James: James Schramko here from SuperFastBusiness.com. I have Ilana Wechsler from TeachTraffic.com.
Good day, Ilana.
Ilana: Good day, James! How are you going?
James: Good. We’ve been covering a few questions people have had about advertising campaigns. You specialize in both Google and Facebook. So you’re really a traffic specialist.
One of the things that come up and certainly a topic I’m passionate about and have been talking about for over 10 years online is this conversation around ownership. I brought the marketing phrase “own the racecourse” to the online space and I talk about building your own assets.
And you’ve had quite a lot of experience both teaching and running an agency. And you and I have both encountered this same phenomenon regarding ownership when it comes to the clients that you have to work with. It’s a massive one. If you don’t get this right, there can be huge consequences. I’d love for you to share with us what that is and how we can fix it.
Ilana: Yeah, I teach at uni, I was just telling you before we hit record. As I teach at uni to business owners, not just students, and there’s always somebody in my class, who has been the victim of some pretty unscrupulous digital agency. And the trick that these people don’t realize is that when they are going to create their Google Ad account, or their Google Analytics account, or even various digital properties, the agency that they hire, sets that up for them.
So this might sound completely innocuous, and what’s the big deal? They’re being helpful. The problem with this is that these digital assets are created under the agency login. So when and if you decide to part ways with this agency, and you say, Hey, I’d like my Google Ads account, thank you very much. Generally speaking, they do not hand them over. I’ve had people where they don’t even own their own Google Analytics account. So, all the data about their business traffic that’s coming to their website, they don’t even own that account. And I’m sure you’ve had similar experience.
James: I’ve had clients who don’t even know where their domain name is even registered, and they definitely don’t own it. There’s a long string of people who have had legacy proprietary website solutions that only the company can work on.
For example, when I worked with Mercedes-Benz, we had a website supplier, who was quite a big company. And I remember I was learning about online marketing. This is about 12 years ago. And I was building my own websites at home. I was learning about WordPress and analytics. And in fact, you’ll laugh at this, but I used to run Google Pay Per Click AdWords and I was bidding on phrases like Mercedes-Benz and Mercedes-Benz Sydney, and it was still only a few dollars back then. So it was great times, but I had put Google Analytics, it was brand new back then, on my website and then I asked them to do it for the Mercedes-Benz website. And they came back to me and they quoted something like $3,800 to install Google Analytics onto the website. So, and I remember also, they charged $25,000 for a one-page landing page that all it had was the list of dealers and their names and logos, no lead capture, no campaigns, nothing beyond it, one page. And I thought, wow!
So basically, what I found is, the bigger the company, the more difficult it’s going to be to get things done and generally the prices go up, and the ownership and controls, you start to get really compromised. So, the other aspect is maybe you don’t want to part ways with the firm, but maybe they have done something edgy and their whole account gets shut down. And you get caught up in that. That’s kind of like when you share a server with a bunch of other webmasters, and they have some, you know, weak defense on their website, it gets attacked and start spamming everyone and that whole IP address gets blocked.
And that’s why sometimes it’s good to have your own dedicated IP or your own server, because you’re not grouped in with everyone else. So to have a little more control, to have ownership of that asset, to give yourself the choice to choose a supplier, I would always say, Look, try and own your domain name and at least your core content. If you’re doing videos and podcasts like this, I’ve always got a copy of it. If you seen this on LinkedIn, or Facebook or YouTube, just know that it’s probably also on my own website. And it’s more than likely sitting in an Amazon S3 storage account or Dropbox or both, or Google Drive. Somewhere where we can “re-get” it if we need to. If one of those social media platforms goes, we’re okay.
And that’s what I like about what you’re teaching in TeachTraffic.com. You’re not just saying, Hey, look, it’s all about Facebook, or it’s all about Google ads. You’re saying Oh, there are ways you can actually use both of them. And you can protect yourself and you can even interplay the campaigns and leverage them way beyond what you can do with just maximizing one platform. So you’ve got a lot of options and choices. And you’re in the box seat, you own what you can and you’re driving the campaign. So there you go.
Ilana: Yes. Speaking my language.
James: Well, thanks so much for sharing Ilana, and we’ve got a few more tips like this. By the way, if you’re watching it and you’ve got a question for Ilana, by all means, comment near this video and my team or I or Ilana will see it and will probably make you another video.
Ilana: Yep, we will even do that for you.
James: Have a nice day. See ya!
Ilana: See ya!
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