Can paper mailers, radio, and print ads still matter? Absolutely!
In this second part of our discussion with David Lambert, Sr. Manager, Growth Marketing at Ruby, we talk about how technology has changed the way we use paper mail and why clients and customers are ready to see you in their snail mail.
Read the interview.
Jill McKenna:
Hello, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. I am Jill McKenna. I’m the Campaign Marketing Manager here at Ruby, and I am truly delighted today to be speaking with my friend and colleague David Lambert, who works with us at Ruby. David, can you say a little bit about what you do for us and your background?
David Lambert:
Hi, Jill. I take on all of the paid media here at Ruby. So I do all of our digital advertising spend, Google Analytics, Google ads, Facebook ads.
So mostly anything that we do from a paid perspective, I’m involved in one way or the other when it involves marketing, and then really trying to tie that into long-term goals and optimization and efficiency. So that’s where I spend the majority of my time, as well as helping some of our systems connect and talk to each other.
Jill McKenna:
So let’s say somebody goes and they do all these great advertising efforts and they really make a point to invest in engaging people and bringing them to their website. What are the biggest mistakes you see when people get people to their website and they don’t necessarily have a great experience?
David Lambert:
There is quite a bit there. A lot of it is the initial messaging. It is easy to get… You’re just trying to cram so much into your website. So you really want to be careful of when someone hits your page. What’s the one message? What’s the one thing you want them to do when they’re there? Do you want them to click to call you? Do you want them to read a headline of who you are? A big thing in web development is the five-second test. If someone hits their page, you know within five seconds who the company is, what they do, why you’re there.
That’s a really, really strong first step that you want them to know, I’m a hairstylist in Chicago and this is my brand—that “Oh, I’m in the right place. I’m looking for a hairdresser.” But then having the contact being easy to reach out, that’s the next thing. So they’re in the right spot, but how do I connect with you? There’s a couple of ways that you do that. There’s forms or telephones or emails being listed up, but we’re also seeing web chat be such a big driver of that, when it can directly communicate. I know as younger audiences, sometimes we don’t like to pick up the phone as much, but when we do, it’s really beneficial.
Sometimes that bridge of having that low friction of “I’m just going to chat to this person to ask a quick question”—that’s been super helpful for many businesses. I know that I do it when I don’t want to fill out a big form or go into their email. I just want a quick response. Then that helps me dig into further what that company does or it helps put me in this perspective of, “No, this might be a service I actually want. It needs to do this or that and I’m not finding it on your website.” It kind of replaces some of the search functionality that we’ve had to do on websites, which is often difficult to get exactly what someone’s looking for.
Having someone answer it directly to your chats, I’m sure that many people have experienced that, where it is a much quicker version of I’m able to find what I’m looking for right off the bat. Then I can decide: Do I want to call? Do I want to pursue this more? But we’ve seen really good results with helping companies utilize that, specifically at Ruby.
Jill McKenna:
Yeah. We’ve seen a lot of rise of chat since COVID began. I mean, for a lot of reasons, right? We’re in Zoom meetings all day. We don’t have time to pick up the phone, but we can get on a website and see are they open? Do they require masks? Is there a pickup protocol that I need to follow? It seems like so many industries are really embracing that. You would never open a store and not have a staff member there, and that can be the experience when you go to a website and it’s like, “Well, what now?”
David Lambert:
Yeah. Well, it’s so easy to get lost in the shuffle of things. If you went into Walmart and there was no signs or no people in there, it would take you forever to find what you’re looking for, and then the signs are helpful, but we’ve all walked down those large aisles and I just cannot find the sign that says batteries and I’m stuck. I just want this and I can go. So you flag down someone in a vest and that they kind of point you in the right direction. It’s very akin to the chat service of, I’m looking. I don’t want to dig through your FAQs. I don’t have time. I’m running between meetings. I just want this quick question answered to know if this is going to work for me or not.
Generally, those really start to prod out different things that companies wouldn’t know about that potential customer, whether that is what they’re really looking for, the questions they sort of ask. So it helps dig into their perspective of a potential lead for you. So even if they don’t convert into a paying customer or they never visit your website again, you can understand who the audience is that first was driven there and try to align either your product or service more closely to those results, or try to make those messagings more clear. If you get always the same questions, try to bubble that up so that people have that and you can check that box right away so that they’re not having to dig through.
Jill McKenna:
Yeah. I’m curious about retargeting. So for those who don’t know, you’ve definitely experienced retargeting. It’s when you look at something online and all of a sudden you’re seeing it on every webpage you go to. It’s popping back up trying to get you to look at it again and hopefully buy it. So when is retargeting worthwhile? When is maybe it not? How does somebody start thinking about retargeting for their services or brand?
David Lambert:
That’s a great question, and it comes up in 100% of conversations I have when I’m consulting for this kind of thing, it’s kind of an art and science. So it is, there is a bit of unknown of, especially when you’re starting out your first ad campaign, you really don’t know the response, or how many customers, how many potential customers have to see your website or see your ad before they convert into a sale, or even a lead. So it has to be something you’re comfortable with. You have to have enough for it to be impactful for, you know, a few hundred dollars generally a month would be pretty minimal. So you want to be looking at it in that framework. But if you know you have a high value customer, a lot of Retargeting is—I would honestly say there is mostly no situation where retargeting isn’t helping you out. It is far cheaper than getting someone to click on your site the first time. So if I’m running a Google search ad and someone clicks and gets to my site, that’s going to be far more expensive than when I’m following them around for a period of time on the internet with some graphic of reminding them, “Hey, you checked out our site. Do you still want the solution?” So as long as it aligns with your business, I think it always is fruitful, especially when you’re not charged unless they click on that banner ad or that retargeting again. It only helps to keep that conversation going.
A big thing with advertising is frequency: how many times someone sees your brand in general. Because like we were talking about, you’re bouncing between meetings and different things, and you’re trying to purchase all this different things. Once you get out of the search mode, it’s on the back burner. I might never think about those sunglasses that I actually thought were cool but I was on the fence because I didn’t want to spend 50 bucks right now. So then I’m going about my day, I’m looking at other stuff, and then that sunglass picture pops back up and I’m like, “Oh, I really do like that. Maybe I should just purchase it.”
So that’s essentially how it works, where you’re just putting a pixel on your site. People that visit then are put into an audience and you’re able to advertise based on their web traffic to other places and kind of follow them around a little bit. I would say it’s super strong. It usually has a better return because you’re utilizing those first web traffic hits and you’re trying your best to say, “Hey, we’re still here.” Especially for someone that’s not familiar with your brand at all, they might’ve searched and found you that one time, you aren’t as familiar as you need to be, you need to kind of see and be reminded a few times before you’re just going to go out with this person. It’s like hanging out with someone for the first time. You kind of want to see them a couple of times and then you’re like, “Oh, we could hang out. It wouldn’t be awkward.”
Jill McKenna:
Yeah. You want to judge how they treat the waiter or the waitress.
David Lambert:
Yeah, exactly.
Jill McKenna:
That’s going to inform everything you need to know.