Misconceptions about GDN are rampant in the eComm world. It’s too hard. It’s too expensive. The targeting isn’t as good as Facebook. It doesn’t work. Justin Brooke knows better.
Justin is an ad veteran who knows just about every ad platform out there. He’s partnered with and trained media buyers for Russell Brunson, Frank Kern, Dan Kennedy and more. He also worked for Agora Publishing. He KNOWS his stuff. And he believes GDN ads are better than Facebook?
Why?

• You can still get $.40 and $.80 clicks.
• GDN offers targeting that you can’t match on Facebook.
• GDN creates the impression that your brand is “everywhere”.

Here are some tips we cover:

• His unique approach to GDN for eCommerce.
• His landing page must-have elements.
• How quality is in the quantity when it comes to GDN headlines and copy.
• Testing 3 angles for every idea - toward pleasure, away from pain, and something controversial.
• Utilizing the overnight celebrity strategy with testimonial GDN ads.
• How deadlines and testimonials work together.
• How to work hand-in-hand with the algorithm for amazing results.

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Mentioned in this Episode:

Justin Brooke

   - LinkedIn

   - Facebook

   - YouTube

AdSkills

   - Website

   - Facebook

   - YouTube

Traffic Tips for Busy People‍

Russell Brunson‍

Frank Kern‍

Dan Kennedy‍

Ezra Firestone‍

Semrush

Transcript:

Brett:

Today we're looking at why the Google Display network is better than Facebook ads. What, you might say, Google Display network better than Facebook? Heresy.

Brett:

Well, no, not heresy, but it is the opinion of my guest today, Justin Brooke. Justin is the founder of AdSkills. He's also one of the smartest marketers that I've ever met, and more about Justin in a minute. But what we're going to unpack in this episode is, one, Justin's formula for using the Google Display network to grow your e-commerce brand. We'll talk about must have elements for your landing pages. We'll dive into his overnight celebrity strategy, which is one of my favorite ad strategies. It could be the key to unlocking the Google Display network for you. We talk about misconceptions and why people fail with the Google Display network. And really, I think we're just going to make your brain explode. We might make your brain hurt just a little bit, but Justin's going to deliver amazing value. So lean in, buckle up and enjoy this interview with Justin Brooke.

Brett:

The Spicy Curry podcast is brought to you by OMG Commerce, Attentive, OneClickUpsell, Zipify pages, and Payability. Well, this is an episode that I can confidently say has been years in the making. I've been looking forward to this. I've been planning this, I've been dreaming about this day and it's finally here. And so I get to interview mister Justin Brooke. Our paths have crossed numerous times throughout the years, even dating back to like 2008, 2009. We were both actually partnering with Russell Brunson on separate projects. And I remember being in Russell's office and being like, "Hey, there's Justin Brooke, that guy's famous." And so then we've crossed paths in a few other ways.

Brett:

We're talking today about the Google Display network, a topic that I love, and I believe there's nobody out there better than Justin. And so I can't wait to tap into his mind and allow him to share with you and me his best insights on GDM, but just a couple of quick things for you to know. So Justin founded AdSkills in 2016, they've trained over 13,000 media buyers. They have 300 plus certified media buyers. He's worked with and trained media buyers for Frank Curran, Dan Kennedy, Russell Brunson. If you've been around direct marketing, you know all of those names.

Brett:

He also has a really well-read newsletter. In fact, some of the smartest people I know referenced Justin's email newsletter, Traffic Tips for Busy People. And so you should check that out as well. But with that intro, Justin, welcome to the show. How you doing, man?

Justin:

Thanks for having me, man. I'm so glad and hardly famous, man. Nobody gives me a second look at the grocery store, man, but I appreciate the accolades and everything.

Brett:

Yeah. So it's famous. You're famous in my mind, but it is funny. There's the Dan Kennedy always used to call him famous people that nobody knows, right? So you're not airport famous, not grocery store famous, but like you get into a room of marketers and you're like, whoa, holy cow, it's Justin Brooke. You got to get tap into this guy's mind a little bit.

Brett:

So let's dive right into this topic, because I think it's one that, and I encounter hundreds of eCommerce brands every year, we're auditing dozens and dozens of accounts. I know almost nobody doing Google Display network well. We run into people all the time that are spending mid to high six figures a year, a couple million dollars a year on Facebook. Most people are spending nothing or close to nothing on the Google Display network, but let's maybe start with what are some misconceptions about the Google Display network? What do you hear people saying about it that just drives you crazy?

Justin:

Yeah. So this is why you don't see a whole lot of people is really it's the misconceptions. So when you think of Google, we are still all stung by the Google slap years ago. We still think of, oh the cost per clicks are really high. They terminated all of our accounts. That stigma is still very much in the air in our industry. It's almost like a branding now, Google Ads is expensive. You know? That's like what immediately what we think. It's expensive. It's hard. And they're going to shut down my accounts. A lot of that has gone away. I'm not saying it's not expensive anymore. There are certainly some crazy expensive niches West Palm, cosmetic dentistry, just stay away from it. Just stay away.

Brett:

Avoid that, yeah.

Justin:

But they've really a far way. They got in a lot of trouble from their stockholders and stuff. When their stockholders were like, wait a minute, you're just like shutting down accounts? Is that the way you guys make money? And that's the way our stocks go. Could you not do that anymore? So yeah, they got a lot of trouble and I'm super paraphrasing it, but there was an event years ago. They're super helpful now. I mean, you can get on the phone with reps. I'm almost a little annoyed sometimes how much the reps are reaching out to me. It's like, okay, yeah.

Brett:

Yeah. Reps are reaching out, wanting to schedule meetings, wanting to get time on your calendar, wanting to meet with you. Absolutely. And some of them are super helpful. Some of them not, but some of them are super helpful.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's really a different situation. So a lot of that stuff has gone away. And I would say, so if you've heard that about Google Ads, I would say it's different. I would say it's still the same in the first two weeks of an account, they're very strict in the first two weeks of an account, that's usually where-

Brett:

Manual reviews. A human is reviewing everything at that point, basically.

Justin:

Even machines. So it's like if you're landing page, your ads, anything smells bad in the first two weeks, there's going to be a high shutdown rate. And that's just because there's trying to stop the churn and burn guys and they have to be very strong because that's where those guys live. They're just creating new accounts all the time. And so it in the first two weeks play it cool. Just advertise your blog a little bit, just be very, I guess, kosher. I don't know the right word, but just play it cool for the two weeks. And then you can start stepping up your direct response and whatever. So that's the biggest misconception. Also, they think Google Ads, they think expensive. Google Display is much different. It's very common for me to get-

Brett:

Display can be very cheap.

Justin:

Yeah, you can get 40 cent clicks. Are you getting 40 cent clicks on Facebook? Not today. You got to be really good at Facebook to be getting those click rates anymore. But it's very common for me to get 40 cent, 80 cents, 60 cent and lower. I've gotten 8 cent, 18 cent, 20 cents clicks on Google Display.

Brett:

So, and you're talking even in the last, for the last year, last six months, you've been getting CPCs.

Justin:

Last couple weeks, absolutely. So when you think Google Ads and they think expensive, that's usually search, and search legitimately can be expensive. I would say that's also very profitable. That's a whole nother podcast, but Google Display is not part of that. You can get very cheap clicks on Google Display.

Brett:

Yeah. Awesome. So you touched on this just a little bit, but I remember seeing a post on Facebook that you made and you were like, "GDN is better than Facebook," and man, those were fighting words to some people because the comments were lightening up and on fire and, "Blasphemy, heresy,", Justin Brooke. But anyways, it's a fascinating statement. So why do you believe, and in what ways do you believe GDN is better than even Facebook at times?

Justin:

Yeah. If you do, if anybody wants, if you got like 20 minutes and you're absolutely bored out of your mind and you want to go search my wall of posts, but if you go search through there, the guys who are actually using GDN all came to my defense and like, "He's absolutely right, this is true." And it was all the other Facebookers who were telling me I was crazy. So the thing is, is Facebook didn't invent interest targeting. They like to claim that they invented interest targeting. The branding is like Google invented PPC, Facebook invented interest based targeting. That's what most people think about or know. It's completely false. Facebook borrowed everything from Google and continues to this day trying to build Google Ads. They are the mighty billion dollar advertising company in every way that you can measure a company, Google wins.

Brett:

The number one online advertising platform bar none, Google's number one and likely will be for some time.

Justin:

The only place that's even argued is in our little like Facebook world. Outside of that, Google is by far the gorilla. So there's that. But then also when it comes to ... there's so many different levels, and I don't want to go too far on this, but okay. So with interest targeting, you have levels of interest targeting, where on Facebook there's just interest targeting.

Justin:

We have keywords, a keyword is an interest it's like, I'm interested in this topic. And so that's a keyword. Then you have topic based. And so keyword essentially, it doesn't exactly work like this without going super scientific, essentially. If I said tennis shoes or tennis, right. That's an interest, but it's also a keyword. And my ads would show up on any pages about tennis, but then there's topics. So we could go sports and now I'm interested in sports and now I'm going to show up on all the pages related to sports and then there's affinities.

Justin:

And so that would be like sports junkies. And so they're going to show up on fantasy league pages, news pages, sports pages, all kinds of different things. And so there's levels of interest. And then the other thing that I would say that separate it's them is really the big thing. And what I keep trying to shake the cage about is it doesn't change. So like Facebook is a newsfeed and so you need constant, fresh, creative. Otherwise, that person is seeing the same ad over and over and over again. And there's only so many time-

Brett:

Ad fatigue is a very real thing on Facebook.

Justin:

Yes, absolutely. Ad fatigue is turning and burning. And so you have to feed this monster, lots of ad creative. Google Display doesn't work like that because it's, the only time you're going to a best tennis shoes article is the time when you're searching for best tennis shoes. It's a very rare person who's going to go visit these same pages over and over again. Sometimes it happens in the precious metals industry, copper price, silver price, gold price, you know? And so you're going to that same page over and over again every day. And so you might start seeing the same ads, but it just doesn't happen in a lot of different industries. Mostly what happens is you're interested-

Brett:

There's audience refresh on GDN.

Justin:

Yeah. You're interested in something. So go to Google, you type in whatever. And then you see an article and you click into that article. And then on that article is ads that are relevant to the thing you just searched. So you're getting search traffic, but at a super bargain of it and in a much more relative space. So that's the other reason why I think it's so much ... you can put a Google and it could run ... my record was two years, but I mean, it's common for one created to run for months on end.

Brett:

Yeah. And we see the same thing on YouTube as well. My industry does a lot of YouTube, ad management and in creative work as well. Sometimes we see ads, the winning ad on YouTube lasts for a year. Because the audience is turning over. You're on that audience when you're interested in something and about to buy something. And then you get off that audience after you made a purchase or whatnot. Yeah, so super smart.

Brett:

So let's break down, let's get tactical for a little bit. Let's look at ... because you've got a unique approach to GDN for eCommerce. And again, I believe nobody does it better than you and your team. So, what does that approach look like running GDN to grow an eCommerce brand? So break that down for us and then I'll have several follow up questions.

Justin:

Yeah. So I think e-com has come a long way in their landing pages. I hat tip to Ezra Firestone. I think he's helped create a lot of best practices in e-com landing pages, but like before there was no reviews, testimonials. There wasn't these big credibility, believability things on an e-commerce page. And so it's come a long way, but it's not quite there yet. I don't love sending page traffic to e-com pages, especially Google Display, which can be-

Brett:

When you say you've got pages, a typical product detail page that's not where you typically want to send cold traffic.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. I don't like to say it. I would have a landing page that would send to that page, you know? And so that's what we do is I just say, hey, what's your best product? Everybody knows what their top selling product is, their best product. So then we take that product and we'll build out a page specifically for that one that when they click by goes right to cart, and so they're almost like a digital sales page. Very similar, you'd sell basically anything else. You got a sales page, it goes right to the cart.

Justin:

Whereas in e-com, it's like you go to a product topic page or product category page, and then you go into the product page and then you go into a checkout and then you go to cart, and so we just bypass a little bit of that. And then what we do is once we acquire the customer with a normal sale page checkout or sales page cart. And then once we've acquired the customer, we bring them back to the store. So now they can buy additional things and we get our revenue per user earnings average order value off of that. But we get our lower cost per acquisition using a dedicated funnel for their best or top three products.

Brett:

Got it. This is always a little bit difficult on a podcast, because we're just talking through things, but what are some of the elements that you really want on that page? So you're bypassing the traditional product detail page. You're sending cold traffic from a GDN ad, which we'll talk about the ad in a minute. You're sending them from a GDN ad to a specific landing page you built, what are some of the elements that you want on that page?

Justin:

Number one thing, when it comes to eCommerce is product demonstration. They want to see the knife cut through a tomato, you know? They want to see the, let's see, Tre has got that butter scraper thing. Makes your butter easier to spread. It's a weird product, but that's the thing is you can't just show me a picture of this weird looking butter knife that has a couple of circles on the end of it and expect me to understand that's going to revolution a eyes butter for me, but all of a sudden you have a quick 15 second video showing that those little circles create little shavings of butter and now immediately, oh, it melts the butter faster, because it's taking these little shavings off there. That's why it spreads though my toast better. And that's what I'm talking about when it comes to product demonstrations.

Justin:

When it comes to Ecom, demonstrate the product and I don't think pictures are enough. Most people these days have good enough internet and you don't need a long video. Don't have a long video. Short, almost like animated images, gif images, show me how product works. That's going to go a long way. And then reviews, reviews are huge. Believable reviews. Don't only have five star reviews on there. That's going to reduce your credibility. Have a couple of ... you don't have to have your worst review on there either but make it real, make it believable, be genuine about it. Those two things are really going to help a lot.

Justin:

And then the other thing is on a lot of eCommerce sites there is a frequently asked questions section. We like to bring some of that onto the page. And so what we've learned is everybody thinks ... when you're creating a sales page, you're trying to convince the person from top to bottom, from your headline all the way through, you're doing everything you can, how can I muster up? What words do I have to say? What images do I have to say to get this person to click the button? But when the visitor lands on the page, they're doing the opposite. They're thinking of why should I not buy this?

Brett:

Why should I bail? Give me some reasons to say no, right now.

Justin:

Why is my wife go to yell at me for buying this product later on? And so, you need to think about that. Don't think like us when you're making your page think like them, because we're making the page for them. We're not making the page for us. So we need to think about they're looking for gotchas. And oh, this is why I shouldn't buy it, or that. So you want to have good, not long copy, but good copy blocks. Almost not even a-

Brett:

Into chunks, right?

Justin:

I dare not say I'm not a fan of bullet points. I'm not saying that, copywriters. Don't kill me. Okay? But I'm saying is I almost like lots of copy nuggets, better than bullet point.

Justin:

Old school, long bullet point list is a little ugly, a little tedious. I like just these little squares, you can rotate them, left align, right align, little images. And that's giving you all the different like, and this reason and that reason and this reason and this objection, we counter it here. And this objection, we counter it here.

Justin:

It's not like in person where you have the opportunity to read body language and tonalities, so you got to answer all of them there. You got this person one time, you need to think of every objection they possibly could have and put all that on the page. But in a way doesn't intimidate them. So short blocks of texts, small sentences, lots of images. Think children's book. Not because consumers are dumb. They're just busy. The baby's crying in the background. They're trying to shop while they're at work and their boss might turn the corner any minute. A life is happening to this person, and so we need these little nuggets of stuff.

Brett:

Yeah. And one of the things that I hear people say all the time is, oh, nobody will read all that copy. And the answer to that question is, yeah, you're probably right. But what people will do is they will scan it. They're scanning it, looking for answers to their specific question.

Brett:

Sometimes someone's going to scan the page. They find one or two of those nuggets, either bullet point or a little chunk of copy. And they're like, "Oh, okay, well, if that's true, then this is okay." And then they may go back and read more. So I think understanding how people consume a page, and you're right, you got to have every possible objection covered in that page or else people will bail.

Justin:

Yeah. A great example on that is right now I'm getting into, or at least I think I'm getting into Japanese woodworking. It's kind of ...in my brain lately.

Brett:

Wait a minute, you're doing Japanese style woodworking or you're just buying it?

Justin:

I'm getting into it, like chisels all saws and joints and things like that. And so I'm looking at the different chisels and specifically looking for a certain type of steel that the chisels are made out of because it affects the sharpening and how long it can hold an edge. None of the pages that I'm going to talk about. It's the biggest thing. When you talk to other people that are in this, they're like, "Oh yeah, you want to make sure your chisels are made out of A2 steel because of this, that and the other.

Justin:

So it's a normal conversation that the woodworkers would have. But when I go to the sales pages, nobody's addressing this conversation. The biggest thing you want out of a chisel is, how do I sharpen it? How long does it stay sharp? ... And that number one question is not being answered on the page. And that's a great example of, make sure your product is talking about that thing that everybody's talking about.

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Let's talk about the ad side for just a minute. So, what are you thinking about, how are you crafting those cold traffic ads? So the first ad someone sees that then sends them to this page we were just talking about, how are you crafting and how are you creating those initial ads for cold traffic?

Justin:

I'm glad you asked me this question and this one hurts me. I have like the world's hardest to show off tattoo because it wraps around my arm. But basically it's an ink quill, it's a Quill with an ink jar and cash. I'm a die hard copywriter. I am a copywriter. First, I sell traffic, that's the shingle I hung, but I live and breathe as a copywriter. So I promise you, it hurts me more than anybody else to say this, copy today isn't what it used to be.

Justin:

I would say for the last hundred plus years, in all the books that we read. They're trying to get you to write the best ads. It's like you're going to write this one ad, like you're going to put all your energy. You're going to do all this research, the whole process, everything we've learned and done over the last 100 years in terms of copy is a little bit almost out the window. Not all the way out the window because today we're not really writing for consumers as much as we're writing for algorithms, machine learning, artificial intelligence.

Justin:

And so the best way to create an ad today is to understand the fundamentals of copying. But I just made a Google ad the other day. My ad rep says, you need at least 15 headlines. What? 15 headlines? For most people that would blow their mind away. What do you mean I got to write 15 headlines?

Brett:

I have three good ones in me. The other 12 are going to be, yeah.

Justin:

Right. And that's us because we're in the industry, die hard's, been doing this forever. The average person, one headline is hard for them. So you need 15 headlines, 3 descriptions, and at least 2 images, but one's got to be square. And then the other one's got to be 16 by 9, you know?

Justin:

And so like, we're really writing ... it's ultimately to the end consumer, but it's first to the algorithm because they're going to go and put all these pieces together. And so that's really where you need to be at. I would say today, less deep dive into copy, more breadth of like, how do you write a headline? How do you write a good ... it's like social media copy. How do you write good sentence? A good post? How do you write a good Twitter post? That's what you need because that's what's working these days. And a lot of the ad networks are going that direction.

Justin:

So when it comes to creating a good ad today, you need to know that it's about creating a volume. I don't know if I'm inventing this. I just don't know what else to call it. I'm calling it modular copy. And so you want to put together, you want to have a folder or even a spreadsheet of a bunch of headlines, a bunch of descriptions, a bunch of images, bios. These are the pieces that we need for social media, for blogs, for podcast interviews. You needed a profile picture and a bio and websites need these social networks. The ads need these. So that's what we need today to make a good ad. And then you need to understand the basics of copy so that your headlines, descriptions, bios, logos, they can't suck. But today the guy who I ... call him the John Belcher, good friend of mine, he is the-

Brett:

He's a legend.

Justin:

He's amazing. He's the modern media buyer and he's not a creative. And I'm not making fun of him or anything. He would say the same thing. He just understands the machines and the new way of doing things so much better. And he can out copy a copywriter who's been doing 15, 20 years experience because he's going to run 753 variations while you've spent two weeks coming up with one, so.

Brett:

Yeah. And it's interesting, because the algorithm is really like the gatekeeper in some respects, it's what's connecting advertiser to potential shopper and really it is a volume play to a certain degree. The machine up front wants a combination of things or this modular copy. I love that phrase, because the machine wants to test. It knows if it can test, it can find the right combinations.

Brett:

So really goes back to an old concept. I can't remember where I first heard this, but sometimes the quality is in the quantity. You got to test quantity and then you just find things that you're like, "Whoa, I never thought that headline could have been the winner, but it was and Google found it," you know? Yeah. And so, yeah. Super duper interesting.

Brett:

So where are you finding inspiration then for headlines and for copy blocks and things like that? Are you pulling from search ads that have performed well, are you pulling from the website copy? How are you going from, okay, back in the old days we spent weeks and weeks on a few headlines. Now we just got to have mass quantities. How are you getting there?

Justin:

You know what I like to do? I used to, for many years I taught use a spy tool, an Adbeat, Semrush, whatever. There's tons of spy tools out there, and you can do a lot of-

Brett:

Spy on your competitors and see what else is in the space. Right?

Justin:

Right. But what you end up doing, there's almost no way to not become a me-too version of the copy. You're essentially saying, even if you spin it into your own words, you're essentially saying the same message as other people. So what I actually like to do is I like to go to a different industry.

Justin:

If I'm selling knives, I'm going to go to fishing and I'm going to go look at what are the top and that's going to help me get good copy and then bring that over to my industry. So go look at what the best people are doing in an industry. Don't go ... like if you're in fishing, go to sewing or things like-

Brett:

Knives and fishing, that's connected. That's often the same buyer, but it's a different products that opens your mind a little bit, but still so on point.

Justin:

No, yeah. Do still use the spy tools and stuff, but try to broaden a little bit, go a little bit outside of your industry, see what's working, same customer, different products and bring some of that goodness back into yours, which will help you make sure you have good copy, but it's going to be a different message a little bit. And at the end of the day, we all know free works, best works, top works, must have. I mean, you can't really say that any other way. So, but that's what I like to do is look up other industries.

Brett:

And sometimes you run into people that just want to be creative. And they're like, "I don't want my ad to look like everybody else's. I don't want use the word top or best or must have." And you're like, well, okay, do you want to get clicks and conversions? Do you want to be original, or do you want to be effective? And so there's some things you just got to test.

Justin:

Well, a couple other things I'd like to add ... absolutely everything you just said. I also like to test different ... so a good story is when I was back early days in the website flipping, I thought everybody wanted to make more money with website flipping. So like all my copy, all my sales pages were like how to make $15,000 with your next website flip, or how to flip a big site, but that's not what they wanted. So I split tested, I didn't even think it was going to work. I split tested how to flip a website this weekend and that just, that blew up. So it's not always bigger. Sometimes it's faster. Sometimes it's cheaper. Sometimes it's-

Brett:

Fast and easy, like you can do it this weekend. It's just check this out. You'd sell a website this weekend. That's interesting.

Justin:

So test those different angles. And then also I like to test towards pleasure, away from pain and then something controversial. So if I'm trying to write three, like, okay, I got to write three different headlines. How am I going to say the same thing, three different ways? And so like, one way I'm going to say is, here's how you could make $10,000 this month. And the other one I could say is, here's how you could save $500 next week.

Justin:

So one's towards pleasure. One's away from pain. And then I'm going to say, you'll never believe how this woman made $500. So something controversial or shocking. So there you go, you're saying this same thing, selling the same product, but you were able to say it three different ways that might appeal. And you want to know if your market is a towards pleasure market, a shocking market, or if they are away from pain market.

Brett:

Yeah. Love that. And that really does make it easy. Again, if we're having to write all these descriptions and headlines, you have one concept, you can spin that concept three different ways, towards pleasure away from pain, and then a controversial spin. I like that a lot. That's fantastic.

Brett:

So I remember back in the old days, and I'm an old ad guy, did TV and radio back in the day to some radio and TV production. And I just remember there was always these old school grandfathers of advertising saying like, "Hey, people need to see an ad six or seven times before they purchase." And I think some of that was just like, hey, we got to sell more air time. And we got to sell more ads in our publication, in our magazine or whatever. But I also think there's a lot of truth there. We see this in Google analytics and other reporting platforms where some people got to see an multiple times. I have to visit your site multiple times.

Brett:

So let's talk a little bit about remarketing, because I know you've got a unique approach to remarketing as well. So what does that remarketing funnel look like? So we talked about the landing page. It's a separate page for your top product. We've got some ads now, we've got some different angles we're writing for that cold traffic ad. How are you setting up remarketing? And what does that look like?

Justin:

Okay. So remarketing and retargeting, just in case anybody ... they're the same thing.

Brett:

Yeah. You define those real quick.

Justin:

Yeah. So retargeting, remarketing is the same thing. We're taking somebody who's already seen your page at some level, and we can talk about all the different levels there, but they've basically, they've been here before and now we're remarketing. We're retargeting that same person to bring them back. And sometimes, I mean, we may want to bring them back somewhere different. Like one of my best strategies is I like to advertise blog posts because they get high CTR. They're like a Trojan horse. They don't even know they're like-

Brett:

Low CPCs, right?

Justin:

They think they found me, but I targeted them with the blog post. And what I do is I'll target them with the blog posts, give them a nice wow experience. And then remarket them to my sales page using testimonial ads. And we can break all that down. That's my favorite like one, two punch combo in advertising. But essentially remarketing, retargeting is the same thing. Remarketing is what Google calls it. Retargeting is like what everybody else calls it. Essentially you take somebody who's been there and talking about your seven touches thing. I think just life is going on. I think there is truth to it. I think there's less truth to it than they want us to believe.

Justin:

But I think it's just somebody hears a radio ad and the reason why they need to see it again is they were in the car. They couldn't buy, they were driving down the road, they were listening to the radio while on a jog. And so when they saw the magazine ad that pushed them over to the internet or to Google search and then that pushed, you know? And so that's why the different touches.

Justin:

So it's legitimate. You do need to have these different touches in different areas. Remarketing is absolutely... you should have it because our consumers are busy, like I said, the baby's crying. The boss is just about to come in, they're watching TV whatever. So they're just busy and they need to see these things. And that's really where remarketing comes in is maybe they didn't have their wallet on them. They were downstairs and they left their wallet upstairs because they just took a shower or whatever. And so they see the ad again, later on now they got their wallet on them and think remarketing was the thing. But it was the whole picture. It's the whole picture that made it work. So how far do you want to get into this?

Brett:

Yeah. So perfect setup. I love that. Let's let's think about like, what are some of the specific campaigns you create? Because what we often look at when we're doing remarketing is, hey, these are people that have been to this presale page. That's a separate remarketing campaign. These are people that have been to a blog post, but nowhere else. That's a separate remarketing campaign. These are people that have taken the introductory offer, but not the next offer. So you got like bot X not Y. So can you map out you at least, what are some of the campaign? What is that remarketing, retargeting funnel look like for you?

Justin:

Yeah. So essentially you have two different things. All right. You have your basic recycler, I call them like brand retargeting. And so like they're just seeing you somewhere and you're bringing them back somewhere. That's your most basic thing. And then you have like the more clever retargeting of funnel retargeting. And so I'm trying to get people who've seen my lead gen to see my front end, and people who've seen my front end product to see my upsell or people like, for example, for a long time, AdSkills, our model was we sold a book, Retargeting Recipes about retargeting. So we'd sell a book, so every one of those customers, we would then want them to see the big back end that we were selling. That was like our whole model right there.

Justin:

So there's essentially those two ways of doing it. It's just a recycler and then there's a funnel advancement. And then there's just umpteenth ways of splitting those two up into different things. And so the traffic recycler, just the bare bones, basic remarketing is they've come to your sales page, but they didn't buy yet. And so you're going to show them more ads back to the sales page. That's it. That's the simplest way. And it could be your blog. It could be your sales page, your webinar page, whatever it is. Then you can make that a little bit more advanced. Okay. So they came to your page, but now when you bring them back, you're going to bring them back with a discount. Grant Cardone does this a lot.

Justin:

You go to his $200 whatever video course. And then you go off on a Facebook to go ask your buddies in your Facebook group. You know, what do you think about this? Should I buy it? And all of a sudden you see get that course for $35 or whatever. There's usually some big discount. And then bam, you go and buy it. You don't have to discount that steep. Often as little as like 10% can really be the thing. They were right about to buy. That's why they went to your page. They went to your page because they liked something about it, but they just didn't ... this wasn't enough to get me to jump off the fence and take action.

Justin:

But this 10% off this weekend only, now I'm going to go take action. So that's the recycler with a discount and then you can do, you can do recycle, right? So like my sales page, bring them back to my sales page. You can run that one. You can have these things set up on like automation rules. I don't know how geeky you want me to get, but there are automation rules. And so you can say like, okay, show that to them for seven days, if after seven days now show them this ad. So now you're going to show them the discount after seven days.

Justin:

And then after seven more days, maybe there's a new discount. So you can do a month long steps. And then finally like the last week, try it free and pay nothing down and only pay if you keep it for 30 ... So you can really get super slick and advanced with these things. But don't at first. Okay. Just try the simple things.

Brett:

Yeah, just the simple remarketing out is a great place to start, but I'm assuming the way you're building that is you're building audiences like a seven day audience, a 14 day audience, a 30 day audience and then you're targeting and excluding throughout there. Yeah. Yeah.

Brett:

Because one of the ways we like to look at it and again, I think more in terms of YouTube, because I know YouTube really well and I don't know GDN as well. Although, we do a lot of GDN remarketing at least, is sometimes you got to look at why did someone not buy? So they clicked on that first ad, so there was interest. They visit at that sales page that there was more interest, but they didn't buy. Why is that? Well, you mentioned it earlier, sometimes it's life happens.

Brett:

So sometimes they just need to be reminded and sometimes they need to be convinced. Right. And sometimes it's a little bit of both. So that's where I really like that. Yeah. Week one is just like, hey reminder, hey, this is cool. You really want these benefits. You want these cool things. Then okay, well they didn't say yes yet so now they need more convincing. We might do something on the video side where we're showing more testimonials or more demonstrations and whatnot, but then yeah, maybe you need to up the ante on the offer, on the discount at that point, which I think makes a lot of sense.

Justin:

I'm a big fan of the ... we call it the overnight celebrity campaign. Whereas you use your whatever traffic, could be your social media, your email, whatever advertising to bring them to your sales page, your page. And then what you do is use Google, especially Google, because that's going to show all over the web. You can do it also in Facebook, but you want testimonial ads. Okay. So different testimonials. How do you make a testimonial lead? You put the person, just like you'd make a testimony on your page, right? You're going to have a picture of the person's face. And then the words as your headlines and description and all of a sudden there's going to be testimonials all over the web.

Justin:

So like they learned about you in some form and then the next thing they know they're visiting US Weekly or whatever. And there's testimonials for this product all over, everywhere they go. There's all of a sudden these people are talking good about this. That one, two punch is really, really good. The other thing that you mentioned is ... the only thing I'd add to what you said about the reminded, convinced is deadline. People need a deadline.

Brett:

Push them over the edge. Yeah.

Justin:

Yeah. I'm not a fan of fake deadlines, but there's tons of ways to create real deadlines. It could be a bonus. You get this bonus by Monday, if you join. Or you're the pink one is only available until midnight tonight or there's a 10% coupon today only. There's a lot of different ways to create real urgency, real deadlines. That more than anything, it's testimonials and deadlines. Those are my two tricks that I use over and over again.

Brett:

Love it. And it does speak to your original point, right? Where we're looking at a product and we're thinking of all the reasons, all the ways we're going to get in trouble if we say yes to buying this, right. My wife's going to yell at me. I'm going to have buyers remorse. I'm going to feel bad, whatever. Or just we're naturally, we're safe. And we take, we're inert. And so having that deadline pushes someone off the fence and gets them to take action. So that's brilliant. Awesome.

Brett:

Okay. So we're running tight on time, but I got more questions. We're going to maybe go a little rapid fire through a few other things. What is your take on smart bidding? So this may be a little bit nerdy, but stick with me. If you're not into the nerdy side of this, there's going to be some good stuff that's broadly applicable in a minute, but I think everybody still needs to know this and know your perspective. How do you feel about smart bidding versus manual versus however you like to do it?

Justin:

Buckle up. I don't think there's going to be a choice soon. I think it's everything we're going to be doing is going to be smart bidding. This is the way it's all moving. Google has already started ... it used to be, there was smart display campaigns and display campaigns. Now it's smart bidding inside display campaigns. And so we're going to see even more of that. This is going to permeate through all ad networks. It's just the way advertising is going to go. It's just more algorithms. More machine learning, learn what it is.

Justin:

Basically it's giving them lots of different options and then allowing their algorithms to ... you give it the confines like, hey, don't make this cost more than $40 per unit. Don't spend more than $3,000 per month. Don't target these different audiences, but other than that, you paint the picture of the fence. And then within the fence, the algorithm is allowed to go nuts in the ... what's really happening is a live auction that's happening at the speed of electricity. And so you just let the algorithm go and the algorithms are getting really, really good. I wasn't a fan a couple of years ago. Today, you're getting hard pressed to beat them as a human anymore.

Brett:

Yeah. 100% agree. And then we were the same way, right? Smart bidding, targetized bidding, smart campaigns, like smart shopping and stuff. In the early days, we're like, "Come on now." And we tested it and some of them were pretty cruddy, but now, dude, you can't beat the machine. You can't eat the algorithm. It's learning and getting better and picking up momentum. And it's just getting better all the time, so totally agree there.

Brett:

With that, then this is a follow up question. What do you view as the role of a media buyer? So what is an advertiser's role? What does a media buyer's role? If the algorithm is taking care of finding the right person up and bending down on all these things, what do we do?

Justin:

Yep. I definitely see us being replaced one day. And if you want, we could talk about that on another one. I got a whole vision for it, but I definitely think we still have another 5 to 10 years. And really what our job is today is to stop learning all the ... learn a little bit of the old ways, because there's a lot to pick up from history, but we really need to be disciplined enough to stop being lazy.

Justin:

I know, it's hard to go learn what smart bidding is. It's hard to go learn what a neural network is, machine learning algorithms, how do they actually work? You have to. If you want to be a good media buyer today and five years from now. If you're climbing up and you want to be the best, that's it, that's your homework. You have to learn how these machines ... that's our new job. Our new job is to know how smart bidding works. One, how to do it on the screen and the interface, but then also knowing the underlying functionality of how it works so that we can be better at working on the interface level of it. That's where we are. Going forward is we need to learn how to ride the tyrannosaurus, not try to avoid the tyrannosaurus.

Brett:

Just one minute. I'm updating my resume. I'm actually pretty good at manual labor. So I think it's a future for me as the agency world winds down, I can load trucks or something. No, I totally agree. And I think there's going to be more and more of the activities that we do that we do as an agency. I run a 50 plus person agency. There's things we do that we won't have to do in three or four or five years.

Brett:

I think there's always going to be an element though, where you need good strategists, right? And you need someone, even if it's just guiding and creating the fence, I like the way you talked about that for the algorithm, right? Here's what you need to start with. And then here's how I can manage you along the way, things like that. And thinking strategically and holistically about business growth and business goals and things like that. But it's going to be wild times, man. It's going to be interesting watching how this industry evolves.

Justin:

So just real quick that, I believe today we are the human interface that sits between the electrical interface. And so our client verbally tells us. We get on a phone call and they tell us what they want. And then we go and we type that into the machine. I don't think it's going to be ... I think 10 years from now, the client is just going to be able to talk directly to the network. And they're going to verbally say, this is what I want. They're going to verbally say set the parameters. And then the machines are going to be able to go out and they're going to use the spy tools to look up the headlines and they're going to test 7,750 different headlines and all these different audiences. And so that's where I think things are going, but I believe we got a good 5, 10 years of us still being the human interface.

Brett:

Yeah, really cool. Really cool. I'll keep the resume on file then. I won't get it out there just yet. This has been fantastic, Justin. So there's lots more that I want to talk about. So we'll definitely have to schedule part two to this conversation and lots more we can dig into, but what I want to do though, I know people are listening and thinking, "Man, I want to learn more from Justin Brooke," or, "I want to send my team through some of what Justin has to offer." So talk to me a little bit about AdSkills. What is it, what do you guys offer? How can people tap into your marketing brain more?

Justin:

Yeah, so we used to be almost exclusively for the ad agency. We used to charge $5,000 and help them get clients. And that was great. We built a very successful company off of the back of that, but I wanted to go bigger and I just realized our run rate, our team, we were just working so hard to keep things going. And so we flipped it. We are now more of like a Netflix model. We're $8.99 a month. And you get everything. Except for the certification. There's like an upgrade if you want to go onto that. But if you just want to learn how to do this stuff for yourself, it's $8.99 a month, you get a nine week course that gives you like the fundamentals, like go through this and you'll learn a to Z.

Justin:

Then we have the short tutorials, how to set up your Facebook campaign, how to set up your TikTok campaign, how to set up your Google campaign. And then if you want to like specialize or you want to master in something, we have their classes from all kinds of experts out there on YouTube ads or TikTok ads or Facebook ads or e-commerce. So all of that is all in there for just $8.99 a month.

Brett:

It's insane. I remember when you posted that model on Facebook, it was like, dude, this is either going to be really amazing or I don't know of what it's going to be, but it's crazy. And it's a great deal. So go out, everybody should buy this, right. $8.99.

Justin:

There's talk of flipping the price up to like $12.99. So if you're watching this like six months from now, it may be a couple dollars higher, but.

Brett:

It doesn't matter. Yeah. It's like $12.50, $30. Well, it's all the same. It's totally worth it. You got to check it out. You got to do it. So what's the URL for that one more time?

Justin:

It's just AdSkills.com, AdSkills.com.

Brett:

Awesome. And then, Justin, how can people follow you? How can they find you on the socials? Because you are one of my favorite follows on Facebook. You mix good business, marketing tips. You also talk about your faith, which you and I have the same faith, which I really appreciate that aspect as well, but there's plenty of business stuff if that's all you're into, but what are ways people can connect with you on the socials?

Justin:

Facebook and YouTube. We have a blog. Again, if you just go to AdSkills.com you're going to see all of our stuff, you're going to be able to get onto our newsletters. I'm spending a lot more time on our newsletters. We have a Wednesday one that goes out where I get into the meat of things. And then we have the traffic tips for busy people, which is a curated, like instead of reading all the stuff out there, here's seven things I really think you should read this week. So you'll find those on AdSkills.com. And then if you just search AdSkills or Justin Brooke on YouTube or Facebook, that's where you're going to find our free stuff. And we're actually uploading whole courses to YouTube now because we just believe that's the future, so.

Brett:

Awesome. Love it. And that's B-R-O-O-K-E, Justin Brooke. And so check out Justin. Justin, brother, this was amazing. It was everything I hoped it would be. It was fantastic. Now, I'm thinking about round two. So we got to plan that soon.

Justin:

Awesome, man. Can't wait.

Brett:

Thanks, man. Really, really appreciate it. And thank you for tuning in. Hey, if you enjoyed this, like it, review it, share it with somebody that needs to know this information and do leave that review. Because it helps other people find this show and we're trying to reach as many people and help as many marketers and e-commerce entrepreneurs as possible.

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