John Horn, How to Build Profitable Online Advertising Campaigns – InnovaBuzz 488

John Horn, StubGroup

In this episode, I’m really excited to have as my guest, John Horn, who is the CEO of StubGroup. John has been working in marketing for over a decade. He was the first employee at StubGroup, which was started back in 2012, and has helped grow the business to become a Premier Google Partner ranked in the top 1% of all Google Partners worldwide and trusted partner used by companies around the globe to manage their advertising across Google, Facebook, Amazon, and more.

In our discussion, John talked to me about:

• Why it’s important to start by deeply understanding your target audience
• Ways to customise adverts to different audiences
• Using analytics and tracking to refine and inform your advertising strategy

Listen to the podcast to find out more.

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Show Notes from this episode with John Horn, CEO of StubGroup

Key points and takeaways from this episode include:

• Nothing that we do does not impact others.
• StubGroup works with clients to help them successfuly steward their online advertising.
• If you’re looking to work with any kind of marketing agency, make sure to ask them how they get their own clients. Make sure that they have figured out how to use whatever channel they are peddling for themselves.
• Be relevant. The only way to run profitable ads is by reaching out to people who are interested in what you’re selling and have that need or pain point.
• Be as precise and specific with your target as possible.
• One of the beauties of Google is that people are telling you what they are looking for at that moment.
• Use the targeting option provided by advertising platforms to deliver relevant and interesting information that would be of interest to your target audience.
• Remarketing or retargeting is one of the most obvious low hanging fruit. If someone’s already been to your website and has expressed interest in the product/service that you are selling but hasn’t taken any action, you want to remind them in a nice way to come back by perhaps offering a discount or something to get them to re-engage with you.
• Focus on the positives of whatever you are trying to sell. Don’t make people feel negative about themselves. Put that optimism and positive vibe into your product/service.
• Get really clear on who your target audience is – what are their pain points and needs, and which of those pain points are they trying to solve, where are they spending their time to find solutions; then customise your advertising strategy based on those things in order to most effectively reach those people with the right messaging at the right time.
• Know your product or service. Understanding whether what you’re selling is something that people are actively searching for right now or if it is something that people don’t know how to search yet helps you determine which platform you are going to use and what your message will be.
• People aren’t searching Google for a new product that they aren’t aware of or doesn’t exist yet. It won’t do you any good to run ads that target those keywords because nobody knows to look for them. Instead, you want to identify people that are interested in your new product based upon their activity and targeting options in Facebook or Instagram and create a message that builds awareness to get them to your website and learn more about your product or brand.
• Figure out where people are in their customer journey. Do they know how to search for you? If not, then think about how can you reach them to make them aware of your brand and nurture them through that process in a cost-effective way.
• Keep your recurring customers engaged. Maximise both the value of your customers and the lifetime value you can get from them.
• Have systems in place that will help you gather data in terms of reaching out to your customers without having to rely on any other platform. Whether it’s an email address or a phone number, having that direct contact information is incredibly helpful in customising the campaigns that you are doing.
• Don’t spam your customers. Make sure that you are sending them emails in a way and frequency that is respectful of their time.
• People who have given you their email address already have enough trust and interest in your brand. You want to craft a different content or message for them knowing that they already know who you are and what they signed up for. You can then craft an ad copy that specifically talks about what you know they are interested in that is very different from a prospecting copy that you would use for people who haven’t engaged with you or need to be educated about who you are before getting to the next step.
• It’s cheaper and better to reach 500 people who have already purchased from you and have a connection with you rather than 50,000 people who are cold prospects.
• It’s important to have systems in place that will enable you accurately track and analyse data to help you identify which aspects of your marketing are working well or need to do better, and where you can invest more money.
• Track as much data as you can. Use the trackers provided by each platform in addition to having Google Analytics that will give you a more comprehensive look at how people are reaching your website and engaging with it.
• Heat mapping software like Lucky Orange or Hotjar are valuable tools that can help you visually see where people are clicking on your website and how they are scrolling through pages.
• Make sure that your initial ad sets the tone for what people are expecting to see on the page that it gets to.
• Make sure that your website is fast. You don’t want to be spending money to get people to click through an ad and then lose that potential sale because your website takes time to load.
• Understand how each platform works, your target audience, keywords, and analytics tool.
• Be patient. Recognise that it takes time to generate data. It takes time to look for patterns and trends as well as to optimise your ads based upon that data.

The Buzz – Our Innovation Round 

Here are John’s answers to the questions of our innovation round. Listen to the conversation to get the full scoop.

1. #1 thing to be more innovative – Take some time to step away from the busy work to look at your business and your market holistically.
2. Best thing for new ideas – Ask questions.
3. Favourite tool for innovation – Harvest Time Tracker; Tracking and measuring where I am spending my time.
4. Keep project/client on track –  Communication. Make sure they understand what’s going on. Pick the right clients and set expectations upfront.
5. Differentiate – Do what you say you’re going to do and treat people with respect. Be honest, transparent, and always do what is right.

To Be a Leader

Take some time to step away from your business. Get away from all the busy work and think about where you can most effectively spend your time to grow your business.

Reach Out

You can reach out and thank John through their website.

Suggested Guest

John suggested we have a conversation with Nathan Barnes of Greenlight Marketers. So Nathan, keep an eye on your inbox for an invitation from us to the InnovaBuzz Podcast, courtesy of John Horn.

Links

• Website – StubGroup
• Twitter – @JohnHornSG
• LinkedIn
• Facebook

Cool Things About John

• He lives and breathes PPC.
• He has taught digital advertising classes to more than 90,000 students, and make frequent appearances on podcasts in the marketing and business space.
• He’s a published author and writes about marketing for sites including Call Tracking Metrics, DataFeedWatch, Shopper Approved, Swydo, etc.

Listen to the Podcast