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Step Five: Amplifying Through Advertising

Then we get into step five, which is amplify through advertising. Amplify through advertising. We already talked about how posting and praying doesn't work right, we talked about how you probably shouldn't just go on these social platforms and say, hey come out here, fill out this form and let's talk. Give me your number. Let's come off this platform where you're really happy and you're trusting everything, and come and talk to me. Here's what does work. Alright, what does work, is content amplification. Content amplification is the key to really, I don't wanna use this phrase but I will, hacking social growth. And I don't wanna say hacking in terms of like, eh, growth hack, it's advertising, okay? You're hacking through the good old means you're just getting there a little bit faster. So the way that content amplification works is number one you start with great content. You start with great original content on an owned property. On a property that you have, let's call it a blog. A re...

ally great awesome piece of content that you're gonna build something on, maybe it's an article that you wrote answering somebody's questions, maybe it's a really great video, okay? It doesn't have to be text or video, it doesn't really matter it just needs to be great, it needs to be something that people are interested in. Now what we're gonna do is we're gonna go out to the social channels and we're gonna talk about this piece of content. We're gonna go to Facebook and we're gonna be like, look at this thing we got. Now this idea of having a post, a piece of content that sends people off the channel onto your own site and we're looking for that four to one ratio. Four of 'em where all the content's here, for every one that does this, okay? But we gotta eventually get 'em back over here, if your goal number three is in mind meaning, traffic, leads and sales. Right, we eventually gotta get 'em off of here, and on here we just wanna make sure we're doing it the right way. Okay, so, we're gonna, we got great content, we're gonna talk about it on the different social channels. Now approximately .5 of the percent of your audience is going to see that, right? But some will see it and that's cool and they're gonna come and they're gonna take action. And hopefully some people will come here, will fill out a form and they'll wanna engage with you. The number of people who see it organically here go over to the content and then click to opt in is gonna be about three people, like it's like nobody, right? Like that's the number of people who we're counting on to do that, it's not that many people who are gonna go in and do that and that's why a lot of people say like ah, social isn't working for me. 'cause you're posting and praying. So how can we hack that, how can we get some more well, for the visitors that do come over here, what we're now able to do is we're able to set retargeting pixels, we're able to build our pixeled audience. What is a retargeting pixel, it's just a simple tracking pixel that when you come to this webpage you're able to tell Google and Facebook, hey this person, that, you know who they are, we don't 'cause you don't share that information with us and so you're able to say now this person who you know who it is got they got this tracking pixel anytime Facebook or Google or network anytime this person is on your platform would you be kind enough to show them my ad? Since they've already come to my site once, right? They're familiar with the brand, we've dropped this retargeting pixel, this little tracking pixel again, you know who they are, we don't, no privacy stuff here, would you be kind enough the next time they come to your channel to show them my ad, it'd be super cool if you could. That's how retargeting works. If you've ever been to a website and all of a sudden you see those, that website's ad following you all over the place, that's retargeting. Now retargeting done poorly is awful. So in this case it's somebody came to a blog post about Facebook advertising, right and so they saw some cool content, they saw that we're delivering value and advanced content not asking for anything and now they're seeing in this case a template guide a template on, that has seven Facebook ad campaign templates so download it, so you saw this thing on Facebook advertising now later on that day the next day a couple days later you see this ad from us that there's our logo so you kinda know that I can trust this remember we gave value in advance we can answer some of your questions over here yeah well now we've got something that's really really cool in fact it's worth you entering your name and email address to get it. 'cause it's high value content from a brand you already know this is content amplification. Content amplification is producing amazing content republishing that content on the social channels and then paying to make sure that people see it here they increase your reach, and paying again to make sure they see it here, see the next stage of the content. Content amplification is paying to make sure that content that has no direct and immediate commercial intent actually gets seen. Make sure that it actually gets seen. So we'll come back to that so, step one, is you need to craft your one amazing piece of content, that's step one, remember it starts with content. And so when we think about content marketing, right? This is a big buzz phrase. This is nothing new. How many of you have heard of the Michelin Star System, you got any foodies in the room you heard of Michelin Stars? You know who started the Michelin star idea? Michelin, the tire company. You know why they did that? So that you would get in your car and drive to different restaurants all over the country to burn up more tires, okay? Content marketing is not new. Content marketing was leveraged by a freaking tire company back in the God knows when, okay? And is now, like a big thing. That's content marketing. The biggest thing to remember about your content is to make it about your customer not the product. When companies screw up with their like, one amazing piece of content, when they're out there producing content they wanna produce content that's about their product. How to select the perfect widget for your industry, nobody cares about that. These are, it's a friend of mine, he owns this company SnackNation, they do Snack delivery services for offices, right? So if you got a startup or something like that they'll send all the snacks you don't have to send somebody to like Costco, to go and buy this stuff. Their content is not about snacks, because nobody cares about snack content. How to select the perfect peanuts for your office, nobody freaking cares about that. They know their buyer is the office manager, the HR rep, so they publish stuff like, 39 Insanely Fun Team Building Activities For Work (Trust Falls Not Included). It has nothing to do with snacks and has everything to do with the customer. Another friend of mine owns this company, Trudog.com. She sells dog food. But she's not putting out content about dog food, she's putting out content about doggie breath, how to keep your dogs from having stank breath. That don't have that much to do with dog food, right? I will tell you, you wanna know the formula for amazing content that people love and will got viral it's this unicorn, plus poop equals viral gold. If you don't believe me, squatty potty, right? I don't now what it is, we're a bunch of freaking 12 year olds, but, even if it's a sales message if you can go and make it entertaining I'm not gonna show like the Squatty Potty ad but you know probably what I'm talking about, if you don't if you've never seen it Google it, it's kind of disgusting I don't know why it makes people and it works right, because it does entertain. So when we talk about content, it doesn't have to be merely informative, right? Make it entertaining, this is an HVAC company out of Charlotte, North Carolina. HVAC company, they do AC repair, right, they've got their installers out there dancing with masks and air filters. It's an HVAC company, you think that oh, I can't do that I don't know how to, they can, why can't you? Morris-Jenkins, Google 'em, their stuff's great. Great great great company, my friend does all their marketing for 'em, does a lot of their marketing for 'em. You know, phenomenal, so it works even if it's boring. So more content ideas, some of these, you know, shouldn't be totally new to you, so we're talking about onsite content right, this is the content that goes on your website, answer their number one question, you've heard that one already. Give them a list of resources. It is amazing people just love lists. Some of our highest converting posts are just, here's a list of stuff that you need to setup, you know, a quick studio. Here's a list of 26 books that marketers should read people love lists they're shortcuts. Specific case studies. If you want a profile, if you have particular avatars in your space, talk about how some of 'em got a great result templates, examples, Swipe files. These are all shortcuts, if in doubt, just answer their number one question. If you need more ideas for content, DigitalMarketer does have a blog post that's the ultimate list of blog post ideas, you can check that out, it has a bunch of started, blog post content that you can go check out. Just digitalmarketer.com/blog-post-ideas probably should have come up with a shorter link. Use the Googles, you'll find it I promise. Now I said before I was gonna tell you the number of amazing pieces of content that you need to pull this off here it is, one, you need one single piece of awesome flagship content. Just one, that's all that you need to make the strategy work, you'll produce a lot more content in the social channels but you need one great awesome amazing piece of content sitting on your site to make this strategy work. That's good, step two, we're gonna amplify the content with advertising, now where should you advertise this content? Where should you be posting and then buying ads so that people see that post in their feed? Don't over think it stick with the big three, right, Facebook, running Google AdWords ads to content and YouTube, running YouTube ads, preroll ads. Going over to your content. If you really wanna narrow it down just start with Facebook. Every man woman and child on planet earth is on Facebook. I almost don't care what your market is, they're there. So that's what's gonna make sure that people see this. We need them to see this. If you don't boost this with some form of advertising, .5 percent of the people see that, we gotta boost this with advertising so that they actually see that content so that we can set that retargeting pixel. And that really, that retargeting pixel, that's the name of the game, that is the game changer. I'll tell you a quick story from my childhood and I promise I'll make this brief, my dad and I, and I told the story in another one of my Creative Live classes so, if you've watched that one forgive me but it's particularly relevant here. So my dad and I were at the beach and in Texas you can drive on the beaches, we're in a 1993, 1992 Mitsubishi Eclipse. And so we get stuck in the sand, of course, and as soon as we get stuck in the sand my dad's looking at me I'm 12 years old at the time I can't get in and like, I didn't know how to drive I couldn't see up the steering wheel, and he couldn't really get us out, so we're like bummed, we're stuck. Fortunately at that exact moment, a guy with a big truck and like a winch on the front pulls up right in front of us, says hey, you got stuck you need a hand. And my dad's like yeah, would you help us out? So he goes and he grabs the hook and right as he's about to hook it to my dad's car he looks up to him and he says, hey you know I could probably work a little bit faster 'cause I'm not a tow truck, I can't technically charge you but I can probably work a little bit faster if you know, you took care of me. I've never seen my dad so enraged in all of my life. He was livid he was furious. Now, I know my dad, he's a generous man, he would've given the guy lots of money, he would've been, not lots, he would've tipped him, he would've taken care of him. But because the person felt the need to hold us hostage and say I'm not going to perform this service for you until I get paid, because he chose in our moment of need to quid pro quo a man and his 12 year old son who were stuck in the sand, my dad paid him, but he did it through gritted teeth. And we were out and we were on our way. What if that situation were different though. Right, what if the person did pull us out, I know my dad would've been like, hey can I take care of you, what if the guy would've been no no absolutely not, definitely not, please, happy to do it, new winch, excited to test it out no thank you, right? I don't need the money thanks so much sir, right? And he drove off. Now that person in that moment would have generated tremendous brand value. But if the only way that person has to feed his family is by pulling people out of the sand then that wouldn't be good for business either. So we hear this story and we think, well I'd never be like that tow truck driver but now that I think back to it, I don't know what that guy's personal situation was, maybe he really needed the money. Maybe he had a sick kid at home, right, who knows? I don't know, but I know as a business owner, I've been in that situation before, where it's like, I just need to get paid. I don't like that I gotta do this to you, but I gotta get paid. And I think we've all been in that situation. And if you're there where you're like, gotta get paid, then you'll do that. But what if this guy knew that the second he drove off another man who'd been kind of kicking it on the beach was gonna follow up, was gonna walk up to us and be like hey, I see you met Jimmy, good kid huh? You'd be like oh dang was that his name? Yeah really good kid. I bet that Jimmy, I don't know if you guys have dinner plans tonight but Jimmy is a waiter at Shells which is the Italian restaurant on the island I bet Jimmy would think it would be quite a hoot that's exactly what that guy would say by the way, 'cause he's an old man like who lives on a beach and has a parrot so he'd say he'd be quite a hoot. I bet Jimmy'd think it would be quite a hoot if you'd show up at that restaurant and request his table for dinner tonight, now, how bit a tip, is Jimmy gonna get? Right? Why because Jimmy went first. So we intuitively understand that, that's what brand building is all about. Brand building is all about going first, building value in advance. But when you're first getting started, you just can't afford to do it. You can't afford to do it, because you can't rely on some old dude walking up saying oh yeah his name is Jimmy, he works here, you should go request his table. We can't afford to do that anymore, except, right, because of retargeting we can. We can now willingly and freely give value in advance and know that the good folks at Facebook and Google and other platforms, because we do set this pixel, that they're going to show our ads to people that we've already pulled them out of the sand. This is the key to making your social plan and your social strategy work. Give value in advance. And be willing to pay for people to see your awesome content. And then be willing to pay again. I'm asking you to pay for essentially the same view twice but I can tell you when we started doing this, our average cost per lead was cut dramatically than when we were just saying, hey nice to meet you, want my thing? It was dropped dramatically. Because that's how social works. And because we know intuitively that if we go first we're gonna take care of people. This is what allows us to rely on the kindness of strangers. Because we know that we're gonna be able to follow up. And that's why when it comes to your content, when it comes to your entire social strategy at least these first couple of steps, the goal is not to convert, the goal is not to optimize for conversions, the goal is to engage and hopefully amaze. We wanna engage and we wanna amaze. We wanna go first. We wanna do it in the context of the social platform, we wanna do it in the context of our great, amazing, fabulous one piece of content, they find on the social platform. The conversion will happen later. It'll come, it'll come, let it play out. And know with confidence that it will because, you'll find them again, you'll have some Jimmy Buffet dude with a parrot on his shoulder saying, I bet they'd think it a hoot if you'd come back to your website and ask them about their, you know their wedding photography business. So goal number one is to build a pixeled audience. Your goal of your social plan is to build the pixeled audience so that you have the ability and you are in the right to advertise to them in the future. That's where Facebook custom audiences comes in right that's what it's called if you wanna see how does it work how do I do that, that's also where, you know, Google Adwords has their own version, YouTube through AdWords has one, Twitter has one, AdRoll is and open one. These are all retargeting channels that will allow you to follow up with your audience when they come to your website, they're all there. Now there are a number of links and resources that will be posted in the resources area, I know these are probably too small to see so please don't feel like you have to write all of them down, we are also going to, you know, look to make these slides available, you know, to you as well, so, but just know they're gonna be in the resources area, but they're out there in terms of how to go about executing this plan, it's lever pulling at that point the platforms make it really easy to follow up, you just gotta be willing to do it. It's gotta be baked into your plan. Okay so first up Sony B it said, Hi Ryan, could you give examples of content for product based business, it seems very much easier when a company is a service based industry. I have a jewelry business, thanks. Sure I mean and yes, this is gonna come easier for some than it will others but just keep in mind it's also hard for your competition, so if it's hard for you it's hard for them too. So if you can break through the benefits are there so I just wanna kind of lead with that. Specific to the jewelry business I've known some people in this space where you gotta think what are the types of questions that folks would ask around jewelry. I know as a clueless guy, who 16 years ago had to spend a lot of money on an engagement ring and didn't know anything about it content that would help me pick the right ring. Even if it was things like, clever ways to figure out her ring size, right? Without doing that. 'cause I mean, just again, case in point, right, I remember I went and I picked some of her other rings that I knew she wore and I was like eh, put in on one and like where did it stop, that way I could go into the jewler and do that. That's something I bet a lot of people aren't talking about. So if you know, now I know me, 'cause I was the customer at that point, I knew the challenges that I had, and so figuring out, how do I know what her ring size is without asking her, you know. How do I know what size, like chains she likes does she like short or longer, and how do I know, like clever ways to figure those kind of things out that's just an example of content. But don't think, that because you have a product based business that this doesn't apply to you. Gosh, yeah it actually applies, anyone you just need to think what are the questions that people are asking prior to that. Also keep in mind what are some of the triggering events, that would cause someone to begin looking for your product so what I'm, here's what I mean by that. No product, whether, any, product, service, it really doesn't matter, all you're ever selling is a vehicle, period. You're selling a vehicle that transports people from less desirable before states to more desirable after states, that's it. That's all any of us are in the business of. We are in the transportation business. We transport people from less desirable before states to more desirable after states. That's what your product, your service, it's the only thing that it ever does. If you can figure out what is their less desirable before state that would cause them to begin looking for your product, whether you're selling flame throwers or spoons, right? Then, you can begin, that'll put you in the right mindset to say okay this is their before state, what types of questions do they ask when they become aware that they are in that state. It's not enough just to, tell people they're in it. Talk to the people who know they're in it. And the way that you engage with them is to ask the questions that they begin asking when they enter into that state, so. Perfect. One of the photographers watching online said, I was wondering if you believe that saying that on your social media you should always present 70% free informational products and 30% product and services. Yeah, what are your thoughts on that? It has to be four to one or it won't work, no I'm just kidding. So I would, so 70, 30, I kinda talked about 75,25, so they're within the same right deal, I think it's a feel right, there's some, when you're a marketer who's marketing to marketers, which is what one of our companies does, we can do it more because it's kind of hard to tell. It gets a little Meta, right? But when it's marketing not, when you're marketing marketing about marketing to marketers when is that not content and marketing right so we can do, we can get away with a lot more digital marketer than we can for example in some of our other industries. So you gotta know, but I think they're in the right order of magnitude, I don't, I think it needs to be more than half, and I think if it's not, you know, one out of 10 times, then, like God dang it at some point you gotta ask for the money. They're not just gonna give it to you if you don't ask. So I think that's your general thing, so it sounds like they're in the ball park. Maybe one more from online and if then, if anybody in the audience maybe has a question here in the studio. After, sorry, are there any businesses that can benefit from social advertising over other businesses? Every business, I believe, can and should benefit from the plan that I just showed you. The plan that I've showed you I've executed literally in businesses selling survival and preparedness things to makeup brushes to industrial water filters, to desalinization plants. So if somebody says I don't think this is gonna work for my business, hum, I just, I'm not saying you're wrong, you're just wrong. 'cause if I can leverage these different social channels to get the right type of buyers for string wound filters that are almost as big as me that go into desalinization plants in the Caribbean, I guarantee you that you can too for your audience, we've also done it for brick and mortar, what you're doing is you're gonna change your targeting, if you're local, you're gonna generally target on a radius basis, which the different ad channels allow you to do, you can plop a pin and say, give me everybody generally here. If you're more B to B or in what you target has a very very long sell cycle, then what I would do is I would over index your advertising, around the times when people tend to buy. So in the case of desalinization plants, people were buying all the time but they were really only looking for new vendors once a year around the time when the big industry event came. They would kind of lock down a vendor for a year and that would be their vendor of record. So we figured out pretty early on, it was foolish of us to advertise dramatically during the times that they weren't doing, we still would, we were sending out content, branding, getting it from, we began really advertising, pushing 80 plus percent of our ad spend the month before and the weeks leading, following up that event. So you're gonna do those kind of those new lots around those lines but the model, the formula, the structure, it still remains the same. My question is this, I use an app to push what I've made in a blog up to the social media sites. Do the algorithms get skewed when you do that, do they push them down? There's been a lot of debate along those lines where people have said, if you're not posting directly into the channel, so if go into a Facebook post and if you're not going direct like Facebook.com and doing you post and instead you're running it through, you know, there's a lot of apps that will automate that for you. There's a lot of conspiracy theories about that. We haven't seen it bare out in the data. We've pushed through apps, we really haven't seen it bare out in the data that we've seen, that Facebook and Instagram the other channels haven't said that they that they don't like when stuff is pushed through those apps if it is a variable I think it's a variable that whispers and not a variable that screams. When you're just getting started, you should probably be doing it manually, because that's gonna allow you to get the cadence of it and really you shouldn't automate something till it's proven so prove then automate. And so I think that that is much, you know, my concern would be more that you're automating stuff that just doesn't work, so it's worth pushing it out there and kind of sitting there for a while and say what happened is anybody looking at this. So I think it's I would encourage less automation in the beginning for that than because I think it's an algorithm issue. The jury's still out on that, we use different tools and things all the time and I don't believe it hurts us, suddenly when you're getting in the scale. You're welcome, alright? Hmm if you're selling a service and you're in a very saturated market, how much content do you think you should put out about yourself, you know, because, to stand out, because I'm actually selling kind of my personality. Yep. So what kind of content should I put out about myself, if any. It's closer to if any than a lot, because people don't care. They just don't. I know we want them to care but they don't. They woke up this morning because they have a problem and what they don't think is I need to find someone who can fix this problem for me, generally where we go, especially if we're out on social and we're looking for things, they think, where can I find a quick answer so I can just get, I don't necessarily want to find somebody that can do this, at least not yet. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to put things out into the world, just to prove that we are a worthy guide. Never forget that we are all the protagonists in our own stories, we're the hero, right? We're walking around and we're listening to our soundtrack that's all our music playing, and everybody else is doing that too, right? The second that you insert yourself as the hero of the story, they will hate you for it and they will regrudge it, if you wanna know why as a society we like to tear down our heroes, because we don't like people to be heroes it's the moment that we realize, wait this person isn't a heroic guide trying to help me they see me as a pawn in their mission. You're a guide. And so when you put out content, what you're doing is you're establishing yourself as a worthy guide. If you're gonna go on a backpacking trip you wanna see that the person has a map, and they weren't like in flip flops, right? That's what you're doing. So you put out content now. Once somebody knows you, 'cause it's a journey right? In the beginning you're putting out content that's just there to prove that you're a worthy guide once somebody knows you and they get a little bit deeper into your funnel, once they're re targeted, so you can tell like, I wanna retarget people who have gone through x number of pages or maybe people who have hit this particular page. So you know they haven't just come to your website, but they went to your website and they got to this one page that you know when people do get to this one page, they've watched this video, they're beginning to get indoctrinated, that's when you earn the right to tell them who you are. But even then you're only talking to them about who you are as a point of an introduction it's still their story, you're still the guide, but in the beginning, for the rest of the world to see nobody cares, they just don't. So talk about them. Talk about their problems.