212: Cross-Channel Advertising: Combine Google Ads, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Remarketing with Rocco Baldassarre

Robert Plank 0:01 Robert Plank Show, episode 212, cross channel advertising. Combine Google ads, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and remarketing with Rocco Baldassare, Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Robert Plank show. This is the internet marketing podcast. We talk about building an online business. Our guest today is Rocco Baldassare, and he's an entrepreneur and digital marketer. And Rocco is best known for being the founder of the award winning digital marketing agency zebra advertisement, which is the first and only agency to have a case study featured by Facebook. Rocco has done a lot of cool things as far as advertising, has been features by the Huffington Post, New York Times, search engine, journal and more. Mr. Rock, welcome to the program.

Rocco Baldassarre 0:46 Thank you very much for having me, Robert. I'm

Robert Plank 0:49 super glad that you're here. And so can you sort of tell us about what it is that you do and what makes you stand out?

Rocco Baldassarre 0:56 Sure, absolutely. So first of all, today, I would like to bring to the your audience something that they might actually apply to their companies. So I try to come up with a strategy that can be applied to any type of businesses, whether they're small, large or also businesses that want to get into the online marketing and would like to know a little bit more about what to do. We are going to talk about cross channel channel advertising, the concept is very easy, because basically, nowadays, in the market, there is a lot of choice. So what you want to do is to become a Top of Mind choice for a customer. This is something that we have seen a lot in offline marketing. For example, when you go to the supermarket, they place products at the at the height of your shoulder so you can see them more often. So you see the TV ads at home. We go to the supermarket, they are at the shoulder height, and you grab the product because it's there. You remember it, and it's easy to grab online. Of course, it's a little bit different, because you cannot place a product in a shelf. So there are different techniques to get your product to become a Top of Mind choice for the customer. In order to do that, cross channel, advertising is the way to go, because it allows you to show your product on multiple channels, for example, Google AdWords, Google displays or websites across the web, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and then once people get to your website, they will actually leave the website and see the product through remarketing on multiple platforms. So they will think that your product is everywhere. They will remember your product. They will remember your colors. They will remember the shape of your product itself. Or if you sell a service, they will remember your brand. The more you do it, the more likely it is to actually get to a conversion when people are ready to make a decision. So cross channel advertising is really like the new front front the new way to actually advertise online, still using a limited budget, because it doesn't take a lot of money to do that. Does it make sense? Robert, yeah,

Robert Plank 2:56 I think so. So just to make sure that we're all on the same page, and just to make sure that I'm understanding you correctly. So you're saying that that your specialty is this thing called cross channel advertising. And what that means is that people should be advertising on Facebook. That's great. People should be advertising on Google ads. That's great. But what you're saying is what people should really be doing is advertising on all the above, on Twitter, Instagram, remarketing Facebook, that way we appear everywhere. Is that correct?

Rocco Baldassarre 3:25 That's correct. But the key point of all of that is that people that need to see your ads on multiple platforms, so the same user needs to be exposed eight to nine times to your ads to be able to actually say, hey, this ad is actually working quite nicely for us. So that's one of the key points of this concept. Because, as you know, users need to see your ad 810 times before buying from you, right? And

Robert Plank 3:50 so sort of along those lines. So, I mean, we need to to be in all these platforms. We need to be everywhere. So as far as what it is you do, I mean, do you set up these sorts of ads for clients or like, what is, you know, what is, what takes up most of your time as far as setting these kinds of things up. So

Rocco Baldassarre 4:08 the what takes the most time is usually the strategic part, because you kind of need to strategize what the creatives that you need to use, because we implement all of that. But the implementation is the easy part. The complex part is to decide what people need to see on your website, what type of ads they need to see, what type of ads they see, the first, the second, the third time they interact with you. So it kind of takes a little bit to create a sort of on an advertising funnel that makes sense, that leads to the goal, which is usually a sale. And this is what I usually spend most of my time on. Okay,

Robert Plank 4:42 great. So along those lines, could you sort of walk us through that process? Could you walk us through like some sort of client that you've had in the past, or some kind of case study where someone has come to you and someone has said, well, I need this traffic. And can you sort of tell us what your thought process was, as far as the strategy was, and what. Sort of decisions you made

Rocco Baldassarre 5:01 absolutely so a typical example is a product called Zen Ed. Zen med is a an acne cream, or they also use sell rosacea products. They have a big product lines, but I'm going to use the example of acne because the concept applies then to the rest of the products. So what Zen Ed was basically doing they were having a very cool product. This product was performing extremely well because it was selling. But with Google starting to kind of reduce the organic traffic, they needed to boost their sales through paid but at the same time, they needed to have a system that guaranteed the sale every for example, $50 because about that the company was losing money. So the first thing we did for for them was to start with plank. The plan was, okay, we need to advertise on Google search, even though it's expensive. People do look for products there, and you need to be there. But on top of that, we said, Okay, we need to advertise also on blog articles whenever they talk about acne. So we created banners for that. At the same time, we decided to analyze their audience, and we figured out who their buyers were once we did so we went on Facebook and target the demographics that they were after. So so far, we had three standalone things, Google AdWords on Search, Google AdWords on display, and Facebook. We then decided to do Instagram and Twitter, still targeting demographics that we had analyzed for them. But once all of that was done, we were okay. People see us for the first time on Google, Facebook or Instagram, but after they go on the website, they see an $80 product, they will never buy it. So we started figuring out what's important and important was to have a good brand value associated with the product. So the next step was to install, of course, remarketing pixels across the website. And we didn't remarket to everyone. We only remarked it to people that spent 60 seconds on the website. So the concept was the following, the first time they saw our product, they were the key selling points of the product on the landing page. So the points that we knew were converting people the most. If people were not converting the remarketing was going to push a little bit more on additional details that we didn't include maybe in the initial ads because they were less important. Because the goal was, if a customer is not happy, we do need to provide them additional value to justify the purchase of the product. So the second time they were exposed to our ads, first of all, they saw them on a different channel that the one they entered from. So if they started on Google, this audio, on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, or all of them, so people starting to see the brand a little bit everywhere, with, of course, a very, very specific attention to frequency. We didn't want to overload them with our ads. But what happened is that people started to find more value in the product, read more about the product, educate themselves. Some people visited our website eight times before buying. Each time they visited our website, we provided them a more detailed overview of the product, because our thought was, if people didn't buy so far, there is something that is not that is blocking them. So we need to fix that. So the way to fix that was to provide more information. And another thing we did is for everyone that visited our website more than three times without buying, we started promoting external review articles. So third parties, third party articles that talked about our product in an completely objective way. And by doing that, people started to inform themselves even more based on the opinion of people that had their same issue. So by doing that, at the end of the day, we ended up increasing sales by 150% in the first three months. And the sales keep increasing because we have the first campaign type that is driving fresh people to the website, and these people are then nurtured through the ads. Because since we're selling an expensive product, we need to educate the customers. Does it make sense? Yeah, it

Robert Plank 9:11 does. And the thing out of all that that you described there, that really blew me away is that you're that you said, you said something along the lines of your your average buyer of this Acme product visits eight times before buying. Did I hear you correctly in that? Yeah, five to eight times. I mean, I mean, crazy and so. So it sounds like, to me, like a lot of people who aren't doing this cross channel advertising on different platforms, and the people who aren't doing retargeting, especially it sounds like a lot of them are just just just leaving tons of money on the table from people who were almost ready to buy but, but, you know, didn't quite get there and left, and so, I mean, so I sort of understood what, what the sort of plan of action was there for this particular client of yours. So what you guys did was you first advertised on Google search, then you made some banner ads, and you advertised. On some blog articles, and then he did some other kind of research and figured out what those demographics were for Facebook, and then also targeted that for Instagram and Twitter. And what I really liked about the retargeting aspect, and to be honest, like I didn't even know this part was possible, but you were able to retarget people, not just people who came to the website, but also people who stayed on the website for at least 60 seconds. So you were, you know, you were putting the big advertising money into that, that small, you know, subset, but not just any subset, people who actually were on the web page for a long time and who were, who were ready to buy so, I mean, so it sounds like people need to be just setting a lot of this sort of stuff up. And so in this particular case, Rocco like, um, like, were you, I mean, do you, do you like, set people up on all these platforms? Or was this case different, where, like, you only set people up on a handful like, do you run people through the whole checklist of like? Is everyone go on Facebook? Does everyone get advertised on Twitter? Or do sometimes you only do a few of these platforms. So

Rocco Baldassarre 11:03 usually we set them up on all of them. But of course, for some clients, we start with a few initially, and then when the budget grows, we go on all of them, because clearly having $1 per platform will not cut it, you know. So based on the budget, and decide where to start with,

Robert Plank 11:19 okay, and then it sounds like, on top of all that, it sounds like there's a lot of, like, going back and looking at your ads and refining it. It sounds like, from the way that you've described it. So, I mean, does that happen, like, after you set up these retargeting and Facebook and Twitter ads, is there some sort of, like an ongoing looking back at the ads and sort of tweaking and changing things there too,

Rocco Baldassarre 11:42 absolutely like, unfortunately, with only marketing nowadays, everything needs to be optimized constantly. And that's not due to the fact that, basically you you need to optimize it because you need to refresh the ads or whatever. But it's proven. And unfortunately, the way the algorithms are set up on Facebook and Google, they require fresh content to boost delivery, increase the relevant score or quality score, and decrease the cost per click. If you want an effective strategy long term, that's the way to go.

Robert Plank 12:17 So I mean, so what does that mean? Exactly, when we're talking about fresh content. Are we talking about like, like, creating extra blog articles every few days, or something like that? Mostly

Rocco Baldassarre 12:27 I refer to the ads themselves. So the creative of the ads needs to change, and need, of course, to be optimized based on the metrics that you generate, because it always makes, if you think about it, whenever you advertise online, there will be always an image, a text, or anything really, that performs slightly better than the previous ad. So if you always optimize, for example, toward the conversion rate, you might end up having in three months, 2% increase in the conversion rate, which probably mean a $6 decrease in the CPA and the cost per acquisition. So if you look at the long term, it really makes sense to always optimize,

Robert Plank 13:07 Okay, fair enough. And so, so along the lines of people, you know people It sounds like should be running these ads. And so, I mean, do you think it's better that's if someone should just like, hire someone like you right out of the gate and have you deal with things. Or should somebody create their own ads? Or is there some way to tell like if it's better for someone to make their own ads or go to someone like you? How does someone decide that sort of thing? So

Rocco Baldassarre 13:34 usually it's always depending on the budget everybody has. But I always recommend, at least, to have somebody jump in for the strategic part of the work, because it's not only about creating yet, it's actually, it's actually about thinking what goes, where and why. So why you need to have this offer this point of the funnel, and not at the beginning? And this is something that having a second person that does it constantly as a job can be a good benefit.

Robert Plank 14:01 Okay? And, and I'm sort of, I'm glad that that was the answer there. So that makes me think, okay, if someone is hearing a lot of what you're telling people to do, and they don't necessarily want to jump in and put a lot of money into ADS, like, Are you saying that a good option for someone is to sort of figure out what ads they they will create, or figure out their funnel and maybe hop on the phone with you for like, an hour of coaching or something to sort of refine that strategy. Is that an option for

Rocco Baldassarre 14:27 people? Yes, that's usually is okay, so,

Robert Plank 14:30 so can you kind of tell us, like, what, what that that process is usually like, like, if someone, if someone, it hires you for coaching, right? Or someone wants to meet with you and pay you for an hour of your time to figure out like their funnel and their ad strategy. I mean, how does that process usually go for both of

Rocco Baldassarre 14:49 you guys? So usually, the first time we start working together, the I usually recommend to have an account review that. So I say, okay, here I want you to review my account. Don't think give me feedback on it. The reason why you do it is because it's similar to when you go to the dentist, really, when you go to a new that is the first time it needs to give you some X rays to figure out what's going on in your mouth, right? Same thing is advertising if I don't know what you're doing right now, it's very difficult for me in one hour to give you the information you need. And that's not because I don't want to get information, because you really if I get my teeth into the account first, it will be much more valuable. So it will get much more value of the hour. So usually there is an account really involved, which ends up generating a PDF or file or a call whatever the client wants, with the feedback on the account. Once that's done, the next step is going to be actually having another call. In the call there will be the definition of the strategy. So I will basically tell the client, look, this is what I would recommend doing, and I will give them a PDF with a sort of a flow of what I want them to do. Clearly, there will be no creatives done. There will be no actual work done, simply because in an hour, it will be impossible to create all the material, you know, but it will basically give them a clear overview of what needs to get done and what they need to do in the first steps of optimization based on a few what if scenario? Because we never know what happens once you click start,

Robert Plank 16:25 okay. And so, I mean, so you said that that way you do, there is an account review and you, and you go through and dig through the account and see what people are doing already. So, but what if someone comes to you, and what if they haven't run any sort of ads? Is that also an option? If they just, if they have a website or they have a landing page, they say, I don't know what I should do at all. Is that something that you will hop on for someone as well?

Rocco Baldassarre 16:47 Of course, in that case, there is no review needed. The only thing that will will be reviewed prior to the call will be the website and eventually a list of competitors, if any. So we can kind of look into them, see what they're doing, then kind of saying, Hey, this is what the competitor is doing. Do you think there is a reason why they're doing that? Like, you know, that works in the market, or not? So you kind of give a little bit of a background anyway that you can Okay,

Robert Plank 17:12 and so, I mean about how much does this sort of one hour cost people? It

Rocco Baldassarre 17:19 really depends. Like, for example, many times, usually we Our flat rate is 250 but it really varies on what you do after, for example, some people decide to use some sort of packages to advertise a little bit more in depth, and in the in cases like that, usually the hours is written off the package, which is a very convenient thing for the client. So just a straight hour will be 250 but independently from that, most people end up doing advertising for us. So it's written off, and when, when the hour is written off, there is the whole team that jumps in. So the cost per hour is much lower because they will not be only me working on the accounts. Okay?

Robert Plank 18:00 Fair enough. So it's like, if, if you do like the simple review or something more advanced than it, then, of course, the cost is higher,

Rocco Baldassarre 18:09 correct. And of course, like, we always make sure that when, anytime we work on accounts, we try to give the clients the best and the newest. I don't know. I don't know if I mentioned before, before that happened, actually last week, so we didn't have the chance to talk. But actually last week, our company was nominated one of the most entrepreneur entrepreneurial company in the states by Entrepreneur the magazine. They actually ranked us among the top 300 so it was quite a good achievement, because we always trying to strive to make sure that our clients get the best from for their accounts.

Robert Plank 18:44 Cool. I mean, that sounds like a good goal to have. And so when, when people are sort of ready to take that step, and you know if they if they want you to run their advertising for them, do you have some sort of like a standard package, or do you customize it based on each client you come across. So

Rocco Baldassarre 19:01 for small businesses, with a package, actually called Silver package, you basically pay 1499 for three months of service. And what you basically do with the silver package is you set up the old thing for them. They make sure not to spend more than $3,000 a month in advertising, and we will make sure to manage all of it within that price. We will get three reports, one at the beginning, one after six weeks, and one at the end of the three months. There will be constant optimization during the account and cross channel advertising will be rolled out throughout. Of course, the advertising cost will be paid by the customer, but it's a very like low cost solution. Because what we realized it, what we realized is that there is no need to start advertising if we don't do cross channel. So we offer the lowest cost possible to give everybody opportunity to at least give a shot at it. Awesome.

Robert Plank 19:56 I mean, that's a good thing to provide, and so sort of as one. This down here. I mean, with the the ads that you set up and the clients that you have and the things that you see, I mean, do you see a number one mistake everyone is making when it comes to the cross channel advertising? Usually, many

Rocco Baldassarre 20:12 people try to rush it through so they don't know, don't they don't implement the progress strategy, or they don't put the effort into making the multiple landing pages, or simply, they believe that with this $10 budget you can the better you can take care of it. I think this is the most common things that we see. When we see something like that, we don't even start on the project, because we clearly know that it will not work. Okay. So

Robert Plank 20:39 the problem was People are rushing it and maybe trying to cut corners, and what they should be doing is having, you know, the everything set up on all these different platforms, having different landing pages, or finding the ads, doing it the right way. It sounds like, right. Well, well, cool. And so, um, so, I mean, where do you want people to go? I mean, where can people find out about you and the services you provide,

Rocco Baldassarre 21:03 they can go on zebra advertisement.com, so zebra like the animal advertisement.com, with two A's, one after the other, and they can always read my articles on online. We write on entrepreneur, social media, examiner, search engine, journal, or they can simply write me an email if there are any questions, and I will get back to them as soon as possible. Also, if they have any sort of they want any tip, I'm open to that to your listeners. It will be done for free so they can take advantage of

Robert Plank 21:34 that. And so what is that that you're offering exactly at the end there,

Rocco Baldassarre 21:39 basically they can write me if they have questions. For example, let's say, hey, Roco, I have this business. I'm doing this. Do you think I should do other strategy, or do you think I should be stopping? It doesn't make sense. So if they have any Q and A that usually do in a live webinar, they will be completely Madrid awesome.

Robert Plank 21:57 And so for people to find that email address and contact you. People should go to zebra advertisement.com and click on the Contact tab. Is that right? Yeah, they're

Rocco Baldassarre 22:06 there, and they can look me up on LinkedIn and write me a message on LinkedIn. I'm very like I'm very happy to receive messages in multiple ways. My assistant will always sort them and send me. Send them to me properly. Awesome.

Robert Plank 22:19 Well, you know, Rocco, I appreciate you stopping by the show today and appreciate you sharing a lot of your insights. And sort of the big takeaway I'm hearing from everything that you've talked about today is that people need to be advertising on all these different platforms. And, you know, people always talk about how things are more crowded and how things are more competitive, but it sounds like the, you know, the way around that is that, well, there's more people advertising, but there are all these other platforms, and it sounds like that, the you know, all this retargeting stuff, it's more advanced than ever. And I was just, I was I'm still blown away that you said that the people who come to a lot of your client sites, you have to advertise to them five to eight times before they even before they even buy. So I think that this is a really important topic. And a lot of people who maybe have been frustrated in the past with paid traffic or frustrated with the way the rules change, it sounds like this is a really good solution for people, because if you're advertising on Google and Facebook and Twitter, it's hard to get it's hard to get slapped by one of those platforms, right? It's more diversified. And so I think that everyone should go right now to zebra advertisement.com, if you want to up your game with paid ads, if you want to talk to Rocco, if you want to get his advice, if you want to see if his services are right for you. So everyone go right now to zebra advertisement.com, and Rocco, thanks for stopping by the show. I really appreciate everything you had to share with us today.

Rocco Baldassarre 23:43 A pleasure, Robert and talk to you. Thank you. Come

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