Mastering Funnels | Scaling Your Offer With Split Testing And Data
Aug 17, 2022Learn more about how Scaling with Inbound Traffic, Ad Targeting: Intent vs Disruptive, Split Testing and Variable Logic and Best Practices for Scaling Up help you master funnels. Watch our recent Livestream on YouTube or you may also listen to our podcast on Spotify.
In this live, we covered a few important and timely topics, including:
1) Scaling with inbound traffic
2) Ad Targeting: Intent vs Disruptive
3) Split Testing and Variable Logic
4) Best Practices for Scaling Up
5) Your Questions
Listen to Mastering Funnels on Spotify Now
[TRANSCRIPTION]
"All right. And we are live. Hello, folks. Jason Wilmot here today is Mastering Funnels podcast number eight. And we are coming to you live.
Very excited to be doing this today. Today is August 16, 2022. And today we are going to be talking a lot about inbound ads and how to scale effectively, basically with data and with split testing and just some best practices for scaling up. So on the docket today, what we're talking about, specifically what we're going to dive into right after this. Hey, you are already watching.
Hello there. And then I should say a big shout out to those who are listening on the podcast as well. I know a lot of folks listen after the fact. In fact, they watch this after the fact. So hello to you as well.
But thank you for tuning in. To those of you who are tuning in live, deeply appreciate it. If you have any questions, go ahead and drop them in the chat and then we will address them here in about 20 minutes or so. All right, let's get back to the agenda for today. So the agenda for today is we're really talking about scaling up our offer with data and predictability and with systems that can scale along with us, but also these best practices for scaling.
So we're going to start off talking a little bit about ad targeting and intent versus disruptive ads. I got into a lot of this last week, but we really ran short on time. And so I want to kind of back up and go ahead and give you a better idea about what we're talking about when it comes to really scaling up, because I want to dedicate an entire podcast to this. And maybe it might not even be enough to do in the short amount of time, but I feel like I've talked a lot about retargeting, I've talked a lot about conversions and UTM and all this process that we've used in the past, I've spoken about in the past, but I really haven't dedicated too much podcast time towards scaling up. So that's what we're going to focus on today.
So I'll give you a little bit of context as to what we talked about last week. So we have a framework, but then we're really just talking about that in order to keep our brains on scaling up. So we'll talk about different types of ad targeting, be that intent or be that disruptive. And then we're going to start talking about split testing and what variable logic looks like and where to introduce split test into what you're already doing so that you can have success by introducing these new ideas, these new concepts, these new ads, these new angles, and then how to tell if they're effective or not. Then last after that, we're going to talk about the best practices for scaling up your offer.
So with all that in mind, let me just back up to last week. Last week I talked about our accuracy framework that's ACURI. This is the backbone of our Mastering Funnels program, where we coach individuals on how to leverage paid ads to really and radically scale your revenue using data. Last week, we talked about these five core components. Component number one is architecture.
You have to understand the architecture of your funnel and having these endpoints in your funnel. Things like thank you pages or events. Then what we talked about after that was conversions, because conversions really do two things. The first one is they give you your ROI so you can see the effectiveness on your revenue. But the thing that conversions also do is they'll go out and train the ad platforms for you to go do the work for us, basically by telling that ad platform, yes, I'm looking for an individual who takes this action.
So once we have those two elements, then we're ready to start sending in traffic. And what we do with all of that traffic, whether it's email, whether it is retargeting, whether it's inbound, we have to attach these things called UTMs. So UTM tracking is this really Ninja way of connecting the click all the way down to that conversion that we denoted earlier. And what that UTM is going to do is it's going to give you the exact data for that ad, that ad set, that campaign, that source, so that you know your ROI on the back end. So on top of that UTM information, you can pass that into things like salesforce and HubSpot, so that when you are on the phone with this prospect, you know exactly where they came from.
So after a month or so of doing this, you're going to understand where your best clients or your customers are coming from. This could be an e-commerce. You can understand what the best ads are. This could be SaaS, this could be lead generation are demand gen. So UTMs are really what connects that click all the way down to that conversion.
And then we've talked about retargeting last week as well. And I've talked a lot about retargeting in the past and how it's really a logic game of who are you targeting, who are you not? And sort of the logic game of days since the event occurred. So we're putting ads back in front of them if they took a specific action, but we're only going to do this for X amount of time. And then after that time window, then we'll push them down into another time window.
So it's just this mental exercise of understanding where folks are coming in and then sort of the drop-off point. At some point, you can be willing to just let these people go out of your retargeting window. So that's the context that we're bringing into this and the reason why we always build these pieces first rather than this inbound is because we want the system to be built before we start to scale. It is hard to scale without systems because you're going to lose out on data, you're going to lose out on retargeting or easy sales. So that's really this core focus.
We have to have this architecture, this conversion element is tracking element as well as our retargeting system. Because think about it, we're talking about inbound traffic today, how to scale. But if you don't have retargeting in place, well, you're just going to be pushing people to your website and then out they go and they're never going to hear from you again or the same thing. You're going to be pushing people into your funnel with ads. But if you don't have traffic in place, if you don't have conversion in place, then you're not going to really be able to make a whole lot of sense.
At the end of the day, you're probably going to say, hey, these ads are working, but I don't know where they're working and where they're not. So there's no room to really optimize and you're not in the driver's seat of those campaigns. So today with that context in mind, what we're going to dive into is how to scale up your offer with paid ads. And so last week I talked a little bit about this and this is where we're going to start. We have to know which traffic is going to be best for our offer.
And really there's two types of marketing when it comes to Internet marketing that is intent-based and disruptive. So the example that I gave last week with Disruptive is something like an ad that you see on your TV. You didn't know you needed this product, you didn't know this product existed, but they're paying to put this product or this offer in front of you. You're seeing this, you're not searching for it, you're not going out looking for it. It just comes up on your feet or it comes on your TV or comes on your desktop or whatever and you just see this product that is a Disruptive ad.
And in those ads, what we're typically trying to do is agitate the viewer and get them to pay attention to us. And then you're introducing the solution or this offer and then you're prompting them to kind of take a further step. A good example of this would be TikTok, where TikTok is very much hashtag and interest-based targeting. So you are choosing an interest-based or you're choosing a few hashtags to run on and then you're putting your ad in front of these people. So as they're scrolling or flipping or pushing it through their phone, all of a sudden they see your ad.
And in the past we've talked about the importance of hooks in disruptive marketing because that hook, that first few seconds is really what's going to draw these folks in to listen to the rest of your offer. And so when we have this Disruptive ad, what we're really trying to do is stop the scroll. You've probably heard that before. So in other words, what we're trying to do is really pull out that audience. And the way that we're going to do that is by calling them out.
You're going to be calling them out in the first 3 seconds and naming who you are targeting so that they can say, hey that's me or no that's not me. And they're going to go right on by. And then after that what you're going to do is you're going to present them with the rest of your script or the rest of your offer or the rest of the details. Maybe it's features if you're an app, maybe it's your products if you are ecommerce. So that is really what disruptive marketing is and there's a huge opportunity there.
If you can convey that ad, right, if you can convey what you are selling and what this offer is, then Disruptive is really hard to beat because it has the power of virality. You can go in and you can leverage this one piece of content over and over and over. So there's extreme advantages in disruptive marketing. So you see Disruptive marketing, you see it on TikTok, you see it on Facebook, you see it on Instagram and you can even see it on YouTube, you see it on TV if you're watching TV. That is a form of Disruptive marketing.
So really what we're trying to do is we're trying to understand what is going to be the best traffic source. Is it going to be something like Disruptive ads or is it going to be something a little bit more intent-based? So let me walk you down the path of what intent-based marketing is. So what I want you to think about is a local service. Let's say that you have a problem, an immediate problem.
You locked yourself out of your car, your water heater went out, you had a storm roll through and it damaged your house. So immediately what people tend to do with a local service or something like that is they go onto Google. They go on to Google and they search for something. That is what we mean by intent. That is a query.
They're typing in a question. They're typing in best plumber near me or local plumber need. Now I don't know, they're in a hurry, forgiven for whatever they're typing. But that is intent basis. They already are demonstrating their intent and they're typing that in.
And that is why Google has been so amazingly powerful in their revenue because they really capitalize on those intent-driven searches and that's where a lot of our intent starts. So if we're researching something, if we're researching a health benefit or a supplement, typically what we're going to do is we're going to go online and we're going to type in our query, we're going to type in our question. We're going to type in something, right? So, for example, let me give you a quick example of something I was searching about last night. I think Mud Water is a very interesting product.
I've been looking into the different health benefits of different types of mushrooms or cacao or these other ingredients within Mud Water. And so I'm looking and I'm researching into this. Now, ideally, I am displaying my intent, and then you or somebody can put their ad in front of me saying, hey, this is exactly what you're looking for, right? And then because of my search history, because I've put in this enough, that enables me to say, hey, that enables me to be kind of eligible for this ad to come up. So if I'm running ads for someplace like Mud Water and I type in something like Mud Water ingredients or Best mushrooms for nootropics, then I hope I'm saying that word, right?
Nootropics. Whatever. I'm an educated folk here anyways. So I think what you get is when you're searching online, you are demonstrating that you will have intent, and you're sort of waving your hand up in the air saying, hey, I'm actually looking for the service, right? Best window replacement near me or best roofer near me or locksmith near me.
So what you're doing there is you're really having this or waving this signal that you have this intent. I wouldn't say that there's a best spot to advertise. It all depends upon your funnel. Now, this is where I think we can get very creative, though. We can get creative with both these combined.
So if you have something where there's intent, let's just go with the plumber near me. Right now, a plumber near me is typically an immediate problem. So this might not be the best example. Let's do something. I've used this example in the past, roofer.
So you've had a storm come through, it's damaged your roof, or it's damaged your sighting, it's damaged your windows. And so you type into Google best exterior company. And then you start clicking through and you're looking. And at that point, you're kind of beginning this shopping air quotes, right, this shopping journey. You click through and you research.
You start researching. Well, this is where disruptive marketing actually benefits the intent-driven. So if you have something like retargeting set up where people are going in and they're typing with intent. But they don't have to make an immediate decision right then and there. As would be the case with an exterior company.
Then what this exterior company could do is start putting disruptive ads back in front of somebody in the form of retargeting ads. Where they're putting out content regarding their past happy customers or their testimonials. Or they're educating this person on why their company is best. That might not work in the case of this plumber, right? Because sometimes these problems need to be solved right now.
I don't need to see a testimonial about a locksmith to get my car unlocked or my house unlocked or something like that. I just need to solve right now. So I want you to just hold these two kind of together, because what you're going to see is how these kind of play off one another very well. Now let's take this intent-based approach then to YouTube, because this is a little bit different. So I give you the example earlier of mud, water or sacred seven I was looking at this is another product of like what are these blends?
What are these mushroom blends that I could be researching? So this is where the power of intent meets disruptive on a platform like YouTube. Because if I'm searching best mushrooms for health benefits or memory, whatever, like I'm putting all of that in on YouTube. You can then take one of these video ads and then you can run it at these people who have typed in specific intent-based searches. And let's just say that they type in best mushroom powder or something like that in YouTube.
But they didn't click on your ad. They typed it into Google. They didn't click on you at all. Well, YouTube has banked that query or Google has banked that query. And so at some point in time, you can go and you can put that video ad back in front of those people.
So really you're leveraging intent here by somebody typing in that query. But if you don't win that click, then that's okay, because you can then follow up by putting these sort of quasi disruptive ads in front of them at another point. So really what intent is, you're listening for signals, you're listening for keywords, and there's a lot of other things that we can do off of that, right? If you nail down those keywords, then all of a sudden you have this SEO game that you can play. You can write blogs around this specific query.
You can write and in fact, that's exactly what I was looking at. I looked at Mud Water ingredients, I read Mud Water, and then I scrolled down and I kept going down. And some gentleman had a blog post on how to make Mud Water yourself. And he listed all of the ingredients. He linked it with an affiliate link to Amazon.
Very wise. And all of a sudden I had started seeing a solution of what I was looking for. But think about it this way. This guy was not running ads at all. He leveraged that keyword research that he did on Mud Water ingredients, and now he's ranking something like fifth or 6th Organically, and he's using that intent and then pushing people to Amazon in order to get that affiliate fee for that product.
I thought it was absolutely brilliant and thought it was kind of fit into this podcast today. So really what we're trying to do again, we're using intent to identify signals for what people are after. We can win them on a search with a Google search. If that doesn't work, we can then put display ads in front of somebody if they are typing in this query or the specific keyword. We can put in YouTube videos in front of these people because we've pulled that query as well.
And so then if let's flip this. We have this Disruptive ad and we are going and we're advertising on places like TikTok or advertising wherever, right, on Facebook or Instagram, and people click on that. They come to the website and then they leave without buying. And then all of a sudden they go to Mudwater competitors, sacred seven competitors. That is where you can use that intent, right?
So you can bid specifically on that competitor. So if you're not going to win them on this initial search, you can use Disruptive to push them into your funnel and then retarget them after they leave your website with these other kind of nuanced, long tail searches, if you will. So what I want to say is there's no right way to use one of these versus the other, nor is one better than the other. I think in some select cases, like locksmith immediately near me, you don't care about disruptive somebody's not on Facebook or on Instagram looking for locksmith. That's just not going to happen.
So most of the time we have this ability to leverage both. And I think that is really where we should begin our thinking. It's not an either or, it's more about what do I lead with, what is first, what comes next? Because there's so much knowledge to be gained off of this. Like I said, once you've identified keywords, then you can really start making content around those keywords where you can write blog posts, you can make YouTube videos.
So there's so much power in those keywords, in intent, but it's really hard to flush those out over time. But that is kind of the basis of what we're going to be talking about as far as inbound is concerned. So I'm going to move on to this next part and that is split testing and variable logic. So let's just say that we're rolling with these examples. So we've got Disruptive ads and we've got keyword ads.
We can run ads on Google, we can run ads on YouTube for these queries or display ads for these queries, and then we have this Disruptive element as well. So at what point though? At what point if you're advertising do you start to introduce this idea of split testing? And then once you understand what split testing is, how do you implement it and then keep iterating on those split tests? So really what this split test comes down to the foundation of split testing is actually a few steps before this.
And setting up your framework, setting up your conversions and setting up your UTM information. So if we attach UTM information on our ads, then what we can do is we can see how they perform. So if we introduce a variable, if we take the constant of what's already working and then we introduce a variable, then all of a sudden we can compare A to B and that's what people are talking about when they're talking about an AB test or split testing. It's the same thing. It's taking the constant and it's introducing a variable.
So what I want to do is kind of talk to you about what that looks like as far as a campaign is concerned. And we can kind of be platform agnostic here. Let's just assume it's a Facebook or Instagram or TikTok campaign. So at this campaign you are trying to go get conversions somehow or some way. And at the ad set level of every campaign, you're typically targeting interests.
You're targeting the placement as well. So the interest or the demographics, age, gender, interests, hashtags look like audience, there's so many different things, but it's essentially who are you targeting and where are they seeing it. So that is sort of the split testing at the ad group level. So when you create a new ad group, what you're trying to do is you're trying to say, okay, I'm going to take this existing ad group with these ads, but I want to measure it against something else. So perhaps in one ad group you're targeting a specific age, demographic, maybe it's 34 to 55.
But in this other one you want to compare, well, I really want to compare the 24 to 35 and kind of weigh these two against each other. And if you have UTMs and if you're passing those through with your clicks, then you can know how these are going to compare. I mean, pretty much apples to apples at this point. So that is the power of split testing because what you're trying to do is you're trying to see which of these performs better. And because you have already implemented conversion rate optimization, which is a major thing that we talked about last week, and that's the number two step in mastering funnels to setting your conversion.
What you're doing is you're going into your analytics or you're going into your platform analytics and you're just comparing what is the click-through rate, what is the cost per click, what is the landing page view, how much does that cost between the two? And then ultimately what is the result rate? The result rate in this case would be your conversion rate optimization. So if you're running ads and you have a landing page that is converting at 10%, they're clicking through and they're signing up. So one out of every ten people who clicks through actually opts into your offer or signs up for your webinar or downloads, whatever, right?
10% could be low, it could be high. It just depends on the offer and the funnel. Well, in Ad Group B or Ad Group Two, what you're trying to do is you're trying to understand, well, what can I do differently? So a good example of this would be on Facebook market. On Facebook ads.
In one ad group you could be targeting only you could be targeting the same exact people. But on Ad Group A you're using Facebook as the placement, or in Ad Group B, you're using Instagram. And so what you're going to do is you're going to split test between what's going to perform better. All of the ads are the same, all of the demographic and targeting is the same, but the placement is different. And over time you're going to find out, what's a better platform for me?
Should I be advertising on Instagram? Should I be advertising on should I be advertising on Facebook? Well, the problem though that arises eventually is what happens when you introduce a different platform, right? Like TikTok or YouTube? How can you compare TikTok to YouTube, to Facebook, to Instagram?
And again, the solution there is your UTM's and you're looking in your own database at that point. So these ad platforms are great for split testing. And looking at the differences between these ad groups is really ideal to get into the ad platform itself and kind of dive in and see the nuance. But as soon as you start introducing different channels, that's where this gets a little bit more interesting. And that's where you have to use a program like this or a framework like that so that you can all of a sudden start to understand, okay, we're running Facebook ads, running Instagram ads, running YouTube ads, and running TikTok ads.
I'm going to go into my Google Analytics, I'm going to look at the conversion rate according to all of these. I can dial it down into the campaign. I can go lower into all of the ad sets and how they perform. I can go into the ads and see how those measure up to. And then on top of that, what you can do is you can understand what are my best sources outside of paid ads.
Maybe these are ranking up compared to affiliates. And what you would see is like, man, our affiliates are outperforming everything that we want to do on paid ads. So do we allocate more budget over to the affiliates or go get more affiliates? And so that is the split testing mentality of its understanding, how to identify a constant, how to go in and set a baseline. And then you're thinking to yourself, how do I go in and add onto this little experiment?
So that's the ad group level, typically what we're doing is we're targeting these people and the placement, if it's something like YouTube, typically what you're differentiating at the ad group level is you're targeting keywords or you're targeting placement or like channel placement. Like you're running ads on specific channels or audiences would be another one, or topics. Those are kind of the four ad groups that I cycle through. Or if you're doing something more advanced, like a skag approach, it's a single keyword ad group. What you're doing is you're testing the different keywords at each ad group.
So the ad group again is the audience. Always think about that, the audience and the placement. Who is seeing this and where are they seeing it. And then even if it's like a single keyword group, or if it's a single keyword ad group flavor of a campaign, what you're going to see is those you can still think about it that way. Who is typing in these keywords and then where are they seeing them?
Then at the ad level, it's a little bit different. So at the ad level, what we're trying to do when we're split testing and this depends on which platform, so I'm going to stick to Facebook and Instagram for this because it's easiest to think about. So in Facebook and Instagram, obviously you have different variables that go into each ad. You have the headline, you have the creative, be it an image, be it a video, and then you have the description and there's like little call to actions or sub-headlines and stuff that you can tweak. So typically what we're doing when we're going in and we're setting up campaigns either for ourselves or for our clients, we want to introduce variation into those because I mean, gosh, I would love to be able to put out one ad and one ad only and just have this magic bullet that absolutely works.
But that's typically not the case when it comes to split testing, we should always be introducing a new variable even if we're having great success. Like what can we do to continue to just tweak this to make it better and better and better? So maybe you're switching up the angle of the headline, maybe you're switching up the image to a video, maybe you're just swapping between the two. Maybe it's the colors. That is where we kind of get interesting at the ad level.
Now typically my brain is if I'm thinking about what do I split test first? Typically my brain is on the ad group, so I'm thinking about the who and the where. I think that's a little bit more important. But at the same time, I am trying to introduce variables into these ad platforms as well. So if you cook up a brand new, let's just say you're cooking up a brand new campaign, this is the minimum that it needs to have.
It needs to have a minimum of two ad groups because you're trying to compare these two and these ad platforms, like to test between the two. So you have two different ad groups at all times. And then in each ad group you need to have at least. Two ads. So these ads could be somewhat similar, they could be completely different.
But at the end of the day, what you're trying to do is you're trying to pass in experiments into these campaigns so that it can self-learn and self-optimize. But then at you as a creative expert here, you're introducing things and angles that you think might perform a little bit better compared to the constant. So let me know if you have any questions on split testing and invariable logic. And the next one we're going to talk about here is how to scale up with proof and predictability and some reflective practices to do that. But before we do that, we are going to answer some questions.
So I'm going to go to the live chat right now, see what we have in here and then we will go. Okay, first question. I find that hooks fall into one of three categories emotional, logical and educational. Emotional is obviously the most captivating, but the others can be used in a comprehensive campaign to address objections.
Do you have a cadence or strategy for using different types of hooks in campaign deployment? So I think let me gather my thoughts here. As far as hooks are concerned, let me segment my thinking into two different types of hooks. I think of hooks as in TikTok, like the first 2 seconds. And I also think of hooks as in a single image ad on Facebook or Instagram.
And what I mean by that is this ultimately what you are trying to do is you're trying to extract the attention of this viewer. And you can do that audibly or you can do that by putting a captivating headline or copywriting in front of them. Ultimately I think both work right. But I think it's understanding your user or your customer and where they are. So whether it is emotional, logical or educational, I think that is worthy of the split test.
But I think it's first understanding where these customers or where these users want to be. If you're SAS, if you're a SaaS offer, because I think this works well because we all use software. Typically what we're trying to do when we're using software is to save time, save money, like make our lives easier. So the question is, how do I extract that? How do I extract that from somebody on Facebook or Instagram.
Well, I'm typically digging in like if this is a B to B offer, typically what I would be thinking about is what is the problem that they're trying to solve, what is the end goal and then how do I kind of position my offer into that? So what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to hook them on a single image ad. So the image is probably just to get their attention, but then their eye typically goes to the headline. So the headline, I think that would be more emotional in this case, is tired of losing money or tired of wasting time or ready to gain an hour a day or ready to scale your revenue or 3.5 row as for every dollar spent. Like, I've seen tons of these images and I've run tons of these.
So that's what you're really digging into. Educational might be a good hook for a product down the line, but if this is like sort of demand gen, I probably wouldn't go the educational as much. I think the hook isn't necessarily educational. I think the content within the ad would be educational. So you're trying to extract, right?
You're trying to feel the pain, harness that pain, kick them in the bruised knee to borrow some terms that I've liked. And then I think you're layering on the educational. So I do think the emotional would be good. Now, I've seen this in a lot of ads. Have they shifted their strategy from stop losing money or stop wasting time to start saving money?
Because I think people, and this may be as a little bit more the logical side that you've commented here, I think people understand with this recession or this economic downturn that potentially that could shift some marketing more to save money versus stop losing money or make money. So I think there's some tweaking to do there now on the video side of where these hooks are taking place, I think that's very interesting and I don't know if I have a specific answer other than let's test it, right? But emotional, logical and educational. I think educational really performs well on hooks. Like on TikTok, you see this all the time, three websites that should be illegal that are not and all of a sudden you're like wow, I need to understand this or use these eight hooks in your opening TikTok for better whatever, right?
So I think there's tons of room for all of this. But again, it's understanding where these people are and obviously it's understanding your offer. At the very end of the day, you have to understand what your offer is and why it benefits people. And then I think when you're on those sales calls, you're listening to people, you're understanding where they are and then there's a direct flow into your marketing materials from those sales calls. So potentially that educational one could be absolutely huge.
I think we've all seen those types of I think we've all seen those where I think there's another category potentially and maybe this is emotional is just like using humor. And I see that, I see these ads online, I don't even remember what they are there. It's a T shirt brand. Their ads are absolutely they're just spot on. They're so good.
And I think what that then lends itself to is that is a disruptive, right, exactly what we're talking about earlier. There's no intent around like a T shirt or something like that, I should say there's very little intent. I think. But if it's like a typical, like, hey, this is a bro t shirt that I'm just going to wear normally, I want it to be comfortable. Hey, this ad is kind of funny.
I'm kind of like thinking about these people now. So I don't know. That's a really good question. Hopefully that I answered it. Do you have a cadence or surgery for using different types of hooks in campaign development?
So, yeah, typically what I would do in this case though, is I would like think about this in a modular setting where you have kind of the hook. Then you have this description of your offer and then kind of your call to action, this description of your offer. That can be a lot of different things. So I'm just not even going to comment on that. But the hook, right, you can film this middle piece.
You can film that CTA and kind of have this bank or this ad in the bank. And then what you could do is you can just take a couple of different hooks, maybe it's four, maybe it's five different hooks, and you use all of those on the same ad, but all of a sudden you have five different ads on because you have these hooks. And I think what you can then do is just introduce these to a platform and then you're going to find out over time, well, what is it? I don't think it is like one trump the other, or one is only to be used or never to be used. I think it generally depends on, again, what your offer is and your power behind it.
Okay, I've got more questions and I need to hustle through this because I'm running out of time. So here's another question. So video ads for local businesses. Video is the go to ad format for every online business, but I rarely see a local video ad, at least in my area. So this was from an agency owner who was inquiring like, hey, I want to be able to provide video ads for local businesses.
And this is kind of what my reply was and is, I think, again, when you're dealing with local businesses, I think most people, you have to think Google first. At least every local business owner knows that they need SEO. They've heard that, they think, they kind of understand that. They understand, hey, the higher that I rank on Google, that is where I need to invest some money. And so that's typically where local businesses are willing to spend more money because over time, those Google reviews that SEO ranking is very valuable.
So that's typically why local businesses don't necessarily leverage online video. I would also say that I think sometimes the local agency probably doesn't have the proficiency in running these well for businesses. So perhaps they've tried it and it just doesn't work because the local agency is typically focusing on the creative and the views and not necessarily like, the conversions and the sales. And ultimately, like, in a market like this, that is absolutely what business owners need, as they need that immediate revenue right now. So what I would do in this case is I think video is absolutely awesome.
I would use it on YouTube for local businesses, or I would stick with intent and try to continue to grow their ranking online. But then if they leave, that's where you retarget them on different ad platforms with that video. Now the question, what is the best way to track sales from organic versus paid traffic? I have a funnel sitting on my Instagram profile and it's getting sales. Should I duplicate the funnel and run paid ads for better tracking?
The answer is no, you don't want to do that. You don't want to duplicate your funnel at all. This would be a solution where you use UTMs. So in Google Analytics, you should see your organic traffic or your direct traffic. And then if you're using UTMs, you will know the difference between paid.
So, yeah, if you duplicate a funnel, that's just going to add a lot of complexity that you don't want to. And again, that's not something that you should be split testing. You shouldn't be split testing. There is no split testing. If you're splitting it and it's the same thing, there is no split testing.
The split testing would occur of a different landing page. Right? So it's the same funnel, but a different landing page where somebody can opt in or do something differently. So I would steer clear of duplicating this altogether. What I would do instead is use UTM and some better tracking in order to kind of find the place here.
And then the last question, then I'll get to the last top tracking reporting tools for marketing agencies. What I would stick with is Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and UTMs. To begin with, if you want to go down like the Weber Low path or Hirose path, you're going to have to be spending a lot of money in order to kind of recoup the ROI on something like Hirose. Absolutely phenomenal. Do it.
But I think as far as, like, a local marketing agency, I think what's most important is just you being able to deliver the results to your clients. And the best way that that's going to happen is probably through Google Analytics because it's powerful, it's free, the client has to have it. You have to be having it. But the problem, again, what most I think local agencies struggle with is they're good at getting views or good in getting clicks, but they don't know how to really attribute what is going on past that click. So I think the best tool is obviously setting up conversions and reporting on those conversions and reporting on whether you're moving the needle for those folks or not.
Okay, all right, well, we don't have a ton of time, but this isn't going to take long. So the last thing that we should talk about when it comes to scaling up your inbound is best practices, right? How do you implement things in order to split test? Right? So we've kind of gone through the nuance of what to do and what to click on and the difference between how to split test ad groups and ads.
But at the end of the day, really what this comes down to is either business owners or marketers or marketing teams ability to synthesize and reflect on information. So what I want to do is I want to give you this kind of reporting template. And when I say reporting, I think what we should think about is a discipline. Reporting is a discipline. So if you're reporting internally for your own team, if you're reporting for your clients, if you're an agency, reporting absolutely matters because one, it shows what you did, but then two, you should take that information of what you did and then set it up for this next round.
So what I'd like for you to think about is this idea of sprinting, right? A two-week sprint, a sprint being a set amount of time where you're trying to run this experiment. And then at the end of this experiment, you're going to reflect on whether that experiment worked or didn't work or what components. So I want to give a shout-out to one of my very first product managers or products project managers, Stefan Ifram, over in Belgium. We consulted together for a SaaS startup over in Japan and he introduced this reflective practice to me and I've stuck with it ever since.
So it's really a couple of things. So at the end of this two-week sprint, what we're doing is we're pulling open a Google Doc or something like that, and we're noting a few things. The first is this what did we do? We're typing out what did we do? What do we do on Facebook?
What do we do on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, so on and so forth. Then it goes to what did we learn? Is there anything that we took away from this that perhaps we didn't know before, but now all of a sudden we do know? And so we thought about what we did and what we learned, and now what we need to do is talk or write down what is next. Because we learned this, because we did this, we found out this.
Now, what are we going to do next? That's sort of the results from these past experiments, whether we're looking at UTM, whether we're looking at ad platforms, we have the data in front of us now. Let's synthesize it. Let's reflect on what we did so that we can plan to what we're going to do next. Hey, this ad group, outperformed.
Ad group A outperformed. Ad group B. This ad was the best in Add group A. So what are we going to do this next round? Okay, well, we're going to pause at Group B then, and we're going to introduce this ad group C or Add Group B.
Two, I don't know what you're going to name it, but that's the process. That's this iterative process of thinking and reflecting and synthesizing. So you're planning out, okay, what did we do? What did we learn then? What is next?
And then there's a very powerful component next of what do we not know? So what do we not know? This is where your sort of document you're thinking, where there's just some things that happened in this campaign where it's just like I don't really understand what happened or why it did, but it did occur. And this is what we don't know. For example, running ads right now for a client targeting a different city and their ads, or they're getting a lot of traffic from someplace, from another state, and we've excluded that.
We've gone through and removed that from all the campaigns, and sometimes it still shows up. So that is one of those, I don't know what is happening, but this is something that we need to continue to keep our eye on and take care of. So that is what we don't know. Now, obviously, there's a fifth component to all of this, and that is the reporting of the numbers themselves. And typically what you're reporting on are what are those high-level KPIs?
What is the conversion rate? What's the click-through rate? What was the budget? What was your return on ad spend? And then hopefully, you're linking to a live document, whether it be like a Google studio or I use a reporting tool called Reports.
It's with the Zwar, this kind of this real-time dashboard where you're able to just look at all of these analytics all over the place. So, again, flash that up. I'll say that one more time. What we did, what we learned, what's next, what we don't know, and then the numbers.
So that's it, guys. That's what we talked about. We talked about how to start scaling up our offer with paid ads and how to scale effectively. And what we talked about is using ad targeting versus intent and disruptive. We talked about split testing and introducing variable logic at different levels of all of these pieces.
And then we finished up with best practices for scaling up and using reflection in what we're doing. All right, that will do it for today's podcast. Thank you for all those folks who tuned in. Thank you for the questions that were dropped. If you're watching this after the fact, go ahead and drop a question and we'll answer it on the next podcast.
And then in the meantime, guys, just have a great rest of your week. I always love doing this. It's a lot, getting it ready to go, but it's something that I really come to cherish and just really appreciate the listenership. For those listening and the viewership of those who watch and then also throw in comments later, I hope today was very helpful in terms of scaling up and if you have any questions, again drop them in the comments below. We'll address them on the next podcast and we'll see you in the next live.
Alright guys, take it easy, be kind to one another and we'll see you soon. Bye."