Turning Social Media into an Unlimited Traffic System with Molly Pittman

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to Marketing Speak! I’m your host, Stephan Spencer. Today, I have the distinct pleasure of inviting on the show Molly Pittman. Molly is a tour de force in online marketing. She started with Digital Marketer as an intern and she worked her way all the way up to Vice President of Marketing and Traffic Manager. She’s in charge of a lot over at Digital Marketer. Digital Marketer is Ryan Deiss’ and Perry Belcher’s company that puts on Traffic and Conversion Summit. They have all these different online businesses that they run like Native Commerce-it’s a powerhouse and she’s a powerhouse within it. She’s responsible for creating, optimizing, and maintaining Digital Marketer’s traffic system that includes Facebook ads, all customer acquisition, and revenue acquisition. In her time a Digital Marketer, Molly has personally spent over four million dollars on paid traffic. She’s generated over 500,000 leads and tens of thousands of customers while still maintaining a positive return on Ad Spend. She’s consulted and advised over 150 brands both online and offline in markets like health and fitness, personal finance, beauty, crafts, professional practices, manufacturing, and more. It’s such a pleasure to have you on, Molly. Thanks for joining us!

Yeah, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thanks, everybody, for taking the time to listen.

Let’s start. Facebook is near and dear to your heart and you talk about this a lot on your podcast, which I forgot to mention in the bio-Perpetual Traffic is an amazing podcast. I love that podcast!

Thank you!

You co-host-every episode you, guys, really bring it and I’ve learned from it. I’m sure countless, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, have learned from it as well. Let’s start by talking about Facebook. I guess a simple-I’ll give you a softball question here with Facebook-do you see costs rising with running traffic on Facebook? Are they staying the same or decreasing?

Absolutely! I think the costs are definitely rising. It’s nothing shocking. It’s not that I see really high costs week over week, but you can definitely tell. If I go back and look at campaigns two, three, four years ago, it’s more expensive. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing though and a lot of what we teach a digital marketer is customer value optimization and how you have to really have a funnel in place that allows you to spend more than your competition to acquire a customer because you know how to monetize traffic so yes, costs are definitely rising on Facebook. It’s definitely nothing near the cost of Google traffic, but subtly rising. I think that’s a natural and normal thing and it’s really good for those of you that know how to really acquire and monetize customers.

Right, if we’re really good at optimizing our campaigns, we’ll still win while the other guys will be priced out of the market.

Exactly. Yeah, if you know how to, not only acquire a lead or a low-dollar buyer, but to actually know how to monetize that customer and sell them something expensive during their lifetime with you then you are going to be able to spend more than your competition and, like you said, price them out.

Right, and this is something that you guys are expert at-that whole sales funnel. In fact, you kind of pay near that where you have a lead magnet and it leads to a tripwire then you offer your core product and then the profit maximizers or upsells. Just briefly, where do you see the Facebook traffic going into-would it be straight to a lead magnet offer like a landing page with some downloadable PDF and they have to opt-in to get it or does it work better to send them to a blogpost that’s totally free and in the clear, they don’t have to opt-in for anything, you deliver lots of value, and you then retarget them later?

Right.

Or, do you send them directly to a webinar-like, I’m scrolling through my newsfeed and I see your ad and it’s inviting me directly to sign up for a webinar coming up. What’s the most effective and, again, this is kind of a softball but-

Yeah, no, absolutely! With traffic, we really look at three different temperatures, right? Cold, which are those people who have never heard of your brand before. You haven’t had any touch points-they’ve never visited your website and they’ve never liked your page on Facebook. They’re really cold, cold prospect. Then you have your warmer audiences. Those are people who have visited your website, maybe they gave you their email address, or they subscribed to your YouTube channel. It’s a two-way street where they have shown interest in return, but they haven’t purchased yet. And then you have your hot audience and those your buyers. Those are people who have made a commitment to you. There’s been a transaction and they’re in the club, right? We really show ads based off of what we know about our relationship with a particular prospect. For example, you are definitely in our hot audience. You’ve attended our live events and you’ve bought our products so you’re someone who really knows the brand. Therefore, you just saw an ad to hop on a webinar, right? To come and give your time to learn something from us. However, if you’re new to running traffic or you’re really looking to expand your business and reach out to more of a cold audience, it’s best to do so with something of value first-a blogpost, a content video, a funny ad, or something that really allows you to first make a deposit into the relationship before you ask them for something in return. A lot of people run ads right to a product like, “Hey, you never met me, but don’t you want to buy this $3,000 product?” It just doesn’t make sense in terms of how humans work and how relationships work. If you’re running ads to an audience that you’ve never interacted with before, it’s definitely best to lead with something of value and then you can pixel them and retarget. You should really show ads based off of what you know about that person and how intimate your relationship is.

Right. You’re taking into account how much rapport and relatedness you have with prospect before you decide what you’re going to present in front of them so somebody who has no idea-as you said, cold traffic-will not appreciate getting hard sold on something where you haven’t delivered value in advance. As Frank Kern calls it, results in advance: deliver results in advance, make it giving page that you are sending people to instead of taking page-and this is something that I think you pioneered or you talked about several years ago at Traffic and Conversions Summit-getting people to a blog post first and then dropping a retargeting pixel so that you can advertise to them later once you’ve delivered value to them without them feeling like you’re taking something in exchange.

Absolutely and definitely. It’s really important as you expand your business and you reach out to colder audiences because people know that there are ads in their Facebook newsfeed or in their Twitter stream or on YouTube. People are used to ads now. It’s not just, “Hey, I see a display ad on this website, I’m going to click and buy because the internet is new.” That’s no longer the case. When you’re running traffic, definitely think about the relationship with the prospect and creating really solid and valuable pieces of content will allow you to scale your business a lot further.

Yup, absolutely. You’ve been talking a lot about the Ad Grid and how to leverage that so maybe you could describe for our listeners.

Yeah, absolutely! I’ll send a link to you to include for people who want a more detailed explanation but the Ad Grid is really a process that we created at Digital Marketer for the strategy of creating an ad campaign or really a marketing campaign. It’s a simple excel document, and we use this every time we start creating any type of campaign-specifically, traffic. What we use the grid for, we start by saying, “Okay, what’s our end goal here? What’s our lead magnet? What is our offer? What are we trying to get this person to do?” so we’ll look at the particular author and we’ll start to think about different avatars that might be interested in the author. We’ll start to place the avatars across the x-axis of the excel sheet. For example, a ten-minute social media audit is a lead magnet that we have here at Digital Marketer, we sat down, and we realized that there are a few different avatars that would be interested in auditing their social media. The first one, of course, would be a social media manager, so someone that actually does social media as an employee. Another avatar would be their boss because, of course, as a boss, you always want to assess the performance of your employees. Another avatar could be a social media agency so someone who does social media as a service for others. The last was a solopreneur so someone who runs their own online business, and just knows social media is good, and even though they’re probably doing it on their own, they want to audit their performance. The first step is really figuring out who you’re speaking to, and those different avatars and segments so on the x-axis, we’re going to create different hooks-really simple marketing messages that would make this offer appealing. If you have an offer and you can’t think of different hooks or marketing messages to use to sell that offer, it’s probably not going to convert very well. It’s probably not something that people actually want.

But then how do you come up with-let’s say that you’re dealing with a team of people who are not that creative-

Right.

So it’s tough for them to come up with the hooks-

Yeah.

To go talk to their target audience.

Right.

What do they do to come up with this stuff?

Right. We have about six different types of hooks that we teach at Digital Marketer that you can use. Of course, you’re going to have to apply it specifically to your product or your offer, but the first one is, “have,”-what is someone going to have after they consume your product that they didn’t have before? It’s a hook that is used a lot, it’s pretty common, and can be applied to almost any product or service. The second one is, “feel,”-how does someone feel differently after they consume your product than they did before? Again, commonly used in marketing, but appealing to someone’s emotions is pretty powerful. The next is, “average day,”-how does your product or service really improve someone’s average day? Maybe you’re selling a razor that cuts off ten minutes of shaving so you’re saving someone ten minutes every day, you’re really improving their lifestyle and their average day. That works very, very well. Another is, “proof and results,”-this goes anywhere from testimonials to using copy-like, used by 50,000 other business owners-or any type of social proof that you can show or results, right? Everyone-when they’re writing copy, it’s great to say that this product or service produced “X” amount of sales for this particular business. It’s a great way to convince someone to buy your product or service. Another type of hook is, “status.” Internally, everyone has the desire to up their status in some way. For example, we sell certifications so when someone takes one of our certifications, they pass the test, they can say, “I am a certified content marketing specialist,” right? There’s a level of status there that’s really appealing to certain types of people. Those are some broader hooks that you can use and really think through-Do I have testimonials? How does my product or service make someone’s average day better? It can be very simple marketing messages, but what’s really important is that you’re coming up with more than one, right? A lot of people use sort of one hook always to sell their product or service, but that one hook isn’t going to work to each of your avatars. Also, how do you know that another hook might not work better? What the grid’s really forcing us to do is to come up with four, five, or six different hooks and four, five, or six different avatars, and then we’re testing each hook to each avatar, and writing copy within the empty cells of the excel sheet using the corresponding hook on the y-axis to write copy speaking to the avatar that’s on the x-axis. We can definitely provide some links to more information on that, but the grid really allows us to build these full fleshed-out campaigns targeting different types of people using different messages, and once you run your traffic campaign, you can really look back to the grid and say, “Wow, this avatar really responds to this message,” or “This message as a whole-this entire hook-we should never use this again because no one responded to this hook,” or “Wow, this avatar responded to all of the hooks. This is a good avatar-where else are they hanging out online? How can we show them more ads?”

Right. Let’s say, we take the avatar-the social media agency-and let’s take the hook of the “average day,” what would you come up with-in terms of a particular hook, under the average day-for social media agency to get people to take this ten-minute social media audit?

Right, so with the average day on-sorry, what did you say? To the agency person?

Yes, so it’s a social media agency avatar that we’re trying to talk to and to make them get to-

Right.

-do this audit.

Right. We didn’t have an “average day” hook on this particular ad grid, but the hooks that we did test for the agency avatar are-we used to report or we used to hook a “have” hook, which the audit is also a tangible PDF, so after they download the audit, they actually have this tangible report, right? An agency owner would have a report that they can give to prospective clients to say, “Hey, we audited your existing social media strategy, here’s the score that you got. Wouldn’t you like to hire us and we can increase the score?” We also used a hook “Get a grade,”-everyone loves to self-analyze so that hook really worked well across the board, especially to the social media managers. We said, “Hey, download this audit, grade yourself, and then use that grade to ask your boss for a raise,” so someone in benefit there.

Yeah, that’s great! With the social media agency person, did you offer in the hook to give them a white-labeled version of the report that they can hand to their client?

We didn’t, but that’s a great idea. That is a great idea! I’m going to write that down.

Because if they’re trying to land a prospect and they’re handing over a Digital Marketer report, that’s not going to put them in the limelight-it’s going to put Digital Marketer in the limelight.

Absolutely!

It’s like kind of scratch their own itch-maybe give them a while-label version, yeah.

Yeah, I know. That’s an awesome idea. Noted!

Do you have an approach that you use to come up with great hooks? Essentially, this is a brainstorming session, right?

Absolutely!

There’s a little bit of brainstorming right there.

Yeah.

Do you get everybody in the room? Do you just try to come up with stuff on your own?

That’s a great question! We have a content team that produces a lot of our products and our lead magnets. Our editorial director, Russ Henneberry, will produce the product or the lead magnet, and then that is really what starts a conversation between Russ and me. We will sit down and I’ll say, “Okay, what do you think is the specific end-benefit of this product?” We use a before-and-after grid so before someone consumes this product-how do they feel? What do they have? What do they think? A lot of what we just talked about, we really tried to get into the mind of our avatar. However, it’s a pretty long discussion in terms of who are we speaking to and which books are we going to use to actually market this offer. It is a brainstorming session-we use the ad grid and we use a before-and-after grid. If we’re speaking to an audience that we’ve never really spoken to before and we don’t know the avatar, we’ll try to interview someone that is the avatar and ask them questions such as: What are their pain points? What are their desires? A lot of times we’ll use Google, we’ll get into forums where this particular market is speaking, and we’ll learn what are their pain points, what’s their reading, what’s their average writing and reading level, what keywords do they use so there’s a lot that goes into not only creating a great product, but figuring out how to sell it and who to sell it to.

Right, and when you’re trying to understand who these prospective avatars are, do you have anything that gives you kind of full-immersion experience of what these people are like? For example, there’s a room-I think it’s Nike-where they have life-size and I think it’s like life-size posters of each of their avatars, they have names, and there’s a locker right next to each poster-

Yeah.

And in the locker, you can see what that kid does to decorate the inside of his locker-

Yeah.

And what kind of backpack, shoes, sports gear, and everything they have so you really get to kind of experience that avatar.

Yeah. Infusionsoft has cereal boxes with pictures of their avatars and information about the avatar on the box, which I think is really interesting. We have internal documents where we have named these avatars. We come up with quotes of what would this person say if they were to speak aloud so yes, we definitely gone through the process of really researching our avatars at Digital Marketer, but if we’re rolling out an offer that doesn’t really speak to one of those avatars, and we’re going to a new market, a lot of research is done-a lot of research on Amazon and Google. I can send you a link to a checklist that we use when we’re really researching a market. We ask: What are the authority figures? Where do this market get their information? What events do they attend? What tools do they use? Where do they live? What books and magazines do they read? There is a lot of work behind the scenes done to figure out who this person is before we ever go into production on a campaign.

That’s awesome! In fact, if you apply that same idea to really understanding your target market before you even create a product-like, do this when you’re in the process of creating your marketing campaigns to really understand who you’re talking to first, but also before you build the product, in fact, it’s oftentimes recommended that you market and sell the product before you even build it. What’s your take on that?

I think that if you’re launching a new product in your business, it’s always smart to launch with a minimum viable product. You definitely want to test. Sometimes, that’s a sales letter. For example, we launched a course at the end of last year called Digital Marketing Mastery. It was a ten-week intensive course and basically, what we had was a sales letter-none of it was built. We just wanted to see if it had a pulse. We promoted the product and it sold really well, which is a good indication that it was something that people wanted. We built out the product. It didn’t go as well as we would have hoped in terms of actual delivery of the product, but now that we know for V2, we know that we can sell it, we know what people want, we know what their pain points are so we can build something, and actually put the resources, especially the technical resources, into building the best product that we can because we know that it resonates with the audience.

If you’re launching a new product in your business, it’s always smart to launch with a minimum viable product. You definitely want to test. Share on X

Right. How does this idea of understanding the audience first before creating the product or the marketing campaign-how does it apply to your podcast because you have a really successful podcast? I forget how many downloads you have-like, 300,000 or something, right?

We just hit 550,000!

Wow! Congratulations!

Thank you! We’ve had a big few couple months here.

Before you come up with the episode-before you record it-have you figured out what your audience is clamoring for the most and kind of worked around that or are you just riffing and you figure out what the episode is going to be as you go along or what?

Yeah, it’s a mix. That’s a great question. We definitely look back at data, of course. We’re looking at which episodes have been downloaded the most and we will try to do a part two or something else about that topic if we know that there’s interest. We also use our blog. We have a lot of content on our blog about traffic so I’m able to go in and see which articles have received the most traffic, and a lot of times that will turn into a podcast episode. Repurposing content-anything new, especially because we’re talking mostly about Facebook advertising, so as soon as something new comes out, we really try to cover the latest and greatest, but not just as a news source, but also this is how it applies to your business. Of course, any strategic partnerships, getting guests on that we know have a big following-we just had Amy Porterfield on, she did a great job, and distributed the episode to her audience, which was great for downloads. So, it’s a mix. We will also use tools like BuzzSumo to see which articles are on the web about a certain topic that have been shared the most so that will give you an idea of topics that really resonate with the audience. It’s a mix of-once a month, we’re going to do an episode about the new features on Facebook, but it also depends on what guest we can bring on or what content we have. Let’s say we did a webinar about Facebook targeting and it performed really well to our customers-well, now we know that that should be a podcast episode because it’s a topic people really liked it.

Right. It makes a lot of sense, yes. Some people are really kind of regimented in terms of their podcasting approach. They always ask the same seven questions where they always have a guest on or they always just rift between them and the co-host, but never bring a guest-you, guys, are a bit more flexible than that so what have you found that’s kind of in the sweet spot for what works versus what doesn’t work?

In terms of the style of the podcast?

The style and the deliver. I know you’ve done some really great marketing campaigns.

Yeah.

You did a contest.

Yeah.

And by the way, we had a really great episode with Travis from Contest Domination.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah, he’s awesome. I know you guys are using Contest Domination.

Absolutely!

As far as the logistics and the structure, but also as far as the marketing of it-

Right.

What have you figured to be the sweet spot-what does work best for you, guys?

Well, I think number one with more of the style. I think the style doesn’t matter as much, but what’s important about it is that you maintain consistency. A lot of podcasts are interview-only, which I think is great. There’s nothing wrong with that at all if you maintain that consistency. There are podcasts like Serial, of course, that are more of a story so each episode references back and is a continuum of the previous episode. Then you have podcasts like Coffee Break Spanish, where you go from episode to episode to, literally, learn the Spanish language. I think it’s important before you launch a podcast to really think about what your style is going to be because you have to maintain that entertainment factor, and you have to really program a podcast similar to a TV show so people need to know what to expect. For us, we have three hosts on the podcast, and we all love to teach traffic. Our podcast is kind of a mix of episodes that are simply educational-we’ll teach a certain topic-or we’ll bring on an expert to talk about a topic that we aren’t particularly familiar with, and we can’t cover. It’s really educational. Just trying to provide as much value as possible while maintaining that “training” feel. In terms of marketing, it’s really important that we’ve found to, obviously, distribute the podcast as much as possible. We run a lot of paid ads to the podcast so that we can generate new subscribers and downloads, especially if we have an episode that’s more niche so it’s speaking to a particular audience. We had an episode, 7 Ways to Grow Your Local Business with Facebook Ads, so we then took that episode and ran a specific ad just about that episode to local business owners on Facebook. Being able to pull out specific markets that you can hit with a particular episode, that’s really smart versus just saying, “Hey, local business owners, come learn Facebook ads on Perpetual Traffic!” right?

Right.

Having those specific episodes and running traffic is smart, but yes, we did launch with a contest. Of course, it’s very important to launch your podcast with a lot of momentum so you can hit New and Noteworthy. We had people subscribe and download our first three episodes, and leave an honest review, and that entered them into a contest to win tickets to our annual event. That did very well and helped us launch the podcast with some momentum.

Right, and one thing that Travis had recommended is, figure out what kind of prize is going to resonate with the audience that makes sense and kind of furthers your message so if you gave away a gift card to Amazon.com as the price, that wouldn’t give further brand building to you, but if you’re making the contest prize be a ticket to Traffic and Conversion Summit, it’s kind of a double win.

Absolutely.

Because you’re promoting the value of Traffic and Conversion Summit, which is a great conference-all you, listeners, need to go to it next year.

Thank you!

It’s all congruent and that’s a really important aspect of it.

Yes, congruency, and especially with your market, right? If you don’t have an audience to promote this contest to, you’re just kind of launching a podcast, you can still do so through a gift that people really want to win. We have Sewing.com and we will run contests to win a sewing machine so even though people might not know the brand, if they like to sew, then they would like to win a sewing machine. If someone doesn’t like to sew, they probably wouldn’t really care to win a sewing machine so you’re helping to qualify your audience.

Makes a lot of sense because the last place you want to end up on is one of those giveaway contest directories, and then you get all these garbage traffic.

Yeah, exactly! And you want your podcast subscribers to be people who are actually interested.

Yeah. I really like your point earlier about how you advertise on Facebook an episode to the targeted audience, and not just the podcast itself because-this is where a lot of people, I think, fall down, and this is where I started too. I got on to New and Noteworthy with this show and with my other show, Get Yourself Optimized. I’m like, “Yay! That’s awesome!” and I’m like, “All right, so what am I going to do to turn up the volume even more?” so I’m looking at other channels, and then eventually paid advertising, and what I did for my first foray into paid advertising with both shows was to do a landing page that I promoted on StumbleUpon. I did paid ads on StumbleUpon-you know, paid stumbles-and it’s just a generic landing page that gives some social proof and description of the show and so forth, and big buttons for them to subscribe via iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and all that. That’s kind of a more brain-dead approach to paid advertising to get people to your podcasts versus what you’re doing, which is a lot more logical and effective.

Well, if you think about it, there’s so much information out there. It’s wise saying, “Hey, sign up for my weekly newsletter,” but that just doesn’t work-people don’t need more information, they don’t need more emails, and they don’t need more podcasts to listen to. If you’re running an ad that says, “Hey, listen to my cool new podcast,” that’s not as appealing as, “Hey, you’re a local business owner, do you want to learn how to generate more customers using Facebook ads?” They’re coming to our podcast because of the end-benefit, not because it’s 30 more minutes of audio for them to listen to every week.

Right. You have, for example, this great online community and resource repository called DM Lab, which I’m a subscriber to. It’s a great resource.

Thank you.

To promote that, you wouldn’t just kind of overwhelm people with how much information there is, but the transformation. You’re selling the transformation and not the information. It might be a particular execution plan inside of DM Lab that you are promoting and, “Hey, you need this!” and so much more comes with it when you sign up for DM Lab that get this resolved.

Absolutely! It’s all about splintering something small off of the big thing, right? Whatever you’re trying to sell, take a little piece that has an end-benefit and is something specific that you can speak to. It’s much, much easier to sell your product because it’s not as overwhelming.

Yup, exactly. Another quick case example of that is, Taki Moore was advertising on Facebook a four-video series on free training and he found that if you were to splinter off the 29-point webinar marketing checklist, which is something he talks about in one of the videos, and offer that as a free PDF, and they still get after opting-in the four-video series, but the thing that he’s hooking people in on is the 29-point webinar marketing checklist, higher performing, and that’s all he runs now for that particular product-that free product that he’s offering.

Yeah, absolutely!

What’s sort of execution plans inside of DM Lab are you, guys, getting the most traction with that are just so transformational that people are clamoring for them?

Right. We have the 21 Day Launch execution plan so it’s people who have an existing business, but they want to launch their first funnel. It’s a great place for people to start. You can get everything set up and running in 21 days so it’s definitely a specific end-benefit-a great hook-there. That one gets a lot of traffic. We also have Facebook Social List Building, which is how to set up your Facebook ads, figure out the targeting, bidding, and all of that fun stuff, so that’s definitely a hot topic, and one that gets a lot of traction too.

Right. What would be some of the key points for somebody who’s not that sophisticated at Facebook? What would be some easy, kind of low-hanging fruit for them in terms of targeting, bidding, and some of the other things that are covered in that EP?

Yeah, definitely. With the targeting, it goes back a lot to the questions I was referencing earlier on Facebook. If you’re new to Facebook and you’re trying to reach a cold audience, the best type of targeting to use inside of Facebook is interest targeting. Interest targeting are pages that people like or the different topics people are talking about on Facebook so the interests are really unlimited. There isn’t a dropdown-you just have to kind of start typing so you can target Tiger Woods or Ryan Deiss or the word “Apple.” There’s a lot of options. It’s the best place to start and, really, we start asking ourselves those questions I mentioned earlier-what books does this audience read? What tools do they use? Say you’re wanting to sell fishing rods to people who like to fish, right? Well, you want to think about interests you can target where the avid part of that market is actually hanging out. Maybe targeting interests like different manufacturers of fishing supplies because you want to reach people who actually buy stuff in this market. Maybe fishing tournaments-the top fishing tournaments-fishing blogs, forums, or places where these people are liking and visiting online. It’s really important to be specific in your targeting. I mean, you can build a beautiful advertising campaign, but if you screw up on the targeting, and put it in front of the wrong people, it will fail and that’s not a good feeling so, really, just getting into the mind of your avatar-

Yeah.

-and figuring out interests, not just typing “fishing” to the interest box because that’s what every lazy person does. It’s too broad. Let’s find people who are actually going to buy.

And documentaries would be a great example-like, thinking outside the box.

Totally!

You could go after a title of a book. You could also go after the title of a documentary. You could go after an author name as well. You could go after the name of an event that they just ran, and pulled a lot of people.

Absolutely.

Let’s talk about something that’s not an online thing for a moment. Let’s go to TV-are you, guys, looking to do marketing on TV-either advertising, commercials, or maybe have your own TV show? Are you working to get TV appearances like on the news?

Yeah. We do have a director of communications, Christine Haas. She was a news anchor in Austin for 14 years. She’s wonderful. She just came on to the team, and she’s doing a great job of-yes-getting us news appearance for our different charity events or Traffic and Conversion Summit. Ryan actually was on the local San Diego News the week of that event so that was really cool. More for branding because it is important. Before people buy, they’re going to Google your brand. They want to see what you’re up to-if you’re a legitimate company, what are you about, and are you involved in the community-so it is important to invest time in the branding aspect to have getting on the news, and different articles from reputable sources online.

Yup, we had a couple of really great episodes here where I interviewed Clint Arthur and Darren Kavinoky all about getting onto TV so some great content there. Surprisingly, it’s not that difficult to get a TV appearance if you know the right angle.

Yeah.

A lot of the stuff that we talked about in terms of picking a hook that really resonates is an essential component to getting on TV-you use the same sort of hooks to get on TV. Speaking of hooks and storytelling, one thing that kind of struck me about that earlier conversation was that facts tell and stories sell-what kind of advice would you give to our listeners in terms of turning their marketing from more fact-based into more story-based like storytelling? Because I know, for example, Alex Blumberg who has the StartUp Podcast and founded Gimlet Media, has some great training on Creative Live about the art of storytelling for podcasting. However, storytelling isn’t just useful for podcasting-oh, and by the way, one of my favorite new shows that I just discovered is called Lore. So this podcast, you’re going to have to check out. It’s actually going to be turned into a TV show. It’s so good. It’s surprisingly only once every two weeks so they don’t have as frequent episodes as you might expect, but incredible podcast. What would be your advice to our listeners in terms of incorporating storytelling into all of their marketing?

Absolutely! Something that we actually do-the before-and-after grid that I was talking about, and sitting down and saying, “Okay, this is how the person feels before, right?” Maybe before they’re frustrated, they’re tired, and after they consumed our product or service, they’re happy and they feel rejuvenated. We take it a step further than that. After we fill out a grid, and we’re really in the minds of the avatar, one of us will actually record an audio telling a story about this person, and as silly as that sounds, we need to take it from, “Okay, this is fact,” like you said-they were this and now, they’re this-to something that can really relate more to the individual. I think that’s what’s special about good marketing. Where it comes from is the ability to tell a story, but we will record audio telling the entire story of this person, and how they went from before to after-not just that they did, right? What were the specific struggles? What are specific examples you can use? A lot of it just comes down to writing good copy that sounds like you’re talking to a friend-not worrying so much about being so formalized, but being really personal. I mean, even if you look at some of the best Facebook ads, sometimes there are typos and it’s okay. Some of the best Facebook ads are really the ads that have a long copy, they’re telling a story, and they’re really resonating with someone, especially on social ad platforms. That’s what people are looking for. People are on Facebook to read about their family, their friends, and stories and news from around the world so if you’re able to tell a good story that resonates with that audience, you fit right in.

Yeah, and along those same lines, if you’re too polished with your advertising or with your content, it’s actually, potentially, off-putting to the receiver, the viewer, the listener, or the reader because it just feels like it’s coming out of an ad agency. This is Madison Avenue-this isn’t like a real person.

Right.

Like with Facebook Live, some folks are terrified of it because there’s no opportunity to do another take like, “Okay, I just screwed that up really badly!”

But that’s okay!

If this were live and I just flubbed my lines or whatever, I could go and have my audio editor fix it.

Right.

We don’t have that opportunity on Facebook Live, but Facebook rewards us for doing Facebook Live by giving us more reach so it’s worth it. What percentage would you guess would increase over just regular Facebook videos that you upload versus Facebook Live?

I would say double.

Yeah.

Yeah. It’s pretty incredible. We started turning some of them into ads, actually.

Yeah, there’s a great new product, by the way, that’s coming out in July. It’s a camera that does multiple angles and you can control it with an iPhone so this is great for Facebook Live videos-you do it on the fly, and it looks like you’re cutting different camera angles and everything, but it’s just one with camera. It’s called the Mevo. I don’t know if you’ve heard it.

Oh, interesting! No, no, no-I definitely need to check that out.

It’s getmevo.com. Along the lines of being too polished-let’s say that you have some Facebook videos that you want to use for advertising, would you recommend hiring a professional videographer for that? Would you just shoot it on your iPhone?

Right.

Do you need some sort of stabilizer so that it doesn’t seem too jerky? What works the best in your opinion?

It really, really depends on your market. For example, at Digital Marketer, we’ve really established a new avatar of Fortune 500 companies-more of a corporate atmosphere-well, if we’re running ads to decision makers for companies that are that large, we’re probably going to use videos that are more polished and planned. I wouldn’t run ads of a selfie with Ryan talking into the camera. It definitely depends on your market, but overall, again, Facebook is a social platform, and getting the video out there, and kind of fitting in to the flow of all the selfies you see in your newsfeed, and being a real person is much more important than perfection or having a polished video. Number one, definitely think about your market-what kind of video would they respond to and take seriously? However, number two, don’t get too caught up in being polished because people are also really looking for authentic brands. That’s a big reason that people buy now so don’t let lack of resources or having to edit a video get in your way.

Yeah, that makes sense. From a choice of platform standpoint, let’s say that you’re going to, potentially, spend money either on Facebook video ads or you’re going to do it on YouTube ads-which would you recommend and why?

Right. That’s tough. If we are going out to cold traffic-people who have never heard of us before-definitely Facebook because people are so trained on YouTube now to skip ads.

Yeah.

But if we’re retargeting people who already know the brand, YouTube is a great place to retarget, especially if you can quickly say, “Hey, hold on just a second!” and wave your hands in the camera, and they know your face or they recognize something about your brand. YouTube’s great for retargeting. However, I think, overall, Facebook video definitely and absolutely.

Yup, cool! Last question, is the live webinar model dead? What are you seeing as far as live webinars? Show-up rates seem to be declining and some people say that it’s a dying model-

Right.

So now you have to switch to Evergreen webinars that are available 90 seconds after the person opts in.

Yeah. I definitely don’t think live webinars are dead, especially outside of the marketing industry, right? I think that they’ve been way overdone sort of in the internet marketing community, and they’ve lost a lot of their scarcity just based off of the ways they’ve been delivered, I guess. I definitely don’t think that they’re dead. I think that a live webinar is always the best way to test a webinar, right? You definitely want to do it live before you ever perpetuate or create an Evergreen webinar because you’re interacting with real people and you know at what time people are actually dropping off. There’s a lot to doing a live webinar. I also think a live webinar is a great way to launch a product for the first time. Again, you get that interaction and it’s really personal. I think in the marketing space, live webinars, the show-up rates have definitely declined, but overall, I think that they will always be a part of our business model at least, and they’re still very powerful in other industries as well.

Yup. Basically, it’s not performing as well for everybody-just like Facebook ads are getting more expensive, but that can be an opportunity if you do it well.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Molly! This has been a fabulous episode. We’re going to have you back because there are so many things I wanted to talk to you about-

Oh, thank you! I appreciate it.

Like, Facebook Carousels and more about pixels and yeah, so much stuff.

Yeah.

Anyway, how would somebody work with Digital Marketer if they wanted to get certification, or if they wanted to get other kinds of training, knowledge, and all that from you guys?

Yeah, absolutely! Just go to DigitalMarketer.com. We have a lot of free resources on our blog. There’s a “products” tab where you can learn more about the certifications. There’s also a “podcast” tab if you’re interested in listening to Perpetual Traffic.

Which I would highly recommend! It’s a fabulous show. One of my favorites!

Thank you!

All right, so listeners, we’re going to create a transcript and an action item checklist for you from this episode so go on to Marketing Speak and grab that. It’s MarketingSpeak.com, and we’ll catch you on the next episode. Thanks for listening! I’m your host, Stephan Spencer, signing off.

Important Links:

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

☑ To come up with podcast ideas or blog post articles, use previous data. If you held a webinar that was really popular, use that topic for a post or episode.

☑ YouTube is a great place to retarget for people who are already familiar your brand, but people are conditioned to skip ads. If you’re targeting cold traffic, start with Facebook.

☑ Check out the free resources available on DigitalMarketer.com, and go to the “products” tab where you can learn more about their certifications.

☑ Before starting a marketing campaign, consider your lead’s feelings. How will they feel before this product or service, and how will they feel after? How does it help to improve their lives?

☑ Using that information, target your ad to their specific needs. Using emotion in a marketing campaign helps people to connect more with your brand.

☑ Don’t be too polished with your advertising or content-it can be off putting to the reader or the viewer, because it feels like it’s coming out of an ad agency.

☑ Use Facebook Live! Not only is it a great way for you to connect personally with your audience, you’ll be rewarded with more views than a regular video.

☑ Try out Mevo for your videos-it’s a camera that allows you to record with multiple angles, and you can control it with your iPhone, so it’s great for social media

☑ For great content, cover the latest news-as soon as something new comes out, talk about it not just as a news source, but also how it applies to your business.

☑ It’s important to be specific in your targeting. Decide on your ideal lead and marketing hook before you even begin to create your campaign.

About Molly Pittman

Molly Pittman started with Digital Marketer as an intern and worked her way up to Vice President of Marketing and Traffic Manager. She’s responsible for creating, optimizing, and maintaining their traffic system, including social media traffic, all customer acquisition, and revenue acquisition. Molly has personally spent over four million dollars on paid traffic, and has generated over 500,000 leads and tens of thousands of customers.