769 – How to Succeed with Paid Ads on Any Budget in Any Industry or Market – Part 3 of 3

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Ilana Wechsler

In the podcast:

01:14 – The stuff we’ve covered and what’s to come
02:31 – Different business, different strategies
05:37 – Coming at it from multiple directions
07:47 – A layering of approaches
09:59 – What needs to work and what it comes down to
12:07 – The moment your prospect is in
13:41 – Different platforms working together
15:19 – Why owning your name is important
16:24 – The phrases you want to leverage
17:26 – Do you know where your market is?
18:53 – Summing things up

Find marketing strategies that will work for you with James’s help

Part 1 of 3
Part 2 of 3

Transcription:

James: James Schramko here. Welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. This is Episode 769. I’m here with Ilana Wechsler, and we are talking about traffic, paid traffic in particular. But even more importantly, how to succeed with paid traffic, no matter what your budget is, or what industry or market.

This is actually part three of a three-part series. So if you haven’t listened to part one, part two, you’ll want to go back to those episodes, 767 and 768, before you listen to this one.

The topics covered and what’s to come

So, quick recap. In the first episode, we talked about how paid traffic is so important, why you should be doing it, and how much of an opportunity it is.

In the second episode, we talked about all the low-hanging fruit, the quick wins, the easy way to get stuck into it, even with a low budget, even if you’re not very experienced. How to avoid having to pay $5,000 a month for another Facebook agency who’s just going to set up all these campaigns and burn your budget for the next three months. So Ilana gave some really great insights.

In this episode, number three, we’re going to be talking about the next stage, what do you do after that? So you’ve decided to do paid traffic, you’ve started the quick wins campaigns. Now what?

Ilana: Alright, now we get to the fun part actually. Because Part Two was about reengaging your existing traffic, so retargeting campaigns, engagement audiences that you might have got from your Facebook page, etc. Now what ends up happening is you end up sort of maxing out of those audiences, and the logical then next progression is okay, well how can I get more retargeting traffic? Because it’s working so well. I want to fill more people into that pipeline.

So the fun part is the cold traffic campaigns where no one knows you and you’re getting in front of audiences which are completely new to you and your business.

How your business affects your campaign

Now, what you do really depends on your type of business, because different businesses will have different strategies. So for example, if let’s say you’re a chiropractor, okay? You run a very service-based business. Or a dentist or that type of business. Then chances are, doing Facebook ads is probably not the best place to start. You may add that later, but it’s not sort of an obvious first initial place for you to advertise.

The best place for a service business to advertise is obviously on Google.com. Someone’s gone to Google and they’ve typed in chiropractor in the suburb that you operate. It makes sense for you to essentially slide your business card under the nose of that particular person at the instant that they’ve searched for it. Okay?

So for a service business, that would be the first kind of cold traffic campaign that I would do. And maybe, you know, you might find that you create a very mobile-centric campaign, if we’re going to talk a little bit of a ninja strategy with this. You might create a mobile-only campaign, which is sort of very mobile-centric, etc. So that’s sort of one type of business.

There’s a complete whole other strategy, let’s say for e-commerce, right? So e-commerce, you might have a multi-pronged approach, because there are fundamental differences between the Google Ad platform and the Facebook ad platform.

So e-commerce, it makes sense to also do Google search. Someone’s typed in Nike air shoes, etc. I only know that because my son is obsessed with Nike. But, anyway. And then you want your ad to show up for there, as well as the Google Shopping ads.

Now as fantastic as Google search is, what ends up happening is you pretty much end up buying all the profitable search traffic that there is, and you need to explore other avenues. So then you might start to consider advertising on Facebook. And what you advertise on Facebook is actually going to be quite different to what you would on Google. That kind of make sense?

James: It does. And thinking of the types of people who listen to this podcast, certainly we have e-commerce operators, certainly we have agencies and service providers.

The other big demographic, or segment or type of business would be information product marketers, such as you and me. For example, you’ve got TeachTraffic.com, where you’re educating people on paid traffic strategies. I’ve got SuperFastBusiness and SuperFastResults, and I’m providing information. What sort of campaigns can we take advantage of?

Ilana: Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up, because I was going to discuss it. So people like you and me and other kinds of information marketers would have a multi-pronged approach. Okay?

So we might do a Google search campaign, like, let’s say, take my business, right? So I might bid on Google Ad training course or something, there’s going to be a limited number of people who do that. And I might end up kind of paying a high cost per click, because I’m competing against some big institutions. Right? And I might not want to do that. But still, you know, it’s probably worth testing and seeing what the numbers come in at, to see. It might convert really well, because Google Search Ads do convert well.

The multi-pronged approach

But typically, so let’s take my business again, maybe Facebook ads, or even YouTube ads could work well. And what we might do is we might have some kind of, you know, your audience have probably heard, a funnel concept, where we might have, as I said, a multi-pronged approach.

So one strategy on social could be to promote content, right? So I’ve got a podcast, I might promote some audio clips of my podcast as a video. Once again, it’s in creating an engagement audience as per Part Two, and then my Part Two ads would kick in with my offer or my engagement audience.

In conjunction with them, and they tend to run quite evergreen, I might also have some kind of free guide that I might give away, or a free webinar that I might run, or a free training program, etc. So those kinds of campaigns work really well on social, Facebook, Instagram, and actually also YouTube. So they probably require a bit more in-depth. But that kind of gives you a broad brush view?

James: It does. One of the things that came up is, are we worried about or interested in or even trying to attract the same people to those different offers? Because I imagine there’s some people who just keep opting in to different things and at some point, you’ll hit the thing that is most relevant for them. Or are we looking for different people together?

Ilana: I think you’re looking for a mix. And I think at the end of the day, it’s about changing the different mediums that you show people. So, you know, promoting videos as well as blog content as well as, you know, ebooks. Because people consume content in different ways. And so therefore, personally, I don’t have much time to watch lengthy videos, but some people love consuming videos. I’d much prefer to skim read something – yeah, got the gist, okay, time to move on.

James: Me too. I don’t even listen to podcasts, which is a funny thing.

Ilana: It is a funny thing, considering you’re up to 769.

James: Yeah. I prefer to make them. I’ve got life sorted out. I get to surf and I get to talk for a living. I’m happy.

This whole series is, really, you could separate it into two categories. Stage One is optimization. So starting with what you’ve got, and then just tuning it a bit. And Stage Two is like innovation, which is adding new things. And that’s where you can get massive scale. So this is a great episode so far.

Working in layers

Ilana: Awesome. So I’m glad you sort of bring on the concept of layering, because that’s what this kind of is, you know? If we backtrack a sec, you might have a Google search campaign that does really well and you end up maxing out on it and buying all the profitable traffic. But that just sort of ticks away in the background.

And then you keep that running and you layer on top of it, let’s say, a social campaign or a YouTube ad campaign. So really, it comes down to, you have to deeply know who is your target audience, and really what content resonates with them to build the awareness of your business and your brand in front of them.

So we touched on building video audiences to build engagement audiences. You might promote a webinar and then, you know, the retargeting campaign kicks in for Whatever that offer is, and yet you have a bunch of different roads that all lead to kind of your retargeting campaigns.

So when you’re starting out, and let’s say you promote some kind of free guide on social media and it converts really well, rather than starting with a different offer, I would scale that vertically. And what I mean by that is, keep increasing the budget with it. And once you kind of tap out on that, then by all means you can scale that horizontally or add in different offers, etc.

But people are so focused on creating all these different things, and they’ve hit on things that work. So rather than getting the most out of what they have, they kind of are always looking to add new things.

James: So in the first part, we’re saying it’s good to go broad with small campaigns. And now I’m hearing you say, go deep in the campaigns that work. So is it like two stages? One is, cast your net wide and just try different things. And two is when you get the nibbles and they’re working, go deeper on the ones that have proven to work. Is that what I’m hearing?

Ilana: Yes, that’s what I like to do. It’s like, you throw a bunch of stuff out there, see what resonates with your audience. Because at the end of the day, they’re your target audience, not you are. And see what flies with them. And then it’s like, right, this is resonating with them. Let’s double down on what is working.

James: Perfect. Yeah, it’s how I approach business, too. We have to try a few offers. I’d say you might need to kiss a few frogs to find the Prince.

What it all comes down to

Ilana: I would also mention one thing. You know, like, success with advertising at this stage with the cold traffic kind of stuff ultimately comes down to showing the right ad to the right person at the right time.

And if you think about those three components, like, the right ad is the right creative or whatever that is to the right person, which is your targeting, at the right time, which is wherever they are in the sales cycle. And each of those three elements need to be in play with each other for the system to work.

James: It’s a tweetable, that one.

Ilana: Yeah, totally.

So if any of those elements breaks down, the whole thing falls apart. So this is where you really almost have to stand back and think of the big picture. Okay, who is my target person? What type of content do I think would resonate with them? And where are they in the sales cycle? I could dangle something that’s really relevant in front of them, and they’re going to want to consume that, you know?

James: It comes down to the word “relevance”, doesn’t it?

Ilana: A hundred percent, yeah.

James: I saw an ad today. It was just in a newsfeed. It was, like, an organic ad. Native ad, I think they call it. I was looking at the news below. It was like, Your next car should have this technology. I’m like, Okay, this is a paid-for ad, I can tell. And then it has this mysterious curious sort of looking graphic, or image of a car with some neon lights in the background. I was like, what is this technology?

I’m a marketer. So I click on it to see what’s going on. And it’s just some really lame ad from a big, it was a co-ad between a car brand and a magazine. And it’s like, here are our latest models, and it went into corporate speak of the waffle of each of the models. It like, totally lost me. The promise of the ad wasn’t there. This is no longer relevant to me, and I’m moving on.

So the key word is relevance. In a previous series I had with Rob Hanly, he talked about the market, the message. The market, the offer and the copy. So that was like, who are you talking to, what are you offering them, and how well can you convey that offer? They were, like, the layers of relevancy there. So this thing just keeps recurring.

Ilana: Totally.

James: No point spending money on ads to the wrong person with a weak offer that doesn’t mean anything to them.

Think about the moment

Ilana: And I think people need to think about the moment that somebody is in, you know? So the moment that someone’s in, when they’re Google searching, is the bottom of the funnel. They’re actively searching for something. Contrast that to social where they’re looking for some entertainment. Maybe they’re standing in the line for their coffee, and they’re waiting.

And so what moment are they in that they can consume your content? Maybe they’re not in the position to consume some video content, you know? Or to watch your live webinar right now, etc. Because most mobile, Facebook traffic is on a mobile device.

Contrast that to the moment that someone is in when they’re on YouTube, right? When they’re on YouTube, they’re in learning mode, or they’re in consumption of video mode. So it’s about matching what you’re showing people to the moment that they’re in. Because even though it might be the one business, what you show them in those different moments has to match that platform.

James: I’ve noticed a lot of my sales come from desktops. So would that mean I have a different campaign for mobiles versus desktops?

Ilana: Yeah, you might find that you do, actually. And I find that happens, especially in e-commerce. People do their research on a mobile, and often, and I think maybe this is a gradual shift, but often they will go on to their desktop and then ultimately make that purchase.

James: Well, I will literally use PayPal on a mobile, because it’s a pain in the ass to fill in all the details. To buy something with a credit card from a mobile phone is still quite a pain, you know, unless you can pay it in an easy fashion. So that was one consideration I was curious about.

How different platforms work together

And one thing you’ve been really strong with is the interplay between the different platforms. And you can actually create custom segments and audiences and then get them with multiple platforms. That’s what your traffic puzzle’s about. Can you just speak to that? Because I think this is where you are unique. This is what sets you apart from every other paid traffic person that I’ve heard about, is how they work together.

Ilana: Yeah, and I think some people don’t realize that they do work together. Because at the end of the day, it’s the one customer.

So I once once had a client that we were running traffic for, and this particular woman was coming out to Sydney to run an event for 10 days. And some people in Sydney had never heard of her. So we were running awareness ads on Facebook, because they’re not Google searching for her at this point, because they don’t know she exists. She’s coming from overseas.

So we were spending a whole bunch of money on Facebook ads and getting people to click on, I can’t remember what the offer was. This was a while ago. But what we were finding was they were clicking on the Facebook ad, weren’t opting in, and then they were Google-searching her name. So her name is Sydney.

You know, because this particular event was a 10-day event, it was quite expensive, and no one’s going to go spend 10K by clicking on a Facebook ad. They’re going to want to know who this person is. And you know, is she legit? What are her reviews? What does her YouTube channel look like? They’re doing their research. It makes sense.

James: So you can anticipate the human behavior. Think, right, we’re going to run these cold ads. People are then going to switch to the platform where they go to do the search with the terms like review, scam, etc., and build safety into their purchase. And you can capture them there and funnel them back to where you need to be.

Owning your name online

Ilana: Now your listeners might be thinking, Well, why would I bother doing that? Because I rank for my brand name, anyway.

James: I do it because you told me to. And it’s great. I used to do it; stopped doing it for a long time. I do it again. I think it’s one of the most effective keywords and campaigns I’ve got for such a low amount, to own my own name. I am a very relevant search result for people searching for my name. That’s the fact.

Ilana: Exactly. And the amount you pay, as you say, is really negligible.

James: And I can benefit the most from my name.

Ilana: The real benefit for businesses is that you can send that traffic where you want to. If you rank in Google, Google’s deciding where to send those people. So let’s say you want to send people to a specific landing page or a specific offer or something, you can at least funnel them into the place where you might really want them to go, which is a big reason people do it as well.

James: And also just a quick, while I think of it, I remember Stephan Spencer gave me a great tip on owning that right-hand side of the search results for your own name. You can actually put your own pictures in the links to things you want. So I wanted to give him a hat tip for that.

Leveraging phrases that are meaningful for your brand

But paid ads is just another way you can occupy real estate in that search result that’s critical for the phrases that mean something for your brand.

Ilana: Yeah.

James: Very good. What else, Ilana?

Ilana: Yes. So there’s like, there’s lots of ways. So for example, let’s just take my business.

James: TeachTraffic.com.

Ilana: Yes. I’m happy to reveal more, not for a client, obviously. But you know, so for me, I do a lot of YouTube ads. So I bid on the keywords on YouTube about you know, I teach a lot of Google ads. So I actively go for people who I know are searching for information on how-to videos on YouTube. I know they want to watch how-to videos, because they’re literally on YouTube, doing that kind of work.

So I use that as my cold outreach campaigns, which then triggers retargeting campaigns across the multiple platforms. So that’s why you’ve got to think about the moment, because what I found was, actually, doing the Facebook ad people, you know, they weren’t such great subscribers for me. Yes, they were interested in my guide, but they weren’t as engaged subscribers as the YouTube ad people.

Where is your market?

So it’s different for different businesses, but it is all about the interplay between the platforms. And wherever platform you find is where your market is hanging out online, then I’d suggest exploring that.

James: And a lot of platforms have paid options these days. And if they don’t, they’ll come soon. We’ve seen them rolling out on plenty of platforms.

Ilana: Many people are getting results from Pinterest. Yeah, there’s lots of different avenues. But please just don’t do one platform, would be my recommendation.

James: And mine, too.

Ilana: Exactly. So many people just do Facebook ads. And look, they do work really well. And I love – I actually have a love-hate relationship with Facebook ads, and that’s probably another discussion. But by all means, you know, you have to diversify your traffic sources somewhat. Don’t put all your eggs in the Facebook basket.

James: I’ll just say, anticipate your account to be shut down at some point. I’ll just say it, black and white. You know, in the past, I’ve had plenty of accounts shut down from multiple platforms, not because I was doing anything particularly bad, but because maybe what I was doing didn’t suit their policy, it suited me more than them.

Also 10 years ago, I was probably a little more gung ho. But I’m pretty conservative now. I’ve always got this mandate: I don’t want to irritate a platform. I just want to deliver what makes them happy. That makes my business happy. But I’m so independent from any one particular platform. I feel a lot more comfortable about my future, and you want to build that kind of safety and comfort into your business.

In summary

So, in short, use multiple platforms, find your campaigns that work, go a bit deeper on those ones because you can scale up the wins, and then keep learning and improving your knowledge of how they play together and which platforms work. I think that’s where you come into it, Ilana. You help people to go from wherever they’re at to the next stage of their journey with your education program. And that’s really cool.

Ilana: Yeah, thanks. No, it’s great. And I also help people, like, with the strategy. I mean, I guess that’s where running an ad agency for the last seven years has really helped me. I’ve probably tested every sales funnel out there, challenge, you know.

James: You’ve still got great hair for someone who’s run a paid traffic agency. It’s quite challenging. You know, it’s a dynamic marketplace, you’re dealing with large companies with very little recourse, and the clients have huge expectations. But you’ve spent a lot of clients’ money, and they’ve been extremely happy with you, with the programs you’ve run. And I think that qualifies you to be able to teach others. And that’s a nice thing.

And combine that with your pre-online background of being a data analyst. You’ve got such a good skill set, and I’ve been enjoying watching that growth, which is why I love it when you come and share these things. But one thing is, I love how simple you make it. You just break it down into the most simple, logical way to go forward. That’s your skill.

Ilana: Well, thanks. I think at the end of the day, like, it doesn’t have to be complicated. And simplicity does go a really long way. And everyone is so focused on making it really complicated. And let me tell you, so I still run some ad campaigns – not that many these days – and the fundamentals still work. Like, you know, eight years later, they’re still working really well.

So yes, you can do all fancy stuff with ManyChat and Messenger bots and all this kind of stuff, but really, good ad creative with a great offer and some good targeting is really all you need.

James: Fantastic. So thank you for sharing on this three-part series: why we need to do ads, how to go and get the easy wins, what to do to scale up next. Of course beyond that, go over to TeachTraffic.com, sign up, let Ilana help you take your paid traffic to the next stage.

Is there anyone who it won’t work for or who you would recommend contact you before buying?

Ilana: Probably not MLM type stuff.

James: Some things that are difficult to advertise. They probably already know that they’re not allowed to advertise, right? There’s certain categories. You’re not allowed to advertise on most platforms, like adult industry or gambling, those sort of things, not so great.

If you’re not sure, just get in touch with Ilana. Contact her via her website. Send me an email – any response you send me, I’ll forward to Ilana happily.

Thank you for sharing again.

Ilana: Thank you so much, James. I always love coming on your podcast,

James: We’ll get you back in the future for another little series. If you’ve got a question for Ilana, or you think you’ve got an idea for a great series for her and I to do, we’re up for it. So give me the ideas, and away we go.

Ilana: Alrighty, thanks so much, James.

James: Thank you.

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Want paid traffic guidance for your online business? Contact Ilana at TeachTraffic.com

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