More Clients Less Hustle

14-Day Challenge: PPC Powering Up Strategies That Are ACTUALLY Working! with Nicolas Trueman (Day 14)

• Caroline Balinska + Nicolas Trueman • Season 1 • Episode 20

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PPC Secrets to 10X Your Leads - Expert Reveals All!

Discover the hidden goldmine of intent-driven Google ads, killer keyword research tools, and mind-blowing social media tactics that'll skyrocket your conversions (while slashing ad costs)!

In this jaw-dropping interview, PPC wizard Nick pulls back the curtain on:

  • Why Google ads beat social media ads for red-hot buyer leads
  • Clever ways to maximize your unique selling points for unstoppable local domination
  • The unlikely "best friend" lead magnet you're probably ignoring
  • Creative marketing genius that turned an IT company into a client-grabbing powerhouse
  • Video ad secrets to forge real human connections (and leave competitors in the dust)
  • The ultimate ad platform showdown: YouTube vs Instagram vs TikTok

🔥 COACHES, GYM OWNERS, TRAINERS & MORE: Are you ready to 10X your leads with the CRAZIEST digital marketing secrets from a Shopify master? 🤯 This video is EXPLOSIVE! 💣

Whether you're a coach, gym owner, personal trainer or dentist, Nick's profit-multiplying strategies will transform your business overnight. Don't miss this digital marketing gamechanger!

Bio
Nick started out in Google Advertising in 2008 and has worked with thousands of brands since then. He's host of the world-famous Winning With Shopify podcast and runs a global PPC & SEO Consultancy called Spec Digital.

Get In Touch With Nick
https://spec.digital

Eliminate 80% of work tasks & 10x your sales for a life you love!
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Speaker 1:

Welcome to More Clients, less Hustle, the podcast where we break barriers, defy labels and empower busy entrepreneurs like you to soar to new heights. Get ready to shatter the glass ceiling as we dive deep with experts and transformative coaching calls, unveiling secrets to success and unlocking your true potential. Join us on this journey of growth, empowerment and limitless possibilities. Let's pave the way for more clients, less hustle. I'm your host, Caroline Balinska. Welcome, nick, to the episode. I'm so glad to have you here. How are you today?

Speaker 2:

Yes, very good. Thank you. I'm so excited as well, and this is. We must have done like 20 or 30 things together now in terms of recording webinars. Now I'm super excited. Thank you for having me back and great to have you tuning in as well.

Speaker 1:

Well, wonderful. Now today's episode, it's the 14 day challenge and you are my lucky last guest and we're talking about pay per click and your specialty is pay per click and SEO. So I did let everyone know in the intro that you are the winning with Shopify host, but you also do do all sorts of pay per click and SEO campaigns for types of businesses. So do you want to just give us a quick introduction of who you are and what you do?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, definitely. Ironically, the Winning with Shopify podcast is what we're known for and everyone sees. It's probably about two or 3% of my workload, which is like recording an episode every week, and I have a team of people that deal with that. Most of my time, as you say, I spend most of the time with my SEO and PPC team here at Spec. Spec owns the podcast as well, so it's all under one big banner.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, I've been working in PPC since I was 17. So that would have been in 2008,. I would have started that so you can work out how old I am. But yes, I've been doing it for quite a while. I also started in SEO, probably about two or three years into my career, predominantly in lead gen initially. I know we're still about lead gen today, so the podcast is about Shopify and e-commerce, partly because I got it from Caroline. So Caroline started it and that was all Shopify related and we've just grown and scaled it up from there, from the foundation that you gave us and some of the great stuff there. But, yeah, certainly the business spec we do half on lead gen, half on e-commerce. So yeah, we're going to focus on lead gen today and talk mostly about what you guys are trying to achieve.

Speaker 1:

Fantastic. So the first thing I want to know is that this is really aimed at people who have not run ads before. So if someone's listening and the whole series has been about growing your business and we've spoken about a whole lot of free ways to get new traffic, to get new leads but today I really want to concentrate on why ads Like why would someone run an ad if they've never run one before? If they don't think that they're ready to do it, is it time for them to do it? And should they get started, what should they know when it comes to the basics of why would you do it in the first place?

Speaker 2:

And that is the million dollar question, isn't it? And I'm going to give a politician's answer. There's an election going on here in the UK, so I'm going to give a politician's answer. Of it depends, let's look at some of the channels. I think is probably a good way. It's the first place my brain went when you asked the question let's look at some of the channels and work out. Okay, how hard is it? What's the barrier to entry and how difficult is it to get an ad running?

Speaker 2:

And the main two, certainly in lead gen, and the first one I would highlight and we're probably going to talk a little bit more about social ads in a minute because I know it's a bit more of a focus for some of you guys but, um, google is the main thing we work on and we do ads on other platforms, but the thing you've got on google is you've got the intent. So someone is there searching like I'm looking for an it company, I'm looking to solve this problem and I want someone to come and clean my roof. You know that's a legion campaign. I want someone to come and clean my roof for me because it's absolutely filthy. Mine's not, because I was just chatting to Caroline, before we recorded about my new solar panels I'm very excited about. So even with the solar panels, I went on Google and searched Okay, I want to get solar panels. What are the funding options in the UK at the moment? How good are the panels? Could I run my whole house off air? All these things I'm searching for. I've already got that intent, whereas if social platform, you're going to find that the intent is obviously going to be lower, because I'm currently on Facebook and one of my hobbies is steam trains. So I'm currently on Facebook looking at pictures of steam trains and talking to people about nerdy things to do with boilers and coal and steam and smoke and stuff like that, and then suddenly an ad hits me and says hey, do you want some solar panels? There's a lot lower chance I'm going to click on the Facebook ads than the Google one, because the Google one I searched for, the Facebook one it's interrupted my day. That said, you said it yourself, caroline. It's pay-per-click, so you only pay when somebody does click on the ad. So, in terms of when to actually start, where's the barrier to entry?

Speaker 2:

The thing you can look at on Google under something called Google Keyword Planner is you can look at what the click costs are. I tend to like to work to a rule of a thousand. It's not a thousand dollars or euros or pounds, that's a thousand clicks, so having a thousand users on the site. So if you go and have a look at it and give an example, some keywords as low as like 20 cents, euros or dollars or 20p in the UK. Some are as low as 20p a click and we've got a campaign type we run for some of our e-commerce clients it's down at like five or six p a click, which is epic. Problem is, the more specific you get, the more targeted you get, the more the click tends to cost, because it's now of higher value and all of these platforms work on an auction. You are bidding, literally like in an auction house. You are bidding to appear in that space.

Speaker 2:

So whether it's google, facebook or anything else, you want to work out as quickly as possible which might be turning a campaign on on like five pounds a day just for one day, um, and just spend five pounds, five dollars, five euros and just find out like what is that click cost and then just turn the thing off at least then you've got some sort of barometer to go okay, to get a thousand people on the site, it's going to cost me two dollars a click, so I'm gonna need two thousand dollars to get a thousand people in. And then you can talk to your coach, caroline, or talk to the business, or have a look in your you know, in your P&L and go right, okay, what's a customer worth? How many people do we need on the website to get a lead, to get a customer Work out? All of those to go okay, every person that lands on the site is worth this to me, because actually we find with some businesses they're like right, here's $10,000. We want to start spending that per month on Google and start generating some leads. And we run the numbers to go okay, you need 50 leads per new customer, so you've got a sales problem. So after they fill out a form, you've got a sales problem here of you're not converting enough leads into customers.

Speaker 2:

Then you take a step back from that and go okay, we need 100 people on the website to get one lead. You've also got a conversion problem. And to get 100 people on the site at $2 a click, it's going to cost me $200 to get one person on the site. So to get 100 leads, to get that one customer, it's going to cost me $20,000. And that is depending on your business model. You know, if you're selling solar panel units, using my solar example if you're selling those to businesses and the average purchase is like $200,000, and it's going to cost you $20,000 to get a new customer go start printing money, it's fantastic and there's nothing really to lose. But let's face it, you're up against competitors that really done all of that analysis and got quite lean in that process and you're up against those guys. So if you were selling 200,000 pounds solar panel units, you're not going to be paying $2 a click. It's probably more like 20 or 40 or 60 or something. So I would I would almost do some maths like that back to then go how many people do we need to get to land on the site? And it is chicken and egg. If you don't have much traffic, you need to get some traffic to find out.

Speaker 2:

And I'm reading the book at the moment.

Speaker 2:

It's an amazing book called Fail Fast.

Speaker 2:

I sometimes say to clients like do you know what? Just get a thousand dollars, turn the thing on, make loads of mistakes with it. Just get the thing on, make loads of mistakes with it, just get the thing live, turn it on for a week or two with a thousand dollars and then turn it off and spend a few hours just analyzing that data and going, okay, what did google deliver, what did facebook deliver, what did tiktok deliver, what did instagram deliver? And have a look across the different channels. But it is a massive question, hence why you've asked me where do we start? When do we start is really key. But obviously get some turnover and get your accountant or look at your p&l sheets depending on how sophisticated you are with finance and have a look and go okay, we could spend five percent of our turnover right now on marketing, so let's put in one percent to start, um, as long as we can get those thousand people in within a month or three months or something, and we'll keep evolving and adapting from there okay.

Speaker 1:

So I had no actual direction to go with this conversation because I wanted to hear what you had to say. We did mention before we wanted to talk about, maybe, facebook lead ads. However, based on what you just said just now, and we you know, it is about the push marketing or pull marketing. Are you pushing your ads out to someone or are you pulling them in via research? So, if people listening they're either maybe a coach, maybe they're a gym, they own a gym or a personal training business, or they're a dentist or some sort of service provider, what would be a better solution for them? Would a Google ad be better or would a Facebook ad be better? Do you think like is there something that works better when it comes to better conversions?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and it's a very good question and I'm going to caveat everything I've said so far saying, going back to my first word, which is it depends. The dependent for me is if you're a freelance coach, you're one person, which means your total turnover, compared to, like that solar panel example, at 200 000 pounds per sale, is so much lower that you've got to look on google and go, okay, we're literally going to be side by side with our competitors on google here. So someone's looking for a local coach, a local business coach or a local um, as you said, like a local personal trainer at the gym or something. When someone's looking for that, they're going to see all the other ones and you're going to get outbid by bigger organizations and and they're going to see the ads side by side. Actually, as you say about Facebook and Instagram, you're not going to have that problem. What you need to do on you do need to do this on Google still, but what you need to do on social, in my experience and this is and we're actually and spoiler alert, if anyone has heard my podcast we're getting t-shirts and hoodies and stuff made soon and it'll be print on demand, so it's nice and green. We're not going to sit on any stock, but we're getting them with.

Speaker 2:

One of my catchphrases, which is marketing has been lost from digital marketing, and what I mean by that is you've got to take a step back and go. What is it that people really buy from us like? So, from my agency? We sell ppc seo services. Do people turn up and going, oh, I need seo and you provide it? No, they don't. Loads of people provide SEO. Why do they come to us? Usps, communication, the way we describe things, our philosophy around coaching sorry, around consultancy, which includes coaching, whatever size of business you are, that's really important to them. They need to understand what we're doing, make decisions with us, and that is a problem across all my competitors. So I've got an edge there.

Speaker 2:

So if you're a personal trainer, I. So if you're a personal trainer, I would look at the like, say, you've got a personal training program that you've created that's half bespoke, half proven and generic, but proven this, this thing, gets results. Um, you know, one of the most powerful things I've ever seen is like, where people show the kind of picture of like that. You know, this is dave, and dave used to look like that and used to drink a lot of beer and you can see the beer sticking out of his stomach because he's got a big stomach. Here's dave with a six-pack like dave looks great. Um, and this was dave's marathon time. That one was seven weeks and this one's two and a half hours, like dave's doing great. That's really powerful and I think, especially if you're offering personal training services, coaching, focus on a local area and I think social is going to be a cheaper outlet. And, as we said about lead forms, I'll explain what those are in a sec if you guys aren't aware or haven't used them, but you certainly got to think of your edge. So, like, my office is based in a town in the UK called Leatherhead, so if I saw, like you know, personal training sessions, your first three are free and I guarantee to lower your running time by 10% in those three sessions and I'm based in Leatherhead. All of that in one very simple ad.

Speaker 2:

This guy is getting a phone call Like I'm training for a half marathon right now. I'm calling him. It's relevant and he knows I'm training because he can target me on Facebook with things like the fact that I'm uploading my Strava times, the fact that I'm part of a group on Strava, which is connected to Facebook. So every time I do a run my Facebook page, which you won't find me it's all private. I've locked my Facebook down because of the podcast, so many nutters reaching out, but yeah, certainly they can see that I'm posting these Strava times and use that as a thing, saying okay, if you follow Strava, you're based in this little local area, you're really into running. And I've recently mentioned a phrase like new shoes, which I did, did I posted going these new running shoes look absolutely bizarre. They do. They look really weird, but they're so comfortable and they don't look like running shoes. So, but you see how I'm I that's a clear targeting method to get to me, but he's got his usps to contact me.

Speaker 2:

Now, in terms of the execution, you mentioned those lead forms, car Caroline. We were talking about them earlier. We certainly find for smaller businesses it's so difficult and time consuming to get a really good website and a really good landing page and that whole user journey I was talking about earlier of clicks to form fills to conversion. That is actually a bloody nightmare for a lot of people, which I find staggering. So in the e-com world, we've got Shopify and Shopify is fantastic, which I find staggering. So, like in the e-com world, we've got Shopify, and Shopify is fantastic. You click customize and you're literally just looking at your website going. Add a block, three columns, put products in. It's really cool. I can do what I want Change colors, click there and you've got the whole color palette. Choose a new color, it's done.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's what I'm doing now. Ad that, you have to link so many different things in and nothing connects to each other.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, and we use wordpress a lot here. But even then, like you click a button and you're like, in the code and wordpress themes, it is like the wild west trying to choose a theme for wordpress. It is actually a really, really big problem. Um, and so when you look at something like facebook, they have an option where, instead of a button that takes you to a page on your website, um, when you're ready and you say, oh, I'm interested, it just opens a form and the form's already populated with all of your Facebook information. So you click one button, a form opens, fully populated with name, email address, phone number, because all that information's in Facebook and you go oh yeah, that's all my info. Click, go.

Speaker 2:

So imagine what the conversion rate is of that then actually distracting them when they land on the page and there's an old philosophy in sales that I absolutely stick to, which is stop selling when the selling's done. So if they see an ad of yours on Facebook and go, like that running this guy doesn't exist, by the way, I just made up this PT who's running, instructor or whatever but if that ad pops up, I see that ad and go I want this thing. If I now land on his website and it starts talking about check out my reviews. There's only six of them, only six. So it's almost like he's done all the hard work and now he's undoing it doing things that he was told by some marketing person.

Speaker 2:

I watched a webinar like this, where someone sat here and stupidly said, like yeah, we show all of your reviews and there's only six of them. And you're like. This guy says he's been a PT for 15 years and only six people in the whole of the 15 years have bothered to go on Trustpilot. That's the problem. So, actually, using the lead form, it's just like I like this video or this post. Click here, bang, it's done and you're through no, I love that.

Speaker 1:

That's really good. I'm doing that a lot with a client of mine, beck, actually, so we've tried all different ads and lead form definitely works really well. She's in fitness as well, and it's so true that people are there. It's also cheaper. Facebook doesn't charge as much for those ads because you're not sending people away from your website, so you're saving money. Like you said, it's just like it's a no-brainer. The information's already there. They don't have to do any work. They don't have to think about which fake email address am I gonna put in. Like, yeah, the information's, yeah we've all got one.

Speaker 2:

The other thing, that the other thing with facebook is and it's just a theory of mine the reason to make it cheaper is if you fill out that lead form, you're then used to you starting to put a habit of filling out those lead forms so you're more likely to do it in the future, which then means that you're more likely to fill out, click on more ads and fill out more forms, which is also good for facebook. So they give a discount because they're, which is exactly what econ brands do. Is you look at like I'd make less profit? My first order to get more orders from you? So us, as a user of facebook, I'd rather make a bit less on that first form fill on the basis that I'd rather have 10 of those than just one single click today. And, as you say, they've left the website gone. So, yeah, utilize it while it's there.

Speaker 2:

I don't know how long it's going to last. And certainly the eu I mean you're based in the netherlands, obviously, and, caroline's, you're really close to head office of the eu. They are like the war on cookies and data protection stuff is odd. So they do not I mean facebook do not comply with data protection whatsoever. So those lead forms, I don't know how long they're going to let them run for. I'm not saying they're illegal. Guys like facebook will have covered that. But I wouldn't be surprised if there were law changes that meant facebook couldn't do a lead form, because facebook then holds that data. So if they put a different email address and stuff in, facebook's now holding a second email address for that person and I don't know what the rules are around that, but yeah, if that changes but I think the?

Speaker 1:

u the US has slightly different laws than the EU and I don't know, are you still under the same laws? Not really.

Speaker 2:

You can do what you want in the EU.

Speaker 1:

Are you under the same laws as the EU? Still?

Speaker 2:

We are, yes, and in our election right now, everyone's talking about it going like why are we still subscribed to all the EU laws with none of the EU voting rights? This isn't what we signed up for with brexit. So, yeah, we'll see what happens. But certainly in the us, like we, we had a sponsor on a podcast called retentioncom and anyone that's visited your website, they'll give you between about sort of 60 and 70 percent of all that customer data. They'll give that to you in a platform within shopify, even whether they filled out a form or not, they'll just go. We know caroline has been on our website, on your website today, and you can have an automation trigger like so it'll send you an email, caroline, an hour after you've been on the site. If you don't come back and buy, send you an email going hey, caroline, thanks for stopping by, and that's perfectly legal in the US right now. Um, I think there's only one. California is talking about getting rid of that, but but they're taking the EU data.

Speaker 1:

They're taking my data from the EU and doing it no, you have to be a US citizen.

Speaker 2:

Okay, you can do it in the US, but, yeah, you can't do it with EU data, because the EU will start a trade war with the US if that happens, which we all want to avoid.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly. So let's talk about, when it comes to ads, if we're running one of those lead ads, let's just go into that a little bit more detail. What's better Text ads, image ads, video ads what works, works best it's a great question.

Speaker 2:

Um, yeah, and I'm not going to say depends on this. There is actually a rule of thumb to it. Um, the first thing I would say is be authentic. Whichever one of those whether it's images, text, carousel images, a carousel, sorry, carousel images, um, video, whatever it is be authentic in that. And I think this goes back to my phrase about marketing think about what's the actual reason.

Speaker 2:

Someone engages like, uh, with this, like my targeting set. What is their problem right now and how do I fix it. And I find it fascinating with brands like we've had clients in the past where we said like okay, you're buying this service, this it support service, why are you buying it? And they go because you have the best christmas parties. The it company invites all their clients and we love it because we never, we don't have a christmas party, so we just come to yours. And it was a genuine thing. Someone wrote down in the form as to why they do it, so actually saying like you know, do you want to come to our next christmas party? We sign up to our it service. In the next two months, you get to come to our christmas party in london. It's amazing, you, we have free drinks all night and it's learning that, like you know, here's a badge to prove why we're one of the best IT providers in the country, but it gets come to a free Christmas party and that's the reason people sign up. I've taken that on board. I have drawers of chocolate in the office and my team come in at least three days a week, sometimes more, and they never complain. It's like brilliant, and we for ice cream now at the summer as well.

Speaker 2:

Um, but I think understand that, and the rule of thumb for me really is like if you're not trying video, you're not trying to do video. Video is so powerful and we've all got the best camera in the world in our pockets right now, so get your iphone. Record something. I recorded a story yesterday announcing something we launched on the podcast. It's gone out on my podcast instagram and we're running that as an advert, and it was literally just me standing in the corner of this room. I didn't even have this lighting rig or anything on Corner of the room, phone in my hand, really, but me just doing a heartfelt like. Guys, I've worked a year on this thing, we've just launched it. Just click the button and you can go and sign up, it's amazing and put five pounds or something behind it. But I think there's, especially if you're a coach or a PT or something.

Speaker 2:

People buy people. So, whether you're, like one of the top account managers or the CEO of a big organization or you're an independent person, you're the thing they're buying. They're not buying fitness, they're not buying it's. Do I like you? And if I like you, you're the thing I need to see. So what you could do actually is interview someone or have a video where you interview someone who's a new client, do six months of training with them, then interview them again and be like you know how are you finding this thing?

Speaker 2:

And, honestly, it's one of the reasons I bought the solar panels that are on my roof is the guy came around with his iPad the sales chap to our house and when he was doing the survey, he said, right, watch this. And he was showing me like 20 people in our area and two of them I actually knew they were based, both based on my road. So he was like, oh, just watch these. He'd clearly gone. This person's based the same road as you talking about solar panels. So what did I do that evening? Went for a walk up the road and went those are the solar panels. And I thought next time I recognize him because I see him jogging past my house, next time I see him I'll go and talk to him. So you see how many points there where it's like people by people, the, the authenticity that it was just him holding his iPad, going like so John, tell us about your solar panels, and he goes. So I think that whole kind of like look, here's someone who lives in your local area that's had a physical health transformation as a result of being a customer of mine. You know, click here to do.

Speaker 2:

And then the call to action is really key. You know, click, fill out the lead gen form below. You know, obviously don't call it that. Fill out the form below, um. And yeah, we'll set up a free consultation for this and we'll set a target. You know, how much weight can you lose, um? How much time can you shave off um? How much better can we have you sleeping at night? You know, and if you, we'll get you a fit bit and we can look at your sleep quality as a result of doing fitness, because actually, even with fitness, if you I saw a study a few weeks ago.

Speaker 2:

If you ask people about fitness and say why do you do fitness, it's always like I'm not sleeping well enough, my wife's not attracted to me anymore and all these other things. Like you know, I've tried cutting my hair, brushing my teeth more. None of it's working. So, like right, it's diet time. You know I'm going to go into the extreme. So then the call to action is, like you know, feel better and more confident about yourself, sleep better at night.

Speaker 2:

Or here are five benefits from going through my health program you can sleep better at night, you can do this, and the first few seconds of that video are so important. I love a mix of ads though. I think the video is a good one to do the kind of, like you know, one or two time frequency to people on on meta ads, for example. Get that in front of them first and then help us have like a audience that's built off that. Then target that audience with little images that talk about some of the features but focus on the benefit first.

Speaker 2:

You know why do you want to come on board with me? Why do you want to come and use my services or pay me any money and then start talking about the features of it, saying, like you know, it's an eight-week program, it only costs 120 to start, um, and you should see an improvement off the back of that, etc. Etc. So I think you're kind of building this like funnel campaign here, but the call to action all the time is the same, like fill out this form and I'll give you a call back and make sure you put on the form as well. When do you want to be called?

Speaker 2:

Going back to that whole kind of like the sales team not getting a hundred leads and only getting one customer, that's really common.

Speaker 2:

You can't afford that when you're a small business, like there's no room for crap, like that, you to make it better. So I think, putting on the form, especially when it's like it's from you to another human and they're buying your set your time, your services, a personal trainer, a fitness coach or whatever um on those, I think definitely have that time in there. So it says, like you know, fridays between 9 am and midday are best for me. Well, as soon as that arrives on your phone, a email them. Hey, thanks so much for filling out the form. I'm going to come back to you and b if you don't phone them at the time, you've said just forget it. You've absolutely got to call them. You could even text them the night before saying we're looking forward to our call tomorrow, going to give you a call at 9.30 in the morning, especially if you've got their mobile number. Going to call you at 9.30 and send them a WhatsApp, and that's the target fantastic.

Speaker 1:

I wrote down so many things that you just said then because you have so much information and you're amazing, so I love that.

Speaker 2:

Um, you mentioned taught me a lot of what I know.

Speaker 1:

It's good um, stop the scroll. So I think you said something before about, um, when you said about the Christmas party. Do you think that's about the actual Christmas party or do you think that that's just something that's so wow and out there that it stops the scroll? What part of that do you think is actually what's catching the person? So they're not doing a Christmas party, so they're like they're listening to you going that sounds great, but I can't do a Christmas party. So what part of that is actually the relevant? Is it that they're giving away something for free that's actually valued at something high, or is it just that it sounds like something so crazy, as you see it, that you go, oh, hang on a second, what's this?

Speaker 2:

and then it makes you think yeah, yeah, and certainly the advert wouldn't start with, like is your workplace doing a christmas party? It needs to talk about it services or whatever the thing is. I think it's what it's trying to do is capture into something like, like, for example, that that I that was actually a real example of an it company that were doing it. Um, obviously, the it company, their clients generally were like law firms, accountancies. So they had targeted those guys, so they had looked at the profile of those businesses and gone what would they love, what would be something that would just interrupt their day. And actually inviting them them to a Christmas party is probably what 50, 80 pounds a head. Like that's nothing compared to what we can earn per user for their computer, the Microsoft 360 licenses, printers, cabling in the office, broadband connections, like the whole shebang for 100 people. And also of the 100 in the law firm, like maybe only 10 or 15 will actually turn up. It might just be the senior directors that come along. It might even be, like all the new young juniors that you know still have their soul. I won't judge accountants and lawyers. We need those guys and they're very helpful, but I think it's just what it was doing is. It was really challenging. Quite a sort of. This is the way an industry is and someone needs to go in and disrupt that. I'm not saying the it company have fully disrupted it, but certainly for their clients it's something that's like. This is so different. This is so different to what we normally have and do.

Speaker 2:

Um, I've had things like and I'm expecting an email. Now I had a little bag arrive and I've no idea who it's from. Arrived yesterday in the office and there was no note or anything and I looked in it and it's got those old um, remember those tattoos that kids have? And you peel the thing off, you put it on your skin, you put like a wet flannel on it sticks. I've been sent like a whole wad of those. I've no idea who from, I'm just I think that they sent those out and the emails badly timed. There's it does the return address. I haven't googled it yet, it just sounds really generic.

Speaker 2:

But even things like that, like um, I remember a friend of mine who works in it. He used to run an IT business. He said he got a rugby ball sent to him during the World Cup years and years ago Rugby World Cup. And it just said on the side of it, like let's throw some ideas around from a marketing agency. And then when you looked on the other side of the ball, it was inviting them to like we want to take you guys out for lunch. We've got a lovely venue. We've got a lovely venue, we can have lunch, there's a meeting room. We're offering you a free marketing workshop to come up with some creative ideas. We want to be your new brand agency. You're an amazing company, but your brand's terrible. Let's throw some ideas around.

Speaker 2:

So now they and it also came with a little thing to put the rugby ball on no-transcript can get the ceo, the md, um, any of the senior team involved. That are like guys, our it company, our computers never work. And these guys say they can fix all of that and we get to go to this free party at christmas. Like that sounds really cool and there's obviously a couple of shots of the free party and this is, but you're not here for the free party. Like let's talk about it. Does your computer work? Does it do this? Does this probably not? We'll fix all of that in the meantime and we'll see you at christmas yeah, I love it.

Speaker 1:

I love those sort of I get really passionate about those sort of things. I think that, um, so one thing from everything you're saying that a lot of people don't understand is that they do get too generic and they just think do you want to lose 10 kilos or do you need a life coach? Because you need a better relationship? And those ads just do not work. Because I don't know what the stats are now.

Speaker 1:

It's around 14 touch points before someone wants to work with you, and I think a lot of people think, oh, if I just put up one Facebook ad? Oh, it didn't get any results, so then therefore, it doesn't work and I cannot use pay-per-click. I think that's sort of the place where a lot of people still sit, that they don't understand that there's like you said you've got to stand out from the crowd, you can't be generic, you've got to get your personality across as well, and if it's about you, then you've got to get yourself across as well, and I think that those are the things that a lot of people are missing out on and then saying that therefore, ads don't work.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. And that is my whole thing about digital marketing is that people just get so, and myself included. You get so bogged down with the data going oh, this ad converts twice as well as that one. But I always say data is an onion. You take the next layer off and go. Although that ad converts better, no one could. No one actually purchases at the end of it. We get leads from it, but no one actually buys anything.

Speaker 2:

And give a really good example of that is we work with a client here in the uk and they a lead on facebook cost them 20 pounds and a lead on google cost them 200 pounds. And on the face of it, they were like get us more leads on facebook. And we were like absolutely, not, facebook is the leads on facebook. None of them convert, none of them become customers. But when we run facebook, google used to be at 300, it's now at 200. So facebook's doing top of funnel hey, we exist, you're thinking of starting a business? You can do that with us. And then when they go on google to go, I want to start this type of business, bang, we're there straight away and we've got a campaign on google that says if we, if you go on the website, you get added into a anonymous audience within google analytics and we target you really hard. Say, if you're just a normal person searching on google, you get campaign a. If you've already been on a website before you, get campaign b. That is a.

Speaker 2:

We're running an offer. Sign up today. Offer ends friday. There's something more specific just for those guys and that can that's bought. Our cost per conversion from 300 to 200 pounds down um. It's quite lucrative, like the business themselves. Every time somebody signs up they get 20 grand a year from there on um, their big franchise model, um. But that, that google model like. When we first saw it they were like, get us more of those. We're like no, no, we've. We've tested the balancing point and the balancing point is spending about 25% of budget on Facebook and 75% on Google, and the only reason we've set that is we can't spend any more on Google. We're at a cap. So if we can spend a bit more on Google, then we can bring Facebook up a little bit, but 25-75 has been the split.

Speaker 1:

Wow, okay. So what about when it comes to things like YouTube ads?

Speaker 2:

Do you do a lot around YouTube ads or do you find that works very well? We do, we do. It doesn't work so well when it's like if your service is one-to-one and it's local, and that is the problem at YouTube. People almost consider YouTube like TV now. So we do use it a lot but we use it more for like a nationwide or a global thing. Like we use YouTube quite a lot for the podcast because anyone anywhere can listen to our podcast and the more listeners we get, the more we can charge for sponsorship. You know that's our cost model, so we're not actually charging the people that come through. I mean, you know that, caroline, because we bought it from you and you set all of this up, um, but I think youtube it's it's really really difficult on youtube to cut through. I think instagram is a much better place to do it and tiktok's a lot better to do something more kind of locality. I think when you become like a big nationwide organization, then great, like you know, you've got 50 to 100 people working in the organization and go nationwide or go global and YouTube's good, but YouTube is it's really hard, I think, and it's ironic, I think, in this day and age to say this. I think it's really hard to use YouTube to do like top of funnel awareness and get those guys through a lead funnel later on, um, even though you can do all of that within google ads. You can do a youtube ad and then get them in later. We find youtube. You basically need to have like a very good free call to action at all times. And even if you geo target it and say I just want 20 miles or 20 kilometers around my location right now, even then it it's not very accurate and it's it's quite hard, I think, for for google actually to target people on a phone, um, because it'd be like I'm connected to a radio mast seven miles away right now, um, and it's traveling from there to my phone, um, or certainly in the uk where I'm sitting right now.

Speaker 2:

Everyone who's listening to this will have heard of oxford. You know it's one of the famous places in the world and it thinks I'm sitting in oxford right now. It's a two and a half hour drive away to Oxford, but that's just where the IP pool for the connection our office thinks we are. So it's not super accurate, but I certainly think the YouTube has its place. But I would do it more sort of if you're like an online fitness coach and people can sign up onto a system platform, you need something for free because it's very interruptive.

Speaker 2:

You've also got to remember with YouTube, they're watching a video which is in the way of the thing they clicked on, so they're trying to get to that now, whereas if you click on an ad on Facebook, most people know it's going to open a new tab. So this train I'm looking at on Facebook I can still look at that train, but that ad's got. I'm looking at solar panels right now. That's why that ad's targeting me. I do want to. They're saying they're half price. I do want to find out how or why, so I'm going to click on that and have a look, but facebook still running, whereas youtube, yeah, they're. They're waiting to watch that vlog of dave's trip to iceland. Uh, say, and you're there going like hey, why don't you get fitter? And you're laying there with ice cream on the sofa watching dave's iceland trip going. Not now, guys, not now yeah, fantastic, okay.

Speaker 1:

So I think the takeaway today is that people can run a. Testing different types of ads is the first thing I think you recommend. So testing Google, testing ads when it comes to Facebook and Instagram, but then, when it comes to trying to get leads, lead forms on Facebook is actually a really good way to do that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. And the only other thing I'd say, just on testing and this would be final point, because we always run over everyone, by the way, caroline, we cannot hold a timeframe, so we're already over the time we set. Last thing on testing is whenever you put an ad into a platform all the platforms, google, meta, tiktok you can always run what's called an experiment, which means 50% of the data set can see ad A, 50% can see ad B, and you can run it more than just two of them at 50% each. You could run 10 at 10% each.

Speaker 2:

Just remember, if you're running on a low budget, don't spread it too thin, otherwise the results are going to be a bit random. You'll go oh, I've had two inquives side by side, because then you'll, you'll quickly go that one's working better. So let's turn off the one that's not, send everything through the one that is, and then let's review it and go okay, what, what do we think it is about this? Let's test that with our next creative. Let's do another video, change the imagery, change the text in the text advert and try something else. So that's something that, since I was 17, has been an absolute. Only ever run ads if you're running at least two and testing them, because you have the ability to just have side by side data to tell you how well they're running. So that's the only thing I'd add to that testing. It's so important it's only in the early days.

Speaker 1:

There's a whole theory that when you're running test ads only make one small change. So you know, don't make big drastic changes through your ads. Do you believe in that as well?

Speaker 2:

yeah, it depends. Sometimes clients come to us and say like, okay, we've got six videos, we want to run a meta and they're all completely different messages. Sometimes we go all right, let's just start with one big targeting set and try and do a sort of fair split test across all six. Other times we'll go all right, we want a second version of each of the six, exactly as you say. One that's slightly different edit, so one that goes straight in going like hey, are, are you struggling with this? We offer that and have that at the start of an edit. Another one that's like this is Jill. Jill's been struggling for years with this problem and kind of like, really kind of you know the violin music going and really kind of suck people into that and marketing should be entertaining. But yeah, sometimes we'll go, okay, six ads, let's do six data sets but have a second version of each ad. So we've got six different targeting going.

Speaker 2:

This one's about a phone falling off a roof, landing on the CEO's car genuine ad we ran recently. And then this one here is somebody else who's dropped their phone in the washing up bowl. This is somebody else who their phone has caught fire. This is someone else who lost their phone in the mud at a festival found it and it was fine because the case kept the phone surviving. So you see, there's different targeting sets for those. So we get a few different edits of each of those videos to see which one is most compelling or draws people in fantastic nick.

Speaker 1:

As always, you're amazing. You give so much great advice. Can you let everyone know, if they want to get in touch with your team for any help, what, um how they can contact you?

Speaker 2:

yeah, absolutely so. Yeah, we're at. Specdigital is our website. Um, old people keep asking me if it'scoukcomcom, something like that. It's not, it's just specdigital, s-p-e-c and then digital. That's the main agency. And if you want to check out the podcast as well, if you go back in the old episodes you'll find Caroline, and if you do the last three years you'll find me. You Winning with Shopify. So just ask Alexa or search that anywhere else. And if anyone's got some loudspeaker, alexa, subscribe to Winning with Shopify podcast.

Speaker 1:

Love it. Nick, thank you so much for joining us, and I'll put all your links in the show notes so everyone can get in touch with you if they need any help. Thank you so much, and for everyone listening to the 14 day challenge. Thank you, it's been amazing. Thank you, bye. Thank you for joining me on this episode. For more tips and resources, visit moreclientslesshustlecom and leave a review or comment, so I can continue to help you on your journey to more clients with less hustle. Till next time.

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Caroline Balinska

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