Activating cold audiences and promoting when you give to charity.
Dave: Jay, how are you mate?
Jay: Good mate. How are you? It’s been a little while now.
Dave: Fantastic. We’ve been a little bit busy hey. It’s been an interesting time, although I want to be able to just provide content day after day after day for anyone who wants to consume it. I guess that’s been we’ve been so busy with our customers, Black Friday, Saturday, Monday, Christmas, we’ve both taken some time off that now it’s a case of we just got to get back in and wait, getting a good response from the information that we’re giving out there. And so I think we’re just got to dedicate some time and keep going, buddy.
Jay: Yeah. No, it’s exciting. Very pumped yeah for this year, like the 2020s eight days in an already looking amazing, so. I’m really excited.
Dave: Cool.
Jay: So let’s do it.
Dave: So a few things that we’ve done that’s changed a little bit over the Christmas period is one of our staff, Paul has transitioned into a bit of a creative director role and he’s now helping us produce the content that we’re producing. So that’s really great. And we’re actually going to hire two more people under Paul, just to help get this content out there, edit it, generate it, talk to our community how we’ve had questions flooding in like crazy over the last 24 hours. Questions that people want. And this is on the tough marketing questions that they don’t know the answers for themselves and they’re looking to us to help them solve those things. So that’s pretty cool.
Dave: So the whole reason why people are sending us these tough questions is we just went live on the eight, no, when did we go live? The sixth-
Jay: The sixth, yeah.
Dave: … of January. We went live on the sixth of January with a bit of an outlandish promotion. I’ve already been sworn at in an email thinking that it’s too good to be true, we’re essentially giving someone the chance to win $50,000 towards a Facebook or Google advertising campaign.
Dave: Now full disclosure, it’s like a spin to win insured prize value. So you’ve got a one in 250 chance of winning the $50,000 cash. But just for asking a question on our Instagram account, or in the comments or just asking a question on our YouTube account in the comments. You can go in the draw to have that free chance to spin to win $50,000 cash. And all you’ve done is asked a question which in turn will answer and help you out, right? So there’s a-
Jay: It’s a win-win.
Dave: … a bit of a carrot there and like, “Hey, you might not want to take the chance to win $50,000 cash, because it’s a pretty low chance to actually win the thing, to be honest. But you might choose to opt into taking one of the other two prizes that we’re offering, which is a three-month strategy session.” So it would be with you for Facebook ads or Chris for Facebook ads. Our Google ad person and our web development or conversion rate optimization team, so three months of strategies.
Dave: Even that alone, Alex, one of our customers were saying to me this morning like, “Imagine three months of picking your brains, like that’s going to multiply business on its own right there.”
Jay: Yeah, that’s right.
Dave: Or the other, the third prize that we’re giving away, which I’m just going to pick up this GoPro and point up to it. We’ve had this safe sitting up here for a couple of months now. That safe has got a big win me sticker on it now. But the contents of that safe have in between the 15th of November and the 15th of December, two of our customers, over half a million dollars worth of sales online and there’s … I don’t know how you can work out that it’s tangible, but it fits in a safe like that. But what is in that safe is a pretty fantastic prize, which would snowball any business, and we’re happy to help implement that what’s in there.
Dave: So in saying that, our toughest questions, I’ll do a quick little promo. Bidpixel.com/questions, plural. And enter your question, head to our Instagram account, comment a question on any of our Instagram pitches or head to our YouTube channel and ask a question in the comments with any video. Our team are monitoring that and we will then answer them live in an upcoming episode. So in saying that, let’s kick it off in 2020 with three questions that we’ve already had in over the last couple of hours. Scott K. Wants to know, what do you do with cold people that you haven’t spoken to in a year?
Jay: Yeah, so great question Scott. Basically we just really believe in giving value. So at the end of the day, you just want to provide value and by doing so you’re presenting yourself as an expert in that field, you’re giving them … You become a voice of trust and a voice of reason and at the end of the day, it becomes a transaction. Now, you give value, you give insight, you give help. There comes a point where there’s a potential transaction for them to then further engage you in your services on a paid basis potentially.
Dave: So let’s say email. So email nurturing. How do you engage with cold people? You’ve got to give them more value than you’re asking from them. What about Facebook advertising audiences and Instagram advertising audience? How can you engage or re-engage with cold people that you haven’t spoken to in a year?
Jay: It really depends on the niche that your business is in. You would attack, you’d strategise slightly differently depending on the niche. We do a lot of segregation in our audiences with our clients, from cold to warm to hot and all the steps in between. So it could be just pure brand awareness, letting people aware of you. Again, there’s a lot of noise out there in terms of marketing, a lot of competition, just getting your brand and your voice out there at a bare minimum is just enough sometimes just to reignite that fire and that spark and potential transaction.
Dave: So Scott K. Who asked the question, he actually emailed me and we chatted about this morning. But imagine if you’ve got a list like we actually did, our list of 14,000 people who we had sat down with for about 12 months and we’ve only just started re-engaging it now. One of the ways that Jay and his team at the Facebook ads side of things would use your list.
Dave: Hey, you might come to Jay with 10,000 people on a database who are really cold and haven’t heard from you. Let’s put them into some Facebook audiences and start showing them your brand as Jay was saying. And let’s warm them up with a brand and an offer or some motivation or education. So that by the time you do pull the trigger and start sending emails, they’ve heard of you, they remember who you are, they’ve got some brand trust. And your open rate and unsubscribe rates are going to be healthier than if you’ve just started hammering out that list with cold emails. So definitely there are smarts around how you can use other platforms other than email to get in front of people.
Jay: That’s right.
Dave: A lot of our real estate customers will use Facebook advertising campaigns and audiences to get back in front of people who may have unsubscribed or bounced or not want to be contacted anymore. Because technically there’s a gray area around. The people that you’re advertising to in a Facebook audience don’t necessarily know how they’ve been advertised or how they’ve been targeted. The real estate industry has the Do Not Call Register and anyone on the Do Not Call Register in Australia, that real estate agent isn’t allowed to outreach cold.
Dave: You can put that information into a Facebook audience and target those people with a cold ad and educate them and motivate them to warm back up to you or your brand or your offer. But I guess it comes down to the offer and the value that you’re providing at the end of the day, doesn’t it?
Jay: That’s right, and would be [inaudible 00:07:57], well I guess for me and [inaudible 00:08:00] she would be gone branding, rather than direct hard selling, is get your brand back out there again, just get people aware of you. If you haven’t spoken to somebody in a while, we probably, everyone’s got that friend that you might not have seen for five years and all of a sudden they appear and they want something straight away. Don’t be that person. Be and engage them and just go, “Hey, good to meet you. Good to see you again.” You know, shake their hand and move on and then wait for another interaction. Or presents another interaction further down the track. So that’d be my advice. Think branding. Think bigger picture. Longer term. It’s a lot more sustainable.
Dave: Yeah, perfect. So Scott asked the question what to do with cold people who you haven’t spoken to in a year. Scott asked that question via our YouTube video this morning. He entered the draw. So Scott has now gone in the draw to win that, the chance of that $50,000 cash. So congratulations Scott. Be like Scott everyone else and do that as well. I will answer your question for you.
Dave: Hey guys, I just wanted to take a moment out of the content that you’ve been consuming right now and just discuss this promotion that BidPixel is doing currently. So for Q1 of 2020, so January through to the end of March, we’re actually incentivizing you and we want to know what your toughest marketing or advertising question is.
Dave: Now we want to hear those questions on our Instagram account, so commenting on any of our posts or our YouTube channel, commenting on any of our current videos, or in fact any of the videos on our channel at all. And we will go through and read those questions and use them as a basis of our content for future videos and pieces of content that we’re making.
Dave: Now marketing is a transaction, right? You need to give and take to get someone’s attention. And while we’re asking you for these tough questions, we know that we need to give you something in return. So what we’ve devised is an outlandish prize of $50,000 cash to go towards your next marketing or advertising campaign. Now we’ve had some feedback from this already and some people think it’s a little bit too good to be true. But I just want to take this moment out of the content you’ve been listening to give you some assurance and give you a bit of an understanding of where that $50,000 cash is coming from and let you know that it’s completely above board and legitimate.
Dave: So within Australia you’ve got the ability to do an insured prize sum. Now while we don’t have the $50,000 to give away, we use an insurance company that say that there is a game of chance involved and the winner will get the chance to spin a wheel. And if they spin the lucky number, like if you’re old enough and you remember, “Hey, Hey, it’s Saturday and pluck a duck and the big chocolate wheel.” If you spin the number and win, you get a genuine $50,000 cash to do with it as you choose or to spend it on advertising.
Dave: Now, because it’s a game of chance, some people might not want to take part in that. So what we’ve done is offered up two other prizes in the prize pool and the first person who asks the toughest question or the person that we deem wins this promotion at the end of March, will get the chance of which prize they’d like to choose. Yeah, they might like to spin to win and go for their chance of $50,000 cash, or they might choose one of our supplementary prizes, which are the first supplementary prize is three months worth of strategy with our team.
Dave: So you get three months of strategy with our Google ads experts, three months of strategy with our Facebook ad experts and three months of strategy with our conversion rate optimization and website development team. Now that’s a pretty powerful prize in its own and imagine what you could do after three months to generate revenue through your advertising and marketing.
Dave: Now if that doesn’t float your boat, we’ve also got a locked safe. Now, you can barely see it up on the screen here, but up on my shelving that you’ll see in a lot of our videos is a safe that says, “Win me,” and it’s actually been locked for quite some time now. The contents of that safe, in November and December alone, two of our customers, over half a million dollars worth of sales online. So like I said, marketing is a give and take mentality, right? We want to take your tough questions and we want to answer them.
Dave: And that’s a selfish motive from us because we want to use those questions that you ask to then generate more valuable content for other people to consume. But we know that we need to give you something in return. And the reason why we’re going outlandish with the $50,000 cash is we want to make it worth your while to take time out of your day to ask us a question. So that’s it. That’s our little internal ad as part of the content that we’ve just pushed out.
Dave: I just want you to know that yes, it’s a legitimate $50,000. We want you to have the chance to win that or one of the other prizes that we’re offering. And all we need in return is for you to ask us a marketing or advertising question that you genuinely want to find out an answer for. Thanks heaps, let’s get back to the content that we’re talking about at the moment. And if you did want to take part in this promotion, just go to wordpress-113725-3695774.cloudwaysapps.com/questions and there’s all the information you need there. Cheers guys.
Dave: So the next question we had is from Tom. Now Tom, I know who Tom is. I’m going to grab this GoPro again and go up here. There’s a couple of little books up here on the back of the shelf that, I have to get right [inaudible 00:13:04]. My Big Adventure. Tom and his partner created these books, they’re travel diaries with things that you can do in them for your children. So you can go to Bali or Thailand. There’s an Australian one coming out soon. I believe there’s a Fiji one on the way, isn’t there?
Jay: Yeah. Yeah.
Dave: Maybe, Tom, you can let us know that in the comments. Tom is a current customer of ours. So Tom, thanks for reaching out. Current customers, you can also go in the draw to win $50,000 cash, the chance to win $50,000 cash. Tom’s asked us a question that we weren’t going to talk about because it’s a very, very opinionated topic right now. And we tend to shy away from something that’s very political and something that’s very left or right factioned on social media.
Dave: Now, unfortunately, the platform that we’ve built our business around, which is Facebook and its advertising and Facebook and it’s social media sort of presence is the same platform that gives everyone an instant gratification and gives everyone the chance to share their opinions when possibly sometimes it’s not educated enough or possibly sometimes not warranted.
Dave: And Tom’s question is really centered around, there’s a lot of guilt and helplessness being felt right now. Because if you haven’t seen, if you’re out of Australia, a lot of the East Coast of Australia and a large portion of Australia has been ravished by wildfires or bush fires at the moment. And there’s been a lot of sort of like political unrest about this. Because look, social media has given everyone an opinion and you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t really at this.
Dave: And there’s a lot of businesses that are starting to be opportunistic and start using this misfortune for marketing purposes. And Tom just wants to know that now which way do you go as a small business? Are you damned if you donate and promote that you’re donating? Are you damned if you don’t? And, we at BidPixel would very much say, all right, this is hard right, because this is a personal opinion and this is what we’re trying to shy away from, right?
Dave: But, we at BidPixel would probably just keep it down on this and Jay, you can probably explain why we would do that better than me. So you’ll answer Tom on this one.
Jay: Yeah. I and we I guess more so, we look at the situation and it’s just a horrible situation, and we don’t want to use that situation for our own benefits. Or even the potential for it to be construed that way. So yeah, so at BidPixel we give to charities. We don’t really promote. That is just something that we do. And the same with, personally, like you know, I give to different charities as well, and I don’t necessarily billboard them.
Jay: That’s just something that I believe in. If you see a cause that needs help, you put your hand out and you help. That’s probably most of where we come from. It’s like not everybody needs to know that you’re giving. Not everybody needs to know that you are donating to these charities. Just do it. If that’s something that you believe in and that you want to help, just do it. You don’t have to post it. You don’t have to blast it across the banners on your webpage. You just do it, knowing that that money is going to go to people in need, and the people that are being fighting fires for such a long time now. And the people that are actually making a very significant difference to people whose lives are in need at the moment.
Jay: And so it’s just an amazing cause. Is that something that should potentially be blasted across social medias as a businesses’ main priority and mine objective and flag? I guess a very question that when also the left hand doesn’t need to know what the right hand is doing and vice versa.
Dave: I guess if you wanted to, I knew you were going to go down the lines of using it for your marketing, or you did want people to know that you are supporting a cause or a charitable thing like this is you are going to be judged. You are going to polarize your audience. And if you’re happy to polarize your audience, which a lot of people in marketing do, right? Marketing somewhat is about polarizing your audience. People are going to love what you do and hate what you do. But it’s going to be a personal decision and you’re going to come under scrutiny if you do it.
Dave: So BidPixel would sit on the fence in that one and we probably, if a customer came to us and asked us to do certain campaigns around that, we’d probably really ask for their heart or their motive in why they want to do it and guide them on maybe what the outcome they’re going to achieve from actually promoting that they’re helping something like this. But it’s saying that our hearts that go out to so many people in Australia right now who are suffering. But it’s also been sensationalized by the media as well, right? Like there a lot of stuff out there that you see that yeah, you just got to form your own opinion, I guess.
Jay: Yeah, that’s right. At the end of the day it’s great and a need, like a very needed cause at the moment. And by all means, give. It’s a really personal opinion I guess. Personal decision.
Dave: Sure. So Tom, we wouldn’t usually discuss a topic like that, but because it kind of relates to the platform that we love so dearly and we are in and around every single day. I guess there is a simple explanation that you just have to be careful because opinions are formed very quickly online these days and whatever you do, you’re going to be scrutinized from. Cool.
Dave: Now third and final question for today, Amanda Wink. I hope I spelled that, or said that right Amanda. Amanda asked just on Instagram, she said, “Hey Dave and Jay, what are your top tips for small business when creating a 30 or 90 day social media content strategy?” Do you want to talk about the first thing that we discussed offline?
Jay: First thing would be know your audience. [crosstalk 00:19:23].
Dave: Who you should talk [crosstalk 00:19:23].
Jay: Who are they? Like it sounds really simple, but so often the most overlooked thing to do is, who are they? Where do they live? What are they interested in? If you were to dial them down to an individual person, what would that person be? Is it a 36 year old female living in Eastern Sydney who loves walks along Bondi? Is it a 65 year old man who loves Ford cars, lives in these garage at home and loves throwing a spanner around.
Dave: Know your customer persona and know what platforms they’re going to be sitting on, right? So Amanda, if you’re going to be creating your 30 or 90 day social media content strategy, don’t put out content for the sake of putting out content is what we’re saying. Know who your target market is. You can Google customer avatars. There’s plenty of worksheets to go through on that. But who is that person?
Dave: And then let’s reverse engineer. What platform are they actually playing on? So there’s always going to be debate of my target audience isn’t on Facebook or they’re not on Instagram or now a lot of people aren’t on TikTok yet, but where are you going to get the best bang for buck investing your time. And where are you going to get the most response from the people that you’re targeting? So LinkedIn for corporates or enterprise.
Dave: Instagram is such a good all-rounder, right? Instagram has really high engagement and it’s a great all-rounder. Facebook’s a little bit of an older demographic, there’s no hard fast rule on this because you know my parents are nudging on 70. They’re not on Facebook, but they’re on Instagram, and they’re on Instagram to see photos of their grandchildren. But you put a well-placed ad in front of them and they’re going to click and buy.
Jay: That’s right.
Dave: Work out who your target market is. Work out what platforms they play on. Don’t just trust your gut and look at the stats as you’re starting to post and you’re starting to put your schedule out there. So your first 30 or 90 day plan would be following that up and doing a bit of a roadmap and a strategy about what engagement you were getting.
Jay: That’s right.
Dave: When you’re creating your 30 or 90 day plan, what value can you provide to that target audience? So don’t just post for the sake of posting, what value or what education can you provide them? And I guess we get a lot of customers that come to us and they go, “Well I don’t know what to share.” And it could be super simple. Like I had this conversation with an electrician recently and he’s like, “I just don’t know what content to put out there.”
Dave: And I was like, “Cool. You know the demo switch that you just installed for my fan. How does a demo switch work? And when it starts crackling on the demo switch, what does that mean?” The average person doesn’t know that, but that’s just everyday thing for him. He doesn’t even think about that anymore. When you’re installing LED lights into the roof of a residential house, like the little LED pop lights that people are now retrofitting and replacing. Like the ones that have three different light settings for the warmth or coolness of the light.
Dave: Explain that to people, because suddenly they say that you’re an expert in what you do and they’re more likely to come to you to use your services because you’ve explained what they don’t understand.
Jay: That’s right.
Dave: Create a podcast and a vlog about everything marketing that people don’t understand, because they’re more likely to come to you and use you for your business, right? I mean, that’s-
Jay: Exactly.
Dave: Your social media marketing strategy or content strategy is working out how you can provide value. And then as we talked about first with Scott’s question is, what is the transaction that you’re having? So marketing at the end of the day is a transaction. You’re providing value and you want something in return. You need to make sure you’re valuable, your value is valuable enough to actually warrant them looking at your content, taking action on your content, clicking through to your website, purchasing, whatever it is that you’re actually wanting them to do. Do you want to add anything to that mate?
Jay: No, exactly. And then I would just say, speak in a voice that’s relative to the platform that you’re on, if it’s Instagram, it’s a visual platform. And yeah, imagery is great. Imagery is obviously the strongest point in Instagram and whether that’s your Instagram feed or Instagram stories, swipe ups, et cetera. Speak, you need a voice, it’s appropriate for the platform. So Instagram is that.
Jay: LinkedIn, however is more corporate and more business and career minded. So speak in the voice that’s appropriate for that platform and that meets those viewers, or those people that you’re trying to engage there.
Dave: So Amanda Wink, what are your top tips for small business creating a 30 or 90 day social media content strategy? Define your target market. What is the message you’re going to provide them? How are you going to provide them value? What are you transacting in that value? What platforms are they on? And probably the last thing that I would recommend, which is not to do with the content, but how you follow through with your social media content strategy is, make it tangible enough that you are actually going to follow through with it yourself.
Dave: Jay and I and the team create 90-day plans for our business. So every 90 days or every quarter we have a set of goals that we need to attain or we need to achieve. And each 90 day plan we have a reward set aside when we meet all of our goals, and we have a punishment set aside. And that punishment is actually Jay and the team work out what their punishment is going to be, whether it’s eating vegan for a month or what else we have. Ice bath in a dirty wheelie bin. Massaging your partner or your wife every night for seven days with a video testimonial at the end saying how well you did. Jay, I believe you still have to do that?
Jay: Yeah.
Dave: But so what I’m getting at is, set yourself your 90 day plan, but make it in bite sized chunks. Break it down to 12 weeks segments and work out how many posts can you physically do each day? How many platforms are you going to be posting on. And it might be that you do one Instagram news feed a day, you do two Instagram stories, you do one LinkedIn post, you do one TikTok, you do two Facebooks. Just work out where your audience is and where it’s best spending your time. And commit to it in smaller chunks so that you actually go through with it.
Jay: That’s right.
Dave: And then set yourself a goal that there’s a punishment or a reward at the end of it when you actually get it done. And roll it over and go again the next 90 days. But we find that once we start setting some of these things, it becomes second nature to the team and they never have to think about it again. It automatically gets done. And so then we up the ante and every quarter we’re up in the ante and getting stronger and stronger in what we do as a team. Cool. Anything else, mate?
Jay: Perfect, no, that’s great.
Dave: So this episode was all about asking or answering the questions and explaining the current promotion that we’re doing a little bit more. If you want to know anything about the promotion, wordpress-113725-3695774.cloudwaysapps.com/questions. All the terms and conditions are there. The lottery permits are there. Everything’s above board with this one. Just so you know, all you have to do is go to Instagram and ask a question in one of our comments, any post in a comment on Instagram. Or go to our YouTube channel and ask a comment in any of the videos. Our team monitors all those comments. Then you just go to wordpress-113725-3695774.cloudwaysapps.com/questions, punch in your details and you’re in the draw.
Dave: Not only can you go in the draw to win one of these prizes, but Jay and I or one of the team or one of the experts that we get in will do the best we can to answer those questions that you don’t have an answer for. So there’s, you said it before, it’s a win-win for these people, right? They’re getting the questions answered by a team of experts, but they’re also getting incentivised with a prize or some strategy or a locked safe, right?
Jay: That’s right, get some marketing insights, and on the flip side, you might be lucky enough to win 50 grand.
Dave: And the big thing with this as well is you’re not just hearing the answers for your questions. Once you’re subscribing to our channels and starting to consume this, you’re going to hear all these questions that other people are answering and it’s going to educate you. Mate, we’re going to do ourselves out of business in three months because we’re going to give that much value that people are just going to go and do it for themselves. I would love that, to be honest.
Jay: That’s great.
Dave: I would love small businesses to be able to implement this stuff by themselves and absolutely keep on at doing it.
Jay: Yeah. There’s one thing I love saying is me working with businesses and just seeing and their lives changed. That’s just the most fulfilling thing. It’s amazing.
Dave: So I did do a video a couple of days ago with the actual, the values of BidPixel and how we build brand trust and brand values and one of those things is, and one of our values is changing the lives of our customers. And we genuinely have the ability to do that, regardless if they’re a $10,000 a month customer or 200. We’ve still got a $200 a month customer. They’re a legacy customer that we love to help. That seeing the smile on their face when stuff works right. It’s a fantastic outcome for us. So, Jay. Thank you for your time today.
Jay: No worries. Thank you. Fun as always.
Dave: Always fun. www.wordpress-113725-3695774.cloudwaysapps.com/questions. Ask your tough question. Ask it in the comments of this video even, and we’ll do our best to answer. If Jay and I can’t answer it, we’ll get an expert in. We’ve got a finance expert coming, some real estate guys coming in to have a chat, we’ll find the best person to answer your question if we can’t answer it confidently ourselves. Cool.
Jay: Perfect.
Dave: Thank you, Jay.
Jay: Thank you.
Dave: See you.
Jay: Cheers. Bye.
