Mastering Platform Selection for Paid Media

Join Anthony Karls, President of Rocket Clicks, and digital marketing expert James Patterson as they dive into effective platform selection for paid media. Learn about the five stages of customer awareness, using CTV/OTT, search ads, and crafting compelling offers to boost your local business’s revenue.

00:00 Introduction to Revenue Roadmap
00:20 Reflecting on Marketing Careers
00:49 The Importance of Sales Experience in Marketing
03:44 Choosing the Right Platforms for Paid Media
04:35 Understanding the Five Stages of Awareness
06:58 Applying Awareness Stages to Platform Selection
09:31 Examples and Strategies for Platform Selection
12:22 Creating Effective Ads for Different Platforms
17:14 Measuring Success in Digital Marketing
18:58 Final Thoughts and Best Practices

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https://rocketclicks.com/client-education/platform-selection-paid-media/

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Transcript

Anthony Karls: 0:00

All right, this is Revenue Roadmap, where we talk about driving revenue and increasing profits in local businesses. I'm Anthony Carls, president of RocketClicks. Today I'm with Mr. James Patterson again. Thank you for joining me again, James. So today we're going to talk a little bit about platform selection in the area of paid media. Before we jump into that, I've got a question for you here, James. So, If you were, if you could go back in time, uh, at the start of your career and give yourself one piece of advice related to marketing, what would it be and why?

James Patterson: 0:41

Yeah. Oh, that's a, yeah. Hit me with the tough questions

Anthony Karls: 0:43

it. Good. Getcha. If

James Patterson: 0:45

spot. Um, yeah, it's an interesting question. So if I could go back in time, what piece of advice would I give myself from a marketing lens? I would probably say one of the things that I've learned at this point of my career, some like about seven years into my digital marketing career, is the sales experience that I got, um, in my initial internship, I thought was totally unrelated to. Marketing. Um, you know, I think we're all kind of taught in college or in different experiences that sales here. Marketing is here. Kind of a thing. it's actually not really true, right? Everything flows together. Like, if you don't have a good marketing team, you can't really have a good sales team and you can. Have a great marketing team, but not a, not a good sales team. And that's not going to work. Right. So really it would have been, um, to embrace, um, the sales, um, opportunity to kind of learn more and gain skills in that because it translates so well to being better at marketing to help both teams obviously, um, achieve, um, their goals. So outside of a cliche, you know, always be curious. I would say that was my, uh, uh, biggest thing is, is how much, um, those two. Different, you know, kind of jobs play together.

Anthony Karls: 1:57

I recall correctly, you were, you were slinging some direct media at the local Costco, I think. Is that, am I remembering correctly?

James Patterson: 2:05

Not Costco Menards, but yes. Otherwise.

Anthony Karls: 2:10

This is our, uh, this is our local satellite retailer.

James Patterson: 2:15

Hey, I, I did pretty well too.

Anthony Karls: 2:17

Like my first marketing experience was at Sterling Commerce Group and we sold Dish Network. So we were, we were competitors,

James Patterson: 2:25

Yeah, I know they're going toe to toe

Anthony Karls: 2:26

meeting each other up. Awesome. Yeah, I think that's so true. Uh, I did sales for several years, uh, selling cell phones at sprint. Um, and some of the things that I didn't know would be related to this career in marketing were really about kind of similar to what we're gonna talk about today, which is choosing, choosing platforms, which was understanding your audience. Um, the thing that I figured out really quickly was when I sold cell phones, that was back in the early two thousands. And I had to figure out, were you an early adopter or did you just need a cell phone when you walked through the store or walked in the door of the store? Um, cause if you were not an early adopter of technology and I walked you over to the new smartphone, I think I was selling the Palm, Palm pilot and the BlackBerry, like those were the big things here. But if I took, if I took someone who was a neophyte. Over to those, they weren't buying a phone that day. They, they, what they wanted to do is go over to the flip phone. It's like, maybe they could deal with the razor or the, uh, whatever the sidekick thing was, or you could, you get the whole keyboard. Maybe they could deal with that. Uh, it was all about understanding the audience, like ask them questions. Increase my sales definitely relates to what we're going to talk to today. Cause it was, it's very relatable. So choosing platforms. So what are, what do you have to tell us about this? Like, so where do we, where should we start thinking about how do we choose platforms that we're going to be on? There is. Tons of them. There's a lot of places to buy media. The big ones, obviously Google, you know, Facebook's another huge one. Where should I be? How should I think about this when I'm starting?

James Patterson: 4:04

Yeah. So, you know, just kind of kick it off. I feel like a lot of businesses when they're first kind of starting to look at, you know, adopting digital marketing strategy and stuff like that, they'll often go, okay, what are my competitors doing? Or, Hey, I've heard Facebook is somewhere we might want to advertise and things like that. Um, obviously that's not the best way to do this. You don't want to just kind of go into a platform and Kind of willy nilly. You want to have a reason to get on there. And, um, usually the way that we approach it here at Rocketflix is we want to base it off the audience that you're going after. So we can compare this to the five stages of awareness. So, um, let's say, you know, you're a more mature business and you're trying to really build up your upper funnel.

Anthony Karls: 4:44

Yeah. Before we go into that, what are the stages of awareness?

James Patterson: 4:47

Yep. So the five stages is unaware, problem aware, solution aware, product aware, and then most aware.

Anthony Karls: 4:53

Nice. Okay, cool. And then can you give a brief, brief definition of each of those?

James Patterson: 4:59

Yep. So unaware is basically that they have no idea that they need this. So think like, you know, when you're going through your day to day life, right? Like we deal with, you know, either issues or problems and stuff like that, but maybe we don't really realize that's become a problem. We're just kind of dealing with it. So that's where somebody where it's like, they're actually probably a good fit for. you know, working with a business for a service or getting a new product, but they just haven't really clicked yet that it's something that they need, you know? So think like, it's like when you see an ad and then all of a sudden it's like, Oh wow. Yeah. I hate, you know, doing this or whatever. My hose always messes up and there's cool new hose that came out or something. Right. It's those types of moments where it's like, man, I never really thought about it. Um, problem aware would be then, you know, kind of the second level to that would be then like, you are aware that. You know, the hose that you have at home is always leaking and is inefficient or whatever that type of deal. Um, so you're start, you're, you're aware that the problem exists, but you're not to the point yet to where you're actively looking at, you know, replacing that or, or what alternatives exist out there. Solution aware, then is the next level down. So then you are, you know, obviously aware of the of the problem. You're now aware of solutions. Um, really what you're looking at this point is trying to figure out like what potential alternatives exist out there. Um, so that's more so weighing. So now you're to the point where it's like, okay, I know I need to replace this. What companies provide this and what other options to replace it are out there. product aware then again, is kind of the next level down. It's, you know, you're not really necessarily convinced at this point. You're usually down to probably like one to two options. You're really in a. I have a more consideration phase. Like you're, you're pretty close to buying at this point. Most aware then is like, you know, basically you're moving forward with the product that you're going, you're going to buy today, um, again, you know, doodling down your kind of, you know, evaluation of different products or services to, to meet your problem. Um, and ready to, to make a purchase decision, you know, Basically now.

Anthony Karls: 6:52

Got it. So how does that, how does that relate to then selecting platforms? So we got our five stages of awareness and how does that as understanding that. Um, in relation to our product and our potential customer help us choose what platforms we should go to and when.

James Patterson: 7:12

Yeah, exactly. So every platform is going to kind of play into these different stages a little bit more effectively. Let's put it. So, um, if I kind of start at unaware, unaware, if we're looking to really prospect to net new people, right? They've never heard of our business. They may not be aware that our service or product will solve a potential problem that they have going after platforms like programmatic. So using a DSP. Um, you know, that's usually consisting of display ads, native ads, uh, CTV, OTT, those types of ad placements or social are going to be best there. So, right. So you're disrupting people's kind of everyday flow. So going back to my, you know, example previously, like, when people kind of go from unaware to, to, to, uh, potentially problem or in solution to where. Sometimes they'll just see an ad on TV, for example, and go, Oh yeah, that's right. I never really thought about the fact that I've been really disappointed with this current service or product that I'm, that I'm currently using. So usually the more upper funnel you are in that kind of series of five. awareness stages, the more social and programmatic type platforms are going to be your best bet.

Anthony Karls: 8:19

Nice.

James Patterson: 8:21

So then as you kind of work down from there, um, problem aware, solution aware, and product aware, it's all going to kind of fall, uh, in a combination between both using some of those more higher funnel tactics like social programmatic, but then also starting to layer in more search. So obviously as you go from problem aware To potentially solution aware and product aware, people are going to be actually seeking out this information online. So one of the best ways to capture that intent is through search ads. Um, so that can be a really effective way to start to really, uh, directly get ads in front of people that are most likely going through the phases of. Either research consideration to I'm buying right now to make sure that you get your ads in front of them. So really an effective strategy is using a combination of this, but depending on where you're at as a business, it might make more sense to, you know, if you don't have a humongous budget, maybe you want to really just capitalize on the search that, you know, the, uh, search volume that already exists for people in a buy stage for your product or service, maybe if you have a more mature model and you can really focus on more of the upper funnel stuff, which is a. You know, kind of a more of a long term play, right? You have to get them all the way down. Um, you're probably playing more in that of, of kind of prospecting to net new folks out there.

Anthony Karls: 9:30

Got it. So, so in your, in your example, um, I guess let's, if we could use a, an example of a client that we, we work with generally actually, um, so one of the clients, one of the clients we work with is, um, They, they do stretching and they're most men are more, more towards me, but you're getting there. So like, don't, don't worry that you're, you know, only a couple of years behind me. Uh, but generally men don't stretch. Like I've worked out my whole life. I stopped stretching once I got out of college sports because no one forced me to do it anymore and I've gotten very stiff. So my wife makes fun of me all the time. Uh, we were in, I think, literally this last weekend we were, I forget where we were driving, but I turned around to look at my daughter behind me and I like, I had to like really turn all of the way because I couldn't turn my neck all the way because. I don't keep myself, uh, stretched. Um, I didn't, I didn't realize that one of the potential solutions that I could have, other than like just stretching and doing the thing that I hate to do, and I'm probably not going to do, cause I really don't like doing it, is going to one of these, uh, stretch places. Um, and then once I understood that, then I, then I started doing research. I started searching for like, who's, who's in this space. What are the different. Uh, competitors that are providing the solution. Some are massage therapists. Some are very specific, like one of the clients we work with, that they are just stretching. And then there's, uh, PTs that do this as well, that are kind of more on the advanced and, uh, advanced end, where you kind of get into the medical, uh, treatment portion. Um, and then you can go in. All right. Now I know my options locally. Now let me start comparing them, uh, going through that. And then finally I went to stretch zone in Delafield and actually got, got stretched finally. And it was, it was a good experience, but I didn't enjoy it that much because, uh, it hurts, but I actually felt really better after.

James Patterson: 11:43

Yeah.

Anthony Karls: 11:44

One of those, like, you know, the pain is worth it after type scenarios. Um, and that's actually helped like, so, uh, it's one of those scenarios as you kind of go down, like you, you hear of an idea, you see something and then you kind of explore it and you might go to search and then you understand your options and then maybe you go to Reddit and you do a lot of research on those brands and then you keep going down that, down that funnel of awareness before you actually make a decision,

James Patterson: 12:10

Yeah.

Anthony Karls: 12:11

um, what are some other, what are some of the ways that, uh, The ads will manifest in into reality. So like when we're way up on top, these are, you said, these are like, what is CT, CTV, OTT, what does that, what does that mean? Like, where are these placed? I think one of the, one of the previous podcasts we talked about, I think you said like native ads and like different things, like what are some examples of these where they'll be placed? And then kind of what is the, what are the next types of assets that we'll see?

James Patterson: 12:44

Yeah. So starting with connected TV, CTV. Um, so the main way that you get ads placed there is generally a 15 second or 30 second, um, um, video ad. So, uh, generally speaking, that's going to be in your traditional wide format for TV screens. Um, that can be shown on some, um, potentially, um, you know, like cable networks and things like that. But generally what we're looking at are those on demand type platforms. So thank Hulu. Uh, Peacock, um, Paramount plus those types of, um, apps that, that exist. Um, generally when we say connected TV, it's got TV in the name. Um, you're going to get on a placement specifically on television screens. So usually from, um, the top set box or through apps, uh, in the TV itself. From there, OTT is going to kind of expand your video ad placement opportunity. You can potentially still be shown on a TV per se, but generally when we talk about OTT, we're talking about mobile devices, desktop, tablet. you can still get ad placement on some of those apps through OTT as well. it may expand to some other areas as well. on websites and things like that, that have video embedded onto their site. You could have video then play in front of that. That would also fall in the OTT kind of, um, strategy and, and placement opportunity there.

Anthony Karls: 14:03

So if we're way up funnel, what type of messaging are we? We typically trying to send out into the world.

James Patterson: 14:11

yeah, so obviously, you know, if you're in the unawares, um, you know, kind of bucket in terms of your audience, targeting one of these platforms, um, you know, obviously making sure you, you have your brand very visible. You always want to hook in an offer and they're going to be really critical to getting your message across. Um, you know, Um, I think a lot of times where we see, um, you know, brands that we work with that maybe have challenges with seeing the effectiveness in some of their CTV or OTT strategy. A lot of times it's because the creative side of that doesn't have those three elements. Um, so going in here really intentionally to have a good offer for somebody who's unaware, right? So, um, for the, the stretch client that we have, one of their big offers is you can come in and get a free stretch. So that's really great for somebody who's unaware because they're sitting on their couch and they're like, I'm like Tony here and I've, you know, I haven't really thought about it, but I have been turning weird lately and I'm feeling stiff. I'm getting older. Um, boom, free stretch. Right. You know, so that's a really good offer. Whereas if they just came in and said, you know, this is what we do. This is our brand that may not compel somebody, especially upper funnel. Um, it may resonate better with somebody who's in the consideration phase. Cause now they've kind of gone through the research. They understand that a stretch. Um, type business might, might help their, their problem that they're dealing with. Um, so that's kind of where we want to look at it. It's really critical for people that are really net new to your either service product or brand to have some type of compelling hook and offer to get them obviously engaging with your brand later and in other areas of the funnel.

Anthony Karls: 15:38

Nice. Um, so as we're moving down, how do these assets in a digital landscape, how do they change from kind of what you described and CTV and OTT, and then how do they, how do they continue down? Like where these continue to look like.

James Patterson: 15:51

Yeah. So, so one of our, you know, kind of most successful strategies generally is like, if we kind of started at the top is, is like I said, so we have some type of hook and offer out there, get some in the door, get some starting to get the gears moving in terms of, you know, you know, I'm basically experiencing this problem. Um, this service provider exists out there, um, ultimately getting them, um, to get to the site in one way or the other, obviously CTV and OTT can be a little bit more difficult, but you can use systems like GA4 or other tools to kind of build that attribution to see. Folks, hopefully getting to the site and interacting with your brand. Then online, you would then get them through, obviously the conversion funnel through a kind of standard landing page or something like, uh, to that effect from there, you can then kind of go backwards once again, and now you're going to actually hit those people again, through some tactics like display, um, native social, potentially another CTV ad again, more. Potentially branded focused, opposed to that, uh, original, um, offer, um, to get, to keep them engaged as they go through the sales pipeline. So for somebody with the stretch, right, they sign up for the free stretch. We want to make sure that they actually go to that free stretch, right? Just because they gave us all their information doesn't mean necessarily they're going to show up so we can deploy different areas of those tactics that obviously are specific to different audiences. To kind of repurpose them to keep folks engaged as they move through the funnel.

Anthony Karls: 17:07

Got it. Awesome. Cool. Any other, any other tips for success here? I guess another like this, you know, as we've been talking through with the different conversations we've been having on our podcasts, how do we measure, how do we measure success here? Because like we, I know this is something that we have to educate clients on quite often because we're looking for a lot of times clients are looking for, I have a CTV ad, how many sales did I get from that CTV ad? So talk a little bit about how we, how we think about measurement and how we coach our clients through this, because it looks a little different than that. Yeah.

James Patterson: 17:43

for sure Yeah, if you are measuring your ctv ad sales, you're probably not going to be running ctv ads much longer That's the reality because it's it's incredibly hard to measure directly. Of course, there's some attribution modeling And tools that are out there that can help you get directional evidence that obviously it's influencing people Um the best way to measure it though is through the waterfall Reporting that we've talked about a bunch in in our previous podcasts So really when we have this marketing these marketing platforms and tactics out there, are we seeing? More users to the site. Are we seeing more leads during this time period? Are we seeing the quality of lead improving? Are we, you know, if it's an, if it's a specific offer, that's maybe a promo code or something like that, that's measurable. Are we seeing people actually take advantage of that and signing up for that offer? So really going back to the business KPIs is going to be critical to it. Um, or you're going to turn things off. And ultimately the reality is, is that when you look at a, at a good, successful marketing, holistic strategy. It does have all these different tactics. It's not, Oh, we'll just do CTV or we'll just do paid search. The best misses out there do all of this stuff. And that's just kind of the reality that can be most visible when you do measure it, um, by using your marketing, your, your business KPIs in your waterfall reporting.

Anthony Karls: 18:57

Awesome. Anything else before we wrap up today? Appreciate it. This is a lot of great stuff, James.

James Patterson: 19:01

Yeah, no, I would say the biggest thing is, like I said, don't, don't jump into it willy I know it's a can be, um, you know, can be attractive to do that or whatever. You just want to get the get the show moving, so to speak. But the reality is you should be really intent to your audiences. And then being really careful to about the creative that you have out there. Um, if you're just throwing what you have from two years ago, and you used it for You know this random youtube campaign you did sure it can go out there But i'm i'm telling you it's probably not going to be as successful if you get really intentional and come up with compelling offers Or compelling messages to match with the different audiences that you're going after so be intentional think it through Um, and you're going to have more success that way.

Anthony Karls: 19:42

Awesome. Appreciate it, James. Thank you very much.

James Patterson: 19:44

Thanks