Is the number one result on Google the best spot for you? With John Horn.

Google, as the top search engine worldwide, is one of the top platforms as well where entrepreneurs and businesses spend money to advertise, with the goal of taking the number one result spot. But is the number one result really the best spot for you? In this episode, John Horn, CEO of Stub Group and a Google and Facebook Ads expert, shares why number one spot isn't always the best for your business, and the factors you should consider when trying to top on the search results list on Google.

John also explains how you could save time and money, and the other benefits of hiring ads experts to do it for you instead of a DIY, the differences of running ads for B2B and B2C companies, and how ads can help you through your sales funnel. He also shares how the transition from desktop to mobile devices made it a lot complicated and harder to set up and track your ads results, a couple of tips when running an ads campaigns, and how Stub Group helps their clients #getnoticed, as well as how they help their business #getnoticed.


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Transcript

Jim James : 0:00

Hello, and welcome to this episode of The UnNoticed Entrepreneur. Today, we are going all the way to Fort Worth in Dallas, Texas. John Horn, joining us from the Stub Group. Welcome to the show.

John Horn: 0:12

Jim, thanks so much for having me.

Jim James : 0:14

Now, just tell us then, because you are the CEO at the Stub Group, which specialises in Google, and Google AdWords, and LeadsGo. Please tell us how on earth can entrepreneurs get noticed using Google and Facebook ads.

John Horn: 0:27

Absolutely, like you mentioned, we focus on Google, Facebook, other platforms, really anything in that digital advertising space. And we're helping businesses get noticed by connecting them with people who are searching for the products or services that they sell, even people who don't know to search for it yet, but who need to be made aware that those products exist. And so, whether that be Google search engine or people scrolling through their feet on Facebook, we're helping companies get in front of the right people at the right time.

Jim James : 0:55

Great. Now, it seems, for many of us that Facebook, Google Ads, it's become very complicated and very tech-heavy. Is it beyond the reach of the sort of growing entrepreneur or can anybody do it?

John Horn: 1:08

That's a great question. And that's a question that we're asked often by businesses, saying,"Hey, you know, do we need to hire a third party to help us?" Or, "Can we just work directly with the platforms?" And really, the answer is, is both end. So DIY Ads or Facebook Ads, and they both platforms put a lot of money into advertising, two small businesses saying, "Hey, come and do it through our platform." And can do it, but the question is, are you going to get good results? That's the more hairy question, because as you mentioned, those are very complicated platforms to work and figure out how to profitably spend money. And so that's why there are lots of agencies like Stub Group, who, this is what we do day. We eat and breathe, and figure out how do we leverage the algorithms to maximize the return that we're driving for our clients. also, how we can spend that time for our busy clients who are also trying to a business and execute the work when they're selling, and they often don't have time to spend in the account to seeing what's working and what's not working.

Jim James : 2:09

I think you've raised a lot of really good points that not only time is money, but also if it's spent badly then it's worth not worse than spending it at all. So John, just tell us, then, take us through a company comes to you and says, "Help, John. What should I do for my internet advertising?" Take us through how you build a campaign.

John Horn: 2:28

Absolutely. The place that we start out is looking to understand as much as we can about the business who's coming to us. So, understanding numbers, what can they, you know, afford to spend to acquire new business based upon their margins? Let's say if they're selling products, you know, what are their profit margins? How much is a new order worth to them? Also, based upon the lifetime value of a customer. You know, are they going to a one-and-done customer, or are they going to be with you for years and make recurring revenue? So it's about figuring out those numbers with businesses then translating that on the advertising side to say, "Okay, well, if we can afford to spend you know, a hundred dollars to acquire a new customer." let's look at the cost of traffic. How much do we need to pay get relevant people to the client's website? And let's look at conversion rates. You know, what can we reasonably assume? How many of those people getting to the website will then actually take the desired course of action to purchase that product or fill out that form, or call the client? we try to work our way backwards from the client's numbers what's realistic in the advertising space to either say, "You know what, we don't think it can work because the numbers just aren't there, it's too competitive." Or,

Jim James : 3:37

Yeah.

John Horn: 3:37

hopefully ideally,"Hey, yes, we see opportunity here. go ahead and test it out and start spending money, start getting that good data, that good traffic, and then optimizing and improving over time to hit those goals for a client." And a big part of that, too, is figuring out what platforms should we use for client. And we want to start out typically with the lowest hanging fruit, you know, where can we get the biggest bang for their initial buck then work and scale from there? So if it's a client who's selling something that people are actively searching for, typically, those people are going to be searching on Google. They're going to be typing in, whatever, plumber near me, or best software to use for this reason or that reason. so, when someone types that in, we want our client to be a solution that comes up for that. And the best way to do that typically is through advertising, and then testing messaging, and figuring out how to get those people to our client's website.

Jim James : 4:28

So you raised a really good point about the way that now it be so targeted and also so finance driven. John, you talk about the ads, and obviously there are competing ads now if you do a search, you say, for plumbing near me, you get multiple. How important is it to be the top one in that list? Because if you're a smaller company, you might still need to be on that list. But presumably the bigger brands of already well-established in the campaign market. So how important is it to be number one as it is on the search rankings themselves?

John Horn: 4:58

That's a fantastic question because a lot of people, they have it in their mind, "I have to be number one." Business will come to us and say, "Can you get me to be number one on Google?" And what we say is, that's actually not the right question to be asking, because the way that things work with Google it's an auction. And what happens is you're telling Google, "Hey, these are the types of keywords or searches that we want our ad to show up for. what we're willing to pay for that traffic." And then there's an incredibly dynamic auction that takes place every single time that someone searches on Google, all the different advertisers who want that type of traffic competing against each other, based upon the quality of their ads, how likely someone is to click their ads, as well as how much they're willing to pay a click to have their ads show up. so you might have a scenario where,"Hey, yeah, being a number one is fantastic because a lot of people click the first thing that comes up." but then you might have scenarios where, "You know, what, really expensive to have that first position often, but second, or third, or fourth position are much more less expensive, and that works with our numbers. We're able to, you know, be profitable when we get traffic from there." So it's less about targeting a position more about having a really foundational strategy of going after the right people with the right bids, and numbers, and best ads on your side to hit your goals, you know, your profitability goals, whatever those goals may be.

Jim James : 6:14

Right, and so that's really reassuring actually for the, let's say, the newer business or the entrepreneur that's competing in a category that may be saturated. It's still possible then to get leads. And now, when we advertise to someone, it's often just the beginning of a journey, isn't it? So, can you just explain to us John, how does Stub Group then help, for example, on the whole customer journey and through the funnel? Because someone may see the ad multiple times before they make a decision, so perhaps you just explain how that can work for somebody.

John Horn: 6:45

Yeah, absolutely. That ad that someone is seeing is often their first impression, the first engagement you're having with them. And it might be follow-up engagements too, like you mentioned, a lot of people will see ads before clicking, or even during the process as they're researching you as a company. And so that first impression is important, but then, are you sending them if they click on that ad? It's just as important. Because if you're spending lots of money on getting people to your website, then you've got a website that, let's say, it doesn't load quickly and people just get annoyed and click back before the content even loads. Or the website you're sending them maybe to your homepage, where you've got generic information and they've clicked an ad talking about a very specific problem and they say, "Oh, this isn't relevant to me.", click away. You're going to be wasting all kinds of money on that ad spend. And so we help our clients think through, who are we targeting? Kind of where are they in the conversion funnel based upon what they're typing in? Are we going after people who to be educated first about why they need your product? are we going after people who've been through that and they're just, you know, about ready to make a decision and they're looking for the right place to go with? And so we help our

Jim James : 7:51

So

John Horn: 7:51

think through those realities and try and craft the landing pages and where we're sending that traffic on the client's website best match those pain points that are in the mind of the people clicking through those ads that are best suited to them towards whatever action we want them to take, whether it's placing an order, or making a phone call, or filling out a form, that action is.

Jim James : 8:13

So, I've got to ask one point about the customer journey. Cause it doesn't all take place on the same platform, does it, John? What about this sort of transition from desktop to mobile and now location-based advertising? Is that really making it too complicated to use Google Ads or Facebook Ads, for example?

John Horn: 8:31

Yeah, that's something, it's been a reality for a long time. Traffic from mobile devices has been more than

Jim James : 8:36

use Google ads or Facebook ads, for example.

John Horn: 8:37

traffic for four or five, maybe even six years at this point. So it's been something that we've been working with for a long time and it definitely, makes it more difficult to track the journey that people are taking. If, let's say, they start their research on their phone when they're riding the bus and then when they get home they go to their computer and go back to the website, or maybe they see a Facebook Ad and they through that. there's a lot of segmentation that journey. A lot of different data points and fragmentation, but there are a couple things that we look to do to try and, make that a unified journey in terms of what we can see on the tracking side. Some of that comes down to tracking and identifying people across devices or across platforms. are a lot of ways that we can do that with the tracking codes that we can implement for clients. And then some of it is, you know, testing and kind of modeling out and saying,"Okay, you know what, we this amount of ad spend to this platform, we know our tracking's not a hundred percent accurate, but we can, you know, look at different date ranges and say, did we move the needle during that time period. When we did this, you know, what happened in terms of sales or traffic to the website? And then when we tested this different thing, how did that change?" And so a lot of that comes back to ongoing optimization and measuring as much as possible about what's happening with the traffic we're driving to the client's website.

Jim James : 9:53

Wow. And then, you mentioned there about moving across to the client's website with the tracking. How are you being impacted by the ability of consumers now to, like, block cookies, for example. Is that making a big difference? Are you're getting lot sort of like black holes and now on that customer journey?

John Horn: 10:11

It has definitely made it more challenging. One of the biggest single, you know, challenges on the tracking side of things that had happened recently is Apple last year when they did their iOS 14 update made it very easy for people on iPhones to opt out of being tracked across apps and mobile websites. And what that has done is it has made it more difficult to track the journey and to do the types of targeting that, ideally, we'd like to be able to do. But it just means that we need to take different strategies, because at the end of the day the people are still the same. They're still using the devices, they're still looking for these products and services. And so we have to just get more creative about, for example, on the Facebook side, we're going to run Facebook ads, we have less actual tracking visibility. Maybe let's send all of our traffic to landing pages just built for Facebook, we know that people coming through the forms and those page from Facebook, even if the Facebook tracking pixel isn't able to track, you know, every single one of those submissions. it's things like that you can do. And then again, it's about going back to the basics of, we running good campaigns with good messaging that send people to well-crafted landing pages that actually the needs that they have. And then, you know, trying to fill those gaps in as much as possible in the back end.

Jim James : 11:23

So you mentioned there about good campaigns. John, can you give us, you know, one or two tips on what makes a great campaign? What makes a great ad, because you'd refer earlier on to the fact that, you know, the algorithms would choose not only the most sort of well-paid but also the best creative ads to show.

John Horn: 11:42

Absolutely. A lot of people, when they talk about good campaigns, they focus on what we call vanity metrics, start saying, "Oh, I got X number of impressions on my ad. You know, so many people saw it, or even so many people clicked through. I've got a great click through rate." But none of that really matters if that's not increasing your bottom line as a business. So what we care about as a good campaign is, are we making you more profit? Are we getting you whatever your, you know, KPI is? Whatever that key performance indicator is, it's actually going to make you money. Is this campaign doing it? And then are we able to scale that and continue doing that better over time? So that's a factor of the conversion rate of the traffic we're driving as well as the clickthrough rate of people who are seeing our ads and then clicking through. that goes back to the messaging, the targeting, and even to the tracking on the back end.

Jim James : 12:30

John, can I ask a question about the difference between B2B advertising online and consumer or B2C? Are there any sort of main differences that your clients need to take account of between the two different disciplines?

John Horn: 12:44

Yeah, we do a lot of space in both, and there's definitely differences between both. One thing that often comes into play is the time lag between someone on an ad, for example, and then actually taking action on a client's website. Often, in the B2B space, you might see a longer time lag as, you know, a business researches multiple options, may be puts out, you know, requests, quotes from different vendors, things like that. And so you have to factor that timeframe into your campaigns, measuring whether something's been successful. So if it takes a month for someone, you know, filling out a form and then actually making a decision to move forward with you, when you look at your data to analyze how much money you're making from your campaigns, you've got to factor that into that. Okay We've got this pipeline in place, and here's what we can expect to get moving forward," stuff like that. On the consumer side, typically, it moves a little more quickly. Now certainly there are plenty of times where there could be a longer lag as well, especially if it's a higher price point, product or service, but usually it's going to move a little bit more quickly there. And then also, you've got to take into account on the business to business side of things, often, the person that's initially seeing your ad or get into your website, they might not be the decision maker. might be researching on behalf of their superior, or, you know, they might be one stakeholder out of five or six who have to sign off. And so you want to make it really easy for them to have information to share with those decision makers, and be able to, you know, get that buy in from stakeholders and clearly understand their mind what sets your business apart. Whereas in the consumer side, you know, maybe they've got to check with their spouse, maybe not, but you know, you're often with that decision maker, and so, that process looks a little bit different.

Jim James : 14:26

Yeah, okay, really good insights there. And what about the creatives, John? Does it make a difference to have just text, which presumably is less expensive, or to have infographics and video? Any guidance at all on the ROI between those different formats, or even audio now?

John Horn: 14:45

Yeah, so on the advertising side, the placement and platform is going to dictate what type of ad you're running. So, for example, if you're on Google search, you're going to have text ads. If you are Facebook, you could do a bunch of different things. Typically, the more engaging and visually stimulating your ads can be, the better. So, video, if you can. Video is often going to perform better than an image, image is often going to perform better than text. Same thing on your website and landing pages, if you can drive people to a page with a video about your product explaining, "Hey, here's how it works. Here's how it fits your need." give them video testimonials from customers. often going to have a greater emotional impact than just imagery. Same thing, you know, imagery versus text. If you just have a page you send traffic to with a white background, black text, and nothing on there - A, you probably already look outdated compared to your competitors, and B, it just makes it harder for you to emotionally connect with consumers, so videos are good.

Jim James : 15:41

Yeah, and I presume more expensive. We haven't touched really how much people just should spend or could spend. John, in your experience at the Stub Group, any sort of minimum viable budget, a number, for people. Can you give any guidance on that? I know, it's like a 'how long is a piece of string' question?

John Horn: 15:58

Exactly. It's like you said, it's one of those things that does depend per client, but we're able to figure it out per client because an auction is what's taking place on most of the platforms that we're running for clients. And so traffic for, let's say, a plumber is going to be very different cost than the traffic for a lawyer or any eCommerce website, or fill in the blank. we can take a look at those markets and do projections and say, "Okay, here's approximately what traffic is going to cost." And then we can kind of work our way backwards, to say, "Okay, well, you know, if we want a minimum of, let's say, a hundred clicks a week for a client, here's roughly what's going to cost, and here's what that monthly budget would look like." And we might say, "Okay, if we get a hundred clicks per week, gives us enough data to start to see what's working or what's not working, and start to make improvements over time." But that minimum number of clicks is going to depend upon the type of business we're working with. You know, if it's kind of an impulse buy where someone either they will or they won't make a decision right away. you can much more quickly say, "Oh, this is working or this isn't working." it's a product or a service that people are really going to research and take a while before they make a decision, to have to collect more data just because it takes more time to really see a pattern or trend that data.

Jim James : 17:13

Right, and if someone wants to work with an agency, John, like Stub Group, how is it in effect self-funding because I can tell you're going to save clients a lot of time and money too, but what sort of cost would it be to a company that wants to work with someone like yourself?

John Horn: 17:26

Yeah, time and money is really that big benefit, like you mentioned. And in terms of how much it's going to cost, there's all kinds of options out there. There is a wide range, certainly. I would say to work with a really a good agency at the bare minimum, you're probably going to be spending at least a thousand dollars per month and usually there'll be a percentage of ad spend part of things as well. So usually an agency is going to take maybe between 10 and 20% of the spend that you're spending with Google or Facebook as their fee as well. The idea being, the more you're spending the more work they're having to put into things to manage that spend. So it's usually going to be somewhere in that range. And that can feel, you know, very high for a very small business. And sometimes it is too high for them and it just doesn't make sense to work with a third party. But at the same time, I like to compare it to hiring a plumber, for example, for your house. You could go and work on your pipes yourself, it could work well, you know, if you make one wrong move and the water starts spraying out over your living room, suddenly you're restoration companies and carpenters and mold cleaning companies, and you wish you just paid that money to get an expert from the beginning.

Jim James : 18:34

That's definitely false economy. And John, final question, the CEO of the Stub Group over there in Texas, how do you get your business noticed?

John Horn: 18:42

I like to say, we eat our own dog food. We run a lot of digital advertising campaigns ourselves, targeting people who are searching for help online for an agency or a partner to come alongside of them and help them. we do that. And we also do other outreach as well, you know, PR, email outreach, outbound, podcast interviews, even just like this one, and even finding partners, let's say, other agencies who have experience doing maybe SEO, or PR, or podcasts, or whatever, and saying, "Hey, we'll help your clients on the gate side of things," kind of a partner there to help them make a win-win for their clients.

Jim James : 19:14

John Horn, CEO of the Stub Group over there in Fort Worth, Texas. Thanks so much for joining me and sharing amazing insights. I know I've not given you very much time on such a big subject. Thank you for sharing today with me.

John Horn: 19:27

Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on, Jim.

Jim James : 19:29

It's been my pleasure. And you've been listening to John Horn. Of course I'll include all of his details in the show notes as always. And thank you so much for listening to this episode of The UnNoticed Entrepreneur.