Tips for B2B paid search marketing

Episode Description

Discover how to effectively use LinkedIn for engaging potential clients and why now is a crucial time for B2B advertising due to lower costs and increased platform engagement. Gain insights on adjusting marketing efforts in response to the current economic climate, ensuring your business remains competitive and ready to capitalize on emerging opportunities.

The panel discusses:

• Adjusting B2B Marketing Strategies Amidst Changes
• Importance of Content and Digital Presence
• Leveraging LinkedIn for B2B Engagements
• Predictions and Strategic Planning

Episode Takeaways

Adjusting B2B Marketing Strategies Amidst Changes:

• Focus on maintaining relationships and consistent engagement with the target audience.
• Emphasize relationship-driven marketing rather than product pitches.
• Utilize smart bidding and targeted campaigns to address specific segments effectively.

Importance of Content and Digital Presence:

• Content creation should solve major pain points or satisfy specific curiosities to attract mid-funnel engagements.
• Ensure that the digital presence is responsive to current market conditions, reflecting up-to-date services and products.

Leveraging LinkedIn for B2B Engagements:

• LinkedIn serves as a robust platform for B2B interactions, offering precise targeting and engagement tools.
• Focus on creating valuable lead magnets and utilize LinkedIn’s features to build and nurture professional relationships.

Predictions and Strategic Planning:

• Regularly revisit and adjust marketing strategies based on the evolving business landscape and consumer behavior.
• Engage in proactive planning and forecasting to anticipate changes and adapt marketing efforts accordingly.

Episode Transcript

Frederick Vallaeys: So welcome everyone to PPC town hall number nine. We’ve got another great one for you. And we took a week off, but the reason we did that was so that we could come back with a slightly enhanced format. Or actually it’s going to be massively enhanced format and we have some great speakers to help us with that.

So we decided. To go a little bit more topical. You know, we, we can’t do nine weeks in a row of oh my God, this covid thing. Right. Let’s let’s get back to business like everyone’s doing here and let’s talk about some specific topics. So the first topic we’ve got this week is B2B paid search and paid social.

And so for that, we’ve got a couple of panelists. Two of them are here. One of them we’re hoping is able to find us. So Frank Cowell, welcome to the call today. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Frank Cowell: Frederick, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. My name is Frank Cowell. I’m the CEO of a digital strategy and execution firm called Digitopia or based out of the San Diego area.

And we work with firms to help them target and identify their ideal prospects online as well as throughout the entire buyer’s journey so that they, we, they can engage people with meaningful content and offers. And create unique positioning along the way. And of course, PPC is part of how we create some of that engagement, and I’m happy to talk about all the other ways that we do that as well.

But I’m just excited to be here, and thanks for having me.

Frederick Vallaeys: And there we have Bandito Matt Van Wagner. Matt, what’s going on with you?

Matt Van Wagner: Well, you know, Fred, I’m trying to practice safe you know, safe town hauling and you know, I, I don’t know what your protocols have been. So I just wanted to kind of keep myself covered.

And so we, Oh God, Oh God. But the we’re, we’re doing well here. I’m based up in Vermont and spring has finally come here to Vermont. We’ve got the lilacs in full blossom. It’s a beautiful time of the year. And Oh, here comes AJ. Hey, that’s that’s good deal. But anyway, my our company find me faster.

We’ve been around for for a few years. We have a coterie of clients from various B2B industries people that heat metal punch holes in metal sell furniture to other businesses medical equipment to hospitals. Services like legal and other accounting type of things to, to businesses.

So we, we’ve got a wide diversity of what you might call a B2B clientele. And so we won’t be talking specifically about that thing that we’re all going through right now, but I think we should talk about sort of where, You know where we think things are going and so I’m looking forward to a good discussion and Frank Great to have you here.

I’d love to you know, love to catch him. Oh, look at that There’s a Harry McHarry and AJ Wilcox. How are you doing?

Sorry about

AJ Wilcox: that. I was super muted

Frederick Vallaeys: How’s it going aj? So we’re just saying hello to everyone here Oh, Matt is no longer practicing a safe webinaring, but AJ, where are you calling in from? And tell us a little bit about who you are. So everyone gets to know you a bit.

AJ Wilcox: Perfect. Well, as you can see from my license plate here I specialize in LinkedIn.

So LinkedIn PPC is, is all we do. I run an agency called b2linked. com. And that’s, that’s all we do is LinkedIn. I play around in a lot of other areas of. Digital ads as it pertains to Google and Facebook, but mainly just to see how they compare and how LinkedIn can improve. So very heavy and B2B focus.

And I’m coming from the state of Utah where it’s, we’re not able to ski. But that’s generally what, what we’re excited about in wintertime here.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah. Well, it’s are you still supposed to be able to skip this later in the year? That’s pretty amazing.

AJ Wilcox: No, we’re getting pretty late now, but yeah.

Frederick Vallaeys: Well, thanks for joining us and bringing some of that B2B expertise.

So why don’t we start with this, right? I mean, so Matt said, like, obviously we have to talk about this thing that’s happening and it’s changed everything. But we’re kind of like many weeks into it now and we’re in the phase where everything is reopening and we’re getting back to business. And and I know, Matt, maybe we’ll start with you, but you did a webinar kind of at the beginning of all of this happening.

One of the SEL live sessions that was also on B2B. You know, anything since that time that has changed meaningfully that you think is like really important to talk about?

Matt Van Wagner: Well yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s I feel a lot with working with clients in different industries that it’s sort of like the three blind men and an elephant where, you know, we each describe a different part of the elephant and completely different things are going on.

Now we were, we’re the first thing we were concerned about. Specifically for B2B was any reliance on audiences was going to be very unreliable. As people were shuffling from office into the home cookie pools were basically sort of, you know, busted up and, and the question was, you know so demographic data also kind of got a little fubar.

And so we were, we were, the main thing we were trying to do is look at signals and things that we could make adjustments to. Where we are now is really with each of the clients we’ve got who have different levels of offline online activity that our online you know, our online paid campaign support, but don’t necessarily get full credit for, you know, in some cases lead gen, you know, and, and, and CMS systems are not connected.

So what we found is that Then and now and I think really importantly now is staying on top of our relationships with our clients Where we are talking to them about what are they seeing is the phone ringing our rfq numbers going up? How is lead? And going up are you and now we’ve got the additional thing b2b where typically summertime gets a little bit quieter So, you know, maybe things are reopening but we don’t see it because it’s a flat line because it’s it’s that so Those those are the types of things we think constant communication and re evaluation is important

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah, and then that’s yeah, we’ve heard that so much, right?

You got to talk to your clients more often than before and I think as a result of that We’re all way busier than we used to be but to your point man, I want to hear from frank on this We’re getting into summer, right? When things are a bit slower, do any of you think that things are just being shifted now by the two, three months that we lost, or are we still going to see those summer slowdowns?

Frank Cowell: Yeah, I think, I think things are being shifted and some of it is a self fulfilling prophecy because as the fear comes, people react, but it’s not necessarily based on. Reality, right? So, you know, I think what’s interesting is in b2b We have long sales cycles in many b2b clients that we deal with. Anyway, they’re just long sales cycles And so like let’s just take about the let’s just take the thing let’s just take that off the table for a moment and if we just think about the kind of experience and journey that a company would go through when trying to engage their audience, especially If they haven’t done it consistently if they haven’t been religious about it and then they start to You Gauge someone or they hire someone to do this.

There’s a ramp up, right? You’re talking you’re going to need a good 12 24 months in market of being consistent Before you start to see this thing become a machine. So that’s just the reality of b2b marketing Anyway, so now when you add in, you know, what’s gone on I think what we’re seeing is There’s a lot of people who are immediately just kind of jump ship, right?

And they say, Hey, we’re going to pause. We’re just not going to do anything because now is a quote unquote bad time to be marketing. And what I, my response to that is, If your approach to marketing, especially as a B2B was very product pitch focused to begin with you were doing B2B marketing wrong all along To right now emphasizes the need for us to be more relationship driven marketing And that’s the way it should have been all along And so that’s kind of what we’re trying to remind people of is Hey, there are still conversations to be had.

There are still people who want to engage in those conversations. We might have a 90, 120, 180 day, you know, soft period, for sure. No one’s denying that. But you know, my question back is, do you then want that same 90, 120, 180 day gap in your pipeline when it does resume? You know, because the conversations you forego today are going to be sales opportunities.

You don’t have three and six months from now. So I think right now, it’s, it’s more critical than ever to be relationship driven in your, in your approach as a B2B. Hopefully this is a wake up call that that’s what should have been happening this whole time. If you don’t mind shameless self plug, I wrote a a book and launched a book recently called building your digital utopia.

It’s on this very topic of building relationships digitally. So, And it’s especially apropos for B2B organizations. So I would highly recommend you, you know, B2B start looking into how they can be more relationship driven and not so product and pitch focused.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah, we’ll put a link to that book on Amazon up on on the video afterwards, but that’s a good read.

And AJ, I would like to loop you in on this. Peace, right? So if we’re talking about having conversations as opposed to pitching products LinkedIn seems like the ideal place to start those conversations too. So tell us a bit about what you’ve seen and how B2B has evolved in this in this weird time.

AJ Wilcox: Yeah. And just to add onto what Frank said, Frank, that was brilliant by the way. Thank you so much for sharing. Just to add on there, I think there’s a lot of fear and uncertainty in the market. So we, we might see people being unsure about budgets, having reduced budgets. And so maybe we’re going to see kind of a reduced dampened summer, but then we’re also going to see smaller budgets moving forward as people are just trying to figure things out on top of that people right now, because of that uncertainty are afraid to sign big deals.

They’re afraid, afraid to sign contracts. And so these, These people who were in the pipeline are not closing. So I think there’s a lot of fear here. I think B2B marketers are maybe rightly getting scared. But on the other hand, if you understand that this is the best time to be advertising, just like Frank mentioned right now, add costs are the lowest that they will ever be across all networks.

And because of that, it’s the cheapest way to get in with an audience on top of that, specifically for LinkedIn, we see audiences are spending more time there. Probably because they’re either hedging their bets, looking for another job, or they’re not afraid of their boss walking by and seeing them on social media, but for whatever reason, they’re on LinkedIn in droves.

So more people, more attention and lower costs. This just seems like the perfect formula to me for a long sales cycle. Take advantage of the lower costs now to build your pipeline and start those conversations. If you are running ads, specifically bottom of funnel, you’re trying to get people to close deals.

I wouldn’t do that right now. I just, I think that might be a waste of money while there’s uncertainty, but certainly start those conversations and relationships while it’s cheap and don’t suffer, you know, 18 months from now when you have an empty pipeline. Yeah. If I can just, you know, add on to what AJ is saying, like this really means organizations have to look at the entire journey of their experience and make sure that they have.

Frank Cowell: Relationship driven assets and offers and engagement the entire step of the way. You know what what i’m what I tell professional service firms b2b firms a lot is If you really look at your businesses more times than not, you’ll find that they’re very binary You’re either not a client or you are a client.

You’re a customer You’re not a customer and and the problem with that is is that’s not a business model. Excuse me That’s not a business model that works for what your clients and prospects actually go through they go through this whole journey You Of like learning and they kind of want to try some things on their own and maybe they’re going to hire somebody and then maybe You’re going to augment with a half a person.

They’re going to try some things along that journey So if you don’t if you’re not there, you know digitally for in that journey You’re just you’re missing the boat to build positioning and awareness and and relationships before you you’re ready for that one to one sales opportunity Well, if I can, let me just make one final question because it may, I think when we talk about this in a general sense, it’s sort of a 20, 000 foot level.

Matt Van Wagner: I think we know no one can take exception to anything we’ve said, but I think when the where the rubber hits the road is when the CFO comes and said, you know, what level should we be spending at? The are we at 75%? You know, should we, you know, you know, Cut to 50. Should we go to 150? So the conversations about you know, what level of investment to put in your advertisement is where the rubber hits the road.

And to your point both of your points. I think a lot of people. Well, it depends on what you’re selling, of course, too, but a lot of people are looking to reopen offices. Yeah, there’s some some uncertainty So a lot of people are in the research phase are trying to line things up so that when they go back to the office for example you know, they’re going to need to get back there quickly They’re waiting for the regulatory body whether they’re governor the you know, mayor, whatever the regulatory body might be I think that what’s going to happen is I agree that we’re going to see very soft Closing rates, but I think what we’re going to see Is these these really weird spikes of oh my god, I need it.

I need it Now things are going to sort of spike up We’re going to see a lot of sort of variation back and forth over the next couple of months And so I I think we have to make sure we we sort of think through that so that we don’t say oh my god It’s now let’s start spending like drunken sailors But also let’s not hold back to your point is we need to keep our You Selves in front.

So I’m just curious. You know, if you guys have anybody that’s offline completely or at 50 percent or where, where are you, how do you make a decision for budget level? And going forward, say from June one on,

AJ Wilcox: I know for us, we have clients all across the spectrum. Some have increased spend, some have pulled back some have quit entirely. And I mean, really, like you mentioned, this is a decision that’s oftentimes made before we’re ever consulted. It’s the CFO looking at the funds that are available and the runway and saying, this is what we’re comfortable with.

So yeah, I don’t know if there’s like an individual formula that everyone’s following. I sure wish there were. Yeah. I would agree with AJ. There’s, there’s no formula. Anybody’s following a lot of it is emotional decision making and likewise, as AJ mentioned, we have clients all over the spectrum of how they’re handling it.

Frederick Vallaeys: So similar and one thing to keep in mind sometimes right is how you position the services that we do. And like, is it digital marketing or are we really the sales engine for the companies and especially the type of lower funnel things we can do? You know, maybe more so in B2C than in B2B, but. You know, you turn off your google ads.

Well, that’s kind of like firing your sales people, right? Those are people that were ready to convert that just needed to be pointed to the right side and and that’s that’s dangerous and I I agree I mean, we’ve seen this over the past couple of weeks that a lot of this has just been a knee jerk reaction Just like hey, well, let’s let’s pause for a second.

Let’s figure out what’s going on But then fairly quickly those that can actually Still sell at some level have come back and even those that can’t are trying to figure out how to shift and how to keep that demand going, right? So some of the the companies that we work with airlines you know, basically 97 percent decline in traffic.

But the worst thing that can happen for you is that your competitor has that one flight that they want, and all of a sudden that loyal flyer. Finds that your competitor has nicer planes and the new normal for them looks like flying a different airline, right? So how do you position yourself defensively even if you can’t really deliver on on the needs right now?

That’s what we’re seeing

Frank Cowell: Yeah, I think right now just emphasizes the need for for brands to be out engaging their audiences giving value You know, it’s really difficult right now to Measure any sort of immediate and direct ROI on a lot of the efforts. So I, I often tell people, Hey, look, brand building is a lot like, you know, religion, you have to have a lot of faith.

You know, it’s one of those things that, you know, you’re supposed to do. Oftentimes the activities don’t have a direct ROI number. And especially right now, you know, a lot of what you’re going to be doing, isn’t going to show up 30 days later. You’re just not going to see that. And so but that doesn’t mean we can’t track, right?

So that means we need to be smart. We need to employ technologies that can help us track through. You know, especially if you can track through the entire life cycle, that’s a huge, huge win to be on one platform that can track that all and make that easier for you, and then just getting selective about which platforms you’re going to gauge on, I know in my experience.

A lot of our B2B clients don’t gravitate towards Google PPC, you know, Google ads. We have some hit and miss there, especially if it’s professional services. With professional services, a lot of the feedback that we get and anecdotally, what we’ve even seen is, you know, you get a lot of leads that aren’t necessarily the ideal fit anyway.

You know, there might be like tire kickers or they might just be out of You know, wrong fit. So I think now’s the time to really look at like where your great fits coming from and maybe like go in all in on a LinkedIn, for example, because LinkedIn, for example, and AJ can speak about this, but offer several opportunities.

Not only can you do some in mail outreach you can be just doing some organic connection building. You can be posting content. You can start a group. There are lots of different facets there to kind of go in. And really create a big brand presence on LinkedIn by being multifaceted with that approach.

So that’s kind of what we’re telling people is find a channel that you think is your best bet and kind of. Really try to dominate there instead of being spread so thin right now,

Frederick Vallaeys: right? And that answers the budget question really nicely as well, right? Prioritize where you see the biggest impact And sometimes you go you go on faith, which is really heretical in this industry to say let’s not look at the numbers But sometimes sometimes you can’t measure it exactly, right?

Frank Cowell: I’m really, Frederick, just on that point, I’m really passionate about that because I truly believe, like, we live in a world where you can get roughly the same thing at roughly the same price from many different people. So, our buyers have a lot to choose from. So yes, we can advertise for what I call the ready nows.

But the bulk of the market isn’t ready now. So what are you doing to attract and engage them? And for both sets of people at the end of the day, brand is what ultimately wins because everything’s so commoditized today. And there’s very few industries where you’re going to have a standout leader. That nobody’s, you know, able to compete with and match.

And so I think businesses have to figure out what their what percentage of their spend Is not going to necessarily be judged against the immediate ROI return there’s a percentage that you have to go towards just continuing to build that brand and build that positioning and awareness because that’s That’s ultimately the the greatest differentiator How deep you’re going to go with your target audiences and carve out that positioning

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah, we’re huge believers in that, in the optimizer as well.

And that’s why we do the webinars, the town halls. That’s why we speak at conferences, do the blogging, right? It’s you want to help people as much as you can. And when they actually figure out they need a solution or they need some extra help, hopefully you’re top of mind and you get to have that conversation. AJ, LinkedIn was mentioned quite a bit here. So any thoughts from your end?

AJ Wilcox: Oh I think LinkedIn in general is so good at just getting rid of the crap. If you’re advertising on Facebook or, and, or Google a lot of the feedback that I’m sure you’re hearing from your sales team is, oh, they’re tire kickers, they’re mom and pops, they can’t afford us, especially if you have a more premium price higher contract value type of product or service.

And so LinkedIn is just so good at, at getting the right people to your offers and to your site. And what it requires is having a good offer because LinkedIn’s prices are too high to really treat it as a true top of funnel channel. You really have to, you’re paying bottom of funnel prices for mid, a mid funnel type of offer.

So my recommendation is get people to an offer of yours that is gated, some kind of lead magnet. Where it’s valuable enough that people will drop down past the top of the funnel into the middle. And that means So talk a bit more

Frederick Vallaeys: about that because I think a lot of folks joining this call are probably more on the Google ad side.

So as far as LinkedIn, they have minimum CPCs that are relatively high. That’s still the case. Have those CPCs also come down in the current situation or are they pretty much holding to their minimums?

AJ Wilcox: Yeah, they’ve come down a little bit. Like we’re on average paying eight to 11 per click on LinkedIn this year, but we’ve seen that drop maybe five to 10 percent during the whole COVID panic as big advertisers were pulling out.

So not as stark as I’m sure you guys can, can verify we’ve heard like 30, 40 percent reductions on Facebook. We’ve heard massive reductions on YouTube ads. LinkedIn, not quite so significant because I think budgets move a little bit slower in B2B. But still, it’s, there’s a discount there and it’s a good time if you’ve got the budget.

Frederick Vallaeys: Exactly, so good time to jump in even if you’ve never done this because it’s kind of this low that you could do a little bit more testing with the same budget than in normal times.

AJ Wilcox: Yeah, and Matt, you’ve got something.

Matt Van Wagner: Yeah, a question for you, AJ. So you know, you got linked in through Microsoft ads.

How do you position that? And what do you see as the, you know, the, the win or the the way to operate, you know, on both networks most effectively.

AJ Wilcox: Yeah. So right now Microsoft has the ability, and I believe this is in open beta to do the equivalent of RLSA audiences. With some LinkedIn characteristics of people.

So we can target them by what department they’re in. We can target by their company name and we can target by company industry. And so if you are able to define the keyword for Microsoft advertisers that you want to show up for, and then layer on some of those aspects of who someone is professionally.

Then it’s, it’s sure great to use. It is low volume because it’s RLSA, but in closed beta that I hope will come out sometime soon is the ability to just use Microsoft’s full display network. And if I can treat Microsoft, just like I treat LinkedIn right now, which is, I want to show you my ads. If you fit this criteria, then I think we’ll probably be able to drive real volume and and that’ll get a lot more exciting.

But as of right now, it’s an add on that we play with, but it doesn’t drive significant volume. Although I do see cost per click in the like 30 cent to 80 cent range, which is a huge discount than from what I’m paying on LinkedIn. So,

Frederick Vallaeys: and so that answer is one of the questions that came in from the audience.

So how do you avoid clicks from consumers when you’re in B2B? So that’s the answer I think for microsoft. Is there a corollary or some other way to do this on google ads?

Matt Van Wagner: Well, I would I would think it really it’s sort of a multi layered thing so directly No, I mean on on google you have the ability to target really personal demographics, you know income level, age you know, gender where they, where they are, and that’s about it.

So where you’ve got areas of, of high crossover, you still, you have to use your ad copy to really sort of filter out what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to filter out the unreasonable clicks. So the other, the other thing you want to do in that regard is to leverage the types of things you can do on the social media to build up audiences of, you know, pulling in, like on LinkedIn, pulling in some other types of areas so that you don’t have to pay the 10 to 12 to 20, 30 clicks.

You would have to on Google for some industries, what you’re doing is you’re building up audiences so that you at least have a better slice of the beat that you’re sort of trying to work with. So yeah, you can’t do it, but not, you have to really be clever about it.

Frederick Vallaeys: And I love that, Matt. So tactically, what does that look like?

Does it mean you post articles, blogs on social media where you have those advanced targeting capabilities and then you cookie them once they read that page and now you have your RLSA list or something to that effect?

Matt Van Wagner: That as well as running, you know, ad campaigns, you know you know, you can do some reasonable targeting and ad campaigns on, on Facebook, you know somewhat within Twitter, but the I think you can promote the

Frederick Vallaeys: content, but it’s on the landing page.

You capture. Use them, put them on the cookie list. That’s the idea. Right. Nice. Hey, the, the biggest question or the most voted for question we got was B2B companies typically have longer sales cycles than B2C. How does this affect the company that’s coming back online after they may have been inactive or mildly active for a while?

AJ Wilcox: I’ve got one on this one. I think huge importance for using your retargeting audiences smart. And not cutting search channels out of your out of your mix. If you have long sales cycles right now, I totally understand why you’d want to cut back on maybe Facebook and LinkedIn where, you know, These are longer sales cycles.

They’re just starting the conversation. So feel free to peel back there, but don’t pull back on your search where people are ready to take action now. And don’t pull back on your retargeting. That should by far be the most efficient spend you have.

Matt Van Wagner: Right.

Frederick Vallaeys: And we even heard, I think in the search engine land live session, I think it was Brad Geddes, who was saying that.

Some sales cycles have actually shortened significantly. Because, and I can imagine this to be the case, right? So you have clients who have completely different needs than before. They need to be more efficient. Maybe they need technology. Maybe they need the solution. Maybe they need legal advice. They need financial advice to get To get the loans, whatever, right?

So all of us tomorrow, or my business is going to go under. Have you guys seen any of that as well? Or, and I imagine it’s pretty mixed, right?

Matt Van Wagner: Yeah. Let me just make a, give a context to that, Frank, and I’ll let you answer. Brad was talking about that right at the very beginning of this, this whole, this whole deal.

Okay. So I, I, I wouldn’t hold that as being an opinion he has now, but certainly it was upfront. So go ahead, Frank.

Frank Cowell: No, all I was going to say is the opportunities we are seeing yeah, they’re much faster. There’s just fewer opportunities, right? There’s fewer people in market, but the ones we are seeing are definitely much shorter.

I don’t think that’s indicative of anything long term or a trend that’s going to last, but, but we definitely are seeing, you know, any sales up. For example, we had we had April was one of our best new sales months. That we had in a year. But I don’t think that’s necessarily indicative of a trend that’s gonna stick.

That these opportunities will come and close in less than a month.

Esperanza Arriagada: We got a

Frederick Vallaeys: little bit of a background noise from Esperanza, I think. Oh. She can mute herself.

AJ Wilcox: And I’ll also throw this in there. A lot of the sales cycles that have been sped up, Are because your product or service plugs a hole that has been created by the new working situation.

So imagine all of the people who were not considering zoom to zoom subscriptions before this happened and now all of a sudden you know zoom’s got an 80 conversion rate on their on their signup page And you know, I think that’s just for some people some products and service Maybe you got lucky and this whole working from home working remotely You servicing customers remotely and digitally.

If you work well with that, then maybe you’re seeing a huge increase in performance. Yeah, when people start going back into the office, if that is a thing. Maybe you can expect that not to be a trend, but

Frederick Vallaeys: That’s a good point, right? So if that is a thing going back to the office, and so I live in the Bay Area and.

Google is basically not going back until at least the end of the year, Twitter is never going back, Facebook is going to keep 50 percent of its people at home, and they expect that to happen over the next five years, right? So, if you’re one of these businesses, like say you’re a landlord, a commercial real estate, or somebody who’s like really feeling the negative impact from this new normal taking hold, What do you do?

I mean, is there messaging that you can do? Are you having to go crazy on special offers to bring people back?

Matt Van Wagner: Well, Fred, I’m just going to say I picked the wrong week to give up drinking scope. Oh, Matt, the, the you know, there are, you know, Hey, there are some businesses that just absolutely will not come back. Or if they come back it will be, you know, sometime next year. I would think you know, it’s interesting talking about this because Mike Ryan at smarter commerce published a nice blog article and right at the front end of, of this whole, you know March 15th, you know, the Ides of March. really were the Ides of March this year.

The weirdest thing was that e commerce rates were up, conversion rates were up, revenues were up. It’s like what in Glorioski’s name is going on here, right? But I think as as we see that was sort of panic buying. I got to get this done before I leave the office. I got to get done because I got to fill up my fridge.

I got to body electronics, you know, if you tried to buy a headset or a mic at staples forget about it You know, so a lot of things spiked right up, but then it sort of settled in this pattern So now we’re sort of at this trough And so I think to your point if you’re a company that sells disinfectants electrostatic sprayers you know ppe Things like that are directly related to reopening safely, sneeze guards lexan plexiglass blah blah Yeah you know, you’re the biggest issue is When the governor says we’re in phase two now, you can reopen saying the, all the uncertainties are gone.

Purchasing managers are going to want to make buy. They’re going to want it quick. So I think in terms of messaging make sure that you, you you’re, you’re clear about what you can deliver quickly. Cause that’s an advantage and don’t discount. I would say do not discount right now. Don’t. Don’t be a price gouger, but this is not the time to offer discounts.

I would offer, you know, quick you know safe, bloody blog type of messaging rather than get it cheap. That’s not cheap time.

Frederick Vallaeys: Right. No, certainly not cheap time. If people actually want what you’re selling, but if you have to get them back to. You know, flying, for example, where people might be a bit more hesitant.

Again, this is not beat to beat, but what’s really fascinating, and we talked about this a couple of weeks ago. So now retail stores, clothing stores get to reopen. But if you ask consumers, what percentage is actually comfortable, Going there, it’s you know, maybe a third of people. So yeah, great that you get to be open, but good luck getting anyone to come into the store.

Right. And I think that then translates into what you’re saying. So if you’re that store, you need to figure out what is it that the consumer is worried about? Is it the fact that you don’t have plexiglass at the register? Is it the fact that you don’t sanitize the store often enough? And right. And then I guess that translates into which vendors do you have to go and get more stuff from to.

Get people to come back into buying.

Matt Van Wagner: Now, when it comes to B2B I think, I think we, we gotta, we, we, we think about B2B as selling business to business, but B2B is really one layer under B2C stuff, right? It’s all supply chain stuff. So I think if we think about who we’re selling to and, and, and where the greatest needs are going to be, and we focus our attention on those clients and tell those clients to focus on these areas that are just subsurface to B2C you know, yeah, maybe sure.

Maybe there’s some things here, but I’m going to stop talking. Cause I know you guys are telling me to, Hey, shut up, Matt.

Frederick Vallaeys: I love it. When you talk, Matt Frank or agent, did you guys want to add something or should I move on to the next question here? No, Matt killed it.

Matt Van Wagner: Oh God,

Frederick Vallaeys: Matt, you’re killing it. My

Matt Van Wagner: talk is

Frederick Vallaeys: talk, talk

Matt Van Wagner: is cheap.

And we’re about to find out just how cheap it is.

Frederick Vallaeys: All right. Here’s another question. So does the increase in work from home scenarios increase the audience landscape to target both business and personal profile because the use of a home PC has increased? So I guess there’s a lot to that question, right?

But I guess it’s talking a bit about the shifts in device usage, the shift in working from an office versus a home. And how do you target to be to be when people are no longer where you expected them to be?

AJ Wilcox: I mean, on LinkedIn, this has been really positive for us. We I saw a stat that interactions in the newsfeed are up 60%.

And and shares in the feed are up 40% just in the last few months. And so if you are an advertiser on LinkedIn, this is great for you. People working from home, they’ve got the browser open. They’re more active. They’re, they’re more open to opportunities and conversation. So I think that’s great. But it’d be hard for me to draw a corollary to any other.

Any other platform or sort of behavior, but man, I’m enjoying the whole work from home thing. Yeah, I think the attention is better for B2Bs because, you know, in an office, part of your attention is spent on the distractions in the physical office. Well, you know, your distraction now is maybe a little bit more time on LinkedIn.

Frank Cowell: So I think that’s probably why we’re seeing it as well, right? The engagement is definitely higher. And I wouldn’t be surprised if it does shift our device usage a little bit, like maybe if you’re working from home you’re not on your mobile device as much because you’ve got everything on your home PC that you need.

AJ Wilcox: I don’t know, or, or maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe people are using mobile way more than they, they used before. And now they’re available on both devices that they’re logged into. Not sure.

Frederick Vallaeys: All right. I have a Comcast and they have a sort of major work, a minor service outage, but it affects my place. So I have no clue what you guys just said. So I’m just going to move on to the next question. Well, neither do we. So, you know, it’s fine. It was amazing. Just leave it at that. It was amazing. If there was one of my answers that was worth skipping, it was that one.

AJ Wilcox: So you’re, you’re doing okay, Fred. Roll the tape. Roll the tape again. All right. So this is another question from this came in from Anthony, but about percentage of budget that you should spend on a brand before you start to cannibalize organic to the point of no gain. And is there any way to test this?

Frederick Vallaeys: That’s a complicated question, right? Yeah, I mean,

Frank Cowell: we’re talking about brand in terms of branded search terms are just General promotion of brand proactively, like on social media, right? Cause like on Google, you’re going to be doing branded search terms for your brand on other platforms, you’re going to be proactively putting it out.

It’s not based on a search. So. I think it depends on which one is being talked about. Obviously, the general rule of thumb for us is I was going to say, let’s go on page search

Frederick Vallaeys: first, right,

to narrow the question a bit.

Frank Cowell: Yeah, Matt, Matt, do you have any thoughts there? You’re probably better to answer that one than me.

Matt Van Wagner: Well, you know, this is a perennial question, and it has been since we began this whole industry, isn’t it? You know, I think one of the unique challenges we’ve got in B2B is Do we really have a good measurement? And it probably varies greatly from small companies to medium, you know, 30 to 50 million and then larger.

Do we really have a good understanding of how much of our money is actually being directed towards people that already know us and love us? And My take on brand marketing for B2B, where we’re not talking about famous brands, you know Staples, for example, which is very B2B, well, B2C too, but your normal everyday, you know, machine shop down the street the Branch clicks are cheap protecting the, the space in the search results against poaching from competitors who are miserable SOBs, as we all know because on the flip side, we’re, we’re them, right?

But we, I think, I think it’s important to claim that territory, number one, and make sure your competitors don’t. So if you’ve got cheap clicks on Google and you’ve got. The protection against, you know, push it, pushing your competitors down. And by the way, you often get more of the, the the extensions are shown, you know, because you have got the brand authority.

So you, you definitely grab some real estate, but then I think that the final thing is especially when things are fast moving your ad on your brand terms, give you some messages to be able to get out to people that may not, they might not be aware of. So, Hey, Hey, we got these things in stock, you know, call us.

Hey you know, whatever, whatever, and, and you can bring ’em to the page that you want to. And so I, I think that that’s always the big issue about having your brand a is as opposed to letting organic results dictate where someone comes on your site, the page, you, you, you, you say, this is the, one of my, my message, this is a landing page.

And so there’s a much more efficient transaction. So I, I think in general it’s, I would never abandon and, and, and I. So I very, really worry about brand in a BD environment. Overspending it. I mean, yeah.

AJ Wilcox: And I think LinkedIn is just too expensive of a platform to run brand campaigns on. So quite frankly, I just, I don’t do it.

We, we jump right to the middle of the funnel. So if it’s, if it’s LinkedIn spend brand dollars there. Yeah.

Frank Cowell: You know, what’s interesting about that AJ is that you know, we teach our clients a methodology that’s particularly appropriate for B2Bs about, You know, a journey based funnel and, you know, in an ideal scenario, we, we educate people first to get them indoctrinated to the brand before we try to get them.

To some of those higher levels of engagement, but on LinkedIn, you just can’t do that. You know, we have to tell people, Hey, we’ve got to go right kind of towards the middle of this relationship and get people who are already kind of there because the math just doesn’t work out as you’ve mentioned,

Matt Van Wagner: you know, the other thing I’d mentioned is one thing that you should be doing during this whole, you know, time of, you know, You know, maybe there’s some free time to do things that are lower on your priority list is make sure your google My business listings are really potent because that takes up a good amount of real estate and that you know That that can be instead of getting the paid click if someone sees that big thing there You might get them clicking through and you can have reviews.

There’s all sorts of good data. That’s there hours that change from week to week To week, you know, we’re open now as of, you know, we’re open for blotty block. So I would encourage people to make sure that, you know, they’re Google my business or they’re being a business account, Microsoft business accounts are, are nice and sparkly.

AJ Wilcox: And make sure they’re updated with information that people want to know about COVID. Do you have product in stock? Are you open? Do you deliver all those things? Super important. I agree.

Esperanza Arriagada: Guys Fred got disconnected for a little bit, so I’m going to ask you guys the next question and it’s related to your opinion on your thoughts on a smart bidding for B2B campaigns, especially considering that most of those campaigns have low conversion volumes.

So in this case, that will apply more towards search and Google, then of course, LinkedIn. But i’m not sure what you guys think about it

AJ Wilcox: frank and matt take it away I got nothing on google.

Frank Cowell: Yeah, matt’s probably a better guy on that one than me I’m, not the technical and the weeds guy on on google.

Matt Van Wagner: Well, actually frank.

I think I think your point earlier was was spot on so, when it comes to smart bidding you can do it to a terminal You know, event like a, like a sale, right? A shopping cart event. But if your smart bidding is based on all those touch points or some degree of the touch points along the funnel, and those signals can be given, you know, to the smart bidding you know, algorithm then I think that you.

We’ll recover a little more quickly to any disruption that the algorithms you know, see. And, and I, I think that, I think we’ve seen the biggest disruption you know, right after March 15th or April 1st, whenever things started to really come to a close. But this, those, those routines are pretty, pretty good.

Again, I’m quoting Mike Ryan, cause he had just published some data. He had shown that things were probably recovering pretty well. The algorithms were adjusting to new, Levels in a pretty reasonable rate pretty quickly, but I think that the more signals, especially in a B to B environment, you know, that’s e commerce, which is a lot of B to C.

But B to B. If you have things like, you know, they viewed this video, they downloaded this white paper. They did, you know, requested this, that and the other thing. And those things are, you know, along the path. You were talking about Frank about the relationship building. Then I think smart bidding, you know, you just keep keep your eye on it.

Make sure it’s picking up all the signals and the signals that are important now but I would you know, I wouldn’t abandon it you know what by the way christy olson on a on a microsoft partners call Last week made the point and this is sort of like it’s sort of like too late if you’ve already done it But the worst thing you can do, for on the microsoft network is to turn your campaigns off And they’re not selling saying that because it’s a click based, you know, we want to sell you clicks It has nothing to do that, but it’s better to reduce the budget Or reduce, you know, I think budget’s probably the better, you know regulator to use.

But don’t turn them off because that kind of screws up and, and they have to build up new heuristics when you come back online. So, you know, it stops tracking the types of impressions you would have had, impression shared, blah, blah, blah. So if you are finding that you’re going now into a double deep you know, sort of slow time because of summer, which normally is low don’t turn them off, just regulate them a little bit with budget and bids.

Frank Cowell: Yeah, I think that’s

AJ Wilcox: nice to me.

Frank Cowell: I think that’s a great point. And this may not get into the technicalities of smart bidding, but. Some of what you’re talking about, Matt, reminds me a lot of what we tell that we bake into how we go about doing online advertising for our clients is we have this concept of follow the funnel.

And so that means that as your prospect engages with your brand digitally, as they move through those, through that experience, the ads on all networks should change and recognize where they’re at and offer the next thing. In the relationship level, as we call it. So if, you know, they visited your cornerstone piece of content, which we call the education level.

But they didn’t take advantage of your lead magnet, which we call the empower level, then the ad should change to the lead magnet to get them to do the next thing. Well, if they did, took advantage of the lead magnet, but they didn’t get inspired by your deep dive content and didn’t go there. Well, then your ad should adjust to then show them the inspirational content.

So, you know, that idea of following the funnel is really critical. It means you have good, you know, good audience maintenance going on. So that way you can, you can technically make that happen. But it’s important, otherwise they just see the same thing, you know, everywhere they go.

Matt Van Wagner: But to your point you know, I don’t know how many people are aware but you know, it used to be that your conversion actions were defined at the account level within Google.

You know, you have the ability to define them at the campaign level now. So, you know, if you’re, if you, this is a way to give advantage to smart algorithms. You don’t have to, you know, forego, you know, the counting of real revenue, but you can set up campaigns and get them smart bidding into the conversions that are defined to that particular campaign or set of campaigns.

So, if that’s something that people aren’t aware of, go take a look at that. It’s actually You know, it’s a little more complicated than, than you, maybe you’ve been doing for the last umpty umpty years, but very, it’s a great, great move for Google and glad we did it. Glad they did it.

Esperanza Arriagada: Thank you, Matt, for that.

Very good suggestion and Fred is still gone guys. So I will be finishing 10 calls today. And I want to. To ask you guys, what do you, your final thoughts on B2C, sorry, B2B and the industry, basically, I’m not sure who wants to start,

AJ Wilcox: I can do it. I think just kind of recapping what I shared before right now is such a good time to be advertising for B2B because the costs are lower.

And because, you know, we know these sales cycles are longer. So take advantage of starting the relationship now so that you don’t have a big Darth of your, of your funnel process, you know six months from now or whatever. And it does mean because we have more time on our hands, it means you’ve got to create better content because you’re.

Competitors are also creating content. So you need to make sure you’re standing out. So make sure you’re creating things, especially on the lead magnet side, that really do solve a major pain point or satisfy a curiosity. And if you can tap in with them, you’ll be able to get people to skip past the initial top of funnel stage and right into the mid funnel.

And that’s where LinkedIn really plays best. So that’s my advice.

Esperanza Arriagada: What about you, Frank? Yeah, I would just going based on the relationship philosophy that we talked about earlier, AJ just talked about it right now. I would say first and foremost, make sure you have a funnel that is hyper focused, hyper specific on a single buyer persona with a single pain point.

Frank Cowell: I think the number one mistake that I see people make when they. Engage in campaigns or funnels is it’s just too broad in its in its scope. It’s too broad in the audiences It wants to target. It’s too broad in its messaging. It’s too broad in the pain points that the Experience aims to solve so get hyper specific on one person one pain point Develop a relationship driven funnel around that one person in one pain point and then just continue to obsess about that and provide content and value Because you’re going to try to pick up the ready nows, right?

Like everyone’s going to try to pick up the ready nows with your Google ads and whatever ads you’re doing. And that’s great. And that’s the bloody battle that we’re all engaged in. But there’s this other area where you have a bigger opportunity, albeit it’s longer term. But if you commit to that now and you’re consistent with it, and you hyper focus in and you create a relationship driven journey, not just have it be so binary, right?

I think you stand to win in the long term and I’m, I’m always about playing the long game. I think it’s one of those things where, you know, you kick yourself today for the long game you haven’t been playing for the past two years. So, I’m always a long game guy and I think relationship driven, hyper specificity.

Is where it’s at and that’s how you’re going to stand out because ultimately again it comes back to brand and that’s what’s going to win and i’m not talking about branded surge I just mean your position in the marketplace that you’ve established about being for somebody around something Again, would love for you guys to check out my book, building your digital utopia.

I teach the whole process In that book and you can find it on Amazon.

Matt Van Wagner: Frank, that’s really awesome. And you know, I, I think you’re, I was just listening some, some sort of these investors on some of these financial shows and you know, they refer to what’s going on right now, sort of a media event, you know and you know, things will, in some industries will, will come back quickly.

Like, cruise lines. Will they ever come back? Well, yeah, because they have a cohort of people that absolutely love cruise lines and they’re doing their best to book things out. We all say, are you crazy? You know, cause that’s, well, no, we love it. We love the community. And so these things will come back. The question is, you know, do they come back a hundred percent, 90%, 80%, but Most things will come back.

And so, I would say that in addition to your strategic long vision, which, which is, which is really protect, isolate you from making stupid decisions, you know, in the short term, which is 100 percent right. And AJ, you know, tactically, you’re right. Take advantage of the lower Prices and, you know, it leveraged my thought.

My only thing is so much of what we have to do it to be to be is we have to filter to make sure we stay out of the wrong traffic. And you know, a lot of what we do is thinking away from our keyboards. And so what I what I invite everyone to do is to think about your if you’re in house. Think about your specific industry.

Think you are the best judge and you’re a team member that the rest of the company, they don’t know what’s going on. And so you are a value member of your team and also tell your client, if you’re, if you have that relationship, say, this is why I think we should be more conservative, or this is the signal I would look for to say, let’s get spending a lot more now, like let’s ramp it back up.

Let’s do it quickly. Every day. If you’re calling it in from stuff you’ve been doing for, from a year ago because that worked, don’t think that that’s going to work every, every week, rethink your base assumptions, deconstruct how you’re thinking about the marketplace, reconstruct it that is using your gut instinct, which is your, really your best, your best judge.

And then do these things that Frank and AJ have just talked about. Does it fit in your strategic vision? Do we want to make sure we’re doing the right brand messaging? And do we want to, you know, take advantage of click? So, every week I don’t mean to be, you know, God bless America, apple pie and the American flag about, you know, You know, PPC managers role or digital marketers role in this whole thing.

But damn it. We have a really good, you know view We’re on the threshold of what’s happening out there. So what we think and our opinions are incredibly valuable They’re more than just opinions. They are most of the time informed by Data. So my only comment to all of you that are listening in and to myself, because I have to remind myself not not to get sloppy. What do we see right now? And make sure we validate that opinion with our client. Things we read in the marketplace. Let’s see if we Can think about what the next three weeks or three months will look like in our little thing in our little corner of the world. And so that’s, that’s my advice to you.

And you already know how to do all the technical stuff, you know, changing bids, audiences, body block, use your brain a lot. These next couple of weeks.

AJ Wilcox: Amen to that. Well

Esperanza Arriagada: Matt, that was very useful insight and how to start investigating and maybe analyzing more about the industry and more about the company before taking any kind of actions.

So thank you for that. Well guys thank you very much for your time today. We will be promoting and share more information about Frank’s book on the recap that we will, that we will be sending by the end of the day. The day but well again, thank you for your time. For your patience And I will say you bye on behalf of fred

Matt Van Wagner: Well, i’m gonna send fred a bottle of scope because this is the wrong week to have given up scope.

So

Esperanza Arriagada: Well Thank you guys. Have a great, rest of the day. Take care. Thanks.

Frank Cowell: Thanks for having us. Thanks. Thanks

Esperanza Arriagada: frank Thanks. Ajay.

Matt Van Wagner: Good seeing you

Frank Cowell: matt. Ajay. Good to see you. Yeah.

Esperanza Arriagada: Bye guys