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Posting more content doesn’t automatically mean better results. One of our favorite clients learned that the hard way after posting 156% subscriber growth in under six months. Such growth never sustains on autopilot, and figuring out why is what separates a good agency from a great one.
In this episode, Tier 11 growth strategist Thomas Mcnaught joins me to unpack the full growth diagnostic we ran for the client. We cleaned up messy attribution data, discovered 10-minute video ads with a 0.01% completion rate, and made the counterintuitive call to kill state-specific targeting entirely, letting Meta’s algorithm do what it does best.
The result? A 20-25% CAC reduction in one week, with more upside coming. We get into creative diversification, campaign consolidation, and why Google and Meta aren’t competing but assisting each other. Listen in and then review your ad account for the same red flags.
In this episode:
- The importance of building a true source of truth across platforms
- Optimizing Meta Ads using better campaign structure and data
- Why long-form video ads may be hurting creative performance
- How creative diversification improves Meta Ads results
- The dangers of overly specific state and location-based targeting
- Optimizing customer acquisition cost instead of vanity metrics
- How Meta, Google Ads, YouTube, and organic traffic work together
- Using media efficiency ratio and attribution tools to measure growth
Mentioned in the Episode:
Part 1 of the Case Study: https://perpetualtraffic.com/podcast/episode-792-156-more-app-subscribers-in-six-months-heres-how-we-did-it/
Tier 11’s Data Suite: https://www.tiereleven.com/what-we-do/data-suite
Download Your Copy of Tier 11’s Marketing Performance Indicators (MPIs): https://www.tiereleven.com/marketing-performance-indicators
Join Ralph Burns and John Moran every Friday for The Ad Lab Live: https://www.youtube.com/@Tier11/streams
Wicked Reports: https://www.wickedreports.com/
Listen to this episode on your favorite podcast channel:
Follow and listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/perpetual-traffic/id1022441491
Follow and listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/59lhtIWHw1XXsRmT5HBAuK
Subscribe and watch on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@perpetual_traffic?sub_confirmation=1
Connect with Thomas Mcnaught:
- Website: https://www.thomasmcnaught.com/
Connect with Ralph Burns:
- LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphburns
- Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/ralphhburns/
- Hire Tier 11 – https://www.tiereleven.com/apply-now
Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to Perpetual Traffic?
Have some feedback you’d like to share? Connect with us on Apple Podcasts and leave us a review!
READ THE TRANSCRIPT:
Bad Data and 10+ Minute Video Ads Were Killing This Account – Here’s the Fix
00:00:00:02 – 00:00:20:12
Ralph
They had experienced some pretty remarkable growth initially when they came on it to 11. Up to about 156% new subscribers in less than six months. And growth like that sometimes doesn’t always sustain. When I’m looking at old numbers, I can’t make the right decisions because I think a lot of people say, well, I just I’m putting out more and more content, but I’m not getting any more results.
00:00:20:12 – 00:00:40:10
Ralph
So how do you solve that issue? And I know this is a big change here that we’re making, but you need to trust me. We’ve already seen about a 20 to 25% reduction and that cost this week alone. So my intuition was let’s test this without any on there. If your businesses growth has stalled and you have no idea what to do about it.
00:00:40:11 – 00:00:46:05
Ralph
Well, today’s show is just for you.
00:00:46:07 – 00:00:47:22
Ralph
Hello and welcome to the.
00:00:48:00 – 00:00:52:11
Ralph
Traffic Podcast. This is your host, Ralph Burns, founder and CEO of To 11. And we’re.
00:00:52:11 – 00:00:53:14
Ralph
Going to be solving that.
00:00:53:14 – 00:01:15:16
Ralph
Problem, talking about that here today with our special guest. And hopefully one if I can twist his arm to be on here on a regular basis, one of our extraordinary growth strategist at tier 11 all the way from Scotland via I don’t even know what tropical island you’re on right now because you hop around so many of them.
00:01:15:18 – 00:01:36:14
Ralph
Thomas McNaught, welcome to Perpetual Traffic. Yeah, thank you for having me. And I’m excited to get to the podcast. And I’m hopefully you’ll invite me back again after this one. We’ll see how it goes. Well, it’s like one in the morning. Your time timer. 11:00. So where are you? Actually, this is like representative of how we sort of run things here at tier 11.
00:01:36:14 – 00:01:57:00
Ralph
You’re a digital nomad, which I’m very jealous of, by the way. Yeah, yeah, kinda came the digital nomad. I don’t live in Scotland most of the year. At the moment I’m in Thailand, but I did spend, I think the last eight years of my life and Indonesia, so, so Bali, but not quite the way that you think of when people think of Bali.
00:01:57:00 – 00:02:13:03
Ralph
I was basically locked inside of my house most of the time, not seeing the sun as you can see. How, how wait, am still, I don’t go out in the sun a lot. Yeah yeah yeah. Spending your days on the beach. Unfortunately, I guess you’re doing a lot of this sort of stuff, which we’re going to be talking about here today.
00:02:13:05 – 00:02:39:10
Ralph
And today is actually is a sort of a part two. It’s like a follow up of an episode. We’ll leave links in the show notes for this. We talked about a membership site which also has an e-commerce store. It’s actually a really interesting business that back in that episode that was episode 792. It wasn’t that long ago we talked about the initial results that we got for this client, and it was pretty remarkable.
00:02:39:10 – 00:03:00:18
Ralph
And we typically will see this after 3 or 4 months of working together. We sort of get our rhythm and all of a sudden things start to really move in the right direction. Especially now. A lot of the strategies that we’re doing on the Meta Andromeda side, and they have a dual business in the fishing space, so they have a fishing app, and then they also have an e-commerce store.
00:03:00:19 – 00:03:28:17
Ralph
And we’re helping them grow. And they had experienced some pretty remarkable growth initially when they came on at 211, up to about 156% new subscribers in less than six months. And growth like that sometimes doesn’t always sustain. Like it’s just because what you did before doesn’t necessarily mean that’s your strategy today. What what always has worked in the past doesn’t necessarily always work in the future.
00:03:28:17 – 00:03:48:06
Ralph
And obviously with the platforms changing so much, they’re very heavy on meta, you know, a little bit less so on Google. So tell us a little bit about the business itself without sort of giving away who they are and what they do. But and some of the challenges that they faced, you know, since you started taking over as the growth strategist with them.
00:03:48:06 – 00:03:48:21
Ralph
Yeah. Yeah.
00:03:48:21 – 00:04:05:21
Thomas
So like you mentioned, obviously there’s been a client of I was I think coming up to a couple of years now at least, and as you mentioned, they were grown quite quickly and for the previous year. And with that obviously you’re going to start hitting some roadblocks, which is what we want to kind of cover when talking about this.
00:04:05:21 – 00:04:27:16
Thomas
So one of the things we started seeing was the kind of go for some subscribers or membership for two different avenues. They’ve got the website, which is people can subscribe through their web platforms, so basically their website. And then I’ve also got their app side where someone can subscribe through the App Store, both Google and Apple app stores.
00:04:27:22 – 00:04:48:18
Thomas
So what we’re seeing for at least for 2026, is the website is kind of dying down, and we’ve been finding it hard to catch up on previous growth, at least so far in 2026, and still started making some changes, which again, I’ll talk about in a second. But on the outside were actually seeing more growth on the app side at least.
00:04:48:18 – 00:05:12:18
Thomas
But overall was still down where we want to be in terms of overall subscribers. And we’re looking to close that gap. And so yeah, that’s kind of how their business operates. They’ve got that side. And then the memberships came to feed into the e-commerce. The e-commerce kind of feeds back into the memberships. Majority of people do come through the membership ads and then they get offers inside the e-commerce aid.
00:05:12:19 – 00:05:34:03
Thomas
Maybe they get some free goodies every month since I’ve been here, like all the guys and women, and say they’re there and are always very happy to take on board what you’re telling them. You know that they’re happy to taste stuff. They just want good performance. They’re open to testing new platforms, new marketing angles, new creatives, and you’ve got a client like that who can really open up and trust.
00:05:34:03 – 00:05:45:21
Thomas
I guess the growth strategist and theater is an agency. It makes things a hell of a lot easier to try and get results. So. So yeah, that’s what their business does and yeah, and how they operate.
00:05:45:22 – 00:06:14:05
Ralph
So they’ve got a really interesting business. So it’s a combination of a membership site, app downloads both on site as well as through both of these sort of the app stores, through Google and through Apple. And then they also have an e-commerce business. So if you have any of those three things here and you’re experiencing any kind of, you know, stagnation of growth, which happens in businesses, it’s not straight lower left hand corner, straight up to the upper right hand corner.
00:06:14:06 – 00:06:35:20
Ralph
It’s it’s jagged like we deal with this all the time. And that’s why the growth strategies like yourself, like Ricardo and some of the other people that we’re going to have on here in the show, their job is to figure this sort of stuff through what we call the growth diagnostic. And the growth diagnostic is literally reinventing, like how you’ve done things in the past to figure out how you’re going to do them into the future.
00:06:35:22 – 00:07:02:09
Ralph
And you noticed a few things with the approach that was working. Well. After that sort of explosive growth, that growth started to stall. We see this a lot. And then it’s like, how do we figure out, okay, let’s look at the data. Let’s understand the business even more. Let’s go deeper into all the individual things that we’re doing in this case creative data traffic and sort of pivot to a newer solution.
00:07:02:09 – 00:07:12:22
Ralph
So tell me about some of the things that you were noticing as growth sort of started to stall, and what you’ve been able to do just in the last few months or so to sort of reignite that growth.
00:07:12:23 – 00:07:13:05
Thomas
Just.
00:07:13:05 – 00:07:13:09
Ralph
To.
00:07:13:10 – 00:07:31:11
Thomas
Like go back on how I kinda started looking at things, I guess is probably a good thing to cover as well, was we had like track and sheet set up and stuff, and we obviously got like wicked Reports and they’re in the data suite, which is all useful information. But sometimes I would like to see a breakdown in terms of like where the spend is going.
00:07:31:11 – 00:07:51:17
Thomas
So as it go into like app campaigns, as it goes into web stuff, what states it go into what creatives spend. And when you’re looking at getting that, it basically involves creating some sort of new report, I guess. So what I did was I wanted to break down all the Spain, so I built a custom sheet just to look at that.
00:07:51:18 – 00:08:10:01
Thomas
We pull all the data into that. We break things down by state, we break things down by web spend, app spend, and we basically use like filters on the campaigns while pulling the spend and the data across. That way, we can get a lot more accurate reading of where people are coming from. Is it the website? Is it the app?
00:08:10:01 – 00:08:29:22
Thomas
Say what states are coming from as well? So that was the first thing I really wanted to see. And from the previous reports and tracker that we were using, and we had a connection into HubSpot and but HubSpot was really nor the customer’s main source of truth. They’ve got platforms where people sign up for the website and the app side.
00:08:29:22 – 00:08:48:02
Thomas
So what I wanted to do was bridge that gap and connect straight to those platforms. That way I’m getting the exact source of truth, which is a lot of the conversations we were having on calls like these don’t quite match. These HubSpot numbers don’t quite match with potentially the, the platforms where people are coming into. So that was the first thing.
00:08:48:02 – 00:09:04:00
Thomas
And then once we get that information, now I can start to diagnose where I’m seeing Spain going, where the difference is in terms of subscribers compared to the previous years. And so yeah, that’s how I started the diagnosis of what was going wrong in the account.
00:09:04:01 – 00:09:35:21
Ralph
Yeah. I mean that’s that’s a problem because you’ve got different data sources. You have the app stores which are capturing those app subscribers, and then you have HubSpot, and then you have their e-commerce store too. So you’ve got sort of three areas which are your, you know, source of truth, so to speak. I mean, so you’re pulling information from like, you’re doing data pulls from the app stores and obviously from HubSpot, and that’s how you’re sort of generating, you know, the actual app downloads.
00:09:35:21 – 00:09:44:01
Ralph
And that’s a precursor to joining the membership site, if I recall this business model accurately.
00:09:44:03 – 00:10:05:11
Thomas
Yeah. So I won’t use the exact platform names, but I can I could kind of clarify what I’m talking about. So let’s say, for example, you’ve got somewhere where, like you said, someone signs up to the app, they go and say that our platform and that’s where all of your app subscribers go. So basically your two stores are connected that your Google Store and your Apple Store are connected to that.
00:10:05:11 – 00:10:22:23
Thomas
Someone signs up for whichever platform the information goes to their they’ve stored there. No, that’s your customer. You can email them, upsell them, cross-sell them, whatever, whatever it is you want, they are stored in that platform kind of kind of similar like Shopify, let’s say, if you’re an e-commerce store. So like you said, they’ve also got the e-commerce side, which is Shopify.
00:10:23:00 – 00:10:41:07
Thomas
That one’s fine because that’s the most common. And then the follow got like the web platform side as well. And the web platform, for their sake, we will just say something like, let’s say click Funnels, but it’s not collect funnels. But we were holding people in there, and then all of those sources were getting connected back to HubSpot.
00:10:41:09 – 00:11:02:20
Thomas
Now there’s a problem with that. And what I noticed was, let’s say, for example, someone does a test or on the store or let’s say you get duplicate people resigning up, then basically that information is getting pulled back to HubSpot. Could be duplicates, it could be test people. So you’re seeing an inaccuracy on the numbers that you’re pulling from there because you’re getting mixed information.
00:11:02:20 – 00:11:28:03
Thomas
And what we decided to do was go directly to the source, which in this case would have been Shopify, the App Store platform, and the the web store platform. Now we’re going directly from the sources, and we’re not getting that discrepancy. Sometimes, for example, you could see maybe 20 to 30 extra signups per week. Which of us is going to knock off your numbers and how you’re actually looking at campaigns in the performance overall?
00:11:28:03 – 00:11:36:17
Thomas
And that’s something I wanted to connect as soon as I was on board, because when I’m looking at the role numbers, I can’t make the right decisions. So right to get us what we change first.
00:11:36:22 – 00:11:56:02
Ralph
Yeah. That’s huge. So that’s like the data solution. So like when we talk about the growth diagnostic and the reason why we do this for any new client is we set up all the data like the internal plumbing. As my friend Denis, you always used to say, but it really is it’s like you can’t flush the toilet without the plumbing kind of thing.
00:11:56:03 – 00:12:13:07
Ralph
Like, I don’t know that. I don’t even think he ever said that. But the point is, is like, you’ve got to be able to set it up correctly. And it was set up correctly, but it wasn’t granular enough for your liking to be able to really make these decisions. Like, is it the is it the web store? Is it the App Store?
00:12:13:07 – 00:12:24:10
Ralph
Is it like, how are these getting broken down? And then being able to make those decisions to say, okay, we’re going to allocate more spend here or there. And depending on what the individual campaigns are it sounds like.
00:12:24:11 – 00:12:43:21
Thomas
Yeah, that’s right. And also making those decisions knowing that they’re accurate and understanding. Like again going back to the plumbing thing, understanding the plumbing under the hood, like seeing where things are coming from and then being able to quickly check things against the source of truth. To me, it was like definitely basically opened my eyes to see things a lot better.
00:12:43:21 – 00:12:48:15
Thomas
So once we’ve done that, I could start to look at and definitely things that were going on in the campaigns.
00:12:48:15 – 00:13:11:06
Ralph
So okay, so you clean up the the data side and it was it was pretty accurate to start. I mean yeah, you know, but it wasn’t to that level of granularity to sort of get to that next stage. So it’s like that’s the next sort of evolution of this whole thing. Then you started to notice a couple of things about their creatives, which they actually do all of their own creatives.
00:13:11:06 – 00:13:29:11
Ralph
And the founder is really good on camera. He’s actually hysterically funny and just a great guy. And so we have a lot of rich content on that side. But there was a few issues there as well, or a few ways in which you felt like you could optimize that as well. Correct me if.
00:13:29:11 – 00:13:55:23
Thomas
I’m wrong. Yeah. That’s right. So a lot of the creatives that were in the account was values, which is good. And we did break a lot of things down by state on the account, which is fine if you’ve got a massive budget to obviously split it across all of those states and you’re seeing performance in there. And so we had creatives for each state, and then we had ad sets for each state and campaigns as well, in some cases with evaded things up by top performance dates.
00:13:55:23 – 00:14:19:17
Thomas
But on the creative specifically, one thing I noticed was it was heavy videos like in the videos were like up to ten minutes long in some cases on a on an ad. So one of my suggestions was like looking at the whole rates and the drop off rates, and people actually watching the creatives was only seeing people whilst in maybe maximum like 10s on some of these creatives were upwards of ten minutes in some cases.
00:14:19:17 – 00:14:38:23
Thomas
And when we looked at the breakdown on the creatives, majority were like that. Majority of them were on the longer side. And again, nothing wrong with the creator of the creative was great. There was so much good content and say to that. And one of my suggestions was like, when looking at the creative and analyzing it as like, this could be like ten creatives and itself.
00:14:39:00 – 00:14:57:11
Thomas
Like, how good is the content you’re getting here? And basically like at the end they had like this testimonial stack of people talking parts. And I was like, that should be an ad on its own, you know, let’s break this stuff out. Let’s start putting this into the account rather than just like trying to put it all in one long message, which a lot of people like to do.
00:14:57:11 – 00:15:17:22
Thomas
But as we know, people’s attention spans are getting lower over the years. Like if you’re a tech talks coming in, YouTube shocks all of these like really quick, this quick content getting across to people. So that was one of the suggestions that I recommended, as well as getting some new images, which is kind of what actively working towards at the moment.
00:15:17:23 – 00:15:40:09
Thomas
Shorten shortening these longer videos and getting some nice fresh images and there and having that mix on the account. My next suggestion, which I’ll talk about in this week, is getting some carousels in there as well. So getting again, just some variation on the creative and not just having like long videos in there. So that was something that we, we started implementing over the last few weeks.
00:15:40:09 – 00:15:55:02
Ralph
So this is kind of the epitome of creative diversification in a lot of ways. Like you’ve got that heavy, heavy video, which is great, which is oftentimes the reverse, like most of the most of the client accounts that we first take a look at, they’re not doing a whole lot on the video side. They’re doing a lot of images.
00:15:55:02 – 00:16:20:22
Ralph
And we were just on a client account where what we started with them, it was all images. It was all like one specific image that had nothing to do with the product or sort of the end state that in that case the patient is trying to attain. But I’ve seen these videos like these are these are long and what I’m going to date myself here, Thomas, when I started doing this 15 years ago in the Facebook space, it was all long videos.
00:16:20:22 – 00:16:42:01
Ralph
It was all like 7 to 12 minute videos, believe it or not. And you would do all the things we’re doing right now with created diversification. You Jim it into one video. So sounds like and I know these guys, I know when they started. So maybe there was still sort of doing it that old school way. But that does work to a certain degree.
00:16:42:01 – 00:17:06:21
Ralph
That will get you to a certain amount of skill for sure. But now it’s about like bite sized chunks out of that. And then using that top of fundamental, the funnel, bottom of funnel strategy that you and I know so well, but really is by all of these individual pieces of content in a singular video, could be chopped up and used on their own because not everybody is going to get through it.
00:17:07:00 – 00:17:14:23
Ralph
Like in a ten minute video. What was the average, you know, retention to the very end? It’s got to be like less than 10%, I think is what you said.
00:17:15:00 – 00:17:18:07
Thomas
So yeah, I think I’ve seen one of them was like 0.01, which I think.
00:17:18:07 – 00:17:19:01
Ralph
So. Points of.
00:17:19:01 – 00:17:23:11
Thomas
Course it doesn’t. It doesn’t it doesn’t show you another zero on the.
00:17:23:13 – 00:17:54:00
Ralph
Get any lower than zero. Right, right. Yeah. So they weren’t even seem like those testimonial montages at the way at the end, which okay, so there’s a lift right there. So you’re pulling stuff out. You’re you’re pulling out the testimonial montage. You’re pulling out. I know the way that these guys operate, they’re super educational. And it’s not all about just selling the app like they’re selling the concept of like in those videos.
00:17:54:00 – 00:18:12:03
Ralph
I forget now, like in the first like five minutes. Is it just all like fishing techniques? Is it like what is it specifically and how did you sort of say, all right, we need to sort of start chopping this up with the exception of the, you know, the testimonial montage, which is, which is, you know, sort of on its own, like, what what what are they saying in those videos?
00:18:12:03 – 00:18:21:07
Ralph
Because I think a lot of people say, well, I just I’m putting out more and more content, but I’m not getting any more results. So how do you solve that issue? And sounds like they had the same issue here.
00:18:21:08 – 00:18:43:09
Thomas
The ads that are running the results of variation and they’re at the moment, and what they actually start with mainly as benefit driven from the app. And they’re actually calling out a lot of states as well. And most of the and most of the ads, which is something that I kind of called out as well, because we’re not getting spend across a lot of the states when we start looking at the data.
00:18:43:09 – 00:19:04:10
Thomas
So we’re making a lot of ads, like you said. And potentially with that, it gives the team a lot of work, which is something I call out, like, you’re giving me so much ads every week and you’re giving me these state specific stuff, but we’re really not spending on most of these ads because they’re state specific and because the spend is getting directed to better performance dates.
00:19:04:10 – 00:19:28:04
Thomas
But at the start, it could be something like, again, without going to specific, it’s called a certain benefits of how the app can help them catch more fish or benefit the fishing trips and community stuff at the start. And again, I don’t know if I’m getting too specific here, but they would zoom in on parts of the map locations in those states that they’re targeting, and those ones actually do well.
00:19:28:04 – 00:19:39:14
Thomas
And we’ve made shorter versions of those, and the shorter versions. Again, I’ve done better so far since we started running them, so but there is a mix. They’re all working together.
00:19:39:18 – 00:20:15:13
Ralph
Did you find and this is maybe part of the challenge. We see this a fair amount. And we actually talked about this in a previous show where people say okay, well the the algorithm is so smart, I can I should be divvying up all of my creatives for really specific, not only states, but cities and even like townships in some cases, because that’s going to resonate with people that are in, you know, Natick, Massachusetts versus Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
00:20:15:14 – 00:20:45:21
Ralph
Like with these guys. It’s an interesting model because it’s state run. It’s obviously it’s mostly on the on the coastlines because this is their particular app is for saltwater fishing. So did you find that some of the creative was a little bit too fine when it came to talking about, oh, I need to show images of South Padre Island versus Myrtle Beach, you know, and or did it really matter?
00:20:45:23 – 00:20:47:22
Ralph
Like what was your experience there?
00:20:48:00 – 00:21:12:10
Thomas
Yeah. So this is actually something we just shifted towards last week. We started making this change. So we were doing this state specific stuff in my guess I suppose was I was a guess like my experience I suppose was more I don’t see how this is truly helping when looking at the overall results that we’re getting. So my intuition was, let’s test this without any any state mention on there.
00:21:12:10 – 00:21:33:07
Thomas
And that’s what we’ve done. So basically we’re the same style of AD. We were only changing the start out to like the first three seconds. So for example, let’s say we’re calling out Florida in that ad. It would start with like hey, Florida or something like that at the start. And what we’ve done was we removed all of that and we created this all variation which could technically fall under any state.
00:21:33:13 – 00:21:53:12
Thomas
And we did have those on the account. But I said, let’s just go for that completely. Let’s just stop making creative state specific. And we put that in. And there was a big reduction in CPA over the last, at least the last week or so. And from what it was on the state specific. So putting those all together, what already dropped about I think about 20% in just from this week.
00:21:53:12 – 00:22:10:11
Thomas
So hopefully the trend continues as we’re getting fresh ads in there. But again, now the team don’t need to make, for example, ten different variations of the same ad because we’ve seen that we’re getting actually better results overall. So we’ve saved them a bit of time as well with that. And we’re getting better performance by putting everything together.
00:22:10:11 – 00:22:34:05
Ralph
So you’re acting as the creative strategist, growth strategist and sort of directing this whole thing. And like just from a logistical standpoint like this makes it a whole lot easier for them to create good content for you. Not that you don’t have a lot of contact because you’ve got a lot of like, you got a lot of stuff that we can post, produce and sort of chop up and put into shorter videos.
00:22:34:05 – 00:22:57:00
Ralph
But by making a Jacksonville video versus a Tampa video versus a New Orleans video, like, that’s a whole lot of video that needs to be produced. And your thought was and my thought immediately going to this, having done this for years and years, is like, you don’t need that. People don’t necessarily want to know it. Like they just want to see what the benefit of the app is specifically.
00:22:57:00 – 00:22:59:11
Ralph
And it’s not necessarily geo located.
00:22:59:12 – 00:23:27:15
Thomas
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And another part of that puzzle, I guess, was with the budget that we’re running, how are these getting sufficient spend on each state and that were targeting as well. And that was a bigger thing with me because you’re kind of being a bit sporadic. Maybe it’s making one sale here to sales here. And at the end of the week you’re only getting like maybe 5 to 10 purchases on on one of these ads, even that some are getting zero in some cases, you know.
00:23:27:17 – 00:23:47:19
Thomas
So my thought is, why don’t we just consolidate these campaigns down where we’re splitting everything out, put it into one campaign, make it all. Now, you don’t have your state specific, but still target those states that you want to. You want to hit, you know, put them in the targeting and then make your creative all and make sure the message resonates with every one of them at the same time.
00:23:47:21 – 00:24:01:23
Thomas
And so that’s what we’ve done. And basically now it’s spending a lot more efficiently as well. It’s choosing like we know the algorithm decides where people are going. It’s going to pull the purchasing from rather than, I was just in here, here’s an ad for that.
00:24:02:00 – 00:24:02:12
Ralph
Like.
00:24:02:13 – 00:24:04:03
Thomas
Spend on that, you know.
00:24:04:04 – 00:24:29:11
Ralph
Now we’re we’re just on another client call. And actually we’ve talked about this many times on the the ad lab lives that we do on Fridays. In a great example of this is that we have a client that sells GLP ones to using Glomma. And then I think, you know, a couple of other supplements. And I was like, well, let’s make sure that we put each one of those in their own separate campaigns.
00:24:29:11 – 00:24:52:16
Ralph
And so what we found is that there’s a lot of crossover between all three of those medicines through the supplements, like 25%. So it’s like the people will do whatever. Like you can’t really control them just because. Oh, this guy, we’re going to put a campaign for Tampa. We’re going to put a campaign for Florida. Just because it says Florida doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s better.
00:24:52:18 – 00:25:05:06
Ralph
If you can put it into a larger campaign where there’s more learning and you really let the algorithm do its work. Like that’s so much a part of all of these changes that we’ve seen, especially on meta within the last year or two.
00:25:05:07 – 00:25:21:10
Thomas
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And it kind of goes back to like, I know you talk about stuff on the ad lab with John and stuff and like it comes back to the messaging and what you’re seeing in the ad and who it’s going to resonate and what stage they are in. They’re buying decision and how well they know the business as well.
00:25:21:11 – 00:25:40:15
Thomas
And that’s important, right? Because you can speak to different people just in the ad itself, in the creative, rather than, for example, trying to put it all into a ten minute video and hope that each person gets to that stage of the video and that’s going to speak to them or give them that push over the line that they need.
00:25:40:17 – 00:25:50:07
Thomas
So yeah, that’s that’s part of the thought process behind that is can we get more creatives in the account and speaking to different people out of different stages?
00:25:50:10 – 00:26:18:04
Ralph
Yeah. And not necessarily where they live. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I have a friend who runs a similar kind of business, but only on Cape Cod, which is this tiny little section of Massachusetts. And all of his content is about Cape Cod. So but he has a membership site with, I think, 2000 members right now, all paying him 14 bucks a month.
00:26:18:06 – 00:26:40:09
Ralph
Like, it’s a great business, but he does very little as far as advertising. Meet with him for breakfast to kind of give him some ideas. And he was trying to do it by town, like in and around Cape Cod, like Barnstable, Hyannis. And I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, don’t target individual towns because you’re limiting the learning now with Andromeda.
00:26:40:09 – 00:27:00:00
Ralph
And yeah, that’s definitely the case here. So that I would imagine is going to get these guys to sort of that next level. And you’re starting to see some some pretty nice early results with all these changes here because there’s some pretty big fundamental changes. I mean, I count 3 or 4 biggies right here. So what are you starting to see for for results.
00:27:00:02 – 00:27:16:17
Thomas
Yeah it was it was definitely a big changes to the account. And I talked to one of this staff from, from the business and basically almost had to convince him. I know this is a big change here that we’re making, but you need to trust me. And he did trust me to be fair. And it has paid off so far at least.
00:27:16:18 – 00:27:51:00
Thomas
And again, still very low, but just looking like I talked about the start of the video here was one of the problems we were seeing was this web subscriber membership was was costing a lot more. And from that we’ve already seen about 20 to 25% reduction in that cost this week alone. So we’re hoping that continues. And as I start shifting spend across like from different because we’ve got three campaigns running as I start shifting spend across to what I’m seeing performing better, I think that will start pulling that down even more.
00:27:51:04 – 00:28:05:13
Thomas
And we’re getting these fresh creatives in that. We’re talking about more images, more shorter videos. And all of this combined is what’s kind of pushing the account in the right direction to hopefully then start closing the gap and get us back to that, that growth number that we’re looking to hit.
00:28:05:14 – 00:28:39:21
Ralph
And this is interesting because like, I actually had to ask you was like, are we doing post-production for them. What we’re we’re not there doing all their own creative, which is, which is great because they have a team. We’re leveraging that team. You’re directing the overall strategy though, and that’s the key. And that’s the thing that, you know, when I talk to folks who, you know, are on what we refer to as discovery calls, you can learn more over at tier 11, of course, is they need that they need that overall strategy because they’re not sure, like what they should be doing.
00:28:39:21 – 00:29:06:00
Ralph
And a lot of like our clients have an in-house video team, have in-house content producers, which is great. Like that’s a wealth of like it’s a it’s an overabundance. In some cases it’s almost too much. But it’s the strategy. It’s the stuff that you’re doing that Ricardo is doing. All our growth strategies to 11 are doing, which really give that guidance to say, all right, here we’re at right now, let’s do all these other changes here.
00:29:06:00 – 00:29:12:10
Ralph
And so so far a lot of those changes are really starting to make a difference in the account, which is great to hear.
00:29:12:15 – 00:29:33:04
Thomas
Yeah, definitely. And there’s also some I guess there’s some funky stuff that we want to test on the account is like talking about how the algorithm decides we’re wanting to maybe test like like we talked about where the algorithms actually getting that good, that we’re potentially testing the same ads with a different landing page inside of the ad set, which I don’t know if many people are doing.
00:29:33:05 – 00:29:37:00
Thomas
And it’s going to be interesting to me because we want to see how that works as well.
00:29:37:00 – 00:29:44:06
Ralph
So at a second, so inside the ad set, you’re running the same ad, but you’re sending it to different landing pages inside the ad.
00:29:44:07 – 00:30:06:19
Thomas
Well, not testing it yet, but it’s something I think we’re going to start testing. Obviously we made these changes last week, but again, talking to the team. So there’s a couple of things that the first thing we wanted to potentially try was a different landing page, but on the same ads and the same ads here to allow the algorithm to kind of make those choices and see how that performs, which I think would be a really good test to see what’s happening.
00:30:07:00 – 00:30:35:13
Thomas
And then the second thing was potentially actually getting some of those state specific ads back end to the ad set that is targeting all of them at the same time, just to see how it performs. So, for example, we’ve got an ad set with multiple states and but we may try, for example, a Florida ad insider there just to see how it does targeting, because my intuition is I think it may perform just as well in the same ads.
00:30:35:13 – 00:30:53:10
Thomas
It but again, it’s discussions I’m having right now. These are things that we’re potentially we want to test in the future, especially the landing page thing that’s probably going to get in over the next couple of weeks. The ad thing, maybe hold off a little bit, see how we get a read on the first stuff. But yeah, that’s a couple other, I guess, funky things.
00:30:53:10 – 00:30:57:01
Thomas
You could see that we could potentially will be trying in the account. You know, I think.
00:30:57:02 – 00:31:25:15
Ralph
Now with the meta algorithm and these guys are doing some a smaller spend on Google, which we can get to in a second, but it’s really more supplementary. It’s like all bets are off, like you don’t really you let the algorithm or meta especially Andromeda algorithm, let the algorithm do the work. If you think, all right, I’m going to send a state specific ad to a state specific landing page, and that’s going to get my result.
00:31:25:16 – 00:31:49:02
Ralph
It might be the complete opposite. It’s almost like reverse thinking in some cases. And now you’re saying, oh, I got away from that, but maybe I might try it back into an ad set that has multiple states for one state. So it’s all of this sort of reverse thinking that you can now start to do, as long as you’ve got the experience, because the algorithm ultimately will decide whether or not it’s a good decision or not.
00:31:49:04 – 00:32:12:11
Thomas
Yeah, exactly. And we actually had a call that both of us were on before this one, and the client actually said something that was quite interesting. It’s almost became an art rather than a science. Now, you know, and I agree with that. I think there’s a lot of creativity that’s involved in this. No understanding why the creative is doing well, why things are working and why they could be working together and complement each other.
00:32:12:13 – 00:32:22:06
Thomas
So I think that’s something that’s could help if you’re if you’re creative, like help the overall performance on the account, especially if our clients open to that, which is always help. Right.
00:32:22:07 – 00:32:44:16
Ralph
And these guys definitely are. So last but not least that just tell me about the Google spend. I didn’t realize we were even doing a whole lot. There is like what’s your like? Obviously meta is really where the bulk of the spend is, and this is 100 and 3040 or $50,000 a month. So this is not insignificant. Spend for a regional business really is in essence what it is.
00:32:44:17 – 00:32:47:08
Ralph
Where does where does Google fit into this whole thing?
00:32:47:09 – 00:33:08:02
Thomas
Yeah. So we have been trying a few things inside of Google. We’ve got a few test campaigns running as well at the moment and say they’re the main the main campaigns. And there are basically the the brand search for both the e-commerce aid and the membership side. So I split the two of those out. There was just one before, and I wanted to split the two of them out.
00:33:08:02 – 00:33:26:14
Thomas
So they came. That became higher quality and spoke to each different person, because someone who’s going to buy something from a fashion store essentially is different. For someone who’s going to sign up to a membership for a fashion application. And I wanted to break those out before they were kinda together. And that’s kind of done better so far.
00:33:26:14 – 00:33:57:06
Thomas
So they’ve got that saved on the Google, and they’ve also been testing some YouTube ads in there, actually, interestingly enough, and we’re really testing just this is more of an engagement play in seeing if assists and with the ads overall on the overall left, rather than saying, hey, we’re just looking to get a number on this, you know, like we’re running ads to the the videos that they’ve already got and say that a platform and getting the viewers up on on there and seeing how that basically engagement push is assessed.
00:33:57:06 – 00:34:13:21
Thomas
And overall, again, we only started that a few weeks ago. And so we’re starting to get a full read on it. And then the last campaign that we’re running inside of Google as well, on the membership side is actually display ads. Believe it or not, we’re running a display remarketing campaign for that as well. Got it. So yeah, we’ve got.
00:34:13:22 – 00:34:38:00
Thomas
We’ve got that running. Obviously that does really well. One of the trickier things where that is it does use a custom audience, which is a retargeting audience, because as a retargeting campaign, so it does find a bit difficult to spend as much as it could just because the audience is a bit smaller. So you find that it goes through its phases of jumping up and speaking and the sales or the memberships, and then goes back down for a few days.
00:34:38:01 – 00:34:42:09
Thomas
And yeah, that’s what we’re we’re also running that as well. And they’re right.
00:34:42:09 – 00:34:47:14
Ralph
And I would imagine that gets a lot of the last click attribution a lot of the stuff. Yeah.
00:34:47:17 – 00:34:51:07
Thomas
Most of it. Yeah 90% of it is. It’s a retargeting audience.
00:34:51:07 – 00:35:01:11
Ralph
And then. Yeah, absolutely. And in the Google like just breakdown from it’s about 150,000 a month on meta. But then the Google spend is not exact figures.
00:35:01:11 – 00:35:13:07
Thomas
But I would need to break out exactly to get you the exact number. I think it’s like probably 130 on maybe at like 20 on Google, but I’ll need to double check.
00:35:13:10 – 00:35:47:09
Ralph
So it’s it’s pretty consistent. I mean, without getting into exact, exact numbers, which is because I think that’s a good thing for people to think about because a lot of the folks that I talk to are so Google dependent because they are going after those, they’re basically fighting for their lives for those those really high value, high intent based keywords, as opposed to getting the awareness, creating the awareness and the consideration over on a platform like meta, which is obviously is a, you know, it’s interruption marketing, as we all know, that’s where you create the awareness.
00:35:47:09 – 00:36:08:05
Ralph
That’s where you can show videos, that’s where you can show all the good stuff that these guys are doing. And then the majority of this, we talked about this with Ricardo when he was on here. The majority of the Google spend is just really scooping up the brand searches for the name of the app. Yes. You know, he’s a name of the company and obviously doing the retargeting too, which is I don’t think we’ve really talked about that.
00:36:08:06 – 00:36:14:00
Ralph
Of course, those audiences are going to fluctuate a lot because they’re smaller, especially because of this, this business.
00:36:14:02 – 00:36:34:14
Thomas
Like that’s what people came the mess a law as these are the assessed each other heavily and a lot of people like to segregate it. And so my Google is doing amazing. But you don’t understand about that. Traffic has really been generated that that’s been generated from all your content on your videos that you’ve been making inside a matter, for example.
00:36:34:14 – 00:37:09:19
Thomas
And all the educational content like we talked about, like people are getting educated on these videos, which is why now we are a heavier percentage of video compared to images on meta, because they will go to other places, they will start googling you. Even a lot of people will start to down this dark funnel, I guess, of like searching on your Instagram, scrolling through different platforms, like there’s so much things that goes into it’s not just the case someone comes collects the ad and in Beijing or there’s like a big backlog, which again, something like Wicked Reports definitely helps that because we can see from start to finish where the first click was, where they
00:37:09:19 – 00:37:18:17
Thomas
collect in the middle, and then what they actually final click was on the ad or campaign or whatever we want to look at. So. So yeah, it definitely assessed each other.
00:37:18:20 – 00:37:42:18
Ralph
Yeah, yeah, that’s a huge point. And it’d be really interesting to see how this YouTube ad campaign does, because you’re going to be looking at that through the 211 data suite. We use obviously wicked Reports as the interface for that, and see how all these platforms interact with each other. And to your point, you’re going to see, you know, social engagement, you’re going to see social clicks, you’re going to see organic clicks too.
00:37:42:18 – 00:37:59:22
Ralph
And then you’re also going to see your AI searches as well. I don’t know if you’ve seen much in that way, because I’ve started to see that spike and some of the other accounts that we have inside tier 11. We’ve seen that at all with these guys yet, or is it lower volume and you haven’t quite seen it?
00:38:00:00 – 00:38:19:01
Thomas
I’ve not seen it on these guys account. Yeah, I did see it in a couple of other accounts though. I can’t remember which ones I was, but I see that AI that AI wrote the bottoms coming in now. So that’s obviously from your different platforms where traffic is getting generated. I think Riccardo was running some ChatGPT ads as well, if I remember right.
00:38:19:03 – 00:38:27:04
Thomas
I wish, I wish I could test some of that. I don’t have anyone open up in trying a few clients like you’re interested in. Interesting. I’ll do it for free, you know, let me run some chats.
00:38:27:08 – 00:38:29:04
Ralph
You just want to do it, right? Right?
00:38:29:05 – 00:38:30:01
Thomas
Yeah, exactly.
00:38:30:01 – 00:38:51:18
Ralph
Yeah. That’s. That’s what you get. Like, seriously. Like that’s that’s that’s the key I think to this whole thing is like a bottom line of all of this is that all the channels work together. And we set it a million times. We set it once on this, on this podcast and said a million times over on the ad lab, which is 230 every Friday eastern time on our YouTube channel.
00:38:51:18 – 00:39:09:20
Ralph
Check that out. That’s me and John Moran just going through stuff, that crazy stuff that he’s doing. But yeah, all the channels work together. And even if you were running affiliate traffic, we can track that. As long as there’s a click, we’ll track it and we’ll capture it through the tier 11 data suite, which is pretty cool to be able to do.
00:39:09:21 – 00:39:30:20
Ralph
Sometimes there isn’t a click like those YouTube ads. You’re not getting clicks on those, really. And a lot of your meta videos, like people are just stopping and not clicking and they’re like, oh, that’s really cool. And then because I stopped, I’m going to see maybe another one of your ads on some other benefit for the app or for the business, and that’s how the whole thing works.
00:39:30:20 – 00:39:51:22
Ralph
And ultimately it’s about looking at the entire landscape and measuring it through media efficiency ratio. If you have really good accuracy, you’re talking about, you know, cost to acquire an app subscriber, which is sort of there. That is there. North star, correct me if I’m wrong.
00:39:52:00 – 00:40:00:16
Thomas
Yeah that’s right. Yep. Yep. That’s on the membership site because the membership obviously assessed with the E-Com. Yeah. That’s what they drive most of the sales from.
00:40:00:18 – 00:40:27:17
Ralph
So if you’re not sure what we’re talking about with all these numbers and all these acronyms, you can check out the marketing performance indicators over at Perpetual Traffic for I understand what new cost to acquire customer is media ratio, all of this CPA, you name it, get all your good stuff over there. And of course if you want our help on any and all of this stuff, you can check us out at to 11.
00:40:27:19 – 00:40:50:08
Ralph
And if you’re lucky, if you play your cards right, as my dad used to say, you might actually get it, says your growth strategist. So anyway, yeah, thank you so much for coming on today. This is awesome. And I think I will bribe you to come back on and talk about sort of the next stage of this or anything else that’s going on with the ad.
00:40:50:10 – 00:40:51:14
Ralph
Was great to have you on.
00:40:51:15 – 00:40:57:22
Thomas
Yeah. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me on. Look forward to the next one. If you do choose to invite me on again.
00:40:58:00 – 00:40:59:04
Ralph
I think it.
00:40:59:06 – 00:41:00:00
Thomas
To be nice.
00:41:00:06 – 00:41:21:20
Ralph
Yeah, yeah. We get all the foreign accents here with the groceries. We got the Netherlands accent with the Ricardo. We got the Scottish accent with you. And then I just got, like, the annoying Boston accent. So anyway, thank you all for listening to this week’s show. Of course, wherever you listen to podcasts, please leave us a rating and or review.
00:41:21:22 – 00:41:43:11
Ralph
We really do appreciate that we helps us get this thing out to marketing people like yourselves, marketing for executives to learn how to do this stuff the right way. But of course, like I said, if you need our help, you can check us out over at 211. So all the links we mentioned here today are over at Perpetual Traffic com.
00:41:43:12 – 00:41:55:11
Ralph
So on behalf of my amazing guest host Thomas McNaught. Coming back soon enough. Next month. Till next show, everyone. See ya. Thank you.
