This is an Auto-Generated transcript, it will have some typos and mistakes 🙂
Online with Amr, the internet guy streaming today on your favorite podcast platforms. This podcast focuses on entrepreneurs and business owners helping them become more successful and conducting their business on the web without being stuck with technology, getting a headache, pulling their hair out or buying expensive software.
Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of online. Today we are discussing selling online, how can we maximize our sales online and reduce the cost of customer acquisition? Believe it or not, if you’re like me, one of the people who constantly watch Dragon’s Den and Shark Tank and these shows, you will always hear them talking about customer acquisition, which is how much you spend in order to acquire a new customer. And not only just acquiring a new customer, but was the lifecycle of the new customer and how much they will be spending with you. In the near future, as well as in years to come. That will also depend on your product and your service or your offering. But overall, everyone is interested to acquire more customers while spending less per customer acquisition. So it’s kind of a make or break, especially if you’re in E commerce. My guest today is Mr. Weil, Perry, and he has the experience to help business owners who would want more leverage per customer acquisition. So without further ado, let’s meet well. Hey, guys, welcome to another episode of online I have Mr. Wilbury with me, hey, well,
hey, good to be here with you. Good.
Thank you. So you’re somewhere sunnier than where I am. So please tell the listeners where you are and what you do.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I know you’re up there in British Columbia and in Vancouver. And I know a lot of the country is still digging themselves out from the winter snow that we’ve all been getting. But it’s actually 85 degrees here today. So in Orlando, Florida, so unfortunately, we’re not getting a whole lot of that.
We don’t get a lot of snow here. So we’re a little bit luckier than the rest of Canada.
Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. But a lot of ice hockey up your way though, for sure. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Oh, God, like Yeah. How
can you be not interested in hockey? I don’t understand it. So okay. My friends in Canada. Please don’t take that against me. I’m gonna come look at sport.
Yeah, that’s sacrilege, almost to a degree, though. Like it’s like a rite of passage.
Yeah. Like, it has to be hokey Tim Hortons?
Absolutely, yeah, I grew up in South Jersey, near Philadelphia, and grew up playing ice hockey as a kid played a little bit into well, and it’s it’s a little bit of a rite of passage up there to, you know, big part of the culture with Philadelphia sports scene and all of that. So I know a lot about my Canadian hockey for sure.
This perfect. I’m old school. I’m a soccer guy. And I still call it football, but just not here. Well, I mean, I had a look at your website, and I know what you do, but you’re much better to tell people about it than me.
Yeah, absolutely. So we really help ecommerce brands 789 figure brands optimize their paid traffic in order to unlock new growth. We’re really strategically positioned as an ad optimization agency. So where we will really come in is kind of what you would consider like a takeover sort of situation where a brand really needs super expertise to reduce their customer acquisition cost, so that they can spend more money and ultimately drive more sales through paid traffic online. So we work a lot with health and wellness brands, you know, subscription products, healthy snack foods, High Ticket info, businesses and things like that, to really help them scale their paid traffic. And we do that through AI optimization. So we’re big advocates of third party tracking like heroes in order to properly track our sales so that we can get clear on our data. And we implement a very strategic strategic, I don’t think strategic strategy is a good way to put
these experiences. Yeah. We implement a very strategic
philosophy or methodology that we call add variable isolation into the way that we media buys. So we get 100% clarity on what exactly is working between ad copy headlines, thumbnails, creative types and styles. And so that way we can feel 100% confident to put the majority of our budget behind what we’re testing. So that’s really the route we’re at optimization experts and anybody who is looking for the ability to scale their spend, would love to help them out.
So why you said just like, you know, give me an idea, because I watch Shark Tank, and you’ve got Mr. Wonderful always grilling people about the cost of acquisition. Yeah. And you get a lot of business owners who go there to pitch and not knowing what their you know what their CPA is.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, knowing your numbers within your online business is one of the most important things. And as someone who partners with founders and businesses like it’s one of the biggest turn offs for me as well, when someone doesn’t know the KPIs or the numbers within their business, because it shows that they haven’t taken accountability and responsibility, ultimately, for that business. And the marketing is a big piece to that whole entire mechanism. You know, you’ve got sales operations, product development and marketing, and knowing what your customer acquisition cost is. And not only that, but understanding that reducing that customer acquisition cost has a variety of different strategies. It’s not just about ads being too expensive. It’s also about, you know, how well does your offer convert. And so what we really do is, is we really help brands focus on that. And, you know, through messaging optimization, sometimes even through avatar optimization, so that they can spend more efficiently and generate a higher ROI. Sometimes we’re even changing the offer. So to get us back here on track a little bit, CPA are sometimes referred to as CAC super important. And it’s really a key metric within the business to understand what ultimately could be the lifetime profitability of the business as a whole. Because if we know how much it costs to acquire a customer, even if it’s expensive, if we can get that customer to stay, we’re good.
If he’s going to be a loyal customer, who’s going to be with you for a lifetime. Like if you think about subscription businesses, for example. And you see a lot of those, you see a lot of those who have you pay monthly and you get a box of something. Yeah, be it coffees or teas or socks are wet, there’s so many of them. Right. So they may start with something like, I don’t know, $150 per customer, even though the box itself sells for 90. So they’re, they’re at a loss yet when they start, but since this is going to be a customer who’s going to stick with them for a minimum of two or three years, I mean, depending of course, that they will keep giving them good products.
And I think when we were talking online, before approaching today, we were talking about the mindset that goes with advertising. And the biggest mistake, or the biggest sort of downfall or a pitfall that I see a lot of brands make when they can’t understand why they cannot scale. It’s related to this. It’s actually based on a fear behind and the mindset approach towards paid traffic. And the reason for that is they are timid to spend, because they don’t know when the money will be returned, right? Yes, it’s really this sort of chicken or the egg scenario where, you know, for example, if you knew that a customer would stay with you for six months, and it would cost you $150. How many of you in future casting here? How many of the listeners here on this podcast would sign up for that every day of the week? Yeah, I get a three to one return. Yeah, I’ll sign up for that. But what most often happens is, the brands don’t understand the lifetime value of the customer, they do not make decisions based on the lifetime value of the customer. And thereby they actually stunt the actual growth and scale to the business by not understanding the customer acquisition cost because there’s a golden rule. And I can’t take credit for the golden rule, but a legendary marketer that we all mostly know, Dan Kennedy used to say, He who spends the most to acquire customer wins. And when we really think about that, if we operate with a bigger mindset, and a bigger approach towards playing this game, because it’s a game, and we play a different game than most people are willing to pay to play. And if we understand our lifetime value, and we understand that key who spends the most to acquire customer wins, and we play a more aggressive game, we will win the game. And that’s by understanding our customer acquisition costs. And what our lifetime value is and making decisions based on lifetime value for profitability.
Now, I mean, I think part of it why people are timid is that either they’ve been burned before? Or is because of all the spammy SEO agencies, not even agencies. I mean, I still get tons of these emails on a weekly basis. And some of them I mean, they have gotten better in the language they use. Yeah, but when you look at like, Okay, if somebody’s sending me, let’s say, an SEO offer of some coins, right? But their email is a Gmail. Yeah. Why would I just go and spend money with an individual that I’ve never heard of, and I’ve never met in my life, and I don’t even know where they live. Yet. They’re not even, they’re not even showing me a legitimate email that’s coming from a company or an agency. Right? So this goes straight to my deleted, but for sure. I mean, I’ve seen so many, especially small businesses. I mean, we’re right now we’re discussing brands, or maybe it’s a small business, but with a good budget, you know, like you’ve raised some money. And now you have a marketing budget of x that you want to spend, but you want to spend it right. The problem is that you’re gonna have a lot of distractions, and you’re going to receive a ton of emails of people promising you everything. And it’s really hard to tell which way to go. If you haven’t done it before. It’s like, it’s, it’s really? And it also depends on I think it also depends on what you’re offering.
Yeah. And offering as in like, the brand. Yeah. What’s
your product? What’s your service? And where is your target in their buying journey? Like? Are they looking not looking? Are you going to start raising the awareness? Does your product need a lot of education? Like there’s a lot of moving parts that people miss? And they just think, oh, you know what? I’m gonna start timid, I’m gonna spend, I don’t know, let’s say 1000 a month. Okay. But how many customers? Does that get you? What’s your return on that investment? And you could spend 1000 a month for six, seven months, 10 months? 10k? And maybe not get any sales? And then you’ll feel oh, you know, what? Advertising doesn’t work? No. Right.
And I just Yeah, and in that scenario, like, the investment isn’t able to move the needle fast enough for anybody to even be able to feel it. Right. And, and I think like anything else in life, and maybe you have some some listeners to the podcast, who are brand owners or executives to, you know, marketing, you know, marketing directors, CMOs, things like that, if I were trying to hire a third party vendor, like an ad agency, or like a, an SEO agency or something, I would be looking for two specific things. Number one, massive results. Have they gotten results? Number two? Well, I guess it would really be three things. Number two, do they have a very detailed process and system by way that they get those results? And then number three, are they great communicators? Like, that’s all I would need to know. Because at the end of the day, the only other variable is you being the client, because if they’ve gotten results before, and they have a process for getting results, and they’re great at communication, if something’s not working, like the brand is probably compromising the strategy. And yeah, absolutely, I was betting, that’s what I would look for,
I think you got to, you got to know that all the agencies will show you some type of results, but you don’t really know how they got there. So the process part is very important, because they might have gotten the result, because the client themselves were on top of things and help to direct the agency, you know, and they might have gotten results by chance, but there’s no process that can replicate those results. And the communication is so important, because I mean, every single agency will give you let’s say, monthly reports, right? But you don’t want to wait the whole 30 days to see if a message is being shown to the wrong audience. Yeah, I’ve been there before. Like i i have an online course, that has a very specific type of audience. It doesn’t help when the agency came back to me and said, Oh, we’ve shown your ad to 67,000 people. Okay, what do you know about those 67,000 people? Oh, we know where they live. Okay, but what do they do? Like? You know what I mean? Like it was a it’s a, it’s a DNS and email deliverability course. So if you’re not a web designer or an agency owner, you wouldn’t be interested. Like if I show this to mom and dad, like You know, I’m paying for them to show my ad to the wrong people, and then wait 30 days after, you know, I’m paying per click or whatever, it doesn’t help. So if I had done my homework properly, and looked for the three things, so communication wasn’t bad, but you know, you don’t want them to communicate with you every day, but you don’t want to wait 30 days to get some reports. Right. Right. Yeah. So things like that.
Communication. And I think if you do an audit, you know, with a brand or something like that, or a project first, you can get an idea for how they operate before you have to really go all in. And I think that’s a really good recommendation, because that’s how we start with brands on on our side, is we require what we call an SAP before we commit to a long term engagement. And that’s because we want to get an idea for what the leadership is like, as well. On the other end. Yeah, like if they’re disorganized, or if they’re not very attentive or accountable or willing to
flexible, like, well, flexible, like, maybe they’re just, you know, stuck on one message. It’s not working, but they don’t want to change it.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so that happens a lot, you know, and I think it’s it, you know, agencies can definitely get a bad rap, as well, and people can move on and on and on. And that’s why I think it’s really important to be really direct with communication, be very transparent with communication. And like you, you get what you pay for, right? And so yes, you know, if you if you’re a brand that’s trying to skip skim by and, and work with, you know, cheap contractors and freelancers, or an agency that has a $1,500 a month retainer,
is that you’ll get some clients, but you’re losing get what you want. Yeah, yeah. So
like, and then of course, there’s always going to be higher paying services, you know, providers that are not going to be able to deliver as well. But look for that more experienced service provider who is charging a premium, who you do feel really good about their results, their process and their communication. Yeah.
I mean, if you know, somebody who’s used them before, at least, and gotten good, you know, results. The key is always return on investment. And I love it when you say, we’re an ad optimization, or web optimization agency. So I wanted to ask you to simplify the word optimization for our listeners who may have been hearing this for the first time. Yeah.
So ad optimization really comes down to splitting all of the winning elements that could go into an actual winning ad, and identifying what is actually winning within that ad. So that’s where that process starts. A lot of brands sort of run into some pitfalls, where they’ve even worked with agencies or had in house marketers that have said, I know that it’s working, but I don’t know why it’s working. And so when you get really detailed into ad optimization, and you implement a methodology, like we do with AD variable isolation, you get clarity on the ad copy, meaning the hook, you get clarity on the headlines, you get clarity on what what types of avatars in the creative are working, you get clarity into the exact headlines on the creative working, because it’s, we very much structure it in terms of a scientific experiment where you have controls, and then you have variables, and then there’s only one variable within the entire setup. So when you with AD optimization, it’s about getting clarity through the testing environment. So that when you have that clarity, you can go scale, and you’re like, I’m gonna put money on that, I’ll put my money on that, because I have the clarity and the confidence behind what is working. And then so I’m willing to put 80% of my top of funnel budget behind the things that I have 100% confidence on. So just to recap, ad optimization is really about refinement of the actual paid traffic system, implementing a rigid testing process and procedure that is very detailed in order to then spend more dollars more efficiently that helps brands generate more sales and revenue through their paid traffic. And that’s a it’s a very detailed sort of split testing environment. That is very intentional. Down to the individual, like piece of the ad that we’re testing. We kind of look at it as like maximizing real estate, if that makes sense.
Yeah, I mean many People think an ad is an ad, right? They don’t know, the composition of an ad. And like a lot of again, like, I don’t want to be too harsh on agencies I own one. But yeah. Well, yeah, the thing is, many people don’t explain this to the client, because they’re always focused on the retainer rather than the results, then this, this is even from personal experience, like having interviewed, you know, at least 10 marketing agencies, for me, or for my clients as well. Like, there’s some, there are some things that I don’t do. Yeah, okay, I do the other end, like, you bring the people to somewhere, I’m in charge of that somewhere, make sure that exact so like, if you do your your off page, wherever you want to do it, whatever you want to use, you’re going to be drawing traffic somewhere to your website, your shop, to your ecommerce, you know, store, whatever, I’m in charge of making sure that that store is up and running is not going to cave. You know, when you bring so much traffic on it. It has a specific, you know, piece of CTA that can convert, I don’t get into your messaging, I’ll leave that to your marketing agency. But I can advise, like, you know, I’ve seen this happen before I’ve seen this work, I’ve seen this not work, the positioning of you know, where you have your CTA, or where you draw the traffic as well, because smaller businesses usually draw the traffic to the homepage, when they shouldn’t, it should be drawn to a specific service. You know, the homepage is kind of a big story. People get lost in their way it doesn’t convert. Yeah, things like that.
On that note, we recommend to brands and service providers to run what we call closed loop funnels, or essentially, a very like direct response landing page or sales page that doesn’t allow
the you can’t go anywhere. There’s no menu,
the user to get distracted by a bunch of other things. It’s like, you create this super compelling message on the front end of ads, you have a super compelling offer on the landing page. Either they buy or they don’t buy, if they don’t buy, they get an exit pop to opt into the email list. And then you and your team handle and optimize that. Or they get remarketed to buy the thing again, and then that’s it.
Yeah, following them around.
And yeah, when you run sort of like this very scattered traffic strategy, there’s no way to efficiently or effectively optimize it, because you don’t know where the user is going. And you don’t know why they’re leaving.
Yeah, so I mean, it’s, as you were saying, there are like a few moving parts that you have to master. So it really helps when you have another mind to, you know, point out the things that they have seen from other campaigns, the things that worked. And there’s one thing that I also see that happen, which is very important, is sometimes the founders and business owners who are not necessarily marketing people, right? They don’t know who their ideal client is, like, Who’s Who are you? Who’s your ad for? Like, it can’t be for everybody, it can be for the whole population over a specific geographic area.
What I always like to say is, if you’re trying to market to everybody, you’re marketing to nobody. Yeah. And, man, if I had a nickel for every time that I found myself in that situation, as well, where well, anybody can really use this. All that does is produce a very vanilla marketing message and a vanilla marketing message results in very vanilla conversion rates and results, and
it cost you like you spend more because you want to show it to everybody, a bigger audience that is not necessarily interested in what you have to offer. So yeah, makes no sense. Like even, you know, when you’re playing, for example, with Facebook ads, and many people run these for themselves. And Facebook would make it a little bit easier for you the interfaces, you know,
kind of easy to give them a lot of money.
Yeah. And then like they don’t care about the results, because you’ve given them the money. Now when you’re doing your targeting, and if you become very, very specific. You see this narrowing from 8 million to 2 million to 500,000 to probably 30,000. And you get scared oh my god, only 30,000. But yeah, only 30,000 who may be interested in what you have to offer. It’s not it’s not 8 million who have zero interest in what you have to offer. So
yeah, I think the best advice that I could have for anyone who wants to optimize their paid traffic now or maybe launch something is create one specific message for one specific person with one specific offer. for them to get it. And that’s the best way to start. And just doing that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re limited with regards to scale, it could actually mean that that is your best way to scale. And I’ll give an example. We’re in process right now of auditing a multi million dollar a month spending brand. Like they spend several million dollars a month between Facebook and Google and everything. And the product is geared towards 50 Plus, you know, male, female, sort of older demographic. And it’s a product that solves a specific problem for that demographic, while they’re cutting out 80% of the population. Yeah, I marketing that product to this specific demographic. However, they’re spending more than most brands and small businesses ever wished to possibly, or dream of possibly spending. And so it’s a really good example of like, just because it’s niche, doesn’t mean it scale is not scalable,
doesn’t mean it’s not scalable. Yeah. I mean, you said they’re spending a few million dollars, they’re probably getting at least two or three, you know, times the return on every dollar spent. So if you spend, I don’t know, 10 million, you’re selling for 30 million. So you’re fine. Like, if you say this to anybody, this is the biggest problem with agencies, right? They just focus on the retainer. Like they say, Okay, how are we going to charge you? I don’t know, $3,000 a month? Okay, fine. What does this $3,000 A month get me in sales, if you if you come right away and say, like, even if I don’t have the money, you know, because small small businesses do not have like a massive marketing budget, they can spend, like, you know, if you’re, I don’t know, if you’re kind of if your turnover is less than 100k a year, you’re not going to be spending 10k a month, like you’re not going to be spending in one year more than what you make in the whole year. Right. But maybe if somebody comes to you and say, you know, if you spend $3,000, with us monthly, you’re going to be sending for 10. So you think, oh, it’s like 3x monitor, and like, it’s worth at least trying for a few months, right? I’ll find the money, I’ll borrow the money. I’ll you know, I’ll find it somewhere because it’s coming back. And, of course, like you have to choose carefully, not to go to spend it with someone who’s gonna waste it.
Yeah, that’s why we actually do Performance, Comp, or performance like agreements with our clients. Because,
yeah, if you don’t get you the results, you don’t pay. Yeah,
I mean, if everything’s aligned, like, you know, it’s, but we chart like, for us, we target specific clients that we know that we can win with as well. So like, we’re doing just as much qualifying and disqualifying, of course, as your brand is. And so in that scenario, for if somebody’s an agency owner, as well, it’s important to be selective, of who you take on and not just sell a hope and a dream, to somebody to and, and yeah, we get to bank on the upside, you know, from what we know how to do as well. So sometimes we’ll do percentage of spend, you know, deals, sometimes we’ll do like, sort of hybrid models, where it’s a reduced retainer plus percentage of sales. You know, but yeah, yeah, there’s like, like, the client gets what the client wants, we get to earn or charge what we believe that we should be able to, and it, you know, winds up being a win win.
What we often forget is that before the internet, there was sales and marketing, right? Yeah, we didn’t have the tools. Say we didn’t have the data driven. Yeah, but business is business sales, and sales and marketing is marketing. And you think of it as, as a, as a business owner before the Internet, what you used to do is to actually hire other hire marketing, like if you had the budget, you’d hire one of the big agencies. I don’t want to say any names now. But or you hire just a good marketing person. And sometimes you’d hire a salesperson as well. Right? So someone to just go and close it, someone to raise the awareness, educate the market, and, you know, help you get the message across and another person to go and close these deals and make the sales. And the same way you used to vet those people before they come and work and become part of your staff, is what you need to do. Now, when you’re dealing with an agency and a word of, you know, advice as well. Most agencies, the person who’s selling us a service is not the person delivering it. So ask to meet whoever is in delivery in the first two meetings and speak with them and because there will be the ones working with you not the person who’s selling.
Right for sure. Yeah, I definitely agree with that as well. You know, that way anybody can get an idea for just exactly how the communications like whether there’s actually consistency between us. To communicate Oh,
golly, yeah, there’s, there’s usually a big gap. Yeah, like the person who talks to you to convince you to use the agency. You become friends, you, you know, you trust them, they they’re good. They know what they’re talking about. And then you end up somewhere with the operation team who’ve never spoken with you before. We don’t know what you do. We don’t get the image. Yeah. And there’s a lot of back and forth. I mean, it doesn’t always have to be this way. But but this is, that’s why we have this podcast is like to give people tips and tricks. So for them, you know, saving them time saving them, you know, heartache, and saving the money, obviously.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Definitely been a good conversation today. Overall.
Thank you. Well, and yeah, you guys do ecommerce, don’t worry about it. Ecommerce is great. There’s so many, you know, agencies, applications help, that you can use when you need to, in order to increase your sales. The mindset is very important. And yeah, one one thing, because we’ve been discussing mindset, and, you know, spending and whatever, when we mentioned the number, any number, whatever it is, let’s say, I don’t know, 5k a month, because I’m talking about smaller businesses here. But in general, right. In order to optimize that, I don’t necessarily mean that you have to double it, sometimes 6k will get you, you know what I mean? So the optimization, because people always think that when we talk about optimization, that we’re asking them to double their spending or triple their spending. And so what’s your take on this? Like? How, how would you make it easier for somebody to understand? Yeah, if
anything, the way that we approach optimization is that we actually want to want the ideas to get you more for the same money that you’re spending. Okay, so, so, for example, more conversion, more conversions for the same price. And so that’s how you get to be more efficient. And then as you become more efficient, then you can you’re willing to spend more money. And when
economies of scale. Yeah, exactly.
So if you’re spending 100k a month, for example, you know, if you’re a big brand with big budgets, and you’re spending 100k a month to get, let’s say, 300k, in sales, you optimize, you get 500k in sales. And now that you’re getting 500k, in sales with 100 spent, you spent 200k, because you want to get to the million.
Yep, exactly. Yeah. And that’s why optimization of your customer acquisition costs, through the ads through your messaging through your offer through your landing page is so important. Because when you when you optimize that conversion rate of that entire process, you’re reducing the amount of cost that you’re that you’re spending to acquire that customer, you’re increased exactly why which increases your cash flow. And when you do your cash flow, you can invest more
and increases your customers like yeah, you’ll have more people buying from you. Exactly. Perfect. Thank you very much. Well, I hope everybody gets extra sales.
Exactly, exactly. Have a great day, you too.
Hey, before you go, I’d like to remind you that if you have a WordPress based website and to be really looking after its maintenance and security and having a professional looking after it, so if you feel overwhelmed, or if you feel that this back end and boring stuff, is something that you don’t want to do, please do hire someone, but get it done. Do not delay this. Do not leave your WordPress website, not updated. Do not leave your plugins not updated. This will open it up for hacking and malware and you don’t want that. If you’re unsure, head to my website, human talents.ca That’s human talents, one word human talents.ca and click there you’ll be able to book like a 30 minute consultation and we can discuss this together and see if we can help you Thank you and see you in the next episode.
