Ryan Fowler: Today's episode comes from a listener question on social media about chunking down a digital strategy to make it manageable. To help do this, I've got an incredible guest, Jo McKee, founder of McKee Creative and Copywriting for Profit, to share her insights on what it takes to manage a digital project or strategy that is achievable.
Now, just before we jump into this episode and fully introduce Jo, I do want to mention that while we were recording this episode, we did have a few technical difficulties, so the audio might be a little different at certain points. But make sure that you listen through the entire episode as Jo has some incredible insights to share with you.
Welcome to The Digital Approach Podcast. This show is brought to you by Orion Media Group, with the goal to help you, an inspired business owner, remove the overwhelm from marketing in the online world, through success stories and practical strategies from entrepreneurs that have done it. There's plenty to come in this episode, so let's get into it.
Jo's marketing agency connects clients with their customers. And as we go through this episode, you'll really hear that Jo brings a "human first" approach to what she does. Now, clients love the full service approach that includes website build and SEO, paid marketing campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, and Google, plus looking after emails and content creation. Everything that you'd expect from a really good marketing agency.
Jo also runs Copywriting for Profit, training small business team members to write irresistible ads, sales pages, and marketing emails so that they can make more money.
Now, that certainly covers a lot there and certainly gives her enough qualification to be set up for this episode. Over 80 marketing agencies engage Jo to consult on strategy and communications. And her work has contributed to a number of seven figure marketing campaigns.
Now, when she's not immersed in all things digital, Jo really likes to go sailing. She reckons nothing beats the sound of water along the hulls of her Volvo 60 Ocean racing yacht, Merit and Spirit.
Jo, thank you for sailing into this episode and being on the show. It's an absolute pleasure to have you here.
Jo McKee: Oh, thank you for having me. It's yeah, good fun. Love everything to do with marketing and connecting people.
Ryan Fowler: Awesome. I'm very glad to hear that because we're going to deep dive into breaking down these projects today. To get us going and looking at digital strategy and managing projects, big or small, which is what we'll cover today, I'd like you to first introduce who you are and share with us your journey, what it's been like, and what has got you to this point now in the starting point for creating your own agency?
Jo McKee: Mm. Well, I've been helping people make money online since 2005 when I co-founded a film distribution business called Heritage HM, that's still going now. Worked with the likes of Disney, and Roadshow, Hopscotch. Launched films like [inaudible 00:03:04] in Australia and New Zealand. So had a lot of fun with that. And then also co-founded a marine tourism business here in the Whitsundays. And [Daysailing 00:03:14] and then Hamilton Island asked us to go over to do corporate charters with the two yachts.
So those two businesses, as well as experience in book editing and community magazine editing, that sort of thing, just really showed me the power in when you write something well and appeal to somebody's senses and they can imagine them either using the product or being in that location, you've come a long way to selling that product. So that's the basic fundamentals really, it's the communication and how we do it.
We had a pretty massive cyclone in 2017 that smashed everything. And I had been wanting to work online full time for quite some time anyway. So took a bit of a gamble with our insurance money to pay for some training with Cat Howell for her Facebook Ads Agency Training. And loved it. Ended up actually being Ops Manager for Cat in her own agency at Eight Loop for a while. And once we've achieved those goals, I came back and relaunched McKee Creative.
So I like to keep it as a small team because I have seen the trouble people have with quality control when they get bigger. But we like to provide a very full service that builds a flywheel for our customers, not just relying on one channel that can fall apart, and then you're screwed. So yeah, really love it.
Ryan Fowler: That's a great piece of advice in just not relying on one channel. Look, we've already been recording for two minutes, and there's already a piece of gold dropped, so that's great. It's great to just hear your passion about how you want to focus primarily on helping people and how copywriting's made an impact in your life to help make that in other people's lives.
To get us into this episode, we are going to be looking at breaking down projects. And by the sounds of it, you certainly been doing quite a few of those in a way that's effective for the long run and sustainable for the business and the team. Just before we get into that, how do you find working in a small team to actually break down these projects and managing projects, especially if you're starting to grow and get a few more people in? What's kind of that workflow? What does that workflow look like for you?
Jo McKee: Mm. We just really support each other. So I hire people who can write as the basic foundation of what they do, and then I teach them the marketing skills, the toolbox. So as long as somebody's prepared to be versatile and they come on board, it means that no two days are ever really stuck on the same thing, which is great. But it also means that we can jump in where we're needed on each client's work. And that way, I think if we silo it too much, we get caught with the, "Oh, they haven't done this bit. We can't do that." Whereas if one of our team members can build a funnel and write the copy, and then set up the ads, we're good to go. So it just eliminates bottlenecks. And then it actually lets us flow. I mean, everybody has their days where they're powering along and days where they're not. So let's just swap it out and keep things easy for people, so that we still enjoy what we do.
Ryan Fowler: That's awesome. And a great concept. That's a great way of managing the teams and being able to show versatility. So to kick us off, that was kind of a diversion of a question, but I want to take a high level look at projects and strategies that people use in their businesses. So this is going to be kind of a two part question. First is, what is the difference between a project and a strategy that gets used in a business? Because there is quite a distinction between them that I think some people will probably blur the lines on a bit. And second, what do we need to look for when actually starting to put together a project for a business?
Jo McKee: A lot of agencies do get this a bit confused. The word "strategy" gets thrown around a lot. And I'm probably guilty of interchanging with that word as well. "Jump on and we'll create a strategy for you." What we really mean is we're building them a project to achieve their goals. Strategy is more about your why and where you set your priorities. So for us, as an agency, to illustrate, a strategy we have in our marketing is to not push somebody into a sale that they're not ready for or don't have the resources for, or to not push them into something we don't feel confident doing. So our growth strategy has that at the core of it.
The projects then are the things, the time-measurable actions that we take, for instance, running a Facebook Ads campaign, or writing a blog post, towards that strategy, if that makes sense. So they're the components that help get you towards your strategy.
Ryan Fowler: Okay. So the strategy would be like the high level look, and then the projects are the bits that execute the strategy.
Jo McKee: Yes. I did see a really nice comment on strategy this morning, on Twitter, a guy called Justin Micolay, who I can share you his handle later, if you like. (Editor’s note: @jmikolay) And he said, "Strategy is setting your priorities." He said, "Be careful when you're setting those priorities not to build a Swiss watch." He said, "You over-engineer your watches, but don't over-engineer your strategies."
And this is where some people fall down, they get really complicated. He said, "It should be more like an old Russian watch. It works when you get sand in it. The parts give a little bit, so you could solve problems without chipping the gears." So if you're creating something that's strong enough, that it's got your core values in it, that it's robust enough that when something messes up in a project, your strategy is still intact, you're good to go.
Ryan Fowler: That's a great quote, and probably perfect timing for this interview today to see that pop up on Twitter.
Jo McKee: It was.
Ryan Fowler: Yeah. So that's a great definition of what we're actually trying to achieve with looking at strategy versus project. Now, when you do have that strategy and that high level perspective, what does it look like when you actually start to put the project into place and sort of looking at that and breaking it down?
Jo McKee: Yeah. First I want to know about the brand that we're working with. I want to know about their voice, who they are, and what's at the core of them, their priorities, obviously, and what do they know and what are they doing. So really just getting to know the customer or a client very thoroughly before we start. So we're looking with their offer and who it's for, who are the people they want to speak to, and what do they respond to. So, that could be a particular format where you might want to advertise. Some might respond well on a Snapchat. Some might respond well to a long, thoughtful blog post. So just working, I guess, with the personalities, if you like, of the brand and the customer, to link that offer. That's what I really need to think about before we start creating any projects.
Ryan Fowler: Okay. So it's really defining the audience and putting the person you want to talk to first. Kind of like the old saying, "If you're trying to talk to everyone, you end up talking to no one."
Jo McKee: Mm. But it's equally important to know the voice of the brand as well. A lot of people just jump in and do their audience research. And that's really great. I'll give an example. We had an agency owner come to us for help in writing copy and building out a landing page for their own funnel. And they've been given an example template, as lots of agencies love to get, saying, "And this is a really high converting funnel." They said, "Can we use this?"
And I said to this guy, he's a really well-considered, thoughtful, creative guy who delivers very, very good results for his clients in E-com. But he's not a shouting kind of guy. He's not a "screaming headline" kind of guy. And yet his landing page was full of that.
If you run with that sort of template, you're creating almost this split personality scenario that the agency then has to try and keep up that energy when they get on the phone with the prospective customer. And that's really hard work to maintain. It's much better to work with who they really are. You can still write persuasive copy to bring the right kind of people who will resonate with that, and still deliver very good results. So not just focusing on your audience and who you're speaking to, but who is it? Clients, what are they like? That's just as important.
Ryan Fowler: Yeah. And how you're communicating with them and that brand voice is incredibly important. I love that you've actually brought that up because it is something that not a lot of people think about, in that regard. Now, they think about what's the strategy and who we're going to talk to, but how are we going to talk to them is just as important. So I really do love that.
When we are looking at the strategies to break down into projects, how are we actually looking to use those? And how do we know what ones to actually try and use for us, as a business?
Jo McKee: So for me, that's getting to know the person I'm dealing with. And it usually fits quite well then. Even just a guy, who's a business coach, who consulted with me recently. He was saying, "Where do I start? There are all the marketing tools. I don't know what to do." And I said, "What you need to do is not work with an agency. You need to just hire someone in-house. You're going to set up this social, very simple content marketing strategy, writing on these topics, amplify it with a little bit of paid traffic to get site visitors in. And that's going to start to get the wheels turning. So, VA can be trained to do that."
And he just lit up because he was thinking he had to run all of these big launches and fuss. But from scratch, he wasn't ready to. So particularly for a strategy for him, he needed to start out just connecting with people through content, SEO, organic, but keeping it low key, as suited his character. And then projects, he starts to build in the paid traffic onto that to amplify who he is. Does that make sense?
Ryan Fowler: Definitely. And when you are developing a strategy, do you find that... I know that you've sort of briefly mentioned this, but there are some kind of stock standard templates, but then there's also different elements where it really needs to be suited to personal. So what do you find in the difference if someone says, "Oh, there's a template here that I want to use for this certain thing", but what about their personality, and how does that portray in it?
Jo McKee: If the psychology fits, you can wear it, you can go for it. If it doesn't fit, then it's just going to be an expensive toy. It's the best way for me to describe that. Strategy really is just about persuasion, isn't it? It's how we're going to connect people and help them feel safe and [inaudible 00:13:15] able to, and know that they're in the right place, that that product or service is right for them to hand over their money, that they're going to have a great experience. And it will do what it says on the box.
For instance, in email marketing, if we're doing a course launch, we might send out 12 emails in the space of two weeks. And it's the same as in ad copy too. You might be appealing to first, their emotions and the benefits of the product, because we buy it on emotion and we justify logic. So then we're targeting all those emails to get it closer to the launch. You're starting to bring in the pros and cons and features and the answers to the FAQs, and all that sort of thing, to help that logical side of the brain make that decision. So strategy is really just going, "Okay, how are we going to connect these two things, the person offering it, or the business offering the product or service, and the customer? What's the most natural fit for that?" And then we build the project to support that strategy.
Ryan Fowler: I love the thought process behind that and bringing through kind of like what's the subtle tone underneath is, it's your authenticity as either a business owner or a business or a brand, and portraying yourself in an authentic way to take that through to your projects.
Jo McKee: For me, you can make short term money very quickly. And I admire people that can. That's fantastic. But to have something that's authentic and built to last, you want something that feels natural for both parties. And that it's built on platforms that are robust, of course. But it's got to feel right and be that good fit. And then you can do it for years. You can build a business that will go somewhere, instead of just hoping for the next little bit of hype.
Ryan Fowler: Absolutely. It's not that short term gain. It kind of adds a little bit of short term pain, but that long term gain is well worth it for sustainability in your business as well.
Jo McKee: Mm, definitely. And I think that brings a lot of peace of mind for people. So, yeah.
Ryan Fowler: Definitely. Now, pardon the pun here, but let's "zoom" in a bit, because we are recording this on Zoom, and start looking at different stages of projects. So we've got our example for a high level look at the strategy and knowing how we want to talk to people and who we want to talk to. But let's sort of start to break this down into kind of an example for the listeners. And let's say we've got a marketing campaign, for example, for a new product launch. Just for example's sake, because that's one that I think many people can relate to.
Jo McKee: So first of all, you've got to define the outcome of what it is that you want to do in that particular project. And then the boundaries. So the volume that you want to achieve, the time you've got to do it, the resources you've got to do that as well. I like to keep it down to sort of three action steps. My brain works better with simple. So in the beginning, if we've got like, for instance, a client comes on and we're setting up for their first campaign, the three elements of that would be to research, to build, and then to monitor and improve that system that we've built.
Then within the campaign itself, you've got the levels of communication that you're talking the customers. Now, that is going to vary depending on the product and the industry and all sorts of things. So you're going to have your first message. Then you're going to have follow-up messages. And then calling in for the sale. It can happen in one message for some products. So a very good example that was just today at the Super Bowl was Coinbase. I don't know if you saw their ad yet, but they literally just did an ad of...
Ryan Fowler: Not yet. I love the Super Bowl ads though.
Jo McKee: Yeah. They literally just... Best, best, best example of not having to spend too much on your content creation, I'll tell you. So, it's a QR code. You can look it up on YouTube. And it's just sort of bouncing around the screen and changing colors. And when you click on the QR code, it's taking you through to become a Coinbase user and you get a bit of free crypto as well. So not only was that really good because they went really simple. You can imagine the production cost that a lot of companies put into their Super Bowl ads. I mean, this is a QR code bouncing around the screen. Somebody posted a picture.
Ryan Fowler: Yeah. It's completely counterintuitive from what you'd expect for a Super Bowl commercial.
Jo McKee: Yeah. Change color a little bit. And someone posted a tweet of their dog up at the telly, loving it. But then, in Twitter they have a post saying, "Now we've got your attention..." And the image wasn't a QR code. It was just the Coinbase logo bouncing around a black screen. So a really, really nice follow-up that they did today, and all credit to them for doing that. Obviously, Super Bowl probably cost 14 or 16 million dollars or something for the placement, but the actual cost...
Ryan Fowler: Yeah, they probably spent the entire budget on putting that in there.
Jo McKee: The cost of creating the content for it was negligible, and very, very clever.
Ryan Fowler: And just on that, and this is kind of exactly what it's made me think of right now is, you know the old DVD players, the old Sony DVD players? You'd plug them in and then you'd leave it, and it would go to sleep for a while. And it would bounce around the screen. And you'd be like, "Which corner is it going to bounce off now?" That's kind of what it reminds me of here.
Jo McKee: They're retro.
Ryan Fowler: And yeah, I think that that element of nostalgia, whether they meant to or not, is probably something that people could relate to as well. So that's kind of talking to the audience in that space.
Jo McKee: Yeah, that's really fun that it makes you think of that. Another example is a course that I bought in January last year, and I had watched that person for nine years before I bought their course. So when they say, "The fortune's in the follow-up", absolutely.
So it wasn't that I had any problem with that person. I just didn't know if it was for me, for nine years. So it's very important to look at what would an average customer journey/lifespan would be and how many interactions do you think they need before they're going to feel comfortable to buy. It's going to vary between industries and products. And you just have to build it to see really, is the short answer.
Ryan Fowler: Yeah. And that's great. And there was a point that you said before, in a few different stages of the projects. And the first one was research. So when you're looking to create this new project, you do your research and do your homework on it. Have you found that when people that are new to starting these digital projects go into this research phase, do you ever find that there's a kind of an element of paralysis by analysis?
Jo McKee: We try to keep it really simple for people if we just gave them a blank screen. We've got a very clear form. That sounds so trash, doesn't it? But it gets all the basics that we need. And we also ask them who is not a good customer, which a lot of people don't take the time to think about. And it can be just as important as who is your customer? It can also affect what you say in your copy.
So it's something that you really need to lead people through, and make it as easy as possible for them to just feel good by ticking off the list that they've answered everything you need. I do have one client. She's lovely. She's been with us for quite a few months now. She's running a couple of brands. And she didn't fill out her briefing form at all. She said, "I can't. I'm lousy with forms." And so, okay, we did it for her. But it's one of those rare occasions where we could make some assumptions and we got it right. And it's working and growing. But I don't recommend that approach. Better to be collaborative with it.
Ryan Fowler: Yeah. Yeah, forms and that extra bit of information are always helpful to get you thinking and trying to think outside the box in the questions that you're actually asking yourself, or being asked in this case.
So with kind of the first step done, and say we've got through that research stage, what do we do then to start making progress? If someone listening now is saying, "Okay, I've got this project that I need to work on. And I'm going to go..." It could be something to do with Facebook marketing, as an example. "I've done some research. I've done maybe a competitor analysis." Something along those lines. "And now I want to go start doing some promotions, paid promotions, organic social growth, that sort of stuff." So in sort of the planning and preparation and moving forward with that, what are the next steps to keep making progress? What do you recommend?
Jo McKee: We move fairly quickly. Basically, I can only really share, I guess, what our process is, and hope that that might help somebody else if they want to use that. So once we've got a campaign brief, we make sure that we can access everything we're supposed to be able to access, because there's nothing worse than going, "Oh, hang on. I don't have that login", or it didn't work when it's the day before something has to be built. Making sure that your tech is right. A lot of people get caught out these days since Facebook particularly have updated their requirements since the Apple updates came in, and they forget to put the conversion API on their site or match their pixels and verify their domain. And it can take 72 hours to process.
So allowing time for the tech stuff, understanding also for their KPIs, I'll come back to that point a bit. But just thinking of the Apple thing, people don't realize often that email now, unless you opt in, it's going to mark an Apple user as "open". So forget your open rates. You've got to know what you're reading and go for your click-through rates now.
So making sure you've got your access, your tech's right. And then we basically just get in and we start drafting. We build whatever it is we need to build. So we usually start with the landing page because that's our offer and our headline. And once we've got that right, we take that scent into the ad, so it flows really nicely. So we'll write a landing page, or if it's for a [inaudible 00:22:52] particularly. And we might come up with a few different headlines, and ask the client which one they prefer if we don't mind. It's not hard to come up with six different ones that will converge. And that way, the customer feels like they've got some input into the process as well.
So basically drafting the landing page, ad copy if you're building a bot, getting that set up for your email marketing in place. Making sure your site's traffic-ready, as well, is really important. This preparation side, it really matters. If, for instance, if your traffic's not right, if your site takes too long to load, if the trust indicators on the site are not there, if there's no social proof or easy checkout options or returns and shipping policies, about 60% of people look for that stuff before they'll buy. So getting all of that positioning correct is important as well.
We tend to have ads up ... If we have to build a funnel, we say two weeks. But we often have ads live within a week of a client starting with us. So it's really a matter of just a day to fill out that campaign brief, checking that we understand, and then getting into that draft and building the creative for approval and launching. When you're targeting and thinking who to speak to, to get out of the competition, because no matter which platform you're on, you've got competitors paying money to get the attention of that group of people. It might not be for anything related in terms of product, but they still want those eyeballs.
An example, one of our team members once ran a nonprofit campaign for an animal refuge. And she found that a target interest of tea drinkers converted really nicely. Now, most people would go in and they'd go social justice or Greens Party or something as targets. But because you've done the research on who your customers are, and you've probably stalked their Facebook likes or which websites they're visiting or what magazines they're reading or what their favorite sports team is. If you can really get to know them like a fiction writer would, probably the best way I can explain that, getting into their world, and smelling it and feeling it, that gives you ideas for targeting that can be very, very helpful. So yeah, and it can keep your cost down.
Ryan Fowler: Yeah. That distinction between social justice and the tea drinker, it's something that you wouldn't really expect normally. And it's really thinking outside the box.
Jo McKee: Mm. Example, even from our own agency, targeting from our own campaigns, one that we've found most successful Facebook saying, "Go broad at the moment." It often does work well. But when we do a tight one of frankie magazine and Stripe, the payments processor, that brings really nice quality leads of the kind of people we would like to work with. Their businesses are earning enough that they can afford to pay us and not have a heart attack about that. They've often got a really good ethos, so we're happy to work on that brand. We've tested a combination of frankie and Xero, and it wasn't the same. It bought some really rubbish leads in. Well, in my term anyway. And so I actually laid it really tight. And I had "frankie" and "Stripe", and "frankie and Stripe". So it wasn't having to choose one or the other, but it was having to find people with both those interests.
Ryan Fowler: Yeah. And it's really narrowing down that market, so basically building off the fundamental foundation that you've already got of the people, the research you've done, what they like, what they don't like. And then it goes into testing and measuring.
Jo McKee: And I wouldn't recommend really tight targeting like that all the time because Facebook system is working well with broad at the moment. But for our funnel, it worked. And I would've initially dismissed, I shouldn't say this in public because frankie might get upset. Love the magazine, but I thought it might have brought very small businesses who couldn't afford us. But when I actually wrote down a list of everybody who advertises in the magazine, I realized that's probably not the case. And so we gave it a go. And it's working very well. Now, I've said it. I might have competitors in that interest targeting, but it's great. We'll find something else.
Ryan Fowler: You'll be onto the next one shortly.
Now, when you did say just before that you started with a landing page, I just want to dive a little bit deeper into that because starting with the landing page might be counterintuitive to some people. They might think, "Oh, I need to start with making sure that I have set up my ads the right way, and I can just send them to somewhere and everyone will sign up, that clicks on the link." That's very, very rare. But the landing page, and this is kind of working backwards at certain stages here, as well. It's like, what's the final destination that I need to get them to? And ties into the customer journey as well. So, once they go to the landing page and they sign up, where do they go? Do they go to a "Thank You" page? Do they have a video on there? Do I have to film that video? So it's kind of thinking end stage and working backwards, and then moving forward with the actual promotion side.
Jo McKee: It makes it much easier to write your ad copy once it's done. Think of your landing page as your storefront. What does it smell like? What does it look like? As people walk past, do they want to come in? Is it going to feel good? So also, you're listing out very clearly the benefits and who it's for and not for all that sort of thing. It's all done once your landing page is right.
Then you can take that into the ad. And it's almost a summary or just a chat version, as if you just see somebody in the street, and you're just commiserating with the problems that they face, and you go, "Hey, I just saw this catalog over here." So when people come from the ad, they need to know they're in the right place. It's got to feel that same thing from the ad through the lander. Doesn't have to be exactly the same headline, but the same scent.
And then you need to know how to measure each step of that. So for us, if we send traffic to a landing page, and we find that it's not got at least 25% of the visitors clicking through to the next step, we want to know why. Either our targeting's off, or if the ad's really clicky but people aren't converting, then there's a problem on the landing page. So we just have to figure out whether it's the targeting or a disconnect in the message. You want to make sure that people who get there are the people who want what you've got.
Ryan Fowler: Okay. So this is kind of once we've started running the ads, we're in this testing and measuring phase. We're using the example of a Facebook campaign at the moment. Let's just say that this was potentially like a SEO campaign. So we'll slightly shift gears here. Do these same principles still apply in saying, "What do I need to look for in this sort of phase?"
Jo McKee: With SEO, I guess you haven't got that precise, "We're going to target this" kind of box to tick. So it is harder. And you've got to think about writing. I shouldn't say it's harder. I love SEO. Actually, I love content marketing. And there's a lot of research you can do to find those long-tail keywords that people aren't competing as heavily on, but who are just the right people for you.
And if you structure your page well with your H1 and H2 headings, so Google knows as it crawls what the information is in there. But write like a human too. Don't write like a robot. And make sure you give loads of value. So free templates are a really handy thing for people. I'm probably getting too specific here.
So SEO is a longer term game. That's for sure. But if you are quite active about looking for the right keywords or phrases to include, and structuring your page to suit that, you're going to see results much more quickly than if you just sort of write what you feel like and hope it sticks.
Ryan Fowler: Yeah. Fair enough. So right now, where we're at and in working on sort of this project platform in how we're breaking down a project. We've gone through research. We've gone through planning, making sure we choose the right person. We're in sort of the testing and measuring phases, things would be running. What's the next step?
Jo McKee: Well, once you've hit your KPIs, you can increase your volume. So if it's a paid campaign, that might mean increasing your ad spend, or it might mean testing it on a different platform and seeing how that compares with the original platform, depending what you'd like to do.
We've just had a client last week. I said to her, she probably should be on Pinterest. She asked me to look up TikTok Ads instead for her. So I said, "All right."
So she's got to keep her Facebook and Google Shop running. And then we'll have a look at TikTok for her as well. So I guess it's just about what the owner would like to test, whether you just want to scale up. But again, if you're scaling up, you've got to make sure you're not becoming too dependent on one platform. It's just such a big deal to me to impress that upon people. It makes your business very vulnerable.
As a side note too, Facebook is obviously pushing people to run their shops on the platform because then they can control the data. Very, very handy. And it will get more handy to do that. But if you put all your eggs there, and your shop gets disapproved, where are you going to be? So it's very important to keep that bigger picture in mind.
So yeah, you can increase your volume in different ways by diversifying your platforms or increase in the resources that you've allocated to them.
Ryan Fowler: Okay. So once that scalability goes, you've got your campaign, you know that it's going to work on your platform that you've chosen, and you do want to scale it up. Once it's been running, then we've got to kind of look at the results, don't we?
Jo McKee: For me, I'm very, very revenue-driven for our clients. For me, it's always what's the cost per acquisition of a new client, and then what's the customer lifetime value. How long do they stay? Will they come back and buy again?
I spoke to a lovely guy the other day, who's releasing a brand of men's undies, except that's all he sells. And I said, "You've got to get your average order value up first because otherwise, you're selling a $40 pair of undies or whatever they are, it might cost you $30 an ad spend to get that sale. So you're going to be in trouble from the outset. And then what else are they going to buy?"
So thinking about those things for your business perspective is really important. And yeah, to me, it's always cost per acquisition. We can measure clicks. They're all very useful things to find bottlenecks in the campaign, for instance, the link click-through rate on a campaign, the time spent on the website, also putting in heat mapping software on your site so you can see how users are doing it. You can improve your website if you need to. Yeah. Cost in E-com, cost per add to cart, cost per initiate checkout, cost per purchase, they're all very important measures that we use.
Ryan Fowler: All of that data then starts to correlate into your result. And that would tie into your KPIs that you set sort of back at the start of your project, right?
Jo McKee: So lead generation, it'll be cost per opt in if you're downloading first, or you might be using a form to filter for the quality of leads that you want, so it might be cost per book to call. But then if you'll take into account, even if you've got SMS reminders, there will be some no shows. What's the sales conversion rate, and actually working out what that cost of that project is to that business and what result is important. It's not rocket science. Is it something that they want to keep investing in or not? Because if it's not making you money, you're not going to keep doing it.
Ryan Fowler: Yeah. Fair enough. They're all really great insights in just how to start looking at measuring results, especially in the digital space, because it is a very overwhelming space for a lot of people. They're all really great indicators of what to start looking for when you do have a project or when you get help, because most people probably end up getting help to do these sorts of campaigns. But yeah, it's really valuable that at least there's some kind of gauge on what to start looking for to see the measurability of your outcomes.
Jo McKee: I should mention actually, it's something that gets me very upset is when agencies lock people out of their own data, I'm a firm believer that if you've paid for that data to be collected, then you own it, that you've hired the agency or the freelancer to do that for you. And I did speak recently to a handbag company. Their Google Ads were doing quite well. They could be improved. But they just burnt Facebook. They were getting 0.1 return on their ad spend. They're just burning money. And I could see in the campaign how people had become more panicked. I could see the structure changing over the months as the pressure was being put on. But the guys who owned the brand, they said, "We've never seen any numbers. Our agency never showed us any numbers." And I actually don't know how they got away with that. But if you don't know what it costs you to acquire a new customer, how can you run a marketing campaign? It's your business. It can't be healthy. You have to know that.
Ryan Fowler: Yeah. It helps to create or make data-driven decisions.
Jo McKee: Mm. You need to be able to say, "Okay, we can afford to spend this much to bring a new customer into our world." And that whoever can afford to pay the most is going to win. That's no way around it. But obviously, you want to do it the cheapest you can as well.
Ryan Fowler: Yeah, absolutely. That's a really good bit of information in there and a great insight that I know I'm going to lock away in the back of my mind and just know that there. But for the people listening, that's something that's really important, especially if you are working with an agency, like Jo, for example. Yeah, that's a really good insight to have.
So I want to just switch tracks a little bit here, and we've covered a lot so far in putting this project together. But it's a lot of theoretical stuff and it starts to get put into place, right? So are there any tools that you would recommend to people that you might use or you think would be a good entry point into starting to look at these projects? And then break them down so that people can actually see them more in a timeline.
Jo McKee: Yeah. So you want to keep the tech as simple as you can because you're busy enough as it is. So for us, we use obviously the Ads Manager of the platform we're working on. But things like Trello are really good project management. Or if our clients are already using Asana, we'll jump in there. Google Drive can do an awful lot for not much money at all. So you can run all sorts of processes in Drive without having to get fancy with your tech. I have played with some full service, expensive tech platforms, and I come back to just Google Drive, Asana, and Slack for most of what we do. As far as internal project management, there's a lot you can do with a spreadsheet. And it's easily shared, easily kept up to date. For instance, when we make a scope of work, a client can just jump in and see where it's at without any trouble at all.
Ryan Fowler: That's great. And the principle of keeping things simple, I love the KISS principle. Most people listening would probably know what that is already. But it's just about keeping things simple. I'm a big fan of Asana myself. I've used Trello and monday and a few other ones as well. But yeah, it's good to hear I've got a fellow Asana user on the podcast, which is great.
So Jo, I really appreciate you spending your time sharing this with us all. And I just want to ask, where can people find out more about you? And we'll link all of this in the show notes too.
Jo McKee: Okay. Probably the easiest is for anything, I guess we've got three ways that we help people. So our agency home is at https://mckeecreative.store. And there are some useful articles there, for instance, on email marketing, with free templates that people can download and use. Because if you're not bringing 30% of your revenue on email, you should be. So think mckeecreative.store for that.
Copywriting for Profit, if you'd like a team member to learn how to write your copy for you in-house, which is really nice because then you can get it done quickly. And then if you don't want to do it in-house, we have a service that other agencies asked us to build called Your Ads on Demand. So in Australia, it's youradsondemand.com. You can literally choose single ad copy, full pack, whatever you like, done in three days. And we include a couple of revisions for peace of mind for new clients, so they don't worry about who they're giving their money to. And yeah, we've written for probably more industries than I care to admit. And they convert really well because we understand what happens in a paid campaign and make sure we write for them.
Ryan Fowler: That's great. And having a copywriter that understands that side of it is very valuable as well. So I can see that that's a very much needed service for a lot of people that really can't stand writing, myself included. I'm really not a fan of that. I'm great at talking on a camera. But yeah, put me behind a computer to type something, I'll be lost. So yeah, that's a really valuable service.
So Jo, thank you again so much for joining me on the podcast. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. And I really appreciate you sharing your insights. Everything will be linked in the show notes down below as well.
Jo McKee: Thanks for having me. It was really great to just spend that time with you. Thanks, Ryan.
Ryan Fowler: That brings us to the end of today's episode. I really hope you've got some great value from it. If you're not subscribed yet, be sure to do so where you get your podcasts. As an inspired business owner, you can join The Digital Approach Podcast community for free, over on Facebook. Just click the link in the show notes. It's a growing community, and I'd love for you to be a part of it. If you'd like to find out more about what I do and grow your business with video, head over to orionmedia.group and book a free 20-minute info call.
Ryan Fowler: Thanks for listening. And I'll catch you on the next episode of The Digital Approach Podcast.
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