5 Levers Drive CAC, Says Ad Pro

From Politics to D2C Performance Marketing Welcome to Ecommerce Conversations, a weekly podcast from Practical Ecommerce hosted by entrepreneur Eric Bandholz. Speaker 3 What is going on? Internet? Eric Band holds back again with another e-commerce conversations. I hope all is well on the other side of the Internet. On the other side of the Internet for me. Hal, what's up, man? Speaker 2 How's it going, Eric? It's good to be here. Speaker 3 Yeah, a couple guys on the other side of the Internet, but the same town, same side of the highway, too. I'm east of the highway. Yeah. Yeah. Who? Who the heck are you? What the heck do you do? Speaker 2 Yeah. So yeah, Hal Smith, I do performance marketing for D2C brands and more recently kind of focused in the outdoor space. So I quick kind of background, I started off doing political advertising. So I did was called like small dollar grassroots fundraising. It's a heavy direct response, heavy performance marketing focus. The idea is how do you raise money for candidates online through, you know, Google and Meta ads and other channels. It is a really kind of, I would say aggressive space. You work really long hours. It's really high stakes. I worked across, you know, presidential campaigns, so the scale was really big. Manage some pretty big budgets there. But most importantly, I just learned a really good methodology for testing because effectively you're trying to fight figure out the right message that you need to serve two different voter groups to get them to donate to a candidate or a cause or committee. After that, I, I spend time in the kind of bigger, more corporate space also doing DTC advertising, but it's more for basically banks and credit cards added, you know, advertising for those as well as some other, you know, companies. I work for a big trucking company driving recruiting for that, you know, worked with NASDAQ doing a lot of their IP OS and, and kind of generating A hype around different brands. They were, they were going to IPO and then started doing a lot of the DTC side of things. So I have worked across, you know, brands ranging from just kicking off all the way up to 9 figure brands. Main focus there is, you know, performance marketing and then now you know, more focus in the outdoor space getting outdoor brands scaled up through DTC advertising. How Storytelling and Novelty Drive Ad Engagement So. Speaker 3 Do one thing I'm I'm kind of curious on, and it's been making its waves on X recently is are you familiar with the I don't know if I'm pronouncing their company name well or not, but it's Resila. RESILA. Speaker 2 I don't think so, but yeah, tell me about it. I might have heard about it. Speaker 3 So they make a their ads have the most insane hooks you could ever imagine, like borderline. Well, not borderline, they are inappropriate, but it's basically they're they're selling a weight loss supplement. So you can imagine they're as kind of like Gray hat, Black Hat as you can get. And they created these kind of like the 3D animation characters that they're, they're storytelling. So like one of them, they're always integrating and like, it's like a, a black guy is having an affair with a Jewish woman and notice all the Jewish family members are skinny. And you know, of course the their product is a secret to why they're skinny, but it like it starts off with like them banging in bed or something like this, like just first of all, how does that get how does that get past like meta's like filter? Sure, certainly that shouldn't be acceptable as an ad, right? Speaker 2 Well, so I have seen those ads. I I've seen them on Twitter and I've seen a couple of variations of it, like 1 is that the guy's also like a barbecue and his like wife is cheating on him with his like best friend. I think I saw that one as well. How does it get past meta? I think there is, you know, a couple of things. One is they might be spending enough that Meta doesn't care. And I think specifically for, you know, GLP ones, peptides, what I've seen this space is a lot of these companies are, are not necessarily compliant with, with Meta's ad policies. But you know, when they're spending high 7 figures a month, there's certain whitelisting that goes on behind the scenes at Meadow where these brands can just kind of fly under the radar and it's OK. And you know, I think it's just a function of how much you're spending. I think the second thing is, is when you when you have different creative formats, right, like claymation or these animation type ads, they're not triggering the same, you know, bots basically for compliance that you get with just actual people in the ads. And then the third thing I think, you know, something I've done with with, you know, brands that are, are, I would say, might have certain policy issues with Meta is you can figure out good ways to still deliver the message, but it's more inferred than being direct. And so with a lot of these bots that are crawling these ads is they're looking for pretty clear, you know, either keywords or imagery that they're going to flag. But if it's somewhat inferred, they're just not as smart to kind of figure out what's exactly is going on. And there's a lot you can do just for figuring out the copy and words that you're selecting as well as the imagery. So I'd say for those reasons, that's probably how they're doing. Well. I've seen this a lot with like, you know, these kind of sketchy drop shippers where they have like clearly like unrealistic AI videos, but they're still kind of getting away with it. And then I'd say maybe there's a fourth one outside of it. But sometimes brands like that, they're just too small where Meta is just not paying attention to them yet, but they might hit a certain stage where they eventually get flagged. And then when those brands do get flagged, they have a pretty good system around spinning up new ad accounts, advertising in different domains where they can kind of keep a little ahead of Meta, but it really doesn't last too long. Oftentimes those brands end up having to go to different channels so. Speaker 3 Yeah. I mean, I guess the other thing is, is also just like this the the style of ad content that they're producing as well. Like is this something worth brands investing in like this? And maybe not as, you know, direct that they're doing it and, and as crass and crude that they're doing it. But like kind of like really it's like storytelling, fictional storytelling with a product involved in it. And it's like these long form video ads are, you know, 4 to 7 minutes long where they tell a really crazy story. Speaker 2 Well, I think so. First of all, storytelling is the most powerful thing you can do in marketing, right? Everything you know, how you explain anything, whether it's like you're, you're kind of doing direct sales on a product or you're trying to build a brand, it's, it's all three stories, right? I mean, even like everything you do, it's like if you're out and, and raising money for a brand, like your fundraising, you're talking to investors. Like how you tell a story is the most important thing, right? So obviously that works really well with creative. I think if you have well written scripts and good compelling stories, they're going to drive a lot of engagement and interest and curiosity. So people are going to stick around and watch a full like 4 or 5 minute video. That's kind of the, you know, like ADSL style approach is, is really what kind of shows that and, and best action. I think the other thing I was going to say is, you know, you know, somewhat crass type ads. It really depends on the brand and the tolerance, you know, a founder might have or a head of marketing might have around the integrity of the brand, right? Certain products, certain customer groups, you really have to focus on and, and worry about the brand integrity and how that shows up throughout your advertising content. But other people just have like looser restrictions around that. So they just don't care as much and they can kind of get away with it. So I'm always a bit jealous of brands like that because our brands are typically buttoned up. And so we actually have to do a lot of work to figure out the brand message and ethos of the brand and make sure it's showing up correctly in ads. And we don't kind of go over the line there, But it's challenging. Like I, I, I do like as I mentioned, these kind of drop shippers that are running ridiculous ads like, you know, they can get away with it, but not everyone can so. Speaker 3 Well, yeah, I mean it's, it's kind of like the as a you know, quote UN quote brand and a long term player in the space and someone who's trying to build a legit authentic long term, you know, real business. It gets I, I, I would say there's what are the lessons that we can learn from the people who are less scrupulous, you know, like what, what kind of takeaways are there where we can integrate that to align both align with our brand, but also utilizes some of the technics. And, and when you see these ads, like how much of the ad performance is that hook? That's just, you have to watch it, you know, like you have to see what's going on and how much of it is the novelty of, you know, the format where they're just blending this like cartoon 3D rendering and like a song, like the, the, the song that they're doing. I, I don't know those answers. And it kind of be interesting to kind of get your take on that. Like is this like really investing in story? Because it can't, it can't be easy to craft a compelling 4 minute long story that's not related to your brand at all. Like you're, you're just creating a, a, a fictional story out of thin air and, and integrating your product into that story. Speaker 2 Well, yeah, I guess just a quick a couple quick thoughts on that. Why Polished Ads Fail: Focus on Customer Pain So, you know, the most important thing you can do with advertising is get someone to stop scrolling and click right? Like that's a whole intent behind an ad, right? And so the, the best driver behavior in advertising is curiosity, right? So you get someone be like, wait a second, I kind of want to see more, I want to learn more about this. And so to your point, I think will the novelty as well. So novelty creates a scroll stop because just something they haven't seen and just double clicking on that quickly. A big issue we have with some clients is they want to have very polished, professional looking ads. And the issue you have with that is it's not novel, right? It's just something that's kind of, you know, Gray or, you know, it just kind of pops up in your feed, but you're not really going to notice it. So really being intentional about how novel your creative concepts are is going to work regardless of, you know, the kind of restrictions around the brand. So I think it's an important thing to pull out. The second thing is, is how did your folks, you know, the first like 3 seconds of your ads or your main headline on a static ad, how they drive curiosity, right? One key thing that we always do is we lead with the question, right? If you ask someone a question that's very specific to them, is specific to a pain point they might have, they get curious, right? Like why you asked me this question? Like what, what, what, where's the answer? Like what it, what is going on here? And then I think with the kind of storyboarding or script writing, there's a lot of tactics that you can implement that kind of keep someone engaging and wanting coming back for more until like some simple things that we've seen with with videos, for example, is you can figure out, you know, what part of the video is driving the most interest. And then you pull that to the front of the video, right? So that becomes your hook. Another thing is, is I actually saw this the other day, but I'm you might have seen this, there's like a, a lecture that the guys from South Park did about how to do, how to like do like write a script. And they, there's like a really interesting simple framework where every scene or every kind of development in the story had to be connected by an and, or therefore I think or no, because you're there for. And so it's like every section, it was like it was all connected by these points. And what it allows you to do is it it keeps people in suspense. So they have to kind of figure out like why, like this happened. So therefore, this next thing happens, which I thought was really interesting, but I think that just kind of goes into good storytelling, right? And so if you're intentional about that, I think that can really help. And it doesn't mean for any of those points I mentioned that doesn't degrade your brand. It's just figuring that out in a format that, you know, kind of sustains the message you're trying to create about the brand, so. Speaker 3 Yeah. And and then like, you know, how do you, I guess in your position, like how do you work with your, your, your contacts within these, these brands to help them understand, like you're, you know, 10,000 dollar $5000 professional photo shoot where you know, your, your products are perfectly lit and you know, stage to perfection are just not going to stand out at all. Speaker 2 Yeah. So, so there's a couple of of things. So one, when we go, when we see content, that's the higher production quality content, usually what happens with that creative, let's say it's like a video. What the brand is trying to do is create like a brand anthem style video where it's like, Hey, here's the essence of this brand and the product and it and sexy and has all these cool, like, you know, transitions or whatever. But the, the problem we see, especially as it shows up on Meta is it's not really specific to any of their customers. And so how we kind of like push back on that or challenge it and, and try to develop a better creative strategy is we really try to dig in and figure out who are your target customer groups, right? These AKA like personas. And then with that, we really do try to figure out the specifics, like like reasons to believe, you know, pain points are trying to solve, like aspirations are trying to get whatever it might be. And then we try to figure out the specific language that these customers use to describe, let's say the pain pointer aspiration they have. Then the final piece is, is, is trying to figure out, you know, for the, for the, let's say people in the ads, they actually reflect those customer groups. And, and what ultimately happens is you get very specific. And when somebody sees that ad pop up on the feed, they automatically say, Hey, this is me and this is my exact problem. Facebook must be listening to me, right? And then, you know, they want to figure out more. And So what happens is instead of just having this kind of glossy brand, you know, brand content that looks really great, that speaks to nobody, you have very specific authentic content that speaks to very specific customers and they're real pain points and that does a much better job driving conversion. And so with that second piece is typically that content doesn't need to be super high production quality. It just needs to speak specifically to that customer with their own language talking about the main pain points you're trying to solve or the aspirations you're trying to hit. But it doesn't require super high quality content and, and just needs to resonate and needs to be authentic. And then to your what we talked about earlier is the the content really needs to be somewhat novel to actually pop on the feed. Optimize for New Customers with Creative Testing I I kind of want to talk about scaling. How do we scale? How do we, you know, like what is the expectation for creating new content? Like how long are ads going to have traction before we got to expect for them to kind of Peter out? Like how do we build a, a larger audience size so we can scale up? And like how do we from an infrastructure standpoint, what are the expectations that brand operators need to have as they want to 10X their ad spend? Speaker 2 Yeah, so I love this question because this is like for 12 years, I've thought about this question every single day. And I've worked on this question for let's say 1214 hours a day. So like this is, this is literally like what I've spent a big chunk of my life thinking about, right? So I want to answer your question specifically around creative and ad accounts. But then I also want to talk about a different concept, which is like theory of constraints and like how do, how do companies and brands actually scale too? And so first, with creative, there's a couple things. So one is specifically an ad account. The biggest issue that brands are doing right now that is preventing them from scale is they're not optimizing towards the right purchase event. And So what I mean by that is everyone just sets up kind of a purchase, you know, in Meta and Google, it's like give me the highest volume at lowest cost purchases. The issue with that you have with that is you're training the platform to go and get just any type of purchase. But what you really need is platforms to do is go out and get net new customers for the brand, right? And so the challenge is, is that these platforms, you know, it's machine learning based. And what that means is you tell them to do something and then they're going to go serve ads and try to get that that event right. And they get rewarded if they get a purchase right. But the people who are most likely to buy from you and purchase are are typically your existing customers, OK. And then you have this other issue where you have a lot of people that are organically coming and buying from you again, right, or sorry that are organically just buying from you. And So what matter and Google do is they serve a lot, a lot of ads to your existing customers or they serve as the people who they think we're going to buy anyway just so they get the credit and attribution for it. So what you really need to do is you need to set up a custom purchase event for a new customer and then use that as your main optimization event in that in Google. That kind of sets a framework where these platforms have to go out and work to find that new customers. Right from that comes your creative testing strategy, which is you need to have like a what we call like a matrix approach where you need to have all your target customer personas, the main angles you're going to deliver towards them, as well as a variety of formats to kind of display those angles. So static image ads, GIFs, you you just see videos, whitelisted or partnership ads, etcetera. But you need to have a big variety because what you really want to do is cover enough surface area of your target customers and the angles that might, you know, get them to convert as well as you need to have enough format so they serve on all the different, you know, placements within that in Google. OK, so you create that and then what you really need to do is figure out an efficient way to test ideas. OK. And so we do this by doing a lot of our quote UN quote matrix testing through static image ads. Because today, especially with AI, you can you can pump out a ton of static concepts really quickly. But what you want to do from that is have a good structure to learn about those personas and angles, which is a bunch of static image ads, figure out the right combinations of things and use that to inform future creative in in formats that typically take longer to produce. So that's like UGC content or videos, but that actually allows you the kind of scale of testing, but also enough surface area of new angles to go after. The key thing is with the signal engineering is you're testing concepts that actually drive net new customers. If you try to do this testing on just a purchase event, what Meta and Google are going to start telling you is like certain creative is doing really well, but you'll find out that that's a creative that just does a good job getting the existing customer to come back and purchase from you, which isn't isn't going to help you scale. The other thing is when you have enough diverse creative in terms of concepts and personas as well as formats, Meta will do a better job serving those ads to net new people and your incremental reach will get much higher, which will also allow you to have much more scale. So that's just a creative side these any questions on that before I kind of go on the other other piece of it? Speaker 3 No, no, I I think that kind of like definitely sets up the foundation for success, like how easily it can be for operators, especially newer operators to think they're doing well, but it's just meta throwing ads by your current customers. Yeah. Speaker 2 Yeah, and that's the thing, we, we see this a lot when we audit brands, you know #1 complaint we hear is the, hey, we were through the couple different agencies, they promised all this stuff and then they start spending a ton on Facebook and we don't see anything improving Shopify. Like we don't actually see new revenue, new, you know, coming in and it's not incremental, right? And, and we always just look at the ad account. It's like, well, OK, so like 50% of your impressions have just been towards existing customers. So that makes sense. Like it's a lot of people who are going to go back and go and buy anyway. So it's a big, a big piece that we we often look at. But the other thing I would just say about the creative testing matrix and in covering up surface area, the way I like to talk about it is it's, it's like playing Battleship. So a lot of brands will just have a couple of ads and they'll just launch them and they're like, it's really not working. I don't know what's going on. And the problem with that is you're not learning anything. You don't have enough kind of difference in your concepts to actually know what you're testing. What we like to do is, you know, if we're playing Battleship, we like to put pegs all over the board, right? We want to quickly figure out where the ships are. And once we do, we're just dropping a ton of pegs where they are, right? Most people will take one single peg or maybe two or three and just drop it on the board and be like, I didn't hit any ships, it's not working. So you'll got to cover enough surface area. And you do that with variety, as well as having these different personas and angles and lots of different formats. Speaker 3 When you say lots, what specifically is that? Is that 510 100? Speaker 2 Well, yeah, it's a good question. It's based on spend and it's based on what your kind of target customer acquisition cost is. So what you need to have is enough volume of let's say conversion actions in a certain time period, like a week to where you can make like strong decisions off of what's working or what's not OK. And, and why I say spend matters. So it matters first because of like if your, if your target customer acquisition cost is 500 bucks and you have a $500 daily budget, you're not learning anything, right? Even if you're getting like 1 purchase a day, you don't know which ad is actually driving anything. There's no significance to that, right? But let's say your target customer acquisition cost is 20 bucks and you're spending $10,000 a day. You're learning super fast and you can actually create much better variety. So it really depends on your budget and your target CAC from that you, you, you are somewhat limited if it's on the lower spend level of higher tax and how many tests you can run for. The most important thing is be much more strategic about what you're trying to learn and, and have a good framework for testing that. So if I was working with a client that had a really low spend, I would only be running a couple different creative concepts. But I'll be much more deliberate about what I'm testing. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. Speaker 3 Well, we, we get back to CAC, I, I think every brand alive would love to pay as little as possible in customer acquisition costs, right? You know, so it's like ideally our, our CAC is, you know, $3 or something. So like is there any realistic opportunity to affect your CAC or is it just simply a a product of the market space? Master Your Offer to Lower Customer Acquisition Cost Yeah. So there there are. And this is where so as are like our agencies focused on what we call like the five performance levers that will improve your CAC. OK. So number one is your offer, if you have a really strong new customer offer that's going to do a lot of work to reduce your CAC. The second is your creative, right. And so the, the better performing creative is obviously going to drive down your CAC. 3rd is how you're setting up your account structure. So a lot of times we look at when we do audits, we find that people have put a lot of restrictions on the ad platforms that aren't really letting them learn quickly. And so that's just I'm jacking up your, your CPMS like the cost to advertise significantly. And you know, we just clean up and simplify the structure. It automatically reduces that. The 4th 1 is your landing page. So if you have obviously a higher converting landing page, it's going to reduce your CAC. And then the fifth one is, is, is signal engineering, right, which is just making sure we're setting the right targets for met and Google to optimize off of. But the way I look at it is there are only a few metrics that kind of define your CAC. One is your CPM, So the cost to advertise to 1000 people. 2 is your your actual ad like click through link, right? So link click through rate, 3 is your your conversion rate and then 4 is your average order value. OK, So what you can do is just like you can look at a campaign and see which ones are like far off of where they need to be. So maybe your CPM really should be about 30 bucks, but instead it's 120. OK, then you can look into that and be like, that's probably an offer problem or it's probably a creative problem, right? And then you want to start solving for those problems. If you're the same thing with click through rate, if you go and you know all those metrics look good, but then your conversion rate on your landing pages, let's say .5%, you know you're a benchmark for Shopify is 2 to 4%. So you just know it's, hey, it's a conversion rate issue. I need to go focus on my landing pages. But what we like to do is kind of methodically work through each of those metrics and get them closer to the benchmarks you're supposed to be. And typically looking at account is like one or two of them are way off. And it's just clear to us, like, OK, this is where we need to focus. Speaker 3 Let's get into the offer. Like, is that one of those things where you you can work and dial it in and once the offer is set, then from there you kind of know it's something else? Or do offers have to constantly be tweaked and modified? Speaker 2 OK, So I, I, I think about offers in two different ways. So one is you have you like Evergreen new customer offer and that's something where you're going to have to always kind of tweak it a little bit. But ideally it's kind of sad and it's just running it looks and it's good a a good company to look at that's really kind of nailed. This is hollow socks. They have just a phenomenal kind of bundle offer and they just run that Evergreen. The second side of offers is thinking about seasonal promotions. And So what you, what a brand should do is, is set up a, a marketing calendar and then really figure out, you know, what holidays like, what kind of events are going to be really good to set up a unique offer around it. So let's say a 4th of July sale, Black Friday, Saturday, Monday holiday shopping, anything like that. But ideally, yeah, you, you kind of have these like non Evergreen, like new offers that you're launching during those time periods. And, and what I like about those is you get like a like a big volume of activity in those times. And they, they're kind of these big like lumps throughout the year. But if you capitalize on them correctly, like it will allow you to have like significantly better, like average, you know, increases in new customers every year as well as just, you know, reduce your average CAC. So it's kind of two parts. The on the first part with your Evergreen offer, the idea here is number 1 is you need to kind of stack a lot of value in the offer and how you're presenting it. So for a customer seeing it, it is kind of a no brainer to go buy it. The second thing is you, you do kind of want to use some of these tactics like, you know, you want to have some form of urgency on it or any of these other like out, you know, like scarcity or if you have like a lot of social proof you can add into it. I would say the other piece too, is the way I like to think about offers is, you know, most C to C products are commodities and you probably have like 5 to 10 competitors. And so people I know like most people experience this. You go on Instagram, you see a product you like, you click on it, check it out, maybe not buy it. And then for the next two weeks you get all the competitors ads popping up in your feet. So the idea is your offer has to be significantly better than those competitors. So if someone's going in in market for that product, they're like, I might as well go with these guys instead of these five other competitors because they haven't really differentiated or kind of shown value there. So that's like the best way of thinking about it. Speaker 3 So doing a quick analysis of what the competitors are doing for their offer and using that as your benchmark and then kind of working from there. Speaker 2 Yeah. But I would say like for the most part like a lot of brands are not really trying to set up a unique new customer offers. So a lot of competitors are just kind of blindly advertising for the product as is, right. So like hollow socks is an example, you know, they have a really good bundle and you know, other competitors might just have like a advantage plus shopping campaign. We're just advertising a single pair of socks. It's like buy the socks. It has alpaca wool work. Hollow socks is like, oh, it has all these benefits, it stacks the value, it has great social proof. And then it's like, oh, if you buy, I think it's you buy 2 get one free or something like that. So. Speaker 3 And then, you know, from that perspective, I, I don't know hollows, PNL or anything like that. Are they planning on losing money on that first order? Is it like get that aggressive with the offer from a, you know, customer acquisition standpoint or like where do we go with how we're allocating our resources to customer allocation and how do you look at that? Speaker 2 Yeah. So look, I frankly, I don't know their profitability as well, but I would guess they're pretty profitable off of this offer. And the reason why is this single product by itself is way more expensive than what you would typically buy for a pair of pay for a pair of socks. And then the offer kind of brings it down to that like a normal expectation. So I think it's like standalone pair of socks is like 60 bucks. But if you buy the you know, the buy 2 get one free. It's or whatever it is, it's it's it's down to like 30 bucks or something like that, you know, per pair with Ohio. Yeah. What I was going to say is the way we kind of consult with brands or talk to them, it's we just really want to figure out their contribution margin on that hero product. And you know, if it's a strong contribution margin, you know, with the product by itself, then that might just be able to sustain, you know, higher customer acquisition cost. But if the margins not that great, you know, part of that new customer offer is probably bundling it with higher margin products where you can actually kind of reduce the overall cost by like discounting, but you still have the margin kind of banked in with these other products you're selling with it. And that's kind of a strategy you can apply here. Engineer Signals, Structure, and Landing Pages for Conversions So the the point I haven't really heard #5 for you, signal engineering, Yeah. What exactly is that? What are you referring? Speaker 2 To yeah. So this is where it's. It's just you need to set up the right purchase events or custom events in these ad platforms that tie to true business outcomes, right? And so this is where it's like you set up a new customer purchase event on a specific hero product as the main optimization event that your campaigns are set to. And so the idea here is, you know, it's concept of like signal versus noise. Signal is rewarding the platform with the most important thing you need, whereas noise is rewarding the platform with lots of different things. So actually just we hop, I hopped off an audit with a prospect this morning where they were, they had an issue with their Meta campaign where their Meta started serving ads for a lot of products that they weren't really their hero product and were lower margin for them, except it was just they were lower AOB and you know, it's basically lower cost for the customer. And so they saw their account kind of get off the rails pretty quickly. We're start serving ads and and try to drive these other kind of ancillary products would like we really don't want to be selling these. These are things we want to would come back and buy later. And so the issue is there was just optimizing towards that purchase event. And then it was like, all right, I'll get you purchases, but it just went off for these lower AOB, lower margin products. And so there it's like no, set the event. So it's it's your specific hero product and a new customer purchase and then make that main signal for the campaign. Speaker 3 OK. And and is there a reason that's not just lumped in with structure or or do you view those things differently as well? Speaker 2 But with the ad account structure, yeah. So it, it, it is, it is very much lumped in, but it's a there's a little bit of nuance. So our, my kind of philosophy here is set the right signal, simplify the campaigns as much as possible and then have as much, you know, of this kind of creative matrix testing, right? And So what the structure side, a lot of like, especially in meta, a lot of the times I see people try to create like top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom funnel campaigns. And then they have this retargeting campaign on top of that. And then within each of these campaigns, they have like interest targeting, they have all these exclusions and all these things kind of layered into it. The reality is you don't need all that. All it is, is jacking up your CPMS in your accounts and then the top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom funnel account structure. Like frankly, that's just not how customers work. I mean, that's not how meta operates today. So, so the the way we approach this is we set that new customer purchase event on hero product is main optimization event. We have broad targeting ABO campaigns and then within the, you know, ad sets for the ads we're running, we just have that matrix running for creative. And so if we have a good framework for it and we have very specific ads, that does a much better job going out and getting new customers because Meta can kind of work with that, especially if you have that diverse credit, it's very specific towards these different customer. Speaker 3 Groups and then with the landing page, are you on the team of just driving everyone to your PDP, your product display page or do you actually have Landers that kind of pre sell before they get to the purchasing event? Speaker 2 It so it depends. I, I would say for the most part, we are driving to PD PS, but we're trying to add a lot more into them that just do a better job selling the product. So a key thing we're trying to figure out main objections to potentially not bind and then making sure we're handling those in the FA QS. Another thing is just making sure we're adding a lot of social proof. You know, we have like the, you know, videos added to the page, improving the quality of like the product images and then making sure that we have all the kind of key proof points we want to say about the products, right? Outside of that is, you know, we do some landing page testing with other concepts, right? So having kind of like a like a faux news article where it's like, hey, like did you know about this? And then it's like kind of a news article based product page or sorry, landing page. Or we have something where it's like a 5 reasons why page, right? Another thing, but that also, you know, sorry, a side note on that, that also sometimes depends on the the quality of traffic we're driving. And so if we notice that certain ads are are getting people who are maybe not necessarily ready to buy, but definitely in market, then it's like, yeah, they're just kind of send them to pages like that first. There's something else on landing pages. Oh yeah. One thing I would say is for the like new customer offer pages, like we want those as stand alone landing pages where we really kind of show the value stack of the offer on the different products. And we have that kind of specific where we're not really getting a standard PDP page or like a collections page. H Street Digital: Audits and 90-Day Growth Plans Cool. Speaker 3 Where can people follow you, reach out to you, hire you? Speaker 2 Yeah, for sure. So I guess the best, best way to reach out to me is on LinkedIn. You just look up Hal Smith, 8th St. Digital, message me on LinkedIn. That's probably the best way to to contact me and then our, you know, website, it's 8th St. digital.co. But yeah, definitely check this out. Shoot me a message. Happy to chat. We do audits and I, I'm, I'm going to stop making them free because I'm losing money on them right now. But I'll just say they, the kind of quick plug on those is we, it takes us about two weeks. They're very intensive and people love them. They're really high impact. And what we do is we audit across the five levers, so offer creative landing pages, account structure and the signal engineering side. And then we actually present a 90 day plan where it's, you know, if we're going to work on this account, here's the exact things we do over 90 days. So, you know, I think most agencies will do an audit. It's basically a sales tool where it's like, hey, we're just going to put some holes in some things. We actually back it up. We put our money where our mouth is and like, no, this is exactly how we would solve these problems over 90 days. And I think the other thing too is, yeah, I mean, we've, our 90 day record is really high. And so we, we do give away the strategy for free. But I'm, I, you know, I think as of probably a couple months from now, I'm going to start charging for these because they're super intensive for the team and I got a somewhat throttled the amount of audits we're doing right now. So. Speaker 3 Yeah, you, you heard it here. You if you want to get in before the price goes up. Classic scarcity play which probably. Speaker 2 You know, it, it's actually genuine, like it's a true thing. So yeah. Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah. So hit up Hal, if you're in need of of some agency work, be able to implement these five different points. I enjoyed having you on the show. Hopefully our listeners enjoyed it as much as I did. This has been another e-commerce conversations. Cheers. Keep on growing. Awesome.