Are you struggling to reach more customers and scale your business?
Do you want to use paid marketing but are afraid you don’t have the budget?
In this episode, Samantha chats with Robert Brill, CEO of Brill Media and dives into the world of paid marketing. Robert shares his insights into the power of paid advertising for businesses of all sizes and shares some valuable information that could transform your approach to paid marketing.
He breaks down the concept of product-market fit, the importance of testing, and practical steps to craft compelling ad campaigns. Tune in to learn how to use paid marketing to reach your target audience, optimise your ads, and achieve your business goals.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- Is paid marketing for you? (00:58)
- Using sprint testing to take the guesswork out of your creative (03:28)
- How to combine problem and solution statements for effective ads (05:24)
- The difference between goals and strategies in marketing campaigns (08:39)
- Knowing your platforms inside-out (12:49)
- The 3 metrics that matter most in Meta ads (14:23)
- Why videos don’t always trump still images (17:17)
- Can Meta misidentify your ideal customer? (21:03)
QUOTES
“What people actually want, what they dearly want, are solutions to their problems. And so with so many messages being delivered to any given individual daily, the way you break through all that noise, all that clutter, is you communicate the problem statements.” – Robert Brill
“You tell them the problem that they’re facing, and they will automatically pay attention to you because that’s what they’re looking to solve. So you start with problem statements, and then you give them solution statements. You have this problem, we have this solution.” – Robert Brill
“It takes 10 times as long to create a good video as it takes to create a good image. I’d rather you make an amazing image and make 20 of them than one subpar video. You’ll get a far better performance that way.” – Robert Brill
“We’re told video wins, video is better, and it just holds people back because they’re afraid of getting it wrong or don’t know how to get cut through. Just create some images and get going. – Samantha Riley
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ABOUT ROBERT BRILL
Born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, Chad quickly developed a strong background in athletics, nutrition and performance psychology. For the last 16 years however, Chad’s focus has shifted to include financial planning and investment coaching. As Dave Ramsey’s SmartVestor Pro, Chad owns a boutique financial planning firm – Veritas Wealth Management, that manages $500 million dollars and serves several hundred families across the US. In addition to finance, he regularly teaches and speaks on fitness and faith, seeing these as all important aspects of a purposeful and abundant life.
WHERE TO FIND ROBERT BRILL
- Website: https://brillmedia.co/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertbrill/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BrillMediaUS/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brill_media/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/brill_media
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brill_media
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@BrillMediaco
CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA RILEY
Facebook: Samantha Riley
Instagram: @thesamriley
LinkedIn: Samantha Riley
Twitter: @thesamriley
TRANSCRIPTION
Samantha Riley 0:02
Welcome to today’s episode of Influence By Design. I’m your host, Samantha Riley. And today I have invited Robert Brill to talk to us about paid marketing. So welcome to the show. Robert. I’m super excited to have you here with us today.
Robert Brill 0:17
Thanks for having me, Samantha. I appreciate that.
Samantha Riley 0:20
So excited, I’m tripping over my words. It’s a nice early time for me here, you’ve got the afternoon shift. So I’m a little bit jealous. But let’s dive straight in. This is your zone of genius, paid marketing. There’s a lot of people listening that are like running paid ads, there’s also going to be a lot of people listening that are afraid to even step into the arena of paid marketing. Can you start off by telling us why paid marketing is something that we need to be doing in our business?
Robert Brill 0:58
It’s the most direct and scalable way of growing a business. There’s two, there’s two real good reasons to run, to buy advertising space. And so when we talk about buying advertising space, we’re talking about, you’re spending money, it could be $20, it could be 2000, it could be $2 million, you’re spending money to deliver a message. Typically we associate advertising with commercials on television, Hulu, Roku, etc. Those are sort of big brand advertisers. But by the way, everyone listening can also run those ads for like five, $600 as well, a month, you have access. When you’re boosting a post on Facebook, you are advertising, you’re spending money to deliver a message. And this then applies to Google, to TikTok, to LinkedIn, to local news and sports sites, national sports and news sites etc. So there’s two good reasons why you should be spending money to deliver your message. Number one, you know the messages that work that get people to spend money with you. And now you need more eyeballs on those messages, so you can earn more money. Number two, so that would be called when you have product market fit, you know what to say and how to say it and how to price your business in a way that people are going to actively spend money with you. Alternatively, you don’t have product market fit. And you want to use a testing framework, a series of $25 testing, sprints, sprint testing, I call it, to understand what your customers want from you right now. Those are the two big reasons, to run ads to drive outside results for your business, or to understand exactly what your customers want from your business.
Samantha Riley 2:52
I’ve had people contact me, and actually happens all the time with people that say, oh, you know, I want to run Facebook ads. And just one quick little conversation with them, I asked because they come to me, I want Facebook ads because they need more leads. But through that conversation, it gets very, very clear that they don’t know who their ideal client is, that they don’t know who their market is, that they’re really not very clear on what their product is. So you were talking about, you know, using ads to get that product, to find that product market fit. How do you bring those two worlds together?
Robert Brill 3:28
You basically conduct a series of six sprint tests as a start. So the sprint test is, what you’re looking for is to understand the problem statements that your customers are facing. Most people, dare I say, no one wants to be marketed to, no one wants to see messages bombarding them saying, buy this, we’re the best, we’re better than the competitors. Here’s all the features and capabilities. What people actually want, what they dearly want are solutions to their problems. And so with so many messages being delivered to any given individual daily, the way you break through all that noise, all that clutter, is you communicate the problem statements. You tell the customer even better than they can, what’s in their heart and soul, the thing that keeps them up at night, the thing that they want to solve, the thing that’s going to give them health, wealth, or happiness. You tell them the problem that they’re facing, and they will automatically pay attention to you because that’s what they’re looking to solve. So you start with problem statements, and then you give them solution statements. You have this problem, we have this solution. And then you pair all that stuff up with the right images or video and you have a winning ad combination. And you can do this with a series of $25 tests and the process to go through this is number one, listen to your sales calls, listen to where people are expressing problems, or go to social media and talk about, read the language that people say when they’re expressing problems about the thing that you solve for, or go to AI, and ask it, what are the types of problems your customers are facing. Once you understand the problems then you can go into Meta, and conduct a series of tests, and you will get maybe three to five different problem statements that resonate for 20, after just spending $25. And then you can craft the solution statements to those problems for another $25. And then test some images for another $25. And for under $100, you start to understand exactly what your customers want from you. And then step two, is start running those as ads, wherever you think your customers are. Now, your customers could be on Meta, they could be on LinkedIn, they could be on Google, wherever your customers are. But let’s just say your customers are in Meta right now. You set up your ad campaign to optimise to the business objective. If you’re b2b, you’re generating leads most likely. If you’re business to consumer, you’re generating sales. So if you’re a coach or a consultant, you optimise your campaign to a lead. And there’s two ways to attract leads, you can drive them to your website, or you can have people fill out a form. And the beauty of Facebook is they let you ask 15 different questions. And you never have to leave Facebook, the user clicks, they need, they have to answer 15 different questions. And then the form is submitted. All that data goes into your CRM, and you start to understand exactly who your prospective customers are and what their problems are. And you’ve started to sell them before they even had a phone call with you. That’s the process.
Samantha Riley 7:06
I love it. I love the idea of doing those tests. In those tests, just to make this super, super clear, so you’ve got your tests, have your problem statements, your solution statements, your you know, your video, your pic, your images. Are you actually in those ads, talking about your product?
Robert Brill 7:29
No, you are a little bit. Okay, so our business, the customer that we actively market towards are agencies. We work with businesses directly, but when we spend money, we’re spending money to attract agencies because they don’t have just one client, they have like 20 clients. I want to attract 20 clients with one call rather than 10. So I say, you know, we say language like outsourced media buying for agencies. And by the way, media buying just means we’re buying advertising space, it could be outsourced ad buying for agencies, or white label media buying. So that’s just the headline thing, a little bit at the bottom. The text at the top is the problem statement. The image is the problem statement is the image that resonates for that problem statement.
Samantha Riley 8:18
Love it, love it. Love it. You talk a little bit about goal and strategy, and not starting any marketing campaign without a goal and a strategy. What is that? Can you explain the difference between the goal and the strategy in relation to paid marketing or advertising?
Robert Brill 8:39
Yeah, so the goal is where you want to get to, it’s in one year or five years or 20 years, like what’s the location you’ll be? Where will you be? It’s like a travel plan. I’m in Los Angeles, I want to get to New York. Okay. My goal is New York. The strategy are the types of decisions you need to make in order to achieve your goal. I’m in Los Angeles, I want to get to New York, well, I could fly. I could drive. I could walk. I could take the train. If it’s important for me to get there tomorrow by 6am, I fly, one decision. Second decision, do I pay extra for premium? Or do I scrunch up in the economy? What time is my flight? Those are all the strategic decisions you need to make. And then you get into tactics which are okay, how do I figure out what time I want to fly? Well, I need to work backwards. So your strategy, your KPIs, your goals, and your strategies. If you don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish with your business, it’s going to be hard to make decisions and know the right decisions you make because you’re aimless. So with our clients, we talk about this goal and having a strategy to achieve that goal, because it helps us do our job better. Oftentimes, clients will come to us with conflicting goals. Hey, we want more video views. But by the way, we also want more sales. You can only have one. So what’s more important to you, sales or video views? Because when I go and make a decision inside Meta, I set the objective for sales. If you tell me you want sales, but if no, your boss says you need 5 million video views on a video, and that’s how you’re gonna get your bonus, let’s say if you’re if you’re not the business owner, you’re a manager, then we’re going to do everything we can to ensure you get over 5 million video views because that’s what’s going to make you happy. So having a goal helps us achieve success for our clients. And it’s often just asking the question that becomes incredibly powerful. We’re like therapists, we can guide you a little bit. But just by asking the question, it opens up a whole world of opportunity and dialogue that maybe our clients hadn’t considered before.
Samantha Riley 11:07
So I’ve got a question about what you use. This is really random, you use that example of 5 million video views over sales. My brain has had a sniff out. Why would we want 5 million video views over sales? There’s something I’m missing here.
Robert Brill 11:23
Yeah, because you’re a mid level, you’re a brand that just got acquired. And the brand that just got acquired has several marketing managers. And the marketing manager say, hey, we think we’re gonna get more sales by getting 5 million video views. Okay, so you are contracting with me to get you 5 million video views. And then you’re gonna be dissatisfied when you don’t get as many sales as you liked.
Samantha Riley 11:53
Okay, cool. Good. I’m glad my brain went there, then.
Robert Brill 11:57
Because I could have gotten you one and a half million video views and a ton more sales.
Samantha Riley 12:02
And that’s why you need to know what your goal is. I’m so glad I asked that question. So the sprint testing that you’re talking about. Let’s go back to that, because I think this is really interesting for people to dip their toe in and really get some, start to understand the data that comes out because this is what we need right, to to move our move the needle on our paid marketing. What is some of the data, or what is some of the basic data that we need to pay attention to? Because it’s not just getting a conversion rate or getting a sale. What do we need to be looking at?
Robert Brill 12:49
Yeah, there’s a few different metrics, you know, there’s an abundance of data and information in digital marketing. A lot of it can go by the wayside for most businesses. You know, at the end of the day, understanding the mechanics of how these platforms work is going to be a big step. So when you look at data, it’s knowledge. When you look at, so like the knowledge is, you know, on Meta, one of the key craziest things you’ll ever hear, which makes no sense logically, but it makes perfect sense, if you’re a practitioner of it, is that some of the best campaigns we’ve ever run have broad targeting, age, gender and location, not keyword interest, not behaviours, not look like, not retargeting, because metas algorithm is set up to understand exactly what people are interested in right now. The keyword and behavioural targeting capabilities that they have is like 2017 technology. Like, you have an iPhone from 2017. Does it still work? Yeah, it’s good. But your 25th year 2025 or 2024 iPhone is like, amazing, right? Yeah. So you want to understand in terms of data and knowledge, you want to first understand what works in these platforms right now. When you look at metrics you have like, engagement rate, likes, views, view count, click through rate. There are a few key metrics that are particularly important for Meta and you know, when you buy ads on Google, on LinkedIn, on TikTok, et cetera. But let’s focus on Meta because it is one of the most valuable advertising opportunities in the marketplace across the world. The key things you need to know about Meta are the following. Your CPM, your cost per thousand impressions, all other things being equal. The higher your CPM, the worse your ads are. It’s an annoyance tax. If your ads are not good, Meta penalises you with a higher CPM, which means instead of getting 1000 impressions for, let’s say, $20, you’re getting 1000 impressions for $40. And it costs you twice as much to get those impressions. All things being equal, great ads have a lower cost, and they have a higher click through rate. When you look at click through rate, and you look at CPM, you also get a CPC. And so the idea fundamentally is understanding how to read those three data sets and having the context for what’s good and what’s bad, is massively helpful to understand where to go with a campaign. And the last thing I’ll share with you is on this idea of retargeting. Retargeting is a staple, retargeting is when someone visits a site for shoes. And then you go to five other places on Facebook, on the news, etc. And you see the ad for the same shoe you just looked at. It’s a staple in digital advertising. You don’t need to turn on retargeting on Meta, because it does it for you. And you know it does it for you because your frequency, the number of times one person sees an ad is higher than one. If your frequency is two, then you know everyone who saw the ad saw it twice. Which means Facebook is doing the remarketing for you. Those are the metrics, everything else is good. Could be, you know, it’s like the edge cases, like 80% of the workload is going to come on the CPM, the CPC, and the CTR. And like 20% of the workload is like these edge cases that matter or only in some situations, depending on your goals.
Samantha Riley 16:49
In regards to images versus video, is there a standalone like, this is the way to do it? Or do you see a big difference between video working for some people, images working for some people? I mean, I know I understand that it’s something to test, you did talk about that earlier. But as a general rule, are you saying that something stands out more above the other? It’s just whatever goes.
Robert Brill 17:17
It’s whatever goes. And here’s the thing. We’ve got to look at practical, the practicality of running an advertising campaign. And when I say an advertising campaign, it could be your $200 a month, it could be your $200,000 a month, like the same exact problem happens at the Fortune 500 level as it happens at the small business level, which is I don’t have the time slash or I don’t have the money, or I don’t have the interest to do all this work to create a bunch more videos because it takes 10 times as long to create a good video as it takes to create a good image. So the first thing to consider is that performance on images is great, performance on video, I’d rather you make an amazing image and make 20 of them than like one subpar video. You’ll get a far better performance that way. So the process would be, you test a problem statements, you then find one or two that are exceptional. And then you create imagery that is directly connected to those problem statements like customised and maybe includes the problem statements. And then you prove that out, and then you make a video. Because it’s the most expensive, most time, time cost. It’s just harder to do. So make that the last thing you do. Unless your business is like you’re a videographer and creating videos for you is as easy as, you know, a fifth grader using Canva, you know, like if that’s who you are, then yes, use video.
Samantha Riley 19:01
You know what I love about that, is that creating the video can hold so many people back, you know, we’re told video wins, video is better, and it just holds people back because they’re like, I’m afraid of getting it wrong or I don’t know how to do this so that it gets cut through. Just don’t, just create some images and get going.
Robert Brill 19:22
And get going. The data is going to be there, you could be incredibly successful, without video ads. Now I’m not talking about your video sales letter. That’s going to be important in some parts of your funnel. But you will make your life so much easier when you focus on ads first, establish ads first.
Samantha Riley 19:45
Love it, love it. You’re talking about not using any specific interests. I can’t think of any, like anything else like, you’re just saying age, gender, location for your ads. Yes. How often does … What’s my question? Ria, you might have to do some editing here, PS. Where do I wanna go with this?
Okay, when you’re setting your ad up in the back of Meta, and it gives you a lot of different, a lot of different questions that ask about interests, about all sorts of things, you’re saying just putting in age, gender, location. How often is it that Meta gets this wrong if you get your creative wrong? Like, how much are you, I guess, handing over to them with the chance of them actually getting it wrong? Does that actually mess up your ads down the track? Does that make sense?
Robert Brill 21:03
It does make sense. Your creative has to address your customer, it has to be very clear who your customer actually is out of your creative. That’s it. Like, if you’re, you know, if you need business growth, or if your clients are entrepreneurs and founders, making over 2 million, doing $2 million in revenue or higher. You may be fried by calling out money, depends on your situation and your business. So maybe you can’t call out $2 million. But you can say high net worth founders or early stage founders in your ad, you can call them out. Your ad has to be relevant to your customer, because the ad creative does the targeting. So if you’re creating an ad that tells me you’re an accountant, but you actually do something completely different than it’s a creative issue. It’s all, it always comes back to creative. The algorithm is so powerful on Meta, on Google, on TikTok, they need to give it a little bit of information, place your pixels, place guardrails, which is what age, gender, and location is, you’re placing guardrails. And then you’re saying algorithm, do your thing because the algorithm is far better than any one individual and by the way, and by the way, Meta designed its platform to be used that way. So if you want to make it work, do it the way it says that it should be used.
Samantha Riley 22:42
I love this because back in the day, it was all about making sure you got the right targeting and being super, you know, clever about you know, this, then that or if this then that. And, you know, that was all that. But I love it now that it’s more about the creative and getting that right. So that’s really cool. I want to ask about podcast ads, because this is something that I get asked all the time. How can I put ads out for my, to get more listeners for my podcast? And my very first question is, is it something that we even want to be doing?
Robert Brill 23:16
Yeah, I mean, I would look at ads, I will look at general content creation, right? I’ve been on TikTok, for example, and I like, listen to a whole hour and a half podcast. And I was like, Oh, where’d I find this from? And then I go back to TikTok, I see the same video I started looking at an hour and a half ago. So number one, post interesting clips of your best content. Number two, use these as ads. I mean, everything goes back to the problem statement. Right? You need a local perspective on a global topic, you know, but that’s not a problem statement. The problem statement is I wish I could get perspective on how to build my course and coaching. I wish there was a podcasts that talked about, that served horses and coaches, consultants. I wish there was a podcast that really talked to me as a coach and consultant or consultant, right, these wish I problem, I need. And that directly speaks to your customer. Like if you’re not a coach or consultant, you’re going to bypass that. Meta is really good at ensuring like so for most companies, if not all, but most companies, you need to collect email addresses. That’s the first step. But email addresses and you can market to people after the fact. So I would have an ad that captures email addresses. And I would be testing separate ads that drive directly to your subscribe, a subscribe page on your chosen platform, whether it’s Apple or Spotify, or a heart, whatever your website, right. So you want to test these workflows. And then the last thing you want to do, which is also part of the sprint testing framework, which is also very relevant to practically every business, is looking at a heat map of your site to see how far people get down the page before they bounce. They do, they submit their information then they bounce, like you may have the best landing page. But there’s like one image that you think is amazing, but actually confuses people, and confusion, they’re just bounce right. So you simply switch that one image, and all of a sudden, people are breaking through all the way down to where the great stuff is on your landing page. So you’re, you’re thinking like a scientist, you’re saying, Okay, if this thing works, what’s the next block in the purchase funnel or the consumer journey? Okay, we got the next thing to work. You know, you just keep going out, you knock, you knock down the block, and eventually you have a highly optimised funnel that prints you money. It’s kind of glorious.
Samantha Riley 25:51
Kinda glorious, or it totally is glorious. I’m gonna go the second one.
Robert Brill 25:56
Depends on your motivations.
Samantha Riley 25:58
But yes, we all can tell where mine is then going. So just then you were talking about getting an email address, which I’d always, I always do for any advertising I run. But I’ve never thought about this for a podcast. How does that look? Like you’re advertising, I have always been told to advertise the specific show because the show, the specific, not the show, the episode, I’m sorry, because the episodes can be different and interesting to different people. How in that are you getting the email address?
Robert Brill 26:41
You were just at a step of the process. Exclusive, you know, give something, give away something exclusive, something that maybe doesn’t exist on the main show and say the five best learnings for coaches and consultants from the last year, if you want it exclusively get it now, submit email address, and you get an email with that information. And so number one, you’ve shared with them that you have knowledge, number two, you have their email address, and number three, now they’re thinking about your podcast. The most endemic ways to market or advertise specifically to advertise the podcast is in other podcasts, right? Like, I agree. There’s a company called Acast where you can do live or you can do dynamic insertions of your ads into other podcasts, it could be promoting a podcast, or it could be any product or brand. But these are all like, it really comes down to your goal and your strategy. Right? Like, does it make sense for you to capture email addresses? It might, I would need to know more about your overall business and how you earn money, right? Where does the podcast fit in? Is the podcast the tertiary? Is it a marketing thing for your primary business? Or is the podcast your primary business? You know, and how do you monetize along the way? So, you know, you got to understand the situation and then apply the knowledge to any one situation. And by the way, you’re looking for testing options. And these sprint tests are great to understand exactly where you need to go so that you’re not spending 10s of 1000s of dollars on the wrong path. Now you’re in a different way. Spend $25 and take, go a quarter mile and see if it is the right way to go.
Samantha Riley 28:26
Absolutely. I love that. Because I think that there’s a lot of people that look at a show, you know, like a Diary of a CEO, the fastest growing podcasts in the world. And they’re like, well, we want it, we want to grow like that. We want those listeners. But what is the end goal? Do you want, you know, going back to what you were saying before, do you want more listeners? Or do you want more targeted listeners that will turn into clients? Or do you just want to be making sales? Or what is that and I think that that’s really important to know. Because otherwise you can really end up barking down the wrong tree for a long time.
Robert Brill 29:01
Yeah, and for Diary of a CEO, that’s actually the person I was thinking about when I saw something on TikTok and I listened to a whole show, one of their episodes. Yeah, I mean, I think for podcasting, there’s probably I mean, there’s probably several dominant or predominant methods of monetization, the most common you’re going to get views on YouTube, which are going to be monetised, you’re going to sell a course, and probably some coaching, like those three are going to be your best ways to monetise. I had a podcast for a while too. And my goal was to meet people and some of them would turn into new clients and they did.
Samantha Riley 29:45
Yeah, there’s lots of different, lots of different strategies in podcasting. And it isn’t just about getting new listeners, lots of different strategies. For people that are listening that want to learn more about you or stay connected so they can hear more about what you do, how can they stay connected with you?
Robert Brill 30:07
Yeah, so our website is brillemedia.co. B as in boy RI L L media.co, you can hit the Start Now button and reach out to us. If you want, we have a full five-minute video about the Sprint Testing and how it actually works in greater detail and some lead cost information from Facebook that you can see dropped our lead cost dramatically. You can email me or I’ll send you a link to that as well. It’ll be on your website.
Samantha Riley 30:36
Yeah, all the links for this episode will be down below wherever you’re listening. So you can find what Robert is talking about there. This has been, you’ve given some really great information here. What is one thing that you want people to walk away thinking about or knowing from about this topic, about paid advertising?
Robert Brill 30:59
You’re always testing. You’re just always testing and you need lots of iterative success. And you have to be okay with the failures too. I don’t talk, I’m not talking about big failures. I’m talking about you find something that works. And you put 80% of your marketing or advertising budget to the thing that works. And then 20% of your budget on to conduct a lot of small tests. And maybe one or two of those will work really well. And now you put more of your proven budget into these things that have shown a little bit of opportunity. But the work with marketing, it’s hard, it takes time, it’s arduous. And chances are if you have a skill outside of marketing and advertising, you’re probably, it’s probably worth your time not to figure out marketing and advertising and to spend your time doing what you are called to do. What your zone of genius is.
Samantha Riley 31:55
I absolutely love that, that was the best ending that you, that we could have ever picked. Definitely stay in your zone of genius. That is something that needs to be done. Robert, thanks so much for coming and chatting to us about this topic today.
Robert Brill 32:08
Thank you, Samantha
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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