Andrew Squibb: Because when you’re trying to drive audience and you’re trying to drive customer acquisition in a competitive space, you’re just not going to do it at the volume needed. If you dip your toe in, you have to drive enough audience and enough volume in competitive, whether it be retail. So if you’re selling furniture or you’re selling cars, you you can’t sell just one. You got to sell lots. But in order to sell lots, you’ve got to talk to a lot of people. And so one TV spot. One email. One full page in the newspaper, whatever it might be. Isn’t going to be enough. You have to do enough to drive enough audience and really take a sales philosophy of you’re going to lose 70% of the time. 70% of the people are going to walk in, not buy your thing and leave. So if you do it. If you dip your toe in that philosophy, you’re only dipping your toe in know enough to win a small audience. And if you lose 70% of a small audience, you’re not winning anything and you’re not driving any return for that investment or you’re not selling anything.
Tim Warren: There’s no return.
Andrew Squibb: There’s no return. So being able to do it at scale. Now, listen, if you have the budget to do it across all mediums, you should do so. Because if you can win in TV and win in radio and win in podcasting and win in email, then you’re going to know exactly where you’re winning and you’re going to be the top player. You’re going to get most of the traffic in the audience and that’ll drive, that should if as long as you understand how to convert those people, it should drive the right result. But that’s really how he thinks about it. That’s how a lot of our customers are starting to think about it. And that’s why I think with digital you can really own and win a channel. Whether that be social, whether that be email, whether that be programmatic, whether that be OTT, whether that be, you know, podcasting. And you can get to your niche audience. If you know how to convert that audience, you’re going to drive and you’re going to win. You can test and really dominate there rather than spend a little bit of money across 50 channels. Let’s spend really good money across five channels and really get as much of the volume of that audience as we can. We’re seeing that drive a lot of results for customers.
Tim Warren: So I want to get your question on this, Andrew, because you mentioned a couple of things that are very interesting. But one thing I’m thinking about is right now this debate of TV and traditional media. I mean, a lot of times you talk to people and, you know, I get the thing all the time, Oh, TV’s dead, right? Youtube is the new TV. Tv’s dead, TV’s dead now. I’m 37, right? So I don’t pay for cable. I have YouTube, I have Hulu, We have all the streaming services. But I don’t pay for TV. I don’t pay for cable. Right. I don’t have a home phone. I’m like that. I’m that demographic. Right. And then you have gen whatever the new one is, Gen Zers or whatever the what is the newest generation now like? I think it’s Gen Z-ers or whatever where it’s like, you know, like they’re like, I don’t even want to own a car. I’m just going to Uber, everything Turo, everything like. Oh wow, you know, it’s like a whole different animal.
Andrew Squibb: Mhm
Tim Warren: So what are your thoughts on traditional because you’re talking about, you know, winning in traditional media, which is expensive and very, very like that’s incredibly competitive.
Andrew Squibb: Yeah.
Tim Warren: Right. So I want to get your thoughts on that because what some brands have have done is just said, fine, if TV’s dying, I’m going to exit, I’m going to go all into digital. But digital is also hyper competitive. And so, you can’t just say, well, not TV, I’ll own on social. Well,
Andrew Squibb: Yeah, right.
Tim Warren: Well Social is also super competitive.
Andrew Squibb: Yeah. So we’re seeing advertisers dominate in niches. So we got a couple that own sports, so they’re going to do TV, but they’re just going to do sports. And so when there’s you know the local teams.
Tim Warren: They are only going to advertise sports content.
Andrew Squibb: On. Yeah. Around sports contents. Yeah.
Tim Warren: So stay out of news.
Andrew Squibb: Yeah. Because, that’s super competitive but if they can own. Right. Now there might be lots of advertisers in the sports content but they might be the only of their kind.
Tim Warren: Got it.
Andrew Squibb: So they don’t care about the other car dealers or whatever, Right. But if they’re not a car dealer, then that’s great for them. That’s really what we’re seeing because it allows them to be there and then not be everywhere within it and have to buy all the different types of TV. They can buy exactly what they want. So as long as those advertisers have the right attribution model, it works because they can then see, okay, our our traffic is up. Once we run the spot during the game or whatever it might be.
Tim Warren: So this is actually really interesting because so many marketers I talk to, I think this this debate of like what is dying and what should I stay away from and what’s the new thing, right? But yet like very few marketers I know are going to put the whole budget into TikTok.
Andrew Squibb: Right.
Tim Warren: Right. Because that’s way too risky. And also, all these other platforms have so many users convert.
Andrew Squibb: Correct.
Tim Warren: But you said something very interesting I want to stop on, which is you can’t own all of TV. You don’t have the money. Okay? It’s not a political campaign. Right? You can drop $10 Million for everyone to know your name.
Andrew Squibb: Correct.
Tim Warren: So but what these guys are doing is they’re picking and saying, okay, I can only own sports, maybe only in Cincinnati.
Andrew Squibb: Right.
Tim Warren: And so I’m going to run for every major sporting game or event in Cincinnati only during these windows. And my brand’s going to be over and over and over again. So are they choosing the strategy to say, I would only rather play in a couple channels and a couple markets, but I want to be everywhere. So those few so that that the few eyeballs on that segment see me all the time versus a bunch of eyeballs see me a few times.
Andrew Squibb: Yeah I think it depends on the market. You know, in this market it’s a pretty big sports town, so the eyeballs are big. So if you’re going to own sports, you still get a lot of eyeballs.
Tim Warren: In Cincinnati.
Andrew Squibb: In Cincinnati, right. So you’re getting we have pro football. We have a big college football audience. We have pro baseball. We now have Major League Soccer. So if you’re going to own in that arena, you are still getting a lot of audience, which is really good. If that’s your audience, then you should own it. And then that makes a lot of sense to me because you have to identify the audience who converts. And if that’s what they’re watching, just go all in there. Don’t go all in everywhere with that medium, right? And then use use that, find that audience digitally so that audience, Yeah, they watch the Bengals game, but they also are online. Where are they? And they’re also searching in a paid and organic environment. So you got to get them both. But if you’ve identified them there, just go in there. That’s what we’re seeing.
Tim Warren: You know, that’s why that’s interesting to me is just thinking through this. The I know I’ve heard this and I know tons of statistics are statistics have made up all the time. But I’ve heard that the average person needs to see or engage with your brand seven times before they make a purchasing decision.
Andrew Squibb: Correct.
Tim Warren: Right. So if you are a software company or e-commerce or whatever, they need to see that, right? They’re not going to Google See you buy. Right? They’re going to Google. See you. Think about it later. Come back, see your social, come back, see your LinkedIn ad, come back, then convert. Right. So what’s interesting there is I think about this, I never really thought about this before because TV’s not my space. But you’re right. If I am watching Bengals games and for the whole season, I’m watching Bengals and it’s like this ad pops up with this brand and this brand and this brand and this brand and this brand, and I see it so many times, but I never see it on any other channel. When I have the problem that I need solved in that space, I’m going to remember that brand.
Andrew Squibb: Probably.
Tim Warren: Because they got their logo in front of me seven times. Yep. Versus if you market to a super wide group of people and they see your logo 1 or 2 times.
Andrew Squibb: Yeah.
Tim Warren: They’re not ready to convert. You didn’t actually build brand awareness, right? You failed. So I think that’s what he’s saying is if you go much more narrow where you can really dominate, it’s probably this idea of I’m going to pick a small enough audience where I can get my logo in front of them like 15 times so that those people are ready to buy when they’re ready to buy. Yeah. And I think from.
Andrew Squibb: Yeah. And I think you have to layer in, you have to retarget them so they’re going to come to the website and then they’re going to what are they going to do? You’ve got to stay in front of them because, I think 90% of Internet traffic is mobile. So people are on their phones 90% of the day. Right. All day. So totally. So if they’re going to see the ad and because they’re a diehard Bengals fan, so every game they see your ad and then you they go online, they go to your website, but they’re going to be online way more than they’re going to watch a Bengals game throughout a week.
Tim Warren: Right.
Andrew Squibb: That’s a four hour window.
Tim Warren: Right.
Andrew Squibb: But they’re online, I don’t know, 100 hours a week.
Tim Warren: Yeah, right.
Andrew Squibb: Embarrassingly, probably. If you think about people.
Tim Warren: Most of the time while they’re sitting.
Andrew Squibb: At work. Most of the time.
Tim Warren: Yeah, hopefully not. Hopefully not. Not at our company.
Andrew Squibb: Not at our company.
Tim Warren: Other people’s companies.
Andrew Squibb: So. So you have to. Engage them and stay in front of them. So the retargeting element is really important. So we talk to our customers about, if you’re going to do that, great, but what’s the follow up digital strategy? What are you doing? You know, if they don’t remember you, you’d be surprised to how many of our advertisers say, you know, why is our organic up? Yeah, because they see the logo and they see the name, but they don’t remember exactly how it’s written on the screen. Yeah. So they go to Google and they find it organically because, Oh yeah, that’s the one. So you see the organic kind of match it. And then we retarget off of and the TV should be retargeting off of that so that you’re getting the constant views because people are again only doing that sporting event once a week. So what do you do on the rest of the week? You got to stay in front of them right as they’re because Bengal games and you move on with your life.
Tim Warren: That’s right.
Andrew Squibb: But you don’t move off your phone.
Tim Warren: So you mentioned retargeting, Andrew And one of the things that I think is interesting there is I think so many brands especially I would say B2B, B2C maybe is a little bit better about this, but B2B, which is a decent base of our customers here at Helium. I feel like retargeting is still something that B2B companies are figuring out. Or they’re not, really going all in on retargeting.
Andrew Squibb: Agreed.
Tim Warren: And maybe it’s because they think retargeting is for B2C or for ecommerce, right? Oh, that’s for if you’re trying to sell shoes, totally retargeting. Like we sell software, does it make as much sense? Right. So what are your thoughts on retargeting and how much should brands be investing in retargeting?
Andrew Squibb: I think that the other thing with B2B is I think a lot of them feel like they only have one option, which is LinkedIn. And so it’s like, Yeah. To exactly do account based marketing. That’s probably a really good idea. You’re probably right if you’re a B2B marketer. But my thought is those people that you’re trying to talk to, they have lives.
Tim Warren: Yeah.
Andrew Squibb: They’re on the internet doing lots of things all day long and why not stay in front of them? So we talked to our B2B customers about just a baseline retargeting. If someone comes to your website, especially in a B2B environment, you can make the argument in a B2C environment that people go to those websites for fun. You go to a car dealership because you just want to see what the new car is.
Tim Warren: Right.
Andrew Squibb: You saw your buddy drive it and you just want to see you go to a Zillow or a real estate website because you just want to see the latest and greatest house.
Tim Warren: Yeah.
Andrew Squibb: Right. But you’re not actually serious. But in a B2B environment, most of the people aren’t going to a website that’s a B2B for fun. They’re going because they have a need or an outage or their boss said, What’s this software? What’s this thing I heard? Hey, my buddy who’s also a CEO, buys this. We should too, or we should look into it. I’m not going there because I’m bored. I’m going there because I have a need, because somebody referred it to me or somebody asked me to go look into it.
Tim Warren: There’s no window shopping.
Andrew Squibb: There’s no window shopping. So that means that the users 90% of the time really serious. So shouldn’t you stay in front of them? You know, I’m not super serious to buying a home because I went and checked out my buddy’s house on Zillow. Right? So Zillow Retargets. Me Yeah probably not. But a B2B software that can help my sales team grow leads and grow help them prospect. Yeah, probably a serious buyer for that. So you should stay in front of me.
Tim Warren: Right.
Andrew Squibb: And I’m not just on LinkedIn all day long. I have kids, I’m on other websites, I’m a sports enthusiast, I’m on those websites, I’m reading content when my downtime instead of, you know, when I don’t work, I’m reading about coaching and sports and my favorite sports teams. So staying in front of me. But that doesn’t mean that during the workday, I’m not a decision maker.
Tim Warren: Right.
Andrew Squibb: I am. But at 8:00 at night when I’ve just worked for 12 hours, I want to do something else. So I’m still really important. I’m just doing something else.
Tim Warren: You’re somewhere online?
Andrew Squibb: Yeah. So I’m somewhere on line so you could stay in front of me. So that’s what we talk to our B2B customers about. Is those the people that you’re trying to buy that trying to get to buy your products. They have personalities and they have lives and they’re online.
Tim Warren: And so retargeting is the best way to not be able to know and predict what their life is, but following them wherever they go. Because whatever, you know, whether their interest are cats, sports in your case or woodworking, it doesn’t matter.
Andrew Squibb: There’s still a decision maker.
Tim Warren: It’s going to follow them around.
Andrew Squibb: During their workday. They still make the decision, Who cares that they go build chairs on a Saturday.
Tim Warren: Right.
Andrew Squibb: They’re still right on Monday, they’re who you want to buy.
Tim Warren: You’re getting your brand in front of them. So this is interesting what I what I’m feeling and understanding tying the knot or the loop here between is whether it’s TV and choosing to do a very small amount of channels or grouping like just sports, right? Not not entertainment, not news, not just sports. There may be even certain sporting events and teams because the idea is I’m going to get my logo in front of them seven times. Ten times, 15 times, because then I’m actually going to influence a buyer.
Andrew Squibb: Correct.
Tim Warren: This idea with retargeting is the same thing, which is I can’t get them to stay on my site for 25 minutes and make a buying decision right now, but I can get them to my site for two minutes. I can get them to leave and come back using retargeting. But I have to be smart about having really good remarketing retargeting campaigns where I’m constantly getting these people back and staying top of mind, which is which is essentially the same thing of you’re buying shoes at 8 p.m. at night or you’re looking at lacrosse coaching.
Andrew Squibb: Yeah.
Tim Warren: And this ad pops up again. You’re like, Oh, okay. And you’re limbic subconscious brain sees this. Add one more touch point.
Andrew Squibb: Yep. One more touch point, right? Yep. And then they call me. Or then they when they do put great content on LinkedIn, right? When I am engaged, I’m going to read it. I’m going to probably ask questions. I’m going to send it to somebody and say, Hey, what do we think about this? Now we’re going, now I’m engaged. Now I’m a little bit farther down the funnel.
Tim Warren: Right.
Andrew Squibb: Then when I get an email or a call from them, we’re at a pretty tight window, right?
Tim Warren: So you have a better relationship with the brand.
Andrew Squibb: Yeah, I do.
Tim Warren: So what are some other while we kind of as we kind of pivot through this, because I think what what Chris has done, which I think is really smart and their company has grown a lot, right? The company has doubled in size. So so something his idea here must be working. Some things are working. But the takeaways I have there is pick fewer channels and go deeper and go better in those fewer channels than spreading out and being all things to all people. What are your thoughts on that? Now we pivot into the digital arena.
Andrew Squibb: Yeah.
Tim Warren: Right. Because we get asked all the time from clients, what about social? What about organic social? What about paid social? What about TikTok? What about Snapchat? What about okay, we’re doing Google, we’re doing SEO, we’re doing paid. What about Bing? Should we be doing this? You know, there’s a million places to spend money online. What about email marketing? Right. What about what about outdoor out-of-home? What about billboards, programmatic? There’s all these things, right? So what are some things that you and your team, how do you guys answer these questions?
Andrew Squibb: The way that we answer them is. Can you do it enough to make an impact? If people are searching for your products and services or your industry enough more than they would be likely to receive an email.
Tim Warren: Right.
Andrew Squibb: Right. Again, one email one time is not going to get it done. You’ve got to email a lot.
Tim Warren: A lot of times.
Andrew Squibb: But if that doesn’t outweigh the search, then you probably need to be where the people are. We try to just make it simple and where’s the audience and where’s the audience not. And what can you get? What’s more valuable, is it running social campaigns or is it, hey, every time this keyword is searched for, there’s 50,000 searches. If I can go from getting 2000 people to come to my website or four, that’s going to convert way faster than having to send out 30 emails.
Tim Warren: Right.
Andrew Squibb: So we’re just asking these questions and getting people to think about these returns and then showing the data.
Tim Warren: Yes.
Andrew Squibb: And then letting it you know, letting it speak for itself. A lot of times as it relates to social, it’s the same thing is is your audience there? So when someone says to us, hey, someone said we should do TikTok, our first question is, do you believe your audience is on TikTok? I don’t, actually. And what are we then? Does it make sense? No, probably not. Is your audience the part of the 50,000 people who are searching for these five terms? Yes, it’s exactly. I want to drive traffic to all of those pages on my website. Well, then we should probably look at that.
Tim Warren: Probably.
Andrew Squibb: Right. If no one’s on TikTok, totally fine. And I think it’s just making them feel comfortable with like, it’s okay that you’re not on TikTok if your audience isn’t on TikTok. Right? If your audience is on TikTok, go do it.
Tim Warren: And the person who told you you have to be on TikTok? Yeah, they could be in a completely different scenario, correct? Different business.
Andrew Squibb: Correct.
Tim Warren: Their whole audience is on TikTok.
Andrew Squibb: Yeah, right. So, of course, you have to be.
Tim Warren: Oh, my gosh, we’re killing it on TikTok.
Andrew Squibb: Yeah.
Tim Warren: But then for you, it’s the idea is we’re killing it on this channel where our audience is.
Andrew Squibb: Yeah.
Tim Warren: You shouldn’t hear them say we’re killing it on TikTok. You should hear them say, I’m killing it on this audience, this this channel where all of my audience is. Well, yeah, it makes sense.
Andrew Squibb: That makes sense, right?
Tim Warren: Of course. And so for you, LinkedIn might be your TikTok.
Andrew Squibb: Correct.
Tim Warren: Right.
Andrew Squibb: Right. So we’re trying to help customers through that journey and through data and just through logical thinking of how are people coming to your website and show them what we’re seeing. And if they’re coming through Instagram, we need to tell them that. That’s the other thing we need to do is we need to be brutally honest,
Tim Warren: Right.
Andrew Squibb: So if they’re coming through that channel, we need to say they are coming through this channel, Let us help you do more. Hey, you might have had three sales last month on Instagram, but you only had five people come to the website, so your conversion rate is high. So stay there.
Tim Warren: Super high.
Andrew Squibb: But it’s not $1 million worth. It’s this possession portion of your budget.
Tim Warren: Right.
Andrew Squibb: And then the rest of your traffic came this way probably, right? Make your investment match the traffic. So I don’t know if that answers your question, but that’s what we we do we try to ask good questions. We don’t make it complicated. And the good questions are, where’s your audience? Is that who you want it to be? If you want your the audience that’s on TikTok, then okay, that’s now we’re talking about brand reversal and rebranding and repositioning ourself in the marketplace. That’s different than my audience is men and women, 30 to 70. Okay. They’re not on TikTok as much. So let’s go find them. If you don’t want that audience to change, that’s okay. Find the right channels.
Tim Warren: Or now you sell it to anyone in Montana. Yeah. Tiktok is no longer your audience.
Andrew Squibb: Yeah, right.
Tim Warren: Because it’s now banned in Montana.
Andrew Squibb: It’s now banned, right? Exactly. So 100%. If they’re in your top five states of sales, probably not a good idea.
Tim Warren: Yeah. If you’re selling cowboy boots in Montana, TikTok is not your play because they can’t buy from you.
Andrew Squibb: Correct. Knowing that kind of stuff and asking those types of questions.
Tim Warren: So I want to ask this because we’re obviously is a search marketing company, right? We focus on search marketing, but yet we’re talking about all these different things which we talk about with our clients helping you understand what TV, where should I be? What about social? What are some things? Why don’t we do these other things? Like why do we stay out of social, organic, social? We do paid.
Andrew Squibb: Yeah.
Tim Warren: But why do we not do organic social understanding that the clients we serve their audience could play there.
Andrew Squibb: We have made a strategic decision to double down where we win really well and where we can drive the best results for clients, and that is in the organic search space. The paid search space and the paid social space. And then now really sort of the content space as well.
Tim Warren: Right.
Andrew Squibb: And in there I think is is retargeting and remarketing across LinkedIn and some other channels. That’s really why is because I think we want to be the best at what we do. Just like we talked about with an advertiser where we said, Hey, if you know your audience watches Bengals games, you don’t got to buy all the TV just by that, right? Well, same with us. We do that really, really well. And so every time we engage with a customer, we can look them in the eye and say, we do these things really well. If you come on board and do these things with us, you’re going to get best in class. And so that’s really worked well for us is we can look them confidently and in the eye and say, for this investment, you’re getting the best. The best technology, the best engineering, the best thought leadership, the best strategy. And so we’ve doubled down there.
Tim Warren: Yeah. And I would add to that, we looking at it, I would say that each of these channels has its own algorithm. And we have just determined we at the company size, we have, you know, 50, 60, 70 employees. We just can’t understand every algorithm to the nth degree as much as we need to to really maximize results. And so we stay out of algorithms that we don’t truly know well. We know Google’s algorithm. We know Google paid and being paid and we know paid social. But these other algorithms are really different. You know, they’re organic. Social algorithms are different. Tiktok is very different than LinkedIn. Linkedin is very different than Google. They’re very different.
Andrew Squibb: Mhm
Tim Warren: Yeah. And I think it’s interesting because as we’re having this conversation, what I’m seeing is helium is taking the same approach, which is let’s not spread ourselves super thin and do everything correct. Let’s stay very focused where we can really win. We’re the best. Correct. And that sounds like this marketer that, you know, with a company that’s doubled, that’s exactly what he’s done with his marketing strategy as well. Let’s advertise in fewer places, but advertise there more aggressively and only do it in a way we can dominate because otherwise we spread ourselves too thin to win, correct?
Andrew Squibb: That’s exactly right. And I think it’s finding the right audience. And just that’s 7 to 10 rule. That’s been a rule since I got into advertising and marketing. And it hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s still the case. You know, you just said of seven times that was the same statement that was told to me when I got into it 15 years ago. Right. So that’s still real.
Tim Warren: It must be. Right.
Andrew Squibb: And so it’s probably right. You know, I would say and and I would say, too, it’s right in the sales side, too. Like you’re not going to get a prospect to say yes after one email. You’ve got to talk to them 7 to 10 times because of the competition. Well, same in advertising. So if that is true and it’s been true for a long time, then that model of doing enough right to where you can get 7 to 10 touches. If your budget is big enough and you can get seven to 10 touches in every medium in America, you should do it. But if it’s not right, then you’ve got to be smart about it. And where can I get 7 to 10 touches? And then? And 7 to 10 touches where my audience is? That’s right. Not just 7 to 10 touches where they have to be there and you have to know they’re there.
Tim Warren: Yeah. So we’re running out of time for this episode. But one thing I’ll say on this is one term I’ll use, Andrew, is this idea of a digital watering hole, right? So like the safari, right? Where should the lion if he wants to, you know, get dinner, Does he like spend all of his energy walking through the fields trying to find, you know, zebras or does he just crouch in the grass right outside the watering hole, wait for them to come to him?
Andrew Squibb: Correct.
Tim Warren: That’s what they do.
Andrew Squibb: Yes.
Tim Warren: He’s just like, I’m going to chill here. They got to drink at some time.
Andrew Squibb: Yep.
Tim Warren: I’m going to wait here. Right. That’s the same idea that we try to use for clients is what are the digital watering holes? Where are your ideal customers? Spending time online? Don’t create those. Just advertise and put yourself in the places where those people are going, right? So whether that’s organic search and picking the keywords, they already they already search. Rank there don’t create new ones. It’s very hard to generate search demand. Right? That is very hard, but it’s very easy to capitalize on it.
Andrew Squibb: Correct.
Tim Warren: Right. So it’s the same idea of knowing your audience, knowing where they are, and don’t try to promote that they should be on TikTok. Just go to the social where they play.
Andrew Squibb: Correct.
Tim Warren: Well, thanks for coming on. This has been fantastic and I appreciate the feedback. Guys, Thanks for listening. This has been the It’s all Just marketing podcast. We’ll see you guys on the next one.
