In this episode, Danny and Joe Wolf, Head of Paid Social at Optidge, explore how to troubleshoot struggling paid campaigns, why communication is more important than ever, and what it takes to be the kind of agency clients trust again—after they've been burned.
With deep experience across paid platforms and a keen sense for client relationships, Joe and the team don’t just run ads—they build partnerships that last. From tactical frameworks like Optidge’s 5-Point Check to real-life stories of client rescue missions, this episode is packed with practical insight and refreshingly honest advice.
An Optidge "Office Hours" Episode
Our Office Hours episodes are your go-to for details, how-to’s, and advice on specific marketing topics. Join our fellow Optidge team members, and sometimes even 1:1 teachings from Danny himself, in these shorter, marketing-focused episodes every few weeks. Get ready to get marketing!
Episode Highlights:
- Learn the Optidge 5-Point Paid Social Check and how it helps spot (and solve) campaign failure fast.
- Joe shares why upfront honesty with clients wins more trust than fluffy promises ever will.
- Hear real examples of recovering strained client relationships through transparency and strategy.
- Discover how UGC, offer testing, and full-funnel tracking power Optidge’s high-performing Meta ads.
- Find out how Optidge’s pod model blends expertise, mentorship, and client care into every campaign.
Episode Links:
🔗 Joe’s LinkedIn
🔗 Optidge Paid Social Services
Follow The Digital Marketing Mentor:
- Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com
- Instagram: @thedmmentor
- Linkedin: @thedmmentor
- YouTube: @thedmmentor
Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family:
- Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations.
- ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Danny Gavin (00:05):
Welcome to the Digital Marketing Mentor.
I'm your host, danny Gavin, andtogether with industry leaders
and marketing experts, we'llexplore the meeting point of
mentorship and marketing.
We'll discover how theseconnections have affected
careers, marketing strategiesand lives.
Now get ready to get human.
Now get ready to get human workwonderfully, but have recently
(00:49):
hit a wall or aren't going asexpected.
We'll start by discussinginsights from real-life
interactions where a client wasfacing challenges with their
paid social strategy.
Joe and I will also exploreOptage's unique initiative, the
five-point checklist for paidads.
This framework helps identifywhere campaigns might be
faltering, whether it's due totargeting issues, stale ad
creative or ineffective campaignsettings.
We'll discuss how the Optageapproach differs from
traditional agencies,emphasizing a hands-on,
data-driven methodology.
(01:09):
So, whether you're strugglingwith your own paid social
campaigns or looking to elevateyour strategy, this conversation
is packed with valuableinsights and actionable
recommendations.
Let's jump right in.
All right, so I'm reallyexcited that you told me to
follow up on that lead today.
Really, yes, because typicallyI wouldn't like respond and you
know I would just send anotheremail, but actually picked up
the phone and I called him andthen we had like some back and
(01:31):
forth, you know, and finally weactually had a conversation, so
it's pretty cool.
He didn't even remember fillingout the form, but he's like
we're in the process of lookingat paid social media agencies
because we get a lot of trafficto our website and it's not
really converting and it seemslike now paid social is more of
an accepted way in gettingpeople and he's looking at like
(01:53):
five, six agencies to sendproposals and then, after he's
kind of vetted that out, to havetwo that present in front of
his whole team.
Now the trick for that phonecall.
What was so cool was that he ithappens to be we're the same
age.
He's also built like a companyof 30 people.
He could really like relate tothat, which was awesome, and I
(02:14):
spoke about what the importanceof measuring leads and the
quality of those leads somethingwhich he kind of knew was
important but didn't know whathe was doing.
We spoke about the creativeofferings that we can provide as
well and he's like, oh, do youoffer this big video photo shoot
that we have to fly out to you?
And I said, hey, I was at aconference earlier this week and
(02:34):
one of the agency owners does$50,000 or $60,000 commercials
and I asked him well, why don'tyou get more into paid social
type of advertising videos, whydon't you make those?
And he's like it's a totallydifferent world.
He's like to do a $50,000commercial.
It's very different than comingup with all this different type
of creative.
So I said the same thing waswith you.
Yes, we need to have qualitycreative, but to go spend
(02:56):
$10,000, $20,000 on somethingjust for social, for it not to
convert, and then you're like,oh shoot, so we have to find a
way to balance quality andquantity when it comes to that
creative.
Yes, and he also asked aboutUGC.
He's like do you have access toUGC?
And I said we don't doourselves UGC, but we do have a
partner that we can work with.
And it was a really great call.
(03:17):
So, going from like the fivepoint checklist type of thing
for it to be like an actual deepintro call where I'm sending
him a proposal, it was reallyawesome.
Joe Wolf (03:26):
Yeah, I mean that is what we're looking for in
potential partners is someonethat has had some sort of
experience in the past runningthis stuff and knows where their
problems and where their gapsare.
And once we can see when aclient or prospect really can
identify those gaps, there'susually a long tail success with
(03:49):
those people because they canidentify what we're trying to
fill the gaps with and not justleave it completely up to us to
just like kind of read theirmind and try to like be this
separate entity from their teamand we're just kind of
delineated between all thisstuff that's happening on their
back end being directed to andtrying to deliver these results
without this back and forth.
(04:10):
So if they're kind of tellingus here are the openings where
we actually need you to fill thespace, then we can fill them
and we can have more of apartnership.
If we're able to have a lastingpartnership where we're
actually working as an extensionof their team, that's where we
see the most success.
Danny Gavin (04:25):
Yeah, and you know that it really works is because
I just got an email from himright now giving me his actual
email address, not just hisGmail type of email address.
That means the phone call wasgood.
Yeah, I'm glad you picked upthe phone.
Oh, we also spoke about it'skind of scary big investment and
I said, okay, you've got tolook at it this way.
There is going to be someupfront costs, there is going to
(04:46):
be a fee that you have to do,but then after that it's really
about hitting your targets.
So we have to know how muchyou're willing to spend on a
customer and how many leads it'sgoing to take to get to that
customer and get that cost perlead and make sure that we can
optimize to that.
He also mentioned differentoffers, like a higher offer, a
lower offer.
We can optimize to that.
He also mentioned differentoffers, like a higher offer, a
(05:07):
lower offer.
Ideally, we could test those outas well, which was really good,
and I said you want to choosean agency that you have a good
partnership.
I said no one is going to beable to make this profitable in
month one, just like Mark Cuban.
He invests in 10 companies inShark Tank.
There's no way that he's goingto hit it big with all 10.
Most probably nine won't dowell, but one will do so well
(05:27):
that it does well.
So that same concept is withpaid media is you're not going
to hit it on month one, but thetrick is, can we find those
unicorns and then make it work?
So you need to have patience.
So as long as you see thatthese campaigns are going in the
right direction, you are goingto go.
And obviously you want to workwith an agency that also has a
good out policy right, like, ifit's not working, let's work
(05:48):
with someone who at least saysyou know, we, we both agree this
is not going to be best for youand we want to do things that
are working.
You want to do things that areworking and we'll go our
separate ways.
Joe Wolf (05:56):
We're not trying to walk anyone into long-term deal
just to walk them into a deal.
We want to have beneficialrelationship with them.
If we have problems, we'regoing to let them know.
We are going to try our best todeliver the results that they
need and I think what youmentioned about backing into
these numbers and what we'regoing to be trying to get to
from a cost per lead standpointis really important, because
some people will come to us andhave no clue what their numbers
(06:19):
are.
They just want to grow.
They don't know what theirefficiency numbers are.
They don't know what the bakedin costs need to be from an
investment standpoint whenthey're working with us.
Sometimes we have to help themwith that.
But the worst thing that couldhappen would be if they come to
us and they don't have any realgoals and their only goal really
is to get a five ROAS and togrow 100% year over year.
Those aren't based in realityright, like we sometimes do have
(06:45):
to, and the ones that don'tlisten or have a dialogue before
we actually sign with them andwork with them, that we kind of
know that that's not going towork.
So we have, you know, in thepast said no to some clients
when they have unrealisticresults that aren't malleable
with working on some of theserealistic KPI projections, once
they're able to look at theideal cost for acquisition on an
(07:06):
overall basis.
That's where we can reallystart going.
And I think what you mentionedwith paid media it does take
time and it can be one ad thatends up delivering a ton of
results and you do need to test.
But the other part of it is wehave an omni-channel structure
within our agency.
We want, when we're bringing ona new client, to have both paid
(07:34):
social and paid search and alsoideally they're supporting
their organic rankings throughSEO and developing that on a
longer-term timeline.
But when you're developing acampaign that includes paid
social and paid search andthere's so many different
platforms that can fall intothat, that's where we usually
see the biggest lift and even ifyou're not getting something to
happen in the first month oreven the first three months from
one platform, the other one isusually going to be picking
(07:55):
things up and you really see aholistic view of performance
when you're bringing both ofthose together.
Danny Gavin (08:02):
And that's the advantage that we bring to the
table, the fact that we managethe full paid and we're not
going to defend.
If we just did Google ads andwe see it wasn't doing well we,
you know it's a little bitharder to defend hey, you should
do it.
But in this case there's nobiases.
It's really about findingwhat's working and putting more
money into it.
Joe Wolf (08:20):
Yeah, exactly, and I think what's also great is like
we we work on a pod structurewhere we're kind of vertically
aligned with an account manager,we have a paid search
specialist, we have a paidsearch specialist, we have a
paid social specialist and thenwe also have department leads
that are being completely readinto the situation, going from
(08:44):
basically advising those paidsocial specialists who are doing
the day-to-day work on what'sgoing on.
So those components can alltalk to each other and there's
information that gets sharedbetween paid search and paid
social.
You know there could be akeyword that might be too, way
too expensive to capitalize inpaid search and you know you're
only going to be able to get Xamount of clicks on it because
the CPCs are just way too high.
But if that information ispassed off and those are
converting right, you're goingto only be able to push X amount
(09:07):
of the budget to that.
You're also going to have tosupplement other long tail
keywords into the mix.
But if that information can getpassed to paid social, some of
those keywords can turn intointerest-based audiences.
And I know that's like taboonowadays to use interest-based
audiences, but they definitelystill work and, most importantly
, you can see what the intent is.
If people are converting onspecific keywords, even though
(09:27):
they're high CPC baselines thatyou have to pay to be able to
get them, you can incorporatethat into copy.
You can even have some keywordsgoing to a specific landing
page, have retargeting going tothat landing page and have the
topic be completely about that.
So there's enough traffic on areally high cost keyword or an
array of broad match keywordswithin that topic or phrase
(09:48):
match keywords.
You can then retarget them withspecific copy around that topic
.
Danny Gavin (09:52):
So pivoting to another story that happened this
week.
So I was sitting down with oneof our paid search strategists
and she was telling me about acertain account that she has put
her blood, sweat and tears andlove into this to really make it
work and unfortunately it's notgoing as quick as she is
expected.
We're getting the right type ofleads, but the companies that
are signing up are too small.
(10:13):
They're small and medium, butthey fit everything that they
need, just they're not largeenough.
So it's hard for her becauseit's like we want to keep trying
it out and we want to keepdoing, but it's moving a little
bit slow.
But what's amazing is I'm partof an entrepreneurial referral
network on WhatsApp and someonerecently said, hey, is there an
(10:35):
agency that specializes in paidmedia performance marketing?
And there's like three or fouragency owners that came in and
then I came in and said, yeah,hey, why don't you consider
Optage as well?
And suddenly two people steppedup to the plate.
One of them is that actualclient, and look at what they
said.
I can vouch for Danny, the mostprofessional and competent firm
(10:56):
I have encountered.
I can honestly say that theymake me feel like they created
their whole firm just for myaccount.
So it's amazing.
Right here we have a scenariowhere our paid search strategist
from her perspective it's hardbecause I'm not getting that
success right away.
But the people that she'sworking with that's not the
(11:16):
issue, right, it's not even intheir mind.
What's in their mind?
They see the care and thededication that Optage has for
them and that's what sticks outand that is what you want in an
agency, right?
All agencies are going to haveups and downs, but the question
is, are you going to have arelationship where it's like a
(11:37):
real partnership and where bothpeople care about what's going
on?
And the fact that that guystepped up to the plate in front
of this whole network of like300 people and said, hey, this
is Optage.
The next comment right underthat, someone wrote, wow, and
that's exactly what I feltthat's amazing.
Joe Wolf (11:54):
Yeah, I mean, there's so much you can do from a
day-to-day operationalstandpoint to get some of these
costs down, and obviously ourgoal is to do that.
We're successful at it.
We've been fortunate enough tohave success with many clients
and we've been one of awards forit, but what we pride ourselves
the most on is having a goodrelationship with these partners
(12:15):
.
Like some of our longesttenured clients go beyond five
years, we our average isprobably two or three years,
right now Exactly, and that's atestament to that partnership.
And it's a two-way street,because if we are working with
someone that isn't giving us theattention that we need to be
able to do well in thesecampaigns, then we're not going
(12:37):
to play that game either.
We try to make it a realextension of their team and we
try to make it about giving themthe service that they required,
along with the performance.
Danny Gavin (12:50):
So, Joe, it's crazy, I had this amazing pitch
six months ago with this movingand storage company and I
thought it went so well andtheir situation was they were
working with an agency that didkind of everything, but they
weren't really able to measureresults.
So my whole pitch was come toOptage.
We measure results.
We're not just stopping at thelead, but we're looking at what
(13:12):
happens to the quality of thelead and who the customer is,
and we're tying it back togetherso we actually know what's
going on.
And I pushed it, pushed it,pushed it and they loved it,
right.
What happened?
I get an email saying, hey, wedecided to go in another
direction.
We found an agency that hasmore experience than you when it
comes to the moving and storagearena, more experience than you
(13:33):
when it comes to the moving andstorage arena.
We love you, but we're going togo off.
And it felt literally like aslap in the face.
It's like what I thought.
We were going so well and justbecause I don't have that
experience, you're not going tolook at me, and so, on one hand,
you can appreciate that, right.
People can think, ooh, I need togo for an agency that has the
exact experience of what I did.
But I think what people aremissing is it's not just about
(13:54):
industry experience, but it'sexperience in many situations,
whether it's with a Catholichigh school or whether it's a
SaaS company, if it's with adoctor's office or if it's with
a plumber.
The point is, if we haveperspective, in all these
different industries, we've seena lot of scenarios and you know
(14:15):
what, especially when it comesto paid media, there's ups and
downs and you've got to pivot.
And even when it looks likeit's bleak and it's dark and
what am I going to do?
But if you put your headtogether, let's try something
else.
So, actually, not being in thesame industry, but having
multiple points of contactyou're able to do.
And what's awesome about this isthat six months later, about a
(14:37):
couple of weeks ago, they cameback to us saying, hey, the
agency we chose it's not reallyworking so well.
We have no idea what our ROI is, so the same problem that they
had before they had again, andto me it blows my mind how that
even happened.
But they're like, hey, wereally want to work with you.
And so just kind of a testamentto, in the end of the day,
(14:58):
right, what's important.
When you're investing money inpaid media performance marketing
, you need to be able to knowwhat's going on with it, and if
you can't, people can saywhatever they want, but in the
end of the day, you're nevergoing to know.
Is it really working or is itnot?
Joe Wolf (15:12):
Yeah, I mean that is so true there.
Not, yeah, I mean that's thatis so true, like there are so
many agencies that do try toniche down and you know we do
have there's there's a portionof our client base, historically
and currently, that does leantowards a certain industry or a
certain size company.
But I think what we reallyspecialize in is the different
scenarios that you're going tosee from a day to day situation,
(15:34):
and it's really about problemsolving.
Like what we like take a hugeamount of pride in.
Besides service and performanceis problem solving and we've
seen pretty much every scenariounder the sun.
So it doesn't necessarilymatter what the industry is that
we're working in or the company, the size of the company.
We're able to be extremelynimble.
We're able to look at thatprevious experience that we've
had and incorporate that intowhatever the situation we've
(15:56):
been in, because we have been inthose situations before.
So, for example, if we have asales team that has a really,
really bad follow-up, right, itcan.
It could be any industry whereyou're generating leads.
It can be any size company evenyou know there are huge cons to
having a massive companybecause you could end up having
six different sales reps acrossall, like across the U S, or
(16:17):
even 10, where you have like 50%of them in the U S and then the
rest across, like Europe, right, and that can end up having
massive roadblocks with gettingfeedback from these leads.
So what we've had to do in thepast and that goes vice versa
with we're talking about a smallcompany If they end up having
just one person fielding leads,like there's, obviously we're
sending a pretty good chunk ofleads we have to fix that
(16:38):
backend.
So what we end up doing istrying to come up with
streamlined processes andworking with them, so it doesn't
really stop from paid media ingenerating those leads.
We force our clients, whetherthey're interested or not or not
, to look at the backend andmake sure that there's a
streamlined approach.
We offer HubSpot specialty andservices like that.
(17:00):
I think we're HubSpot certifiedand basically that part of it
is one of the biggest componentsof our success in the lead gen
space.
And even when you look at e-com, we're looking at backend
numbers.
We've invested in tons of toolswhere we're able to verify
information coming fromdifferent attribution models
across meta and Google ads andGoogle analytics, and all these
(17:22):
different platforms are going tomeasure things differently so
it doesn't stop at leads.
We really go the extra mile tolook at the data on the backend
and make sure that'sincorporated into our analysis.
And when things aren't workingand there isn't a level of
clarity that's required for usto perform the way we want to,
we push and we try to have thatongoing negotiation or
discussion with the client onwhat can be done on that back
(17:43):
end to improve things, becausethat is really where this does
get crystallized and it can'talways be just on that front end
.
When you're looking at peopleclicking on ads right, it needs
to be how you convert them.
Danny Gavin (17:55):
And therefore half the time, like you said, we're
going to go ahead and build somesort of CRM.
So in a perfect world, we'llget people to move to a proper
CRM like HubSpot, which we love.
At a minimum, we're going to becreating a spreadsheet,
tracking those leads, figuringout the quality did they turn
into customers and then takingthat data and putting it back
into the system so that we canoptimize correctly.
(18:16):
And that wraps up today'sepisode of the Digital Marketing
Mentor Podcast.
A huge thank you to Joe Wolffor sharing his insights and
experiences with us today.
We hope you found value inhearing firsthand stories about
the ups and downs of paid socialstrategies.
It's clear that even the bestcampaigns can face challenges,
but with the right approach youcan turn things around.
If you're interested inoptimizing your own paid social
(18:37):
efforts, I encourage you toexplore Optage's free five-point
checklist for paid ads.
It's a fantastic resource toidentify areas for improvement
and set your campaigns up forsuccess.
Thanks for tuning in and, asalways, don't forget to
subscribe, leave a review andshare this episode with your
fellow marketers.
Until next time, keepexperimenting and driving those
results.
Thank you for listening to theDigital Marketing Mentor Podcast
(18:59):
.
Be sure to check us out onlineat thedmmentorcom and at
thedmmentor on Instagram, anddon't forget to subscribe on
Apple Podcasts, spotify orwherever you listen to your
podcasts for more marketing.
Mentor magic.
See you next time.
Welcome to the Digital Marketing Mentor.
I'm your host, danny Gavin, andtogether with industry leaders
and marketing experts, we'llexplore the meeting point of
mentorship and marketing.
We'll discover how theseconnections have affected
careers, marketing strategiesand lives.
Now get ready to get human.
Now get ready to get human workwonderfully, but have recently
(00:49):
hit a wall or aren't going asexpected.
We'll start by discussinginsights from real-life
interactions where a client wasfacing challenges with their
paid social strategy.
Joe and I will also exploreOptage's unique initiative, the
five-point checklist for paidads.
This framework helps identifywhere campaigns might be
faltering, whether it's due totargeting issues, stale ad
creative or ineffective campaignsettings.
We'll discuss how the Optageapproach differs from
traditional agencies,emphasizing a hands-on,
data-driven methodology.
(01:09):
So, whether you're strugglingwith your own paid social
campaigns or looking to elevateyour strategy, this conversation
is packed with valuableinsights and actionable
recommendations.
Let's jump right in.
All right, so I'm reallyexcited that you told me to
follow up on that lead today.
Really, yes, because typicallyI wouldn't like respond and you
know I would just send anotheremail, but actually picked up
the phone and I called him andthen we had like some back and
(01:31):
forth, you know, and finally weactually had a conversation, so
it's pretty cool.
He didn't even remember fillingout the form, but he's like
we're in the process of lookingat paid social media agencies
because we get a lot of trafficto our website and it's not
really converting and it seemslike now paid social is more of
an accepted way in gettingpeople and he's looking at like
(01:53):
five, six agencies to sendproposals and then, after he's
kind of vetted that out, to havetwo that present in front of
his whole team.
Now the trick for that phonecall.
What was so cool was that he ithappens to be we're the same
age.
He's also built like a companyof 30 people.
He could really like relate tothat, which was awesome, and I
(02:14):
spoke about what the importanceof measuring leads and the
quality of those leads somethingwhich he kind of knew was
important but didn't know whathe was doing.
We spoke about the creativeofferings that we can provide as
well and he's like, oh, do youoffer this big video photo shoot
that we have to fly out to you?
And I said, hey, I was at aconference earlier this week and
(02:34):
one of the agency owners does$50,000 or $60,000 commercials
and I asked him well, why don'tyou get more into paid social
type of advertising videos, whydon't you make those?
And he's like it's a totallydifferent world.
He's like to do a $50,000commercial.
It's very different than comingup with all this different type
of creative.
So I said the same thing waswith you.
Yes, we need to have qualitycreative, but to go spend
(02:56):
$10,000, $20,000 on somethingjust for social, for it not to
convert, and then you're like,oh shoot, so we have to find a
way to balance quality andquantity when it comes to that
creative.
Yes, and he also asked aboutUGC.
He's like do you have access toUGC?
And I said we don't doourselves UGC, but we do have a
partner that we can work with.
And it was a really great call.
(03:17):
So, going from like the fivepoint checklist type of thing
for it to be like an actual deepintro call where I'm sending
him a proposal, it was reallyawesome.
Joe Wolf (03:26):
Yeah, I mean that is what we're looking for in
potential partners is someonethat has had some sort of
experience in the past runningthis stuff and knows where their
problems and where their gapsare.
And once we can see when aclient or prospect really can
identify those gaps, there'susually a long tail success with
(03:49):
those people because they canidentify what we're trying to
fill the gaps with and not justleave it completely up to us to
just like kind of read theirmind and try to like be this
separate entity from their teamand we're just kind of
delineated between all thisstuff that's happening on their
back end being directed to andtrying to deliver these results
without this back and forth.
(04:10):
So if they're kind of tellingus here are the openings where
we actually need you to fill thespace, then we can fill them
and we can have more of apartnership.
If we're able to have a lastingpartnership where we're
actually working as an extensionof their team, that's where we
see the most success.
Danny Gavin (04:25):
Yeah, and you know that it really works is because
I just got an email from himright now giving me his actual
email address, not just hisGmail type of email address.
That means the phone call wasgood.
Yeah, I'm glad you picked upthe phone.
Oh, we also spoke about it'skind of scary big investment and
I said, okay, you've got tolook at it this way.
There is going to be someupfront costs, there is going to
(04:46):
be a fee that you have to do,but then after that it's really
about hitting your targets.
So we have to know how muchyou're willing to spend on a
customer and how many leads it'sgoing to take to get to that
customer and get that cost perlead and make sure that we can
optimize to that.
He also mentioned differentoffers, like a higher offer, a
lower offer.
We can optimize to that.
He also mentioned differentoffers, like a higher offer, a
(05:07):
lower offer.
Ideally, we could test those outas well, which was really good,
and I said you want to choosean agency that you have a good
partnership.
I said no one is going to beable to make this profitable in
month one, just like Mark Cuban.
He invests in 10 companies inShark Tank.
There's no way that he's goingto hit it big with all 10.
Most probably nine won't dowell, but one will do so well
(05:27):
that it does well.
So that same concept is withpaid media is you're not going
to hit it on month one, but thetrick is, can we find those
unicorns and then make it work?
So you need to have patience.
So as long as you see thatthese campaigns are going in the
right direction, you are goingto go.
And obviously you want to workwith an agency that also has a
good out policy right, like, ifit's not working, let's work
(05:48):
with someone who at least saysyou know, we, we both agree this
is not going to be best for youand we want to do things that
are working.
You want to do things that areworking and we'll go our
separate ways.
Joe Wolf (05:56):
We're not trying to walk anyone into long-term deal
just to walk them into a deal.
We want to have beneficialrelationship with them.
If we have problems, we'regoing to let them know.
We are going to try our best todeliver the results that they
need and I think what youmentioned about backing into
these numbers and what we'regoing to be trying to get to
from a cost per lead standpointis really important, because
some people will come to us andhave no clue what their numbers
(06:19):
are.
They just want to grow.
They don't know what theirefficiency numbers are.
They don't know what the bakedin costs need to be from an
investment standpoint whenthey're working with us.
Sometimes we have to help themwith that.
But the worst thing that couldhappen would be if they come to
us and they don't have any realgoals and their only goal really
is to get a five ROAS and togrow 100% year over year.
Those aren't based in realityright, like we sometimes do have
(06:45):
to, and the ones that don'tlisten or have a dialogue before
we actually sign with them andwork with them, that we kind of
know that that's not going towork.
So we have, you know, in thepast said no to some clients
when they have unrealisticresults that aren't malleable
with working on some of theserealistic KPI projections, once
they're able to look at theideal cost for acquisition on an
(07:06):
overall basis.
That's where we can reallystart going.
And I think what you mentionedwith paid media it does take
time and it can be one ad thatends up delivering a ton of
results and you do need to test.
But the other part of it is wehave an omni-channel structure
within our agency.
We want, when we're bringing ona new client, to have both paid
(07:34):
social and paid search and alsoideally they're supporting
their organic rankings throughSEO and developing that on a
longer-term timeline.
But when you're developing acampaign that includes paid
social and paid search andthere's so many different
platforms that can fall intothat, that's where we usually
see the biggest lift and even ifyou're not getting something to
happen in the first month oreven the first three months from
one platform, the other one isusually going to be picking
(07:55):
things up and you really see aholistic view of performance
when you're bringing both ofthose together.
Danny Gavin (08:02):
And that's the advantage that we bring to the
table, the fact that we managethe full paid and we're not
going to defend.
If we just did Google ads andwe see it wasn't doing well we,
you know it's a little bitharder to defend hey, you should
do it.
But in this case there's nobiases.
It's really about findingwhat's working and putting more
money into it.
Joe Wolf (08:20):
Yeah, exactly, and I think what's also great is like
we we work on a pod structurewhere we're kind of vertically
aligned with an account manager,we have a paid search
specialist, we have a paidsearch specialist, we have a
paid social specialist and thenwe also have department leads
that are being completely readinto the situation, going from
(08:44):
basically advising those paidsocial specialists who are doing
the day-to-day work on what'sgoing on.
So those components can alltalk to each other and there's
information that gets sharedbetween paid search and paid
social.
You know there could be akeyword that might be too, way
too expensive to capitalize inpaid search and you know you're
only going to be able to get Xamount of clicks on it because
the CPCs are just way too high.
But if that information ispassed off and those are
converting right, you're goingto only be able to push X amount
(09:07):
of the budget to that.
You're also going to have tosupplement other long tail
keywords into the mix.
But if that information can getpassed to paid social, some of
those keywords can turn intointerest-based audiences.
And I know that's like taboonowadays to use interest-based
audiences, but they definitelystill work and, most importantly
, you can see what the intent is.
If people are converting onspecific keywords, even though
(09:27):
they're high CPC baselines thatyou have to pay to be able to
get them, you can incorporatethat into copy.
You can even have some keywordsgoing to a specific landing
page, have retargeting going tothat landing page and have the
topic be completely about that.
So there's enough traffic on areally high cost keyword or an
array of broad match keywordswithin that topic or phrase
(09:48):
match keywords.
You can then retarget them withspecific copy around that topic
.
Danny Gavin (09:52):
So pivoting to another story that happened this
week.
So I was sitting down with oneof our paid search strategists
and she was telling me about acertain account that she has put
her blood, sweat and tears andlove into this to really make it
work and unfortunately it's notgoing as quick as she is
expected.
We're getting the right type ofleads, but the companies that
are signing up are too small.
(10:13):
They're small and medium, butthey fit everything that they
need, just they're not largeenough.
So it's hard for her becauseit's like we want to keep trying
it out and we want to keepdoing, but it's moving a little
bit slow.
But what's amazing is I'm partof an entrepreneurial referral
network on WhatsApp and someonerecently said, hey, is there an
(10:35):
agency that specializes in paidmedia performance marketing?
And there's like three or fouragency owners that came in and
then I came in and said, yeah,hey, why don't you consider
Optage as well?
And suddenly two people steppedup to the plate.
One of them is that actualclient, and look at what they
said.
I can vouch for Danny, the mostprofessional and competent firm
(10:56):
I have encountered.
I can honestly say that theymake me feel like they created
their whole firm just for myaccount.
So it's amazing.
Right here we have a scenariowhere our paid search strategist
from her perspective it's hardbecause I'm not getting that
success right away.
But the people that she'sworking with that's not the
(11:16):
issue, right, it's not even intheir mind.
What's in their mind?
They see the care and thededication that Optage has for
them and that's what sticks outand that is what you want in an
agency, right?
All agencies are going to haveups and downs, but the question
is, are you going to have arelationship where it's like a
(11:37):
real partnership and where bothpeople care about what's going
on?
And the fact that that guystepped up to the plate in front
of this whole network of like300 people and said, hey, this
is Optage.
The next comment right underthat, someone wrote, wow, and
that's exactly what I feltthat's amazing.
Joe Wolf (11:54):
Yeah, I mean, there's so much you can do from a
day-to-day operationalstandpoint to get some of these
costs down, and obviously ourgoal is to do that.
We're successful at it.
We've been fortunate enough tohave success with many clients
and we've been one of awards forit, but what we pride ourselves
the most on is having a goodrelationship with these partners
(12:15):
.
Like some of our longesttenured clients go beyond five
years, we our average isprobably two or three years,
right now Exactly, and that's atestament to that partnership.
And it's a two-way street,because if we are working with
someone that isn't giving us theattention that we need to be
able to do well in thesecampaigns, then we're not going
(12:37):
to play that game either.
We try to make it a realextension of their team and we
try to make it about giving themthe service that they required,
along with the performance.
Danny Gavin (12:50):
So, Joe, it's crazy, I had this amazing pitch
six months ago with this movingand storage company and I
thought it went so well andtheir situation was they were
working with an agency that didkind of everything, but they
weren't really able to measureresults.
So my whole pitch was come toOptage.
We measure results.
We're not just stopping at thelead, but we're looking at what
(13:12):
happens to the quality of thelead and who the customer is,
and we're tying it back togetherso we actually know what's
going on.
And I pushed it, pushed it,pushed it and they loved it,
right.
What happened?
I get an email saying, hey, wedecided to go in another
direction.
We found an agency that hasmore experience than you when it
comes to the moving and storagearena, more experience than you
(13:33):
when it comes to the moving andstorage arena.
We love you, but we're going togo off.
And it felt literally like aslap in the face.
It's like what I thought.
We were going so well and justbecause I don't have that
experience, you're not going tolook at me, and so, on one hand,
you can appreciate that, right.
People can think, ooh, I need togo for an agency that has the
exact experience of what I did.
But I think what people aremissing is it's not just about
(13:54):
industry experience, but it'sexperience in many situations,
whether it's with a Catholichigh school or whether it's a
SaaS company, if it's with adoctor's office or if it's with
a plumber.
The point is, if we haveperspective, in all these
different industries, we've seena lot of scenarios and you know
(14:15):
what, especially when it comesto paid media, there's ups and
downs and you've got to pivot.
And even when it looks likeit's bleak and it's dark and
what am I going to do?
But if you put your headtogether, let's try something
else.
So, actually, not being in thesame industry, but having
multiple points of contactyou're able to do.
And what's awesome about this isthat six months later, about a
(14:37):
couple of weeks ago, they cameback to us saying, hey, the
agency we chose it's not reallyworking so well.
We have no idea what our ROI is, so the same problem that they
had before they had again, andto me it blows my mind how that
even happened.
But they're like, hey, wereally want to work with you.
And so just kind of a testamentto, in the end of the day,
(14:58):
right, what's important.
When you're investing money inpaid media performance marketing
, you need to be able to knowwhat's going on with it, and if
you can't, people can saywhatever they want, but in the
end of the day, you're nevergoing to know.
Is it really working or is itnot?
Joe Wolf (15:12):
Yeah, I mean that is so true there.
Not, yeah, I mean that's thatis so true, like there are so
many agencies that do try toniche down and you know we do
have there's there's a portionof our client base, historically
and currently, that does leantowards a certain industry or a
certain size company.
But I think what we reallyspecialize in is the different
scenarios that you're going tosee from a day to day situation,
(15:34):
and it's really about problemsolving.
Like what we like take a hugeamount of pride in.
Besides service and performanceis problem solving and we've
seen pretty much every scenariounder the sun.
So it doesn't necessarilymatter what the industry is that
we're working in or the company, the size of the company.
We're able to be extremelynimble.
We're able to look at thatprevious experience that we've
had and incorporate that intowhatever the situation we've
(15:56):
been in, because we have been inthose situations before.
So, for example, if we have asales team that has a really,
really bad follow-up, right, itcan.
It could be any industry whereyou're generating leads.
It can be any size company evenyou know there are huge cons to
having a massive companybecause you could end up having
six different sales reps acrossall, like across the U S, or
(16:17):
even 10, where you have like 50%of them in the U S and then the
rest across, like Europe, right, and that can end up having
massive roadblocks with gettingfeedback from these leads.
So what we've had to do in thepast and that goes vice versa
with we're talking about a smallcompany If they end up having
just one person fielding leads,like there's, obviously we're
sending a pretty good chunk ofleads we have to fix that
(16:38):
backend.
So what we end up doing istrying to come up with
streamlined processes andworking with them, so it doesn't
really stop from paid media ingenerating those leads.
We force our clients, whetherthey're interested or not or not
, to look at the backend andmake sure that there's a
streamlined approach.
We offer HubSpot specialty andservices like that.
(17:00):
I think we're HubSpot certifiedand basically that part of it
is one of the biggest componentsof our success in the lead gen
space.
And even when you look at e-com, we're looking at backend
numbers.
We've invested in tons of toolswhere we're able to verify
information coming fromdifferent attribution models
across meta and Google ads andGoogle analytics, and all these
(17:22):
different platforms are going tomeasure things differently so
it doesn't stop at leads.
We really go the extra mile tolook at the data on the backend
and make sure that'sincorporated into our analysis.
And when things aren't workingand there isn't a level of
clarity that's required for usto perform the way we want to,
we push and we try to have thatongoing negotiation or
discussion with the client onwhat can be done on that back
(17:43):
end to improve things, becausethat is really where this does
get crystallized and it can'talways be just on that front end
.
When you're looking at peopleclicking on ads right, it needs
to be how you convert them.
Danny Gavin (17:55):
And therefore half the time, like you said, we're
going to go ahead and build somesort of CRM.
So in a perfect world, we'llget people to move to a proper
CRM like HubSpot, which we love.
At a minimum, we're going to becreating a spreadsheet,
tracking those leads, figuringout the quality did they turn
into customers and then takingthat data and putting it back
into the system so that we canoptimize correctly.
(18:16):
And that wraps up today'sepisode of the Digital Marketing
Mentor Podcast.
A huge thank you to Joe Wolffor sharing his insights and
experiences with us today.
We hope you found value inhearing firsthand stories about
the ups and downs of paid socialstrategies.
It's clear that even the bestcampaigns can face challenges,
but with the right approach youcan turn things around.
If you're interested inoptimizing your own paid social
(18:37):
efforts, I encourage you toexplore Optage's free five-point
checklist for paid ads.
It's a fantastic resource toidentify areas for improvement
and set your campaigns up forsuccess.
Thanks for tuning in and, asalways, don't forget to
subscribe, leave a review andshare this episode with your
fellow marketers.
Until next time, keepexperimenting and driving those
results.
Thank you for listening to theDigital Marketing Mentor Podcast
(18:59):
.
Be sure to check us out onlineat thedmmentorcom and at
thedmmentor on Instagram, anddon't forget to subscribe on
Apple Podcasts, spotify orwherever you listen to your
podcasts for more marketing.
Mentor magic.
See you next time.
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