Episode 33: Shiny New Traffic Sources
There's no end to new platforms popping up and claiming to be the next great source of traffic to your business. First there was Yahoo. Then Google. Then Facebook. Then Twitter. Then Instagram. Then TikTok. Then… well, the list goes on and it will forever be growing too. So, how do you decide which one to test and how to gauge the success or failure of these new exciting ways to spend your marketing dollars to generate business? Luckily Ryan is here is to break it all down for us. TRANSCRIPT: Jon MacDonald : Hey Ryan, welcome to another episode of Drive and Convert. Today we're going to talk about shiny new traffic sources. Right. There's no end to the new platforms popping up and they're always claiming to be the next great source of traffic for your business. So, we're going way back first though is with Yahoo, then Google then Facebook then Twitter then Instagram now everyone's on TikTok. I mean I'm not but everybody is supposedly. Definitely feeling old these days based on these stats. Ryan Garrow: Yeah. Me neither. Jon MacDonald : But look, the list goes on and on. And I'm sure I've left a lot off of that list over the history and it will forever be growing too, right? So, what I'd love to get schooled on today from you is how do you decide which one to test? And how do you gauge the success or failure of each of these new and exciting shiny objects to spend your marketing dollars on to generate revenue? It's a lot, right? But look, with so many social networks and traffic sources popping up seemingly every week, how do you know if it's a good place to spend money? Ryan Garrow: The real answer is, always it depends. But that's always the answer we give everybody no matter what we're talking about in the digital marketing world. It's my least favorite answer but it has to be the one you give every time and with context. And when you're looking at all of these wonderful platforms and companies that you can spend money on the ads, I think the first step is to really understand what the platform is. Who's on it? What are they trying to do? What's their goal of being on that platform? Because we all really understand Google and that was always a pretty easy one. Like I'm on Google to find something either information or a product that's why I'm there. And it makes a lot of sense logically saying, "I get it, if I am selling that product or I provide an answer to that I want to show when they're searching for that." There's a lot of intent there. If you're selling houses you might not necessarily want to spend a lot of time on TikTok, generally. TikTok is skewing. It's getting older, I think, as young people blow platforms open like in Facebook and Instagram did and then older people take them over because I think they're being cool by getting on them. Jon MacDonald : I saw a stat today about Facebook that something like 70% of people over 60 are on Facebook, which is the highest user percentage base. It's crazy. Ryan Garrow: Oh, [crosstalk 00:02:57]. Jon MacDonald : We used to tell our customers you want to convert older folks and high income, you would advertise on Microsoft Bing. Because they're using Internet Explorer out of the box and not changing the default search engine, right? So- Ryan Garrow: Correct. Jon MacDonald : ... But now it's definitely Facebook too. Like it's crazy. Ryan Garrow: What's sad, well I'm not going to say sad, but you have to advertise through Facebook to really target Instagram. You have to use that Facebook ads platform like Joyful Dirt, which hopefully I'll be able to bring this back later to talk about one of my issues with the Joyful Dirt brand. But Joyful Dirt doesn't have anything going on on Facebook really. Instagram because we're targeting millennial plant moms generally, I mean obviously anybody can buy the product, but we get very little and to no interaction on Facebook and it doesn't work when we market on there. But at least you're understanding that, right? If you are selling arthritis cream you want to be on Facebook. And we've got a company that sells arthritis cream and does really well on Facebook. So understanding who's on it, where it's going, and then also just how they're interacting. If it's short-form video like TikTok, then if you're not prepared to make short-form video you're probably not going to be tremendously successful in that space. Do you have a personality? Like if you're just a brand throwing ads up randomly on TikTok with no face to the brand, I can't imagine it's going to do well. And I think in early on you've got these platforms that you have to really get into the platform, I think, and understand how you're interacting. And so if I was going to spend my money on TikTok step one is I would go join TikTok. Like I'm not there, I don't want to be there but that would be understand who's there. And in theory until you get in there you won't even know that, you have to get in there and start watching TikTok. You know I was nev...