Key Insights from Traffic & Conversion Summit - Day 2

Well, hey guys, it was another amazing day at the Traffic and Conversion Summit. Just tremendous insights, tremendous learnings. I've sat in the sessions throughout the day, tried to remain focused on the agency-specific track. These videos, I try and gear them towards you guys running agencies trying to learn what were the key insights, whether you're here at the TNC or maybe you're at home thinking, "Man, I wish I had made it. I couldn't make it this year, but I want to try and get some of the key learnings and key insights." I'm going to share my screen real quick and hopefully we won't get the eternal flood of screens since I've only got one screen to play with. So I'll just say one more time, you know, The Traffic and Conversion Summit, there's, I would guess, 6,000+ people in attendance. There's no replacement for the energy that you get being around other tremendously successful people that are just hyper-focused on digital marketing, whether they're doing digital marketing on their own or they're doing it as an agency model like us. Hearing them, seeing what they're thinking, getting their feedback. Feeding on that energy. That's the power of being at this type of event, and there's nothing like the Traffic and Conversion Summit. So again, if you're not here, definitely put it in your sights for next year. So some of the key insights I got from the day. First, Facebook lead ads rock. This is something I've looked at in the past, and really, in a nutshell, as opposed to putting it out on Facebook and pulling somebody off to a landing page, with Facebook lead ads you can collect their information right within Facebook ads. I'm gonna share some of the key insights on why that's so powerful and there was a gentleman named Ali that just knocked it out of the park in that particular topic. Facebook Live and live video is the future. This is being produced Facebook Live right now. I'm gonna talk about some of the cool tools and technology that were shared in one of the sessions on this particular area, but I really enjoyed it and I do believe that the direction is more and more live video is gonna be being produced and it's a major opportunity for you as an agency owner to get in front of your ideal target market and really just put out great content that's relevant. The marketer of the future, Ryan Dice started the day with a great session on building the future marketer. And kind of the key message there is that they have to be diverse. As a marketer, you know, there's a culmination coming between sales, marketing, and service. And the true marketer has to be able to understand a lot of different strategies and a lot of different tactics without becoming Frankenstein. So there were some great insights on that particular front. And podcasting is a really low-friction method of producing content, and it's also the lowest-friction method of consuming content. So it's extremely easy to record audio, get it up on a podcast format without creating barriers for yourself. Barriers meaning you've got to set up a video camera, you've got to set up the lighting, you've got to make sure everything's in place. With a podcast, you can just sit down and do raw audio collection. But the other really interesting thing is not only is it easier for you as a content producer, it's also easier for your consumer, right? Because they're usually listening to this stuff on their phone while they're driving, while they're in between other things, and podcasts is just really easy for them to play that and hear it in the background. It's just audio. There's nothing for them necessarily to have to look at. So people love podcasts, they're consuming tons of podcast content. If you don't have a podcast yet, this is an opportunity to explore. And Facebook groups build community and they build brand. If you go back to my notes from day 1, you know, Ryan Deiss had a really salient point, which was that the new brand is the community. It's what other— it's what really your customers are saying saying about you when you're not in the room. And so leveraging Facebook groups, you can bring your customer base together, form that community, and it's not just about you communicating with them as an organization, it's about them being able to communicate with your other customers and, and develop that community. And there was a great session on how to develop community and how to leverage Facebook groups to really make, to facilitate that process. And then we close the day with David Asprey of the Bulletproof Diet, the Bulletproof Movement. And first of all, I'm a major fan of David Asprey. I've read all of his books. I've been listening to his podcast for years. I drink Bulletproof Diet pretty much, the Bulletproof coffee on a daily basis, and it's worked wonders for me. It gives me higher energy, gives me better focus, and getting to see him live, it was really interesting not just to hear him talk about the benefits of the Bulletproof Diet, but really the business side of what he's developed. He developed a multi-million, $100 million brand, and the way he did it was creating content. He came up with a theory, he studied it, he created scientific information to back it up, and he started blogging about it. He started doing podcasts about it, and there was such an interest, his community and his brand, that he was able to go out then and start selling all of the different products that he sells. He sells his mold-free Bulletproof beans, and he sells the MCT oil, and he sells now bars and all kinds of other supplements, and they're great products. But it was really interesting to kind of hear from him how he built that brand. Not only is he a great theorist on, on how to be more active and more fit and get more out of your body, but he's a brilliant business operator as well. So quick drilling down on some of this stuff, uh, first of all, if you're looking to drive sales appointments at the bottom of your funnel, um, Facebook lead ads is a fantastic channel. So as the owner of a, of a digital marketing agency Ideally, if you follow what we think has worked best, what's worked best for us, you choose a niche, you position yourself as the expert in that niche, and then you market to those customers in that niche with your expert positioning. You get people coming to you prepositioned to buy. But they don't just buy in cyberspace, right? They don't go to an order screen and order. You have to take them through a consultative sales process, which means you You have to get them on the phone, you have to get them on a live one-on-one sales session, you have to show them where there's problems in what they're doing today and how you can help to improve that. And so Facebook ads obviously gives you the ability to target people within your niche. I'm a big fan of leveraging Facebook ads to target our clients. We serve the plumbing and HVAC niche, got hundreds of plumbing clients throughout the United States. We can target them based on uploading our email list, based on the associations that they're involved in. We've been doing that for quite some time, but the key insight here was we were landing them on a landing page and asking for a name and email address. And the challenge is that creates friction. They're hanging out on Facebook, typically from their mobile phone, and they're browsing through and they're looking at pictures of their friends and they see an ad that's relevant to them and interesting, and if they click it and it pulls them out of Facebook onto a landing page, that creates friction. So for some of you guys, this is, this is, you know, already old hat. For me, I've been aware of it, but we have not implemented it. Within Facebook, we can take them straight to a Facebook lead ad. So changing the campaign from taking them off the page of Facebook to just entering a form right into Facebook clicking the yes button makes it a lot easier for them. They don't have to rekey quite as much information because Facebook already has all of that data. And Facebook released this information: a Facebook lead ad, which is what I'm talking about there, where they just enter their information right into Facebook and it comes to you as a lead, it creates an 80% reduction in cost per lead. And there's more than 10 times more leads for the same spend going to a Facebook lead ad versus a landing page on ClickFunnels or something else like that. So it's going to result in more leads because there's less friction, as well as you get the ability to capture their mobile phone. So kind of Olli, Olli Bilson, I'll give a shout out to Olli because there's amazing people at this event, there's tremendous presentations, but for me His was right on point. He runs Facebook ad campaigns for link selling, for GKIC, so he's got some really interesting strategy around how to take people from Facebook to a sales consultative process. And this was in a nutshell, I can't do his presentation justice, but the key insights were, you know, take them to a lead ad, and then capture the cell phone number, at which point you can then communicate with them on the device that they were consuming the content. So they were on Facebook, they saw something of interest to them, instead of going off Facebook, they get an option to, to get a lead ad. You can get their opt-in or their approval to communicate with them via text message. And then you can follow up with them on the device they're already using. So they get an email that— or a text message that says, "Hey, here's a link to your video," right? And then you can add them to your follow-up sequence, whether it's in Infusionsoft or whatever else. We use Infusionsoft. That contact, through the power of Fix Your Funnel or Zapier, gets pulled into Infusionsoft, tagged, and then you can run a campaign that follows up with them via text message and email marketing. Obviously with the end goal of getting them on the phone. And one of the other key insights on this whole presentation from Olli was you don't necessarily want all of your communication to seem broadcasty, right? Usually your autoresponder sequences are broadcasty, but you can use text messaging to ask a question. "Hey, so I sent you a case study video. What did you think?" And try and solicit a feedback, and this kind of goes back to to Ryan's keynote presentation yesterday, Ryan Deiss talked about conversation is the new lead, right? Conversation is the new lead. You should be focused on creating conversations as opposed to just opt-ins and leads. So what Ali is talking about in this presentation was you engage with them in a way that solicits a response which would then Obviously, so yeah, I thought it was cool. Oh, I'm glad you enjoyed it. You know, is this something you think might apply to your business? Absolutely. Great. Do you think it would make sense for us to schedule a time to jump on a call where we can talk about your business and kind of show how we might be able to work together? Yeah, let's do it. And then you link them to the page where they can schedule their one-on-one appointment. So really leveraging this whole concept of the Facebook lead ads to create less friction and then leveraging SMS text messaging, which of course has a much higher open rate than an email, in combination with email and a conversational format to get a live strategy session because we know we need to get them on the phone. So to me, this, this was, um, for, for me personally, the, the session of the day. It was right on point. It was something I did not really have my mind fully wrapped around and an insight that I feel like I can go back tomorrow 'Make some tweaks to my funnel that will drive more leads, better engagement, and ultimately more strategy sessions for our sales team, which results in more business.' And so I got a screenshot of his presentation. Again, you know, just the whole visual concept of they see the Facebook ad, right within Facebook they fill out a lead ad, it's just a web form built right into Facebook, then that gets pulled into your Infusionsoft campaign. And then you're dripping on them just like you always would, but now you've got the opportunity to drip on them via SMS text messaging in addition to email. The other session I really liked was a session on Facebook Live and the adaption of people using Facebook Live to engage. And Joe Kham did this presentation. He's famous for first inventing the iForth app on the iPhone. Which was a big hit, apparently he made a lot of money with, but you know, he's doing new things, he's innovating, and really ultimately he talked all about the fact that Facebook is where it's at. Facebook recently indicated that 70% of all video that's uploaded to their Facebook is done via live. And so Facebook loves live content, they push it out, it shows up in people's feed, it creates engagement. And so you have a massive opportunity as an agency owner to get clear on who your target is, right? For us, it's plumbing and HVAC companies. And as you come out with relevant content, maybe you're meeting with one of your clients in your space, as you're doing something cool at your office, like we recently created a new welcome gift for our clients and it's a box that has Cuban coffee in it. We're in Miami, Florida. Everybody comes to South Florida and they drink Cuban coffee. And so we thought, what better way to kind of welcome them to our company and let them know how excited we are about working with them than sending a custom gift. So we got this box with a picture of our team on the front of it, and they open it up and they see, you know, they see a Cuban coffee maker and there's a video of my business partner Dean saying, hey, we're so excited to have you on board. This Cuban coffee is famous in South Florida, and since our team is based in South Florida, "We wanted to send you some of it and kind of show you how to make it." And there's a video of him showing them how to make the coffee. So what you can do with Facebook Live, and we did this actually, was while we were creating this video, we went Facebook Live and we said, "Hey guys, we just want to show you something we're working on for you, our clients, which we think you're going to get a big kick out of." And we got a lot of engagement from that. So there's lots of ways that you can create good unique content and get in front of your target audience with messaging that's specifically for them. So that's, you know, that's one piece of it. The other piece is, you know, do training that's relevant to them, right? We do webinars with our space on a consistent basis. Oftentimes it's done through Zoom meetings and, you know, with the power of Zoom meetings, you can do your live webinar but also broadcast it live to the Facebook page. So now you get the people that registered for the webinar that are hanging out Live with you, you get the people that maybe just, they don't know you that well yet, but they see you on the Facebook page and they see your video. And so it just creates more and more opportunity to engage with your customer base and add value. The key insight though from Joe's presentation was Facebook Live needs to be authentic and it needs to engage. And so what he, I think what he meant by that is it doesn't have to feel like a professionally produced studio where you're in a news studio and everything is perfect, the lighting is perfect and the sound is perfect. No, it's authentic and if you just capture the moment as it happens and you share great information, people resonate with that. But then in addition, you have to engage. So if there are people watching you live, if they are posting questions, the whole idea is to be live and then engage, see the questions, answer the questions, and engage with those customers. So I thought that was powerful. Make sure that you tell interesting stories, case studies, things that you're working on, new strategies that you implemented that worked well for your client base, new ideas that you picked up that can apply to help them grow their business and do more with their online marketing. And when you keep it real and you're authentic and you engage, that's how you develop relationship. Kind of going back to the central theme, of community being the new brand. And so if you use these tools, you can start to develop that community. People know, like, and trust you. They build relationship with you, and you can land more clients, and you can retain those clients at a higher level. So there were some awesome tools that he shared. Some of them were Zoom.us. This is the web conferencing platform. Cool thing about Zoom is you can get on, you can have 1 or 2 other people get on, and right within Zoom you can say share to Facebook, and Facebook will then take your Zoom session and broadcast it on your page. So, you know, you could take anything, you know, one-on-one webinars, one-on-one interviews, and have that published straight to Facebook Live. Another tool he talked about was a tool called BeLive.tv. This is a different platform that was built specifically for Facebook Live. And it looks like a pretty neat platform. I'm not using that. Right now I happen to be doing this through Open Broadcast Studio, which is a— I found to be a really cool platform that lets me have an opening like you saw here on this video, share my content, and share my screen. But what's really nice about BeLive.tv is that you can do the same thing. You can bring on multiple faces, but you have the ability to also see all the comments. So right now with Zoom and Open Broadcast Studio, there's no easy way to see who's live with you and who's posting questions and comments. So as you build your following, a key to this whole thing is to be authentic and engaged. Um, until Zoom and Open Broadcast Studio give you some function to do that, um, you know, you're missing out on that engaged piece of the equation. BeLive TV has that capability already. And of course, Open Broadcast Studio, which is a completely free, uh, open source pro— uh, uh, platform for doing Facebook Lives. That's what I'm using here. If you're not aware of it, it, you know, basically you set up your scenes and you can get as creative as you want to get. So you can have an opening and then have it shift straight to your face and then shift to your face and your screen, which if this is working correctly, that's what you're seeing on this particular video. Um, and then you could have a, a close or you could have a transition. Where another pre-recorded video plays. And so that's Open Broadcast Studio, amazing tool. I just picked up on it a couple weeks ago and have been using it and really like it a lot. The marketer of the future is going to have to be— is going to have to be more and more well-rounded with the ability to handle a wide variety of tactics. But, you know, really one of the key things was the marketer's T, right? This is a T, and the concept is you need to understand strategy, statistics, programming, user interface, analytics, behavior psychology, and storytelling, which is really all the things that go into marketing, but you need to be really good at least at two key elements. So maybe you're really great at statistics, or maybe you're really great at, um, at design, or maybe you are really great at email marketing, but you can't be great at everything. And that was kind of one of his key insights, and one of the slides that resonated with me was as you look to develop the marketing team of the future, you want somebody that's going to be super well-rounded and be able to do a lot of things, but you also can't create Frankenstein. Nobody is going to be efficient at everything. So really, it's going to be a team effort. You are going to need some analytical-focused people, you're gonna need some creative-focused people, you're gonna need some, you know, copy and conversion-centric people, and that's how you build really the marketing team of the future. And the key insight from Ryan's session was, you know, the company that wins in the future will be the ones that educate and build the skills that they need from the team from the ground up because the skills of the future for the future marketer is, is all brand new. There's new technology coming out, things are constantly changing. You can't go out and hire someone that understands all of this stuff that can come out of the box and just be quick and efficient. If you're going to grow and you're going to be on the cutting edge, you have to be willing to say, look, I'm going to understand how this works, I'm going to plug into tools, like Digital Marketer HQ and train my team to create the skills. So I thought that was really a powerful insight. You have to be thinking, you know, don't just try and hire talent that has it all figured out. You're going to have to train them and equip them to be as effective as possible. So again, just some tremendous insights. You know, I want to say thank you to Ryan Deiss and Roland Frasier and the entire team over there at Digital Marketer, Perry Belcher. It's been great. These are just my key insights and there's just a couple that I was able to share in this quick video. If you'd like to get access to my notes from the Traffic Conversion Summit, and I'm gonna be spending a full day at the end of the summit with other successful digital marketing agencies that are going to 7 figures and beyond, and we're gonna spend the whole day decompressing. What did we learn? What were the key insights? How does this apply to our agencies? And based on those insights, what can we implement? What can we implement to be more effective in our agencies at attracting new clients? And then what can we do to serve our clients better, get them better results? And that way we retain our clients at a higher level possible. So I'm going to be spending that day really getting extremely clear on everything that was covered from the Traffic and Conversion Summit as it relates to growing and scaling a digital marketing agency. I'm going to be also conducting a live session on Monday, March 5th at 10:30 AM. So if you want to be part of that, you want to get my notes and kind of have me kind of walk you through how this stuff applies to your digital marketing agency, I'd encourage you to sign up and join me in that process. You can do that at 7figureagency.com/traffic-conversion-notes. Thanks for joining me. I hope that these insights are useful for you. I would love to hear your comments. If you're here, post in the comments what were your key insights, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.