures per month. He’s gone, he says, from being astonished by these numbers to seeing them as simply part of his daily operations.
This level of spending points to the ambitious scope of their advertising efforts and Charley’s comfort and enthusiasm in handling such significant investments for growth.
The typical bare minimum ad spend
While their typical clients spend significantly on ads, Charley says there’s a strategic shift towards more selective spending, stressing quality over quantity.
Charley actually prepared for this episode, he says, by reviewing successful campaigns, highlighting the effectiveness of sub-niching strategies. This approach has proven particularly beneficial, allowing for targeted campaigns that yield better results with lower overall expenditure.
Charley illustrates with an example of a client in accounting and wealth advisory, where instead of broad campaigns, they’ve moved to highly targeted campaigns focused on specific demographics, such as contractors.
This method has allowed them to achieve greatly improved outcomes while reducing the monthly ad spend from around $30,000 to lower, demonstrating the power of precise targeting.
Given that, the bare minimum ad spend for Charley’s clients typically starts at over $10,000 a month, with some clients investing much larger sums. This indicates the flexibility in ValherMedia’s approach to accommodate different scales of advertising budgets, from the relatively modest to the substantial, all while ensuring efficiency and effectiveness in their advertising strategies.
Max returns, minimal spend – agency ethics
James raises concerns about a common issue within the advertising industry, where agencies might incentivize campaign managers based on ad spend. This potentially leads to conflicts of interest, as managers may look to increase spending to boost their own earnings.
This practice can encourage excessive ad spending, not necessarily aligned with achieving the best outcomes for clients.
Charley underscores his agency’s commitment to avoiding such scenarios. Their focus is on achieving maximum returns with minimal spend.
Charley’s stance is that agencies should prioritize the client’s best interest, even if it means recommending strategies that might reduce the agency’s immediate revenue but ultimately serve the client more effectively.
James is of the same mind, recalling Jay Abraham’s term of “custodian,” someone with a duty of care of the client.
From podcasts to paid traffic: a strategic shift
James knew Charley then as an expert in video podcasting. Charley’s transition to mastering paid traffic is a response to the challenges and limitations of organic growth through podcasting.
Charley observed that achieving significant traction with podcasting could take over a year. Hence a pivot towards leveraging paid traffic, an area where he already possessed considerable expertise from previous business ventures.
The move was prompted by the desire to accelerate client outcomes, recognizing the immediate impact and scalability of paid advertising.
The shift also capitalized on Charley’s existing resources, notably his team of video editors, facilitating a smooth transition into producing content suitable for paid advertising, particularly video ads.
This change of strategy allowed Charley’s agency to more effectively meet client objectives, transitioning from the slow-building process of podcast audience growth to the more immediate and measurable results offered by paid traffic campaigns.
When strengths and skills find their niche
Charley, James notes, has a diverse set of skills, including proficiency with people, systems, paid traffic, and media – a rare and valuable combination in the online space.
It’s fortuitous, says Charley, that his natural inclinations and abilities have aligned with the needs of his professional environment, and he’s quite grateful.
James reflects on his own career path, appreciating the simplicity and effectiveness of getting paid to listen to people’s problems and provide solutions. It’s a sustainable model, he says, which lets him create impactful content from the comfort of his home, leading to client engagement and business growth.
Finding a niche where one’s strengths and skills can be most effectively applied is often key to personal satisfaction and professional success.
How sub-niching elevates ad spend ROI
Charley highlights sub-niching as a key strategy for enhancing the ROI from ad spend, by targeting specific segments of the audience with tailored messaging. He argues against a common concern, missing out on broader audience segments, by pointing out that a more generalized approach often leads to wasteful ad spend and lower quality leads.
Focusing on specific niches, such as contractors and medical professionals for an accounting firm, results in higher quality leads and more efficient use of advertising budgets.
Examples from Charley’s experience illustrate the effectiveness of sub-niching in various industries, including mortgage brokers and health coaching. By targeting specific employment segments like nurses, teachers, and shift workers, these campaigns have achieved exceptional lead quality.
The approach allows businesses to stand out in crowded markets by directly addressing the unique needs and challenges of their target sub-niches, thereby significantly improving ad campaign performance.
When broad targeting meets smart algorithms
James asks if broad targeting can be effective at all, given the advanced algorithms of platforms like YouTube, Meta, and TikTok.
Charley acknowledges that these platforms’ algorithms can indeed efficiently identify and target the appropriate audience with well-crafted creative content. He suggests that, under certain conditions, broad targeting can work effectively if the creative content is strong and specific enough to resonate with a particular segment, allowing the algorithm to refine its targeting based on user responses.
Charley provides a specific example to illustrate his point – a targeted ad aimed at young dads looking to lose weight. He explains that while the ad could potentially reach a wide and irrelevant audience, the algorithm is capable of honing in on the specific demographic that engages with the ad.
This demonstrates the potential of leveraging platform algorithms to achieve targeted results without explicit demographic restrictions, though with the caveat that some initial targeting parameters might help.
There is a potential drawback, says Charley, of relying too heavily on broad targeting and smart algorithms. He recounts an instance where a campaign became too geographically focused, limiting its overall reach and effectiveness. This underscores the need for a balanced approach that combines strategic creative content with smart targeting decisions.
Adapting to change: reviving segmentation techniques
James speaks of the effectiveness of content marketing on platforms that reward creators for producing content that resonates well with their audience. He’s had such an experience with one of his surf channel videos.
Charley emphasizes the importance of tailoring advertising strategies to specific business circumstances, cautioning against a one-size-fits-all approach. He suggests that understanding where the competition invests in ads can provide valuable insights into effective strategies, and stresses the need for constant innovation and adaptation to stay ahead.
Charley’s current focus on sub-niching as a strategic approach reflects this mindset, acknowledging that while strategies may be effective now, the need for future innovation is inevitable as the market evolves.
James draws parallels between Charley’s approach and traditional advertising strategies, as in Perry Marshall‘s “Definitive Guide to AdWords.” They reflect on the cyclical nature of advertising techniques, where the industry seems to be revisiting segmentation strategies similar to Marshall’s early advice on managing broad and exact match campaigns.
This cyclical return to foundational strategies underscores the continued relevance of segmentation in achieving effective and targeted advertising results.
How conversion pixels transform ad strategies
James recalls when Andre Chaperon was the only person he knew using conversion pixels to inform ad campaigns. How essential a role do they play? Is it a waste of time to run ads without them?
Charley agrees emphatically that running ads without conversion tracking or pixels is ineffective. He shares an experiment to illustrate the point.
Charley contrasts two campaign types—one focused on maximizing video views and the other on conversions—to demonstrate how platforms like Facebook optimize ad delivery based on the objective. It reveals that conversion campaigns target users more likely to take meaningful actions beyond just viewing content.
These findings underscore the sophistication of platform algorithms in identifying and targeting users based not just on their viewing behavior but on their potential to convert. This reveals it is critically important to direct ad strategies towards conversion objectives to engage users who are more likely to make purchases, based on platforms’ extensive data on user transactions and behaviors.
Social platforms do collect a massive amount of data, James says, enabling them to predict user actions with remarkable accuracy. Hence the value of conversion pixels in leveraging this capability for more effective advertising.
Tailoring pixel tracking for enhanced ROI
Charley discusses the distinction between tracking conversions for opt-ins versus actual product purchases, using the example of a coaching business employing a Video Sales Letter (VSL).
Initially, ad campaigns might track conversions based on lead generation—people submitting their contact information to watch the VSL. However, Charley tested shifting the focus of conversion tracking from leads to actual sales, marking a significant strategic pivot.
This approach entails only considering a conversion when a viewer not only watches the VSL but also proceeds to make a purchase, providing the advertising platform with data on genuine sales rather than mere interest.
This shift in conversion tracking strategy to focus solely on sales data, despite leading to higher lead costs, resulted in a substantial increase in actual sales conversions.
By feeding the advertising platforms more precise data—specifically, information related to actual purchases rather than just lead generation—Charley observed an improvement in the platforms’ ability to target and convert potential buyers at a higher rate.
This methodology highlights the effectiveness of tailoring pixel tracking to directly measure the most critical business outcome: sales. This strategy can be applied to various types of campaigns, including book giveaways and evergreen webinars, to enhance ROI by optimizing for actual product sales.
Why sales matter more than leads
James stresses the importance of focusing on sales rather than merely gathering leads, drawing from his own experience with book promotions. He emphasizes the value of understanding which leads actually transition into buying coaching programs or products from partners, as this directly impacts the return on investment (ROI) of ad spending.
This approach mirrors a strategy adopted by MindValley, which prioritized fewer, higher-quality opt-ins that resulted in more sales, showing the effectiveness of targeting genuine buyers over merely increasing lead numbers.
Recalling his early days in affiliate marketing, James shares his then strategy of focusing exclusively on buyers, offering additional incentives to those who purchased through his affiliate link.
This allowed him to build a targeted list of proven purchasers, enabling more effective marketing for future offers. James’s emphasis on targeting a super sub-niche of buyers was a foundational element of his initial success, highlighting the long-term benefits of concentrating marketing efforts on individuals with a demonstrated willingness to spend.
James criticizes obsession with vanity metrics, such as large followings or email lists. Engagement rates, he says, can artificially inflated. He advocates for a marketing strategy that prioritizes actual sales over leads.
Given, this approach may result in less exciting reports for those fixated on superficial metrics. It is, however, ultimately more challenging and rewarding. By focusing on sales, agencies and marketers must demonstrate tangible results, ensuring that the money spent on advertising generates a positive ROI and sustains client relationships.
Integrating skills for superior results
James and Charley touch on the importance of accountability and skill in advertising, noting a prevalence of ineffectiveness among competitors, especially in the SEO industry.
James shares his experience of running an SEO business, emphasizing the focus on meaningful outcomes like customer conversions over superficial metrics like rankings for obscure keywords. He highlights the synergy between paid traffic campaigns and organic growth efforts, pointing out that insights from paid campaigns can significantly inform and enhance organic strategies by identifying what truly converts.
Charley speaks of the strategic advantage of integrating various skills and resources, like employing full-time developers within an ad agency, to achieve superior results. This enables more sophisticated tracking, integration, and automation capabilities, crucial for optimizing ad campaigns and outperforming competitors.
Charley’s emphasis on having a well-rounded team with diverse technical skills highlights the evolving nature of digital advertising, where technological proficiency is increasingly becoming a factor of success.
The integration of different disciplines—SEO, paid advertising, development, and analytics—can significantly amplify a business’s online presence and efficiency. By leveraging insights from one area to inform strategies in another, businesses can create a cohesive, data-driven approach to online growth. This multidisciplinary integration not only enhances campaign performance but also provides a competitive edge in an industry where technological and strategic agility are key.
The resurgence of live events
Charley has to say it: live events are big in the current market landscape, with a particular emphasis on in-person gatherings. He is excited over the resurgence, noting their effectiveness as a marketing and engagement strategy.
James would attribute the sudden popularity to a pent-up demand for real-world interactions, following long periods of isolation and restrictions during the pandemic. Lower frequency of such events and the growing desire among people to connect in person could make for some big successes.
Logistical improvements and economic factors make live events quite viable now, including easier travel and potentially lower costs. Charley speculates that future shifts in economic policies, like interest rates, could further influence people’s willingness to participate in live events.
Live events could become a significant trend in 2024, fueled by all the aforementioned factors.
James and Charley plan to delve deeper into the topic in a future episode, promising to explore strategies for capitalizing on the trend towards live events. This forward-looking perspective underscores the importance of adapting to market changes and leveraging emerging opportunities to connect with audiences in meaningful and impactful ways.
If you’d like to work with Charley….
If you’re interested in working with Charley’s agency, visit ValherMedia.com/review. Charley highlights the value of this initial review, which allows for a quick assessment of how one’s advertising efforts could be optimized. He offers to analyze existing ad accounts for those currently running ads, providing insights into potential opportunities or affirming the effectiveness of current strategies, aiming for a mutually beneficial partnership.
This underscores Charley’s commitment to providing value first, either by identifying areas for improvement in ad campaigns or by reassuring clients about their current agency’s performance.
Look for future chats with Charley where further strategies, especially concerning live events, will be explored.
Get a free paid ads review from a consummate expert
Liked the show? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts
Leave a Reply