Blake Beus  0:00  Recap of last week we did some testing. Well, you did some testing about what we talked about on our last episode. Yep. About being where customers at being okay, spending a little bit more money from a CPM perspective. Yeah. Give us a rundown on on what we talked about last week. And then let's talk about your tests that you ran and what you found.

Greg Marshall  0:23  Yeah, so. So basically, to recap, last week, we were talking about how this individual is talking about data, and really researching where your customers at, you know, and focusing more and more on where they're actually at, versus what the advertising platforms recommend that you do, which is to put the ads everywhere, right, and that, technically, it is cheaper when you do it that way. But in a way, it could actually be more expensive. Yeah. Because if you're wasting money on placements that aren't converting, or your customers aren't there, then it doesn't matter how cheap it actually is. And so with the tests that we ran, last week, I ran one on my account, and I ran a couple on some clients accounts, after analyzing what actually works for for the specific offers, right. And I found that by running them on the placements that their customers are actually on, including mine, you get a lot, although the CPM is slightly higher, you're actually getting I think more for your dollar, because that dollar is not being spread out to so many different platforms, right? That the customer that you really want to see it is not actually seeing it as many times as they need to be right. And so that's what I found is although you technically and there's all these prompts, especially in Facebook, that will tell you your cost per result is going to increase if you don't use all the placements. just disregard that, because this is where you have to think, Where is my customer? And right, how do I show up in front of them regardless of the cost, because you have to work out your math anyways on cost per acquisition to revenue you're making. But if you're not actually in front of the customer, then you're essentially wasting money. So therefore, it's more expensive.

Blake Beus  2:14  Right, right. So let's define CPM. And I know we define this a lot. But if someone's just hopping in right here, CPM is cost per 1000. Impressions. So what what is an impression specifically in that context?

Greg Marshall  2:28  Meaning so an impression when when you run the ads is when someone sees the ad? Okay, so that's, like, if they're scrolling, and they just see it, they don't have to do anything. Okay, that's the impression.

Blake Beus  2:39  So here's the question I've always had in regards to impressions that I've actually never looked into. And I'm curious if you know the answer. So let's, let's talk about Google Display Network, right? Those are the ads that show up on someone's blog, or whatever. So if I'm running some ads, in the Display Network, very, very cheap cost per impression, like the CPMs are very, very low. Yeah. I, I'm a user, I hit the blog, and I see the same ad four times on that blog. Does that count as four impressions? Yep. Okay. So that's why the cost per impressions are so cheap, because one person is causing four impressions. Yeah. Which basically cuts the cost cost of that impression. The CPMs in the reporting by 75%. Right, like,

Greg Marshall  3:28  yep. And so that's basically how they counted. Yeah, if you're, so if I'm reading, you know, espn.com, and I see one of your ads on there. But I see it four times, because maybe it's placed at the top, and then he scrolled and maybe it's within the article, that's going to count as two impressions and more if I keep looking at it, right. And so, so impressions are great. And I do, I do see some value in them. But I believe where the impression is happening is more important, in my opinion, then, you know, how many times you're seeing right?

Blake Beus  4:00  So you're saying it's worth paying more? From a CPM perspective? Yes. To be in front of your correct audience,

Greg Marshall  4:08  correct? Yeah. Because it makes sense. It's just like, Well, why would I spend, you know, less money to talk to people that are not my customer? Yeah. That makes absolutely no sense because I can't possibly gain a customer. Right?

Blake Beus  4:24  Going, I could probably get a really cheap billboard. Yeah. If I wanted to put a billboard up in China. Yeah. For products solely in English in America here, but it wouldn't do anything. Really sad. It'd be really cheap advertising, but it won't

Greg Marshall  4:39  get any sales. So actually, it's very expensive. Yeah, so then it would be like a waste of money.

Blake Beus  4:44  It's like, it's like buying a shirt just because it's cheap. Yep. But then it doesn't fit right. So you never wear it. Like I never not even once exact. It's more it's better off to it's more expensive than buying a more expensive shirt that fits right that you wear all the time.

Greg Marshall  5:00  Exactly, yeah. So that's how I like to view advertising. And when you're especially when you're running paid, and I've pretty much always had this view, but you're constantly getting influenced by Facebook or Google or whoever, always wanting and recommending that you do a certain tactic. When really, it feels like it's not serving my best interest to serve in their best sense. Yeah, it almost makes

Blake Beus  5:24  you feel a little crazy, though. Yeah. Because you're like, well, it's working for me over here. But, but they keep telling you over and over and over again to do to do. It's crazy.

Greg Marshall  5:34  I liked that you brought that up, because there's actually a point since I, since I've done that I have received 10 phone calls from Facebook last week. Really? Yeah. Like, they want me to get on the phone with an advertising rep. And that my results could be better. I've made a few adjustments. And of course, I already know what they're going to tell me. Yeah, they're gonna say move it all. It's automatic placements, and changes and change. And all it's going to do is make them more money and make my stuff less effective. So remember, we talked about the theory about why you think they do that? Yeah. And the theory is basically, which also makes sense. If I can get great results on a single placement, and it does really well. And it's, you know, turning a profit, then I don't really have a huge incentive to spend more. Right, right. Because if I'm very profitable spending x amount, like if I was getting a 10x return, that's bad for them. Because I'm not going to turn it up. Nope, I'm gonna keep it as that budget. And that's it, and there's no more spend. So if you think about it, it makes sense why they want to keep pushing all these other, you know, placements that convert as well, is because if they're not, what's the recommendation? Spend more, you're not spending enough? Yeah, you got some results, you got to always spend more and

Blake Beus  6:57  more. Yeah, and I? Yeah, I always feel like even with these machine learning AI, you know, things like performance, Max and Facebook had their CBO. And they've done some other things as well. Those things do perform well, because of how machine learning or AI works. When you have bigger datasets, and to get a bigger data set, you need to spend more advertising dollars, and then they can totally work. But if you're working with a small budget, yep. And small in this context might be big for some but small in this context, I would say is anything under $500 a day?

Greg Marshall  7:34  Yep. I would agree. I would say the like the budgets. It seems like the people who recommend the automatic type placements are people that are spending 1000s And 1000s per day. Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. Because you need a giant data set to make that

Blake Beus  7:53  work. And that and that does make sense. And machine learning or AI can totally help in those circumstances. Because if you're spending 1000s a day, you're you're very quickly going to saturate small audiences. So you need to go find more people out there they exist, they're just harder to identify. And so it does make sense. But if you're working with a smaller budget, this is just a strategy that just doesn't work. And frankly, a lot of people will their business probably never ever, ever needs to go above $500. If you're gonna have a very profitable, very successful business with multiple marketing channels, without without going over that budget, not everyone has to be a Coca Cola, or Pepsi or McDonald's that has, you know, a 10 million 100 million dollar a year advertising budget, right?

Greg Marshall  8:41  Well, if you think about it be spending 500 A day it's about what 15,000 A month. So if you get it three or 4x return on that you're at 45 to 60,000 in revenue. And then if you're able to capitalize on repeat purchases off the new customer acquisition, you can grow yourself into 8090 100,000 or some million dollar a year business Yeah, which most people would be pretty happy, very happy with. It's a comfortable living as long as your margins are pretty good. So in this case, and this scenario, and I'm glad you added that context is really we're talking to the business owner that is doing $500 In a day in Aspen or less Yeah. Because most business owners that's what they're doing. Right I can't remember the exact statistic but I do know it's a very low percentage that of how many businesses actually reached a million dollar revenue per year mark yes, not as many as you think. I mean, the internet will make you think like everyone has ever you're the only millionaire that not out there but that's not true at all. If you look up the statistics and it's very that's a that's a big milestone if you can hit a million dollars a year. That's that's pretty good. And so So yeah, so you can definitely reach a million dollars a year spending $500 there less Yeah, and over time that will compound as long as You have a strong business model?

Blake Beus  10:01  Absolutely. Absolutely. So what what do you think is a good way to kind of test this out for Aranda, some listeners listening right now they're like, Okay, I want to test this out for me? Would it be? Would it make sense to just say, okay, my budget is going to be $50 a day, $100 a day, and I'll run it with all placements for a week just to get a baseline, and then I'll back off and run just targeted placements out, you know, what would you think this?

Greg Marshall  10:29  I mean, if someone were to ask me, yeah, like, just directly, like, hey, you know, I'm thinking about doing this, I would say, in my experience, based on all of the ads that I've run, that's been a lot. I would say, like, if it's on Facebook, the newsfeed and the stories option, those are the earth placements. Those are the two placements that I would say, just focus on those, forget about the other ones to get those data. And then if you go to Google, I would say search or YouTube ads, okay, okay, those are the two places that I would go, I would stay away from display. And so either you have a gigantic budget, which we just went over, you're most likely not going to want to go to anyways. And those are going to give you your highest return. So I feel like news news feeds the same even if you go Tik Tok, or any other platform, always choose the newsfeed over any display, we ran into the Zealand LinkedIn member, yeah, when you run website traffic campaigns, if you have display network enabled, your cost per clicks will be like 25 cents. But then what you'll notice is no one stays on the site very long, no one converge if no one does anything. And the second you turn that off, and you only have the newsfeed the cost per clicks, go back to what they're supposed to. And so I would always recommend newsfeed no matter what you're doing, you always take out display or Audience Network or anything that sounds like that,

Blake Beus  11:56  or in video stream, or any of those people aren't in the click to go off. They want to just keep watching, but

Greg Marshall  12:04  it's just those replacements to give, I feel like a lot of vanity metrics. You know, like you've had 100,000 impressions, but 95,000 came from in stream and Audience Network. And it's like, that's not going to drive your bottom line. So the other thing that I typically recommend, okay, nothing is like set in stone. There's outliers out there. But I would say, if you're doing e commerce, right, or lower ticket products, you could stick with Facebook, and you can even start to test out tick tock, since CPMs are really low. And that'll allow you to get more volume of traffic and the numbers will work out. If you have high ticket though. Google and YouTube are better,

Blake Beus  12:46  in my opinion for E commerce, or just are just high ticket just high

Greg Marshall  12:49  ticket. Okay. Yeah. For high ticket, I believe. Those are better.

Blake Beus  12:53  Yeah. So when you say high ticket, just to define that we're talking like, maybe a consulting thing, at least

Greg Marshall  12:59  five $600. Okay. But you could get away with even higher priced products. Absolutely. So I would say if you're, if you're charging a lot more, you tend to get better results. And you know, I use personal training in this too, because personal training, technically is higher ticket because you're buying four or $5,000 training packages, right? The mindset is different. So think lower price point equals higher impulse, higher price point equals more logical thinking, right? And because of that, think of Facebook and Instagram and Tiktok you're scrolling, you're really just wasting time. So you can just impulsively buy things, right? But when you're like, for example, YouTube, you're like kind of searching things out your mindset mentality is a lot different, right? Especially if you're targeting based off of keyword searches. Yeah, or topics, that really means that person that you're getting in front of is actually in the state of mind of the exact product you're selling.

Blake Beus  14:00  Plus, along those lines with YouTube, people are generally on YouTube to spend some time. Yep. And so they're willing to watch an ad that's interesting and relevant to them longer. Yep. And so with a higher ticket product, oftentimes, you need a little bit more time to explain the value proposition. And so YouTube is a really good fit for that. Yeah. Because you tend to get more time. I mean, you were telling me once this was a while ago, but you had a client that was, I don't know, a chiropractor, physical therapist, something, something along those lines. And you had a YouTube ad, and your average watch time was something like seven minutes. Oh, yeah. Or something like that. Remember?

Greg Marshall  14:42  I did? Yeah. It was to actually the gentleman. Oh,

Blake Beus  14:47  yeah. So the average I mean, think about how much selling you can, you can do. We're explaining the value proposition you can do in seven minutes of an ad. How long you remember back in the day when people actually have ads on TV, they still exist. But I wouldn't sit there and watch a seven minute ad. But if it's highly relevant, and interesting to that person, which you can do in YouTube, because you then all the search history and everything, you can get a seven minute and are highly,

Greg Marshall  15:18  highly qualified. Yeah. Just think of someone that just walking around and thinking about buying your exact product. Yeah. And then you serve them an ad of that exact product. Like it's a perfect match matches the market match. And so that's why I think if you have higher ticket, it's better to like your opportunity to essentially make money is higher on YouTube, then, you know, Facebook and Instagram just because of the mindset, our high ticket buyers on Facebook and Instagram. Of course they are I'm not saying that they're not there. What I'm saying is, you may see a better performance on YouTube, because of where their mentality is. And the other thing that I find is, if you're targeting people on YouTube, and they fill out your lead form, and they get on a phone call, the quality of the person is higher, also, because of the mindset, then I find that a lot of those sales turn around pretty quick. Yeah, like less than seven days interest. And quite often they can. I've actually had some ads on YouTube for my own business where the person bought, like, an hour later. Oh, really, like after a phone call? Like they saw the ad they clicked they booked the call got on the phone, they purchased all like that, really? No, no thinking about it. And but it was because individuals like I am looking for this, which I of course I knew because that's what I'm targeting.

Blake Beus  16:44  And you made the video, you made the video content basically resolve objections, probably before they even got on the phone with you exactly. And so for the ideal person, it's a no brainer.

Greg Marshall  16:53  Exactly. And so just think about that, when you think about placements be where your customers at, and where you're gonna have the most probability of success. And the other thing I've been telling. Lately, I've been talking to quite a few fitness trainers wanting to sell their services out of their gyms, and I've been trying to move a lot of them to YouTube. And the reason why is because YouTube number one, personal training services are technically high ticket, right? Like, you're not gonna get anything really for like less than 300 bucks. Okay. All the most of the programs are being sold or 2345 $6,000. So with that being said, YouTube's a perfect match for that. It's also a perfect match for that, because I was talking to a trainer yesterday, who will be launching her ads soon, and we'll keep you updated on it. I said, How many courses have you seen on YouTube ads to build for personal trainers? She said, I've never seen more. I said, How many have you seen on Facebook and Instagram? How To Grow Your Fitness following and all that Facebook? That's all I've seen? Yeah. So I said, so it's most likely that the market is saturated. And it's all the same offers over and over and over and over again to the consumer, right, you're seeing over and over and over again, the same offer just a different location, right? So that kind of makes it where your CPMs are gonna be higher, because you're competing in a highly competitive audience. And then the offers all sound the same. Right? Right. So you're going to spend more and be a part of they're going to associate with all being the same versus if you go to YouTube. They don't really know. They're they're not seeing these offers, right, particularly locally. Yeah. So because of that, and there's this level of like, and I don't know if you've ever run into this, but there's his level of YouTube, like when people see you on YouTube, the perception is, wow,

Blake Beus  18:48  there's like an authority there. You know, what I mean? Builds authority. Yeah. And so

Greg Marshall  18:52  you also have that, that that can go into play. So anyways, what are some of your thoughts on, you know, placements and targeting? And are you along the same lines of this thinking?

Blake Beus  19:06  Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I've, for a long time felt that there were ulterior motives, with a lot of the cues that they have in the platforms about how you should run your ads. And, and some of the defaults and things they put in place I felt weren't necessarily in the best interest of the advertisers. But were in the best interests of say, Google or Facebook, namely, specifically the geographic targeting Yeah, like you when you when by default, when you target people in America on Google's the default option, which is like three or four clicks away, you can't see is, is people that live in America have been to America recently or are interested in America. If you're targeting America, you have to change that to people that live in America, or else you're going to retargeting people all over the place. And so they always have these cues. So I guess my main takeaway from this is from a placements and all this perspective is, as you're going through and running the ads, trust yourself, run those tests, verify everything that they're claiming. And you can keep listening to to us, because we're doing these tests all the time, you can kind of skip some of those steps and just run right to the targeted placements. But you definitely need to do that, or else you'll be spending money and you'll that you don't need to spend to not have any actual benefit. Yep. And so if you want to be profitable, if you're running on a smaller budget, or whatever, definitely stick with those targeted placements. And think about which platform people are on. I know, we talk a lot about Facebook and Google, they're definitely some of the bigger players out there with the industries that we work with. But there's mean tick tock is is growing from an advertising perspective, really cheap CPMs there. I've seen some pretty interesting results from from an E commerce perspective. On tick tock, yep. Like little demo demo videos or whatever. Pin Pinterest still exists. A lot of people forget about that. But Pinterest, including me, yeah. Pinterest has a full advertising platform, they have millions and millions and millions of daily users. And people use Pinterest in a different way than they use the other. The other ones, people actually use Pinterest, very similar to the way people use Google, if you if you think about Pinterest as a search engine first, which wasn't what it was initially, but it's kind of how people use it. Now, if you think of it as a search engine first, and you're just having, you know, search results, but in pin form, then there's some really interesting opportunities there. LinkedIn is another one, if your people are hanging out on LinkedIn, they have a full advertising platform. It's a little bit clunky, yeah. But I've seen some amazing results there. And they probably have one of the best in my opinion built in. Bot, like message bot? Yep, advertising platforms, I've seen that it's in. And I've seen some really great results there. For higher ticket offers the best offers, I've seen, there have been something like, Hey, let's get on a call and chat three others. So a good way to book a call for consultants, or if a phone call is part of your funnel, the and your people are on LinkedIn, the LinkedIn messenger, bots are a pretty interesting advertising way to go and, you know, get targeted on those things. And you're definitely gonna see better results.

Greg Marshall  22:43  Yeah, and I think you know, the moral of the story, basically, with all the testing and things like that is, number one, know where your customers at. And then number two, get the message in front of you. Right? I mean, you've got like 80% of the work done. If you're literally showing up where your actual customer is at, and you're putting something in front of us, then all you have to do is figure out, how do I get them to respond. But what you don't want to do, which a lot is advertising platforms, I feel like maybe not intentionally, but probably most likely, intentionally, is encourage you to put your placements everywhere. Yeah, and to almost be wasteful with what you're doing. Because it's in the best interest of them versus you actually putting it in the right person's face, and getting the results that you want. So it's it's amazing how simple of a concept that is. And even as I consider myself a veteran and buying ads, you still can get it. So if I'm getting influenced, I feel like someone who maybe doesn't know any better, for sure is getting in on that. Because they don't know any better.

Blake Beus  23:50  Yeah, well, I think it's causing an unintentional side effect of people getting frustrated and then not even advertising. Yep. So so they're putting these cues in here saying, Hey, do do all this stuff, push, push the auto placement button button, push CBO push performance, Max, we'll just automate everything for you. And then the results aren't going to be that good, but their profit margins are better. But then you have a lot of businesses that would potentially be really great businesses where the founder, the owner, whoever throws their hands in the air says not nevermind, because literally advertising can take a business from nothing to huge, yep. When when done right. And so there's I feel like there's this entire kind of hidden layer of businesses that have really great products really great offers really great people running them. But this advertising piece is frustrating enough that they never see the light of day in a in a big way, when the could well and I

Greg Marshall  24:51  think a lot of these advertising companies they you know, they're salesmen just like us, just like anyone else. They know that the consumer ever wants to hear automatic? Yep. And set it and forget it. Yep. And that type of language, so they kind of know how to dangle that in front of you these these products are basically that, you know, just let us do the work for you, which, you know, most likely is not going to be as they don't have as near as much investment and you're succeeding. And here's the other thing. I have seen campaigns, this, I'm thinking of this one client, how I got him. And when he gave me access to that account, I couldn't believe what I was saying, really. So he so Google, agreed to, like, build his ads or something like that, and had convinced them that he needed to spend like $500 or six hours a day, okay. And this individual had the money to do so. But I went in there and there was like, I mean, I think there was like four conversions even ran this for like weeks.

Blake Beus  25:58  The average order value or was it was

Greg Marshall  26:01  like a 40 $50 product, it was performing Wow, horribly. And it was all set up by Google. And I'm like, so Google set this up, encourage you to spend a whole bunch of money, and you're not getting any results. And when I say a bunch of money, I mean, what is you know, 500 times 10? Or has five grand? Yeah. And he got four sales. I like it. So that's like 280 bucks and sales. We spent $5,000. Yeah, it's it's just, that's insane. I mean, I couldn't believe and I was like, Google actually set this up. And he had suspicion like, these ads, they're not working very well, even though Google literally made them. So I understand the psyche, because it in theory, it would make sense, right? Who would know the advertising platform better than an actual Google rep or a Facebook rep or whatever. But you gotta remember the people that they're hiring. These are just salespeople that yeah, and most of them never run out of their life. Yeah. And so when they give you advice, it's, you know, it's from a script, you know, piece of paper that their sales manager told him to say, and it's like, I've had so many phone calls that reps like this, where I'm like, that just doesn't seem to make sense, right experience. Yeah, actually running and paying money. I've never seen that work.

Blake Beus  27:16  Yeah, you know, it's, it's just got me thinking. The psychological term for someone convincing you that you're crazy is called gaslighting. This episode definitely needs to be called gaslighting. gaslighted gaslit like Google gaslit like

Greg Marshall  27:35  Google Facebook, where they convince you that you're literally going crazy and you're like, I don't feel like I feel like this is what it's telling you.

Blake Beus  27:45  So, anyway, well, let's let's wrap. Let's wrap it up here. Yeah. How can people get in touch with you Greg?

Greg Marshall  27:51  You go to my website, Greg marshall.co book a free strategy session.

Blake Beus  27:55  And you and Blake Beus stock comm slash SM three is the best way to get in touch with me. All right. Well, I

Greg Marshall  28:00  hope you enjoyed this episode, and we'll see you guys next week. Okay, bye.