John Parkes and I go way back.
In the early days of OMG, we partnered with Russell Brunson on a project called DotComSecrets Local. John helped oversee the project. It was pre-ClickFunnels in 2010 and an excellent time to work as an online entrepreneur. Having an upfront seat watching Russell and his team was inspiring and educational.
Fast forward to today, and John is the Chief Traffic Architect for ClickFunnels. Or CTA for short, which is a nerdy and satisfying job title for a media buyer. John is a great media buyer, strategist, and marketer. He’s wicked smart and fun to talk to!
In this episode, we dive into rethinking Facebook Ads. Plus, we talk about the grandfather of direct response marketing - Dan Kennedy. Interestingly, many people (myself included) thought Dan was dead. He’s not, and now he’s part of the ClickFunnels team.
Here’s a look at what we dive into:
- The experience of buying Dan Kennedy’s company and brand. Opening up new markets and introducing the current market to The Godfather of direct response marketing.
- D.W.E.L.L. - audience strategy for focusing.
- How to build “set it and forget it” remarketing ads.
- How Google and Facebook Ads work together - this can really unlock growth when you understand it.
- Is TikTok really a game changer from a marketing and business growth perspective?
- A sneak peek at ClickFunnels 2.0.
Mentioned in This Episode:
John Parkes
Transcript:
Brett:
Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of O OMG Commerce. And today I have a legend on the show. Not only is he a legend in the industry, but he is an old friend. We go way back like 10 or 12 years. We'll tell that story in just a minute, but we're gonna be talking about Facebook ads. Are they dead or are they not dead? And, uh, spoiler, They're not dead. We're gonna talk about ways you can maximize. We're also gonna talk about some trends and the interconnectivity. I'm just trying to use big words now. Uh, between Facebook and Google, we're gonna talk about ClickFunnels 2.0 and some other amazing things happening. And so with that, I wanna welcome to the show, um, and longtime friend John Parkes, who is the Chief Traffic Architect, which, if you are paying attention, if you're thinking that acronym is CTA Baby, which totally makes sense for markers. So c uh, Chief Traffic Architect, John Parkes. How you doing, man? Welcome to the show and thanks for taking the
John:
Time. Yeah, awesome. To awesome to be here,
Brett:
Dude, I was so excited. We, uh, well, I, I think you reached out to me on Voxer, right? Which is the old walkie talkie app, which the only reason I ever got on that app was because of you and Russell Brunson back when we were working together. And, uh, and I hadn't, like, I hadn't had it in for years, but a notification popped up. I was like, Whoa, is John Parkes that I, that I suddenly, uh, teleport back to like 2012 or what happened here. But it was present day and I was excited, uh, to get that message from you. But, uh, but yeah, let's, let's actually tell the story of how we met. So you are now celebrating how many years working with Russell Brunson?
John:
I'm in my 15th year now with Russell. I know, it's been a while.
Brett:
It's crazy. And so back in, I think 2009, 2010, I could check. I'm terrible with dates, but I think that's, I think that's right. Uh, I partnered with Russell and, and, and you to, to launch, uh, an old project called.com Secrets Local. Right? It was super fun. It had what, a three or five year run it, it was great. Yeah. And you guys were just, I, I remember, I remember meeting Todd and hanging out with Todd at some events and Boise and you guys were just like kind of noodling on, uh, ClickFunnels. Cause when did, when did ClickFunnels launch?
John:
Uh, yeah, let's see. Can me on a date? I'm gonna say it. We played around in 20, 20 15 ish. There was something Yeah,
Brett:
You guys were like, just kinda
John:
Like, but yeah, like, we're
Brett:
Working on, we're working on something big. I remember you guys, so working on something big and I'm like, cool. I can't wait to see it. And, and something big was an understatement because ClickFunnels has been a monster success. And we, you know, we focus in the e-com space, run an agency, but we use ClickFunnels and a lot of our clients use, like, everybody knows ClickFunnels, right? So, um, uh, I, I wanna do this first. Maybe can you kinda explain like, what, what does a, a chief traffic architect do? What, what does like a day to day look like for you John Parkes?
John:
Yeah, awesome question. Awesome question. So we, uh, it's interesting as we've grown, cuz I mean, you've been with us since we were tiny. There was like three of us in the office and you know, <laugh>, you're like, There you go. There's, I
Brett:
Remember, I remember one, uh, one year I was there for Halloween. Uh, me and Chris Brewer, my business partner were both there. Uh, Brent Co. Peters was there and everybody, everybody wore costumes and sweets, like made stuff up. Yeah. I put a big, uh, mailbox like around my waist and I went as Lumpy mail, if you remember like the, the field three 3D or lumpy mail. <laugh>. Absolutely. Anywho. Yeah. Crazy.
John:
That's hilarious. Um, yeah. So, you know, back in the day, I, I, uh, I'm gonna close this tab here just to make sure we don't get too crazy, so No
Brett:
Problem.
John:
Yeah. Back in the day, like when I was, uh, running just kind of all of the traffic, I mean, I had to produce the ads, write the copy, you know, make sure the sales funnel got made, do the customer service. Like there was, it was everything, right? And that was back in the day where you were on board and uh, um, and, and it was crazy. But when we, as we grew, we started to specialize more and more and more, right? And, and so we had to come up with this, this concept of the chief traffic architect, somebody who's like driving all of the traffic. Like, what are we doing organically? What are we doing paid? What are we doing, You know, when it comes to branding and search and are we doing anything offline, direct mail, all kinds of stuff like that. And it's like, who's this person that does all of that and is slightly different than the person who's, who's, um, coming up with the new ideas for, for offers and landing pages and stuff like that.
Cuz that's a different focus, right? In our company. So we have, we have, uh, a team focused on putting up the new sales page, the new sales funnel, putting up the, you know, or, or even deciding what the Black Friday, Cyber Monday offers gonna be. All of that is in this channel over here. And so a chief traffic architect day to day is, is, um, basically taking the pass from the, um, from the funnel team and, and making it grow, making it, bringing it, you know, making it rain, bringing it in the sales. So it's like that's what we do all day long is we're, uh, we're, uh, iterating on ads that worked, looking at what works in other industries, bringing that back to the table, creating new, you know, images, video, getting copy written, trying it, failing, trying again, 16, you know, that whole model of, it's a, it's a like a whole suite of media buying.
Brett:
Yeah, man, I, I love it. And I really like the way you laid it out there. It's, it's thinking about all the traffic options that are available. Yeah. How do we, how do we optimize, maximize, really get the most out of that? And, and I, I've never really loved the term media buyer. I mean, we use it all the time in our industry. I use it too. It's, it's fine, but I think it's just kinda limiting. It's like a retail buyer. I'm just buying products, right? I'm just buying some media. I mean, right. But, but Chief Traffic architect, come on, man. Like that, that's what what it is, right? We're, we're architecting this traffic, which I love that. So Kudo, kudos to you for a, a great, a great title. Yeah. So I, I wanna, I want to talk, uh, briefly about Dan Kennedy mm-hmm. <affirmative>, before we get into, uh, some specifics on Google and Google and
John:
YouTube together. Yeah.
Brett:
Yes. Yeah. So, uh, and actually, uh, so, so those that don't know, and if you don't know, it's because you're probably just new to the marketing world, but Dan Kennedy, he's like one of the godfathers of, of modern marketing, of direct response marketing. And in fact talked about dotcom Secrets local, where we all worked together. I met Russell at a Dan Kennedy super conference. I, I'd just been reading the newsletter, you know, Russell wasn't as huge, uh, then as he, as he is now. And I was just at this Dan Kennedy event, saw Russell in the lobby, and we started chatting it up and hit it off and, and kind of went from there. Uh, but so Dan Kennedy is what kind of made that, that possible. I, I read his newsletter for years, man, It really formed my, my marketing perspective. But, um, I gotta say, I was surprised.
I think a lot of people were surprised. I thought Dan Kennedy was dead, right? So there was this time, and then you can maybe, uh, fresh me up on, on dates, but, but Dan Kennedy wrote this letter from what he thought was his death bed, saying like, Thank you, it's been a great run, whatever. Like, and, and I remember reading this letter and I was just so sad. I was like, this is like, you know, a guy who was a, a mentor from a distance, but a mentor for me, and he's dying, you know? Yeah. And then, and then not too long ago, I'm on Facebook and I see a picture of Russell with Dan Kennedy, and I'm like, Wait a minute. Was is that, like, is that an old picture? Is that a new, what's going on? And, uh, lo and behold, uh, Dan Kennedy's not dead. And, uh, I just never heard that he pulled through his, his illness. He really was terribly sick, but pulled through that illness. And, and so, uh, you guys now bought that company, Dan Kennedy's company, Magnetic Marketing, the rights of that. So talk about what that experience has been like and, and kind of why'd you do it and what the vision is there. But yeah, just, just tell us about that.
John:
Yeah, yeah. It was fascinating cause we were, we were on the same train as you. Like he was, he was dying. And then the next date we saw people publishing that, that it had happened, he had passed. And so we were all sad in the office. We were like, Oh, I can't believe it happened. This is, you know, and in a way it kind of, kind of revival as, as the legend, you know, moves on to the next phase of his existence and we're reading old Dan Kennedy books and stuff like that, and then all of a sudden it's like, wait, he's not <laugh>, he,
Brett:
I go, That's right. Yeah.
John:
And it was, it was fantastic news. I mean, you can only imagine, you know, it's like, it's like a Hollywood movie, but the, but then, um, I, I wish I knew the exact moment that Russell then kind of reached out and, and they started to mastermind this idea of, um, of combining, you know, of, of, Hey, let me, let me take on your business and help your legacy grow. And it kind of, I kind of stemmed from that moment where we're like, well, now Dan's passed on into legacy status, right? He's, he's, he's the, he's a legacy. Well, well, not really. He's, he's still alive. Well, let's make it a, a legacy anyway, right? So <laugh> <laugh>, of course. So yeah, we, we, we grabbed that brand, We knew that we know sales funnel and we know, you know, online acquisition and stuff like that.
Like, like that's our bread and butter. And so we're like, let's take this Dan Kennedy offline old school marketing genius, and let's publish it to the internet marketing world, um, and, and just, and just grow and scale in a way that, that, that that brand hadn't done. And so we thought it was the perfect match, um, bringing in a new demographic into our world that, that we hadn't reached before, as well as introducing the young bucks to this, to this marketing legend to the past. So, um, yeah, in a, in a really cool way to like reverse mature the brand. We, we acquired an old brand and now we're a part of the legacy, right?
Brett:
Yeah. It's so smart. And, and if you look at, at some of the legends that a lot of people will know, like Frank Kern and Ryan Dice and, and Russell Brunson and Alex or Mosy and, uh, Roan Fraser, some of these, these legends, you know, in our mind, like they all learn from Dan Kennedy in the beginning, right? Like Dan, Dan shaped all of these, uh, current rock stars. And so yeah, you guys are able to track like that, that old following Dan Kennedy audience to ClickFunnels and also take the, the young pups and introduced them to Dan Kennedy, Right? Which is just awesome. So,
John:
And what a neat way to, um, to, to also, um, like garner relationships with some of those old legends. Like you're saying, if, if, uh, if I can entice you to like, Hey, would, will you support a Dan Kennedy offer or Dan Kennedy launch, then heck, you know, all of a sudden it's like, like doors are open, right? And so it's a way to open new doors that, that weren't previously open to.
Brett:
Yeah, it's so cool. Can't, can't wait to see more there. And so, and you guys are using the magnetic marketing brand, right? You guys are, are, are kinda reviving that product or building things around that right
John:
Now? Yeah, we re we relaunched an offer, oh, I'm gonna say not six, maybe nine months ago at this point. Um, no BS letter, The no BS letter that, that Dan Kennedy's used that no BS concept for a long time. And, um, he's had his newsletter going out for a long time, but we, we put a new fresh face design on it, matched it up with our own behind the scenes, you know, Russell Brunson letter. And so now you get a two for one, um, you know, twice a month you get, you get these just dynamite marketing newsletters. And so we, we have been able to revive that brand and that, uh, not, not only the, the brand and revive the people who are already subscribed to the, to the Dan Kennedy world, but, but bring our world into the Dan Kennedy brand, right? Which is kind of a cool thing when you acquire, is how you get a cross sell, especially when you acquire a complimentary thing. You know, you get that cross sell, and so you get kind of a double subscription happening as well as, uh, it's been able, we've been able to attract, you know, other JVs and affiliates who are, they're all about promoting Dan Kennedy, you know, that's, that's a thing that they wanna stand by and stuff.
Brett:
Totally. Yeah. It really, I didn't even think about that, but it totally makes sense. Like, if you're digging into affiliate marketing and joint venture stuff, which you guys have always been great at, at, this opens up a a whole new realm of people to work with, or just a fresh excitement, like of course, Right. I wanna promote Dan Kennedy to my list, that type of thing. So that, that's awesome. Uh, super excited to see where that goes and, and dig in more. And I'm just curious, has, has, like Dan been by the office, has, like, have you guys got to hang out with Dan or, or, or I guess maybe not in a, the covid world or post covid world,
John:
Right? He's, yeah, he <laugh> he's a very, he's a very interesting cat. We have been able to hang out with him when he comes to an event, you know, like behind the scenes at our funnel hacking live event, you know, we can hang out with him. Um, but he, he, he rarely travels here, but Russell does go travel there and hang out with him. Yeah.
Brett:
Yeah. Totally makes sense. That makes sense. Cool. All right, awesome. So let's, let's get technical, let's get strateg, let's get tactical. Yeah. Um, and so let's talk about Facebook. First off, uh, let me ask you this, John Parkes. Yeah. Is Facebook dead? Because, you know, I, I hear people a lot saying I was 14 killed Facebook, Right? Right. I'm mad at Zuck, like, you know, Zucks catching a lot of heat for a lot of things and whatever you'll probably be catching for forever. And the meta versus silly and just all all kinds of stuff, right? So, but from your perspective, how are you viewing Facebook right now? And is it that
John:
Yeah, that's a fantastic question and it, and it's different if you ask a stock investor <laugh>, right? Versus, versus a chief traffic architect, right? Yeah. Is is is the, is the Maita stock grow? Is the growth curve still there? Is it, And, and, and the thing to realize is that it's, it's saturated, right? It's hard to find places for Facebook to grow, but that right there by definition means it's a great place to advertise cuz it means they're omnipresent, right? They're everywhere. So
Brett:
Everybody, everybody is still there, right?
John:
Right. Should you go out and buy Facebook's stock? Well, I'm not a stock investor, not gonna buy you on that, but should you go buy ads on Facebook? Absolutely. Shit, <laugh>, it's a fantastic place. And you and I were chatting, um, earlier and it, the concept that like almost every brand we work with, and a lot of 'em, the ones that you work with, from what you're saying, um, 50% of their spend is in the Google Suite and 50% is in the Facebook suite. And in those two monsters, you've kind of saturated everything.
Brett:
Yeah, totally. It, it's so interesting to me. And, and yeah, there, there are potentially issues with Facebook, right? Like one of them is, hey, young people aren't really on it. Like, I've got some older teens and my oldest is, is 20 now. Like, none of them really wanna be on Facebook, but they're all on Instagram, so, so kudos too Zuckerberg for getting on Instagram. One in the same when it comes to ads. Um, but yeah, it really does still come down to those two giants, Google, which includes YouTube and Meta and, and yeah, we got an advertiser that's spending, you know, six to 8 million a month on ads and it's probably not quite 50 50, but I mean, Google and, and Facebook, those two are, are by far the biggest. And then you got native ads, which are pretty huge chunk for this particular brand.
And I'm, I'm focusing on one brand, but this is true for other big advertisers. And then you also get TikTok and, and Snap and some other things there. But, but one of the things we talked about, and this, this is not, I do not want to, uh, be a downer on TikTok. Cause I think I'm bullish on TikTok. It's, it's a cool platform. It's growing. There's, uh, I mean, it's cool. I don't get on it, uh, for fun, but I think it's creates some good opportunities. But I don't know anybody, big advertisers, I don't know anybody spending more than 10% of their budget on TikTok. Right?
John:
Most
Brett:
It's like six to 8% type of thing, which is fine. Like, I think the way you said it was like, we spend a little bit on, on TikTok and it helps a little bit, right?
John:
Yeah, it's interesting. We, and we do the same with Snapchat and with Pinterest. Those are kind of the three where we've been able to find some, some extra room is, um, well, B too, I mean, we do advertise on Boone.
Brett:
Yeah. Bing is actually a great little add-on to what you're doing it
John:
Maybe
Brett:
10% what you doing Google?
John:
Yeah, Right. Giving us that five, 10% lift over here and there and over there, you know, but Snapchat mostly your targeting. Pinterest, we do some prospecting on Pinterest, and it is, and it is working for, you know, for certain offers that we have. But again, it's, it's a small piece. It's not anywhere near the size of what we spend on the, I guess it's now called maa, right? The Maita Ad State or the, or the Google, Google site. So yeah.
Brett:
Yeah. I'm still, I'm still not used to calling it meta, but, uh, I don't either. It, it'll happen more as we go, but, uh, but yeah. Okay. So let's talk about this for just a minute. And then, and then I want to talk about, uh, your system that you and, and, you know, kind of inspired by Russell developed for Facebook ads. But let's talk a little bit about the, the interconnectivity or the, the, the connection between, uh, Google Ads, including YouTube and Facebook, and how do you see the two working together?
John:
Yeah, I love that. So, um, Nicholas GoIT, I'm sure you're familiar with him. He wrote a book, um, and I read the book on a plane once, you know, and, and this interesting thing he brought up that I hadn't ever seen in this way, he, he likened under a swimming lane, right? And there people who swim fast, medium are slow. And there's the people who the fast swimmers, right? And they just take action. They, they see an ad, they click a buy, right? My wife accuses me of being that <laugh>, and
Brett:
It's like, it's Mark research, babe, I gotta see what this funnels like. I gotta buy the product, write
John:
It off, I'll use her business card. Right? It's no, exactly. It's the people who are just like, it's the type of person that just sees lives, right? And, and those are the ones that can, you know, run a conversion ad on Facebook and you get 'em, that's great, fantastic. You're measuring your CPAs. You want, you know, your, your average car value is higher than your CPAs right there, right then and there kind of a thing. But then there's the medium swimmers who are gonna think about it or need to see the ad a few times, but then there's the slow swimmers, right? Who, who aren't getting any less of a workout, it just takes them longer to do it, right? Kind of kind of concept. And those medium and slow swimmers, um, find themselves elsewhere on the internet interacting with you, right? That's what's really interesting to realize.
So when you run a Facebook ad, or you know, whether you're on Instagram or Facebook or anything, you're running the ad, you know, you immediately tend to focus on, well, how much should I spend and how much should it cost me to get that sale? But the other number that is right next to it in your stats is, how many impressions did it have? How much reach did it have? And it can be in the millions, right? And the millions of video views, depending on how much you're spending and the millions of impressions and stuff like that. Well, those, while nobody's necessarily clicking on those, or maybe they are, maybe you could have hundreds of thousands of clicks too, you know, and only somebody turning into sales. Think about the amount of branding that's happening. Think about the, the, the literal reach that you're having there with those ads.
And if the message is intriguing, and if you, if you've got the right kind of hook story and offer, um, you might not be closing anybody, but the fast swimmers and the slow ones are finding you elsewhere, right? And so that relationship with Google Ad Suite, where then they might go to YouTube and search, Well, tell me about this e-comm, you know, this, this e-comm product, this new thing that I found out saw on Facebook. Or they might go over to Google and, and, uh, and actually search for your brand. Or you might <laugh> gotta gotta throw my wife under the bus on this one because it was really funny looking over the shoulder. I mean, love her to death her, but I was looking over her shoulder, she was using the computer the other day and um, and I was like, Go to this website.
And so she opened up a new tab and the new tab, you know, in Chrome and it just said Google. And there's this big old place down there, right under the word Google. So she typed in the URL right there, and she, and she clicked enter, and then it caused a search to happen. And then <laugh>, luckily the URL she was looking for was the first thing that she clicked about. So like, there are people searching for your brand intentionally, unintentionally. And I'm, I am, after watching that and watching how she uses the internet and how some of my parents use the internet, some of my neighbors use the internet, I'm convinced that that unintentional search is a huge number. You know what I
Brett:
Mean? Is a huge number. And, and we see this too, and I'll, I'll, I'll make it a little correlation here. Cause I think this will help paint the picture. There's a lot of people that wanna buy something on Amazon, uh, but they still start on Google. And so we see this a lot with a lot of our Amazon brands where they're, you know, hundreds of thousands of searches a month on Google of someone typing in this product. And Amazon. And I think it's just for a lot of people, the internet begins on Amazon. I'm sorry, the internet begins on Google, right? So you go to Google, you just to even type in the url, but it triggers a search. It's insanity. It's super interesting. Yeah,
John:
No, it's, it's interesting. And like, even if, even if they know, I mean, so we're like talking things like URL and, and address bar. People don't know what those are. I mean, the, the majority, I'm gonna say the majority, and I'm shooting from the hip here of, of, of consumers don't know what I mean when I'm like url, you know what I mean? Or, uh, you know, kind of a thing. They're just like, I don't know. I just searched for the thing. I searched for the soap and I typed in the word Amazon and then I, it just magically leads me to this place called Amazon where I buy the tho, right? Yeah.
Brett:
I Googled it and then I got there. That's all, that's all I needed to
John:
Know. Yeah, you survey them, that's what they say. And so the fact that you are just throwing out millions of impressions over here on the social media side, and then you're basically retrieving them on the Google side, those things work hand in hand. So with our budgets, we've noticed, um, like we, you know, we'll find this fantastic, you know, cost to get the sales over here on the Google search side, right? And so we're like, well, we're gonna take some of our budget off of Facebook and you mentioned doing this, see my budget off of Facebook cause that's kind of expensive over there. We're gonna put it more on this Google search side. And it doesn't work because it throws the balance off. All of a sudden you have so many fewer people getting introduced to your brand and so therefore less searches.
Brett:
Yeah. Yeah. I love that. We, we notice that, you know, as an agency, we don't run any, any traffic on Facebook, but, but we're big fans of it obviously. And, and we'll notice that too, Like say, Hey, branded search is down this week. Did you guys do something different on Facebook? And and oftentimes the answer is yes. Yeah. And so we immediately see that. Yeah. We've also seen a connection, a correlation between YouTube and Facebook. So as we boost spend on top of funnel, YouTube, uh, Facebook often performs better. If, if someone's going hard on top of funnel, Facebook often top of YouTube works better. Oh, yeah. Uh, but we, we do a lot of measurement on, you know, YouTube brand lift studies. And one, once a once a client or once a brand gets to 30, 50, a hundred thousand a month on, on YouTube, we're usually seeing lifts of like, uh, 20 to 35% on their branded campaigns.
Mm. And, and, and I'm, I'm confident we haven't done the same study, cuz we don't do, we don't run Facebook, but confident the same numbers are true on Facebook, Right? You, you start spending a certain amount, your brand campaigns, your, your lower funnel search campaigns are gonna see a 20 to 40% lift. And so, so yeah. Yeah. You can't just look at what, what are the, and I love that. I love the Swim Lane thing. I, I think I'd maybe heard that, but I've forgotten that. I love that analogy. I'm gonna use that. But you can't just look at, okay, well this campaign only closed so many people because it just got the fast swimmers, right? The medium and slow swimmers are, are being converted through other channels, but wouldn't have happened without your top of funnel efforts. So, Right. That is awesome. Good stuff. Um, so let's talk about your dwell method. D W E L L. And it's an acronym. And you know, as marketers, we love acronyms, right? Right. We love, uh, shortening things. You know, there, there are more. I think there are more acronyms for marketers than any other group of people in the military, right? We got, we got ct, we got cv, we got ecr, which is E-commerce conversion room. We got, we got CPAs, we got cac, we got, we had CTAs, Right? Which now has a new meaning. Thanks. Right?
John:
And we even like to use our acronyms wrong too. I mean,
Brett:
<laugh>. Yeah. So gimme an example. I know, I know that, Oh, you mean, you mean what your acronym?
John:
No, no, no. I just, it's just funny cuz the accountants use C in one way and the marketers use CAC and it doesn't mean the same thing, you know? True,
Brett:
True, true, true. Yep. CPA is not certified public accountant. It's, you know, cost proposition and things like that. Uh, but, but anyway. So explain to us what Dwell is, and maybe also explain why it's kind of got a double meaning. You'll, you'll, you'll talk through the acronym, but it also kind of means something else. So, so walk us through that.
John:
Absolutely. So, so, uh, you know, Russell's written a a variety of books, fantastic books. And, um, in the books, he talks about finding out where your, where your target audience congregates, right? Finding out where they congregate. And it's an interesting concept cuz like, if you think way, way, way back when, you know, you, you brought yourself a literal soap box and you find out where the people are congregated, you'd drop it down, stand on top, say you're one foot taller than everybody else, and you'd start shouting, and hopefully somebody would buy something, right? Or you'd be preaching or whatever it was. But the whole soapbox concept, because you were finding congregations, right? You were finding wherever they were, and they were there because they liked to be in the park, or they were there because they, you know, you'd go to where you'd think your target audience best was.
So in the internet world, you gotta figure out where your people congregate, especially back when this concept was developed. And there was things like forums, right? But at, but they still, they still exist right now. They're in the forms of Reddit, you know, and things like that where people still congregate around topics. Um, Facebook groups or pages likes, interests, right? Uh, YouTube channels and, and all kinds of stuff. They still congregate. So you gotta find where they congregate. And so with that concept of congregating, I needed an acronym to help explain Facebook audiences, right? Because we, we teach a lot in, you know, the ClickFunnels brand. We, we have, we have coaching programs and we teach from stage at our own, at our own presentations and other people's, our events and other people's events and stuff. So I needed a good acronym to teach these concepts that I developed. And so I kept thinking about, you know, so I came up with Dwell, right? D W E L L, whereas where do your people dwell? What do they congregate? So that was a way for me to remember it, and hopefully the audience do.
Brett:
Yeah. I love it. It it, it, it will stick in my brain for sure, and I think for everybody else as well. And so, really the acronym relates to audiences, right? And, and such a huge part of we do as marketers, right? So the right message to the right person at the right time, right? And so it's message market match. Uh, but walk us through that. So the D and Dwell mm-hmm. <affirmative>, what, what kind of audience are we talking about there?
John:
Okay, So this is some, when I teach Facebook advertising to people who, who really don't know it yet, or maybe they just wanna learn this method, um, they, they forget all the different audiences available to them, right? So that's why Dwell makes sense. So the first D in Dwell is your data. What data do you already have? What's your data? Do you, do you already have, Are you a pizza restaurant? And you once put a fishbowl out and people threw their credit or their, their business cards in there to get a free topping or something like that. That's, that's data. You have data, you've collected so many email addresses or phone numbers, right? That data audiences that you can then upload into Facebook as what's called a custom audience. So d helps you think data and it helps you think you, you gotta start just like brainstorming, what data do I have?
Do I have data from a previous launch? Do I have data from five years ago? Do I have data from my fishbowl? Do I have data from my cousin's business, which is a lot similar to my business? And he'll share that list. You know, like, what kind of data can you access so that, um, you know, um, obviously legally and uh, and, uh, ethically what kind of data can I access? So yeah, get, get the data you can, you can get, and then refine it. Make sure that it's, it's good data, you know, it's data that that's gonna work and convert the best you can think through. And then you upload that into Facebook. The fun thing with Facebook is you can give them an email address, first name, last name, all kinds of shipping address. You can give them, you know, male, female, you can give 'em phone numbers. So sometimes you have data and you don't realize you have it like maybe your dentist's office and you have a whole bunch of phone numbers, but you sure that's not available for online marketing? Well, you can, you can upload a list of phone numbers, you know?
Brett:
Yeah. I love this so much. And, and really as we look at where, where is marketing headed in the future? Data's always been important, right? It's always been about, uh, you know, who you're speaking to, right? Is almost more important. I would say it is more important than, than what you say, right? You, you deliver a mediocre message to the perfect audience, it's gonna work, right? You deliver the perfect message to a terrible audience, it's not gonna work. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But, you know, with, with privacy changes coming, uh, like the, the people, the businesses, the brands that have the most first party data are gonna be way and are, are likely gonna win. So get more first party data. And actually, I think this is why you see, like, you know, Google's in a really good spot as far as first party data. So all that search data, that's their data, right? You're giving Google that search data on google.com first party data, they can use it, right? If you look at Amazon, all the shopper data and what you've bought and stuff like that, it's all done on Amazon. It's first party data, they can use it. Uh, you've got first party data too, and you've gotta put it to work. And that's the best place to start. So, love that. So D is for data,
John:
D is for data it
Brett:
Audiences, I like it. What's but
John:
The w Yeah. So I'll, I'll give this caveat as we head down. The first L is gonna reference the other three as source audiences. Okay? So as you think about that, D is our first source audience. The w the w is for website, what's happening on your website, right? And the, uh, you know, you've heard the Facebook pixel, the Google Pixel, the tracking things you can put on your site. Um, it's the, it's the website. So what, what's happening on your website are people, you know, all the people who hit your website, all the people who hang out longer on your website, um, people who go to the next page in your sequence. So all that pixel data is, is the second layer of audiences. And again, a source audience for the, for the looklike. We'll talk about when the first L, So the first D is that data. Grab all your data, refine it, upload it into Facebook
Brett:
From purchasers, subscribers, wherever you can get data about your customers. And then website,
John:
Right? And the website, Yeah. Yeah. The people who are hitting the website, cuz they haven't necessarily given you data, but the tools are in place to let you capture it into an audience.
Brett:
Yep.
John:
Love it, Right? Google has tools to do that. Yeah. Facebook too.
Brett:
Cool. So we got D, we got W Next is E
John:
E the E and the, and the dwell. The E in the dwell is cool. It's the engaged audiences. Okay? So you, you've got your, you know, your, your YouTube subscribers and watchers and stuff like that. You've got your Facebook page likers and shares and you know, so you got this, people
Brett:
That have engaged with video ads, like people that have watch a certain percentage of a video ad you can put them into an engaged audience.
John:
There's all this engagement happening. Some of the cool coolest engagement audiences that a lot of people miss are on, on Facebook, on the Facebook and Instagram platforms. You can save a post. Some people are in the habit of doing it, some aren't, but an audience, a lookalike audience based off of people who've saved your post or even interesting who save your post, Save the post that hot, hot market. Yeah. It's a really interesting one that a lot of us just don't think about. It's smaller, but it's almost like a, a very refined buyer's list. It's really cool. Hmm. So think about
Brett:
I know that I've ever done that. Wait, is that, is that just on Instagram? Is that right to say post
John:
Facebook watch you too? Facebook people
Brett:
Never done that on Facebook. I have had
John:
Three dots that list.
Brett:
Okay. Super interesting. So I have done that on Instagram where I'll see like a, like a stoic philosophy quote or so I'm like, Oh man, it's so good. I gotta show that my kids or my team or something. I'll save to collection or whatever mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But I've never thought about that. So that, that happens on Facebook too, yet that's a, that's a white hot audience. Uh, so that's an interesting one and that's one that I do not hear people talk about too much. So love that. So yeah, we got, we got lots of ways to measure engagement. Who is, and you know, if you look at like Google with, uh, Google Analytics, they can build, um, oh, I just forgot the name, cu uh, shoot. Um, it's the audience of people that are most likely to convert next.
John:
That's to maintain
Brett:
What, what's that?
John:
Affinity or custom intent?
Brett:
No, it's neither one of those. Those are both brilliant. But there, there's an audience that, like you, you get, it's a smart audience, uh, that you can build inside of Google Analytics. And Google is saying, Hey, this audience is likely to convert next because of what they've been doing. Yeah. But that's really what they're looking at. It's certain levels of engagement. And then Google's saying, Hey, I'm gonna package all those people for you. But what you're able to do here at Facebook is say like, okay, I want, I want these types of engagement, right? Because those people are showing that, hey, they're likely to convert if we just give them a reason to say yes and push them over the edge. So
John:
That's, you know, one thing we do with, one thing we do with engaged audiences is we, we boost them, right? We intentionally grow those engaged audiences and then we, we harvest out of it. So we, uh, we have our organic social team and they'll throw out posts, you know, all the time, a couple times a day, whatever, whatever seems to be working organically to get maximum, you know, maximum engagement. And then they'll notice a certain post has, has legs, right? When the other three didn't that week or whatever on that one, they'll throw another $200 behind it and just grow the engaged audience, right? Five, you know, 5,000 people watched this video. Well, let's make it 50, 50,000 people now watched it and now we have this big audience that we can then throw conversion ads at, right? And so growing intentionally kind of bolstering those engagement audiences, um, has been really helpful for us.
Brett:
That's super smart. Uh, so, so I love that where you're looking at, okay, say three, call it three organic posts a day, whatever the winner is, right? If there's something that's doing pretty well organically, that's a good sign that people like it, it's gonna be good. Throw some money behind it, Build up that engaged, uh, audience, and then now you can Yeah. Harvest it. Super smart.
John:
Right? You know, another crazy thing that we've tried recently on that same note, I'll just throw this in there as a, as a little nugget. Oh, I like this, uh, an organic post that, that performs really well engagement wise. If you, so like, let's say it's a carousel, right? And it, and it can be a fairly standard Instagram carousel where like, sp scroll to the right five times and I'll tell you five book quotes, right? Or whatever it is. Mm-hmm. But as long as it's working engagement wise, if that final part has some kind of call to action that's relevant to the care cell, you can turn it into an ad and it becomes the best performing ad. We had a certain ad
Brett:
Interesting,
John:
We ran it for months and months and it had, I mean, no one who crafts ads would've said, You know what? That's, that's the winning ad right there. That's the one. It was just this really silly Instagram engagement care cell, right? And it, I think it was about Russell and potato guns, right? He loves, we love to rely on that one. So Russell, Russell, yeah. I started this potato gun business first I did this, then I did this, then I did this. Learn more on how to start your own business. Click boom, right? And it was crazy.
Brett:
And it was your best at. And that, that's, that's so cool. So, uh, love that little nugget there. So, you know, organic post, find the winner from, from just organic reach, boost it, you find a real winner. Yeah. Say a carousel ad, just make that closing card, a call to action and voila. Yeah.
John:
Had a winner. Yeah, that was a really fun one. But after we've built up these audiences, these data audiences, and we've scoured around and got our best ones, these website audiences and got our best one, these engagement audiences and get our best ones, the next letter in the dwell acronym is L and that stands for lookalike or in Google it would be, it would be similar audiences that doesn't work from acronym. So, um,
Brett:
D Weel. Yeah.
John:
<laugh>, right? That works. But yeah, the lookalike audience. And so these, these, these audiences then serve as, as sources, right? The, the seed audience for then these algorithms, whether it's the, whether it's the Facebook algorithm or the Google algorithm to, to see who, who the type of audience you're looking for is, and go out and find more of them, right? Anywhere on Facebook, anywhere from 1% of the nation that's similar to you, up to 10% of the nation, that's the most similar. They've got all this data that you don't have. Algorithm has more data than, you know, than we even know. So like they're able to go out there and just juggle away at it.
Brett:
Yeah. It's awesome. So lookalikes and, and that's, yeah. That's the beauty of these two platforms of Facebook. And also Google is yeah, you, you build these profiles, right? Engage, you know, those us your website data and then yeah. Build lookalikes and, and often that those are the audiences you can, you can scale with. So,
John:
Um, I'll give you some, some caveats though on that, on that, on that fourth audience that looked like audience, um, garbage in, garbage out, right? We learned that in elementary school and we had our little typing computer program class. So if, if the audiences that you're giving Facebook, if you're saying, Hey, these are 10,000 people who liked my organic host in the last month, make it look like off of that, that's garbage, right? But if instead your engagement audiences, all the people who've saved my post in the last five days, something that's like really, really tight, tight, then it's gold, right? Gold in gold out. No one ever told me that in elementary school. Yeah,
Brett:
Gold in gold out. I like that better. That's cuz that's way more motivating. That's
John:
Way more motivating. So you gotta make sure you're giving really, really good seed audiences for those similars and lookalikes to work.
Brett:
Totally makes sense. All right, we've gotta, we've got the, the, the first four, uh, of dwell here. Uh, but bring us home. What's the second L
John:
Okay, the second L. And this is the one that you're supposed to ignore until you've paid attention to the first four. That's why it's at the end. And this is the one too many people resort to right outta the gate. And those are the provided interest that Facebook provides. So layering interests, right? And l for layering interests. Um, Facebook has all these demographics and interests and stuff. And you can say, well if they liked Martha Stewart and they like home cooking, then they're probably gonna like this, this new spa I'm selling, right? But, but the thing is, is that you're just guessing at that point. You're taking the algorithm out of it and you're just going like willingly guessing and too many people start there. That's not where you start. You gotta start with the other one.
Brett:
Yeah. You'll find some winners there, right? Like going, going after these broad audiences, right? In in the Google ecosystem. It's in market audiences and, and things like that. And we love, you talked about, uh, custom intent audiences or building audiences around what people are searching for. Um, you know, it's still going beyond your data and your, your customer stuff and, and similar audiences. You'll find some major wins there and some major opportunities to scale, but you also find a lot of stuff that doesn't work and that's okay, that's just part of it. But that, that's why you start with those other areas, those lookalikes. Yeah.
John:
Yeah. You, you lean deep into your, to, into your other audiences before, especially if you're, I mean, I'm talking like you're starting a company, right? You've got 400 bucks a month to spend. You, you're just trying to figure out where to spend it. It's not that last month.
Brett:
Yeah. Yeah. Totally, totally makes sense. Yeah. Uh, cool. Alright, so we got our, we got our dwell. Uh, let's talk a little bit about, uh, you, you told me about kind of a, a set and forget it. Uh, Yeah.
John:
You, you know about
Brett:
That. Accept versus never refresh. Yeah. So, so tell me about this.
John:
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, so another way, another way I help beginning advertisers understand ads is that there's, there's a world of prospecting and a world of retargeting. Two different kinds of ads, right? And the prospecting ads, the way you can think about that is that's when you're reaching out to find cold people, people who who don't yet know you, your brand, your attractive character, whatever your leading thing is, you know, your, um, and, and they don't know that yet. And so you're reaching out to maybe problem aware people, but not, or maybe even solution aware, but not product aware, right? When we're using the Eugene sports model Yeah. They're not, not yet familiar
Brett:
With it. Did I just read, I read a big chunk of that book again on an airplane recently. Yeah. It's so good. Like, it, it just, it triggered all kinds of ideas in my mind. It was written in one like 1960 something, 1970. I don't remember Eugene Schwartz. Yeah. Um, uh, uh, what's the book? No, not scientific. That's uh,
John:
That's the other one.
Brett:
That's track cables. Uh, yeah. Breakthrough Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz. Yeah. It's, it's a masterpiece for sure. It's
John:
Fantastic. Um, yes, it's breakthrough advertising and it's fantastic. And the, um, the fantastic things, you know, the, the, the layers he taught about the, you know, the problem aware, solution aware, um, even product aware at the top. So when you're prospecting, you're reaching back a couple layers, right? And you, and you've gotta have these ads and, and they, they tend to burn out quickly depending on the audience size. You've got, you've got these, um, you know, these ads, the prospecting ads, and you've got, especially, especially in the Facebook world, I hear this more burn out there, right? For sure. Every, every three weeks you gotta come up with a new ad because this one stopped working, it worked for a while and then didn't, right? And so that there, there's a lot of work there, especially for a new entrepreneur starting up and maybe they don't have a lot of, you know, creative power behind them.
Um, but the cool thing about the separating out the retargeting is that if once you've figured out, you can set it and forget it. And this is why, because you have, if, if you set up the audiences right, and if you test your ads, then you can get this done. So figure out what you wanna say to these, to these retargeting audiences. You know, try it out. Figure, run some creative until you get some that work, right? And then, and then those, and then once you have that, you've got that. And then you gotta make sure your audiences are structured right? So I, I do retargeting audiences off of, off of website action, off of engagement action. And, um, and even off of the data. So it goes like this, if they've engaged with your brand, right? You know, they've, they've watched them YouTube video, they've liked to post, shared it, commented, anything like that, any kind of, um, engagement.
Then I will retarget them for a small period of time, right? Maybe three, five days, right? We're talking for a small period of time. Um, but, but I set up those audiences in Facebook so those people only hop into the audience for five days and after five days they fall off. It's almost like a conveyor belt. So that audience never gets old so they can't burn out on your ad, the ad last nice indefinitely, right? Right. Pop in, they hang out with you in your ad five days, boom, fall off the backside, right? They didn't take action, they're out the next layer. Yeah. The next layer is people who visit, who then click through and visit the website. Well hey, they visited the website, that's a little bit of an action. I can hang out with them a little bit longer. Let's go for 10 days now. You know, But again, you structure that, you structure the audience. And so, so they hop in, they see that ad, you know, they see it in, and I'll tell you how I, how I like mechanically how I structure these in the, in the campaign, um, in the campaign settings. But they hang out for 10 days and then they, they fall off of that audience and they can't in essence, burn out on that ad. They're only there for 10 days. Yeah. So the, this is a set senate, forget it kind of model, you know?
Brett:
Yeah. Love it. Love it. So then you find these winning ads Yeah. For retargeting and then they could maybe run for a year or more. I'm, I'm guessing like it could just run Yeah. Uh, that and I that actually because of that. That's why in YouTube some ads will just run forever because a lot of the audiences like a custom, uh, intent audience is refreshed by Google about every 14 days. Yeah. And so then you, you, it's not, the ad doesn't wear out cuz the audience is refreshed all the time. Yeah. So I love that. That's super, super cool. Um, so any, any thoughts here for those that like to get nerdy on the, the mechanics of, of how you set that up and, and understanding with podcasts? It's hard to visualize things, but in any, uh, specifics you want to add there.
John:
Yeah, definitely. So depending on the depth, the, the, the amount of steps they've taken with you or how refined that audience is, however you wanna kind of think about it. If you've got a very, very refined audience, you don't need Facebook to back you up and double refine that audience. And what I mean by that is you don't need to rely on the algorithm and you don't need to run conversion, um, conversion objective campaigns. Okay? You can run reach campaign, right? True, true of your campaign, right? You can run campaigns that, that are there for saturation more, more so than are there to, to snip out the winners. Cuz I mean, if you only have, let's say you only have, you know, a thousand people who, who clicked through and hit your landing page, you should retarget every single one.
Brett:
You wanna hit all a thousand. Yeah. Right? So go for a, so making an impression based campaign ensures that that Facebook or Google's gonna just hit everybody. Versus if you do smart bidding, the algorithm's gonna be kind of choosy on who they should. Right?
John:
Pull, pull, pull the smart out of this version, right? And I'm saying, I'd say this with a huge caveat of make sure you have a refined audience or you blow your budget. You know, you don't, you don't do this on a cold audience,
Brett:
A few million people or something. Yeah.
John:
See a super refined audience where, where they've taken a ton of actions, you know, that the likelihood that they buy is high, go for a full saturation. Usually what happens, you get cheaper impressions, right? Cuz you're not having, you're not, they don't have to be choosy. They don't have to like, use their algorithm to just like the winners, right? Do you get cheaper impressions often do you get, you get more brand saturation, you get to reach 'em all so you get more conversions.
Brett:
Yeah. Super smart dude. I love this. This is awesome. Uh, well I'm a little bit bummed. Uh, we are, we are completely out of time. Uh, so we do need to wrap up, but, uh, kind of final questions. Uh, tell us a little bit about ClickFunnels 2.0. Huge, uh, sure. Release that depending on when you're listening to this is either about to come out or is barely out or, or whatnot. So talk us a little bit about that and, and what are you excited about, uh, for the future of click
John:
Funnels? We're, we're super excited about ClickFunnels 2.0. So yeah, it's coming out in just a few weeks. Um, we're super excited. You know, ClickFunnels 1.0 will still remain people who are in there and and loving it can still keep using it. And if they've got their pages built there, their sales funnels and they love 'em, by all means stay there. But just like base cam does where we're coming out, ClickFunnels 2.0 and it will, it will, it will also be an an option. ClickFunnels 2.0 has like all the features you always wish base or ClickFunnels had at 1.0. You can build your blog on it, you can build your website on it, you can build your sales funnels in it. You can have brand controls, you know, if your brand's purple and this exact, you know, shade of purple, you can brand the whole thing purple.
You can make, you know, these, these static elements that are always there. You know, branding things, whether it's the website, the blog. So anyway, all of the pieces you always wish you had and get this br It also has a store and it just like Shopify so you can have all your income store listed right there. So that's why we're so excited. It's all under one house. So the ease of use will be fantastic. The, the interactivity between them and the coolest thing that I'm so excited about cuz I'm the, I'm the, you know, the numbers guy is, is the integration of the stats.
Brett:
Mm.
John:
Love it. Like, like since it's all in one system, I'll be able to see the person who hit my shop and then the sales phone, like all of that will be so interconnected and the data will be so clean because it's all under one, one roof.
Brett:
Super, super smart. Awesome. So if people are like, Hey, I wanna learn more from John Parkes, or I just, I wanna check out click funnels, I know most people already know about it, but, or I wanna check out ClickFunnels 2.0. How do, how do they do that?
John:
Yeah, just hit me up on Instagram. I'm, I'm most active on Instagram, um, you know, uh, the handle of John O. Parkes and you'll see me right over there. And yeah, if you wanna find more about click Funnels, click funnels.com. That's where find Oh, right. It'll be up in just a few weeks. If you're listening to this in a few weeks, then it'll already be there. But Click Funnels 2.0. We're super excited for that launch.
Brett:
Awesome. So I'll link to everything in the show notes, but, but John, this has been a blast. Thanks for doing this, man. Super fun. We'll have to do it again.
John:
Hey, for sure. Thanks for having. All
Brett:
Right, brother. Thank you. And as always, thank you for tuning in and we'd love to hear from you if you've not, uh, reviewed us on iTunes yet. I would love that. Love it if you leave us, that five star view on iTunes helps other people find a show, makes our day, uh, and is just super fun. So with that, until next time, thank you for listening.
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