In our latest episode of the Book More Show, we sit down with Andy Splichal, a specialist in search engine marketing, to explore strategies for optimizing online success. Whether you're a traditional business expanding online or a digital-native drop shipper, Andy's insights on Google Ads, Amazon listings, and niche marketing can help you shine in a competitive landscape.

Our conversation also dives into the outsourcing versus in-house team dilemma. We examine the advantages of working with marketing agencies, including their broad expertise and agility, and the potential growth benefits of building an internal digital marketing department. Andy shares tips on tailoring strategies for service-based businesses and leveraging tools like Microsoft Clarity and Hotjar to enhance customer experience.

Retargeting emerges as a game-changer, with Andy detailing its effectiveness across platforms like Facebook, Google, and Instagram. We discuss the role of personalized ads in improving user engagement and acknowledging privacy concerns.

As we wrap up, we're excited to discuss future possibilities and collaborations that can enrich your digital marketing efforts.

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

1. I explore the significance of search engine marketing in e-commerce with Andy Splichal, discussing the importance of optimizing Google Ads and Amazon listings for online businesses.

2. We delve into the decision-making process between outsourcing digital marketing and building an in-house team, highlighting the benefits and challenges of each approach.

3. The conversation emphasizes the need for effective website design to align with user expectations, aiming to enhance conversion rates even with high traffic levels.

4. Andy shares insights on using tools like Microsoft Clarity and Hotjar to understand user interactions, offering businesses a way to refine their online presence.

5. We examine retargeting strategies, focusing on their application across platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Instagram, and address privacy concerns related to personalized ads.

6. Email marketing is discussed as a potent tool for nurturing customer relationships and converting leads, emphasizing its role in maintaining profitability.

7. The episode highlights the use of books as marketing tools, showing how they can establish authority and credibility for businesses.

8. We consider the importance of infusing personality into marketing strategies, especially for service businesses, to differentiate from competitors.

9. Andy discusses the role of books in marketing, illustrating how transforming online content into a book can add value and lead to business growth.

10. We touch on future marketing strategies and potential collaborations with Andy, focusing on integrating books into ad funnels and website pages for enhanced marketing efforts.

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Website: True Online Presence

TRANSCRIPT

(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)

Stuart: Hey everyone, welcome back to the Bookmore Show. It's Stuart Bell here and today, joined by Andy Splitsholt. Andy, how you doing Good, good to the Bookmore Show. It's Stuart Bell here and today, joined by Andy Splitch. Andy, how are you doing Good, good, thanks for having me on.

No problem at all. I spend so much time talking to people on the phone, but it's usually just first names, so I've had a couple of shows recently where I've tripped over surnames, so if I mispronounced yours, apologies for tripping over. I just blame it on the accent, though, and keep going. Yeah, there you go.

Andy: Yeah, it's close, it's splical, but yeah, I've heard a lot worse, so yeah, no problem.

Stuart: I used to work with. I was telling someone yesterday I used to work for an American company when I was still based in the UK and I'd say oh hey, andy, it's Stuart here, is Bob there. I was supposed to give and they'd say, oh hey, joe, yeah, two minutes, I'll just get them for you. And the amount of time that people mistook Stuart for Joe. I don't know how we got to that, but it must be. But I just blame everything on the accent nowadays and just blast through. This can be an interesting conversation because oftentimes the people I'm talking to are people I know pretty well. So I'm kind of joining the conversation knowing what they do and kind of leading it in that direction. But we think it's pretty interesting because we haven't met before, so this is going to be a discovery for me. So why don't you start off and share with everyone what it is that you do in the organization over there?

Andy: Sure, yeah, no. I have a search engine marketing agency where I work exclusively with e-commerce companies. I have e-commerce clients. I run their paid ads, so their Google ads. If they're running their own websites of Shopify, a BigCommerce, a WooCommerce, or if they are looking to get on Amazon, I help them list their products on Amazon, optimize their listings and then run ads. They get traffic on Amazon as well.

Stuart: Ah, fantastic. So is that mainly brick and mortar businesses that are looking for an online presence as well, or is it often purely e-commerce plays?

Andy: Yeah, a little bit of both. I mean, there's some brick and mortars that are selling their store, but they want to expand online all the way to. I have clients who are just drop shippers and don't even have inventory or a physical location. They're just selling purely on Amazon, and so as long as they're selling online. Those are my clients.

Stuart: Yeah, and then you can do something with them. It's such an interesting space because, as the discipline has grown over the year, as the individual marketplaces have moved, as you get big players coming up Spotify now Spotify shop, if I know, was something that was around, but much smaller. When you go back, I guess five, six years, do most of the clients come to you because they're doing something already but it's not working as effectively as it could, or are a lot of people looking at moving in this direction for the first time?

Andy: Yeah, you know most of the people come to me through referrals. I've worked with somebody in the past. I have a vendor you know they are looking for either for a change. They have a marketing agency. It might be not doing what they want them to do, may not be getting the results they are getting, so they're actively looking for something. Some come through me, through the books I've written, so it just kind of it kind of depends.

Stuart: Yeah, yeah, it's so interesting, isn't that idea of kind of niche specializations. Probably both old enough to remember kind of internet marketing in the early days and you'd have single agencies that just did everything because the everything wasn't that much, wasn't that much to do. But when you think about an SEO organization or a print marketing or PR type company, if they're trying to move into the e-commerce space and also be specialists in that area, it's very difficult for one organization to be as skilled as they need to be in each of those particular channels and disciplines. I think much more it's the case that people are looking for experts in the domain for the very specific task.

Andy: Yeah, and I mean it really just kind of depends on your resources internally. So the clients that I work with typically are companies under $5 million in annual revenue, because if they're going over that then they have the resources to hire somebody who's an expert in-house. But if they're not making 5 million, I mean you're not going to afford what's the going rate Maybe $120,000, $150,000 a year to have somebody just handle your digital marketing. So you really, as a smaller company, best way to do it is to outsource to make sure you're getting an expert.

Stuart: Yeah, do a lot of the organizations that you work with kind of migrate in that direction? They'll kind of start off with you and then move to some in-house resources, or do they typically tend to, by nature of what they do? They kind of stay within that cost model of it makes the most sense to outsource this particular task and then they can insource other things that might be more in their wheelhouse.

Andy: I've had clients do both. I've had somewhere we do such a great job that they're able to scale and then they replace us, which honestly is a bit frustrating, although rewarding. It's great for them and I really develop a friendship almost with the clients that I serve because we're working as a partner to help them grow their business. But we've had that before where we've grown them to a level and then they're just like well, we want more control over it, we're going to hire somebody in-house and it happens. But a lot of clients will stay with us for years just because they found a trusted source. They don't want to deal with hiring somebody in a W-2 and somebody calling in sick and all the problems they go with actually having a physical employee.

Stuart: And the scope and the scale. I mean the breadth of experience you've got with both their inventory, their world, but also the other clients where some of those learnings naturally come through to just bring that back in house and then have 100% responsibility back within the four walls. There's risks to that as well. If someone is, you've got the pressure of making sure that you've got the right hire and then, if they're not available for whatever reason, if they move on, making sure that the corporate knowledge, at least in some parts, stays with the organization, at least there's a there's a service certainty that they get working with you. That is difficult to replicate internally, particularly if it's then going to just one person in a team and not two or three people in a team.

Andy: Well, certainly, and I mean there's so much more that, as an agency, you can learn by working in multiple accounts. You know you don't have to test everything in one account. You can. You're testing something over here. You don't have to test everything in one account. You're testing something over here. You're seeing what's working over there and then you're bringing it in and best practices and especially in. You know you're working with Google ads or Amazon ads. Stuff's changing all the time, and so it's important that you're changing too and don't just have a static account if you want to have the best results.

Stuart: Right if you want to have the best results. Right and, like you say, not only from the best results point of view but also kind of staying compliant, depending on what the business is, and making sure that you're not wasting money on types of ads or efforts that maybe worked a year or two ago but now aren't the most effective way of getting something. That ability to see that return on ad spend and make sure that the dollars are being spent in the right direction. Again, on ad spend, and make sure that the dollars are being spent in the right direction. Again, the breadth that you've got to be able to pick and choose the ones that are most effective. It gives more of a certainty to them than trying to replicate it inside yeah, no, for certain what the, as we're sharing this with people who are on our list.

They're majorly business owners but a certain degree more probably thinking about the numbers, slightly more on the service side rather than the product side. Is there any crossover between those two disciplines? The markets and the eventual message is slightly different, but as people are thinking about channels for service-based businesses, do you see trends across some of the platforms where maybe an ad type is more effective than others? I'm thinking about lead ads in the last couple of years seem to be more effective than bouncing people off to landing pages in certain respects, those kind of high category changes and kind of type changes that are applicable across the board.

Andy: You know it's interesting. So certain channels that we work with, nameably Amazon, not for professional services and when I launched my own agency, I had come from working with an e-commerce retailer, so that was really my bread and butter. But with many small business owners, I started an agency. You know a lot of different clients agency. You know you have a lot of different clients, so I had professional service clients and one of the things is, with a professional service client, there's not a checkout button, you're not buying a t-shirt, so being able to track the conversion and especially, a lot of times there's multiple touch points involved, so they see your ad.

You need to hit them again with retargeting. You need to have an offer to try to get you know whether it's a free report or trying to get their contact information in some ways so you can put them on your email list and then target them through email. So I mean it's the channel is the same, I mean Google is the same and it can be successful. But you really need to have a strategy more than just throwing your ad up and hoping that they're going to click on it and then call you for an evaluation of service or depending on what you sell, you know HVAC tune up. I mean there's got to be a lot more effort on the website trying to get conversion than just the ads.

Stuart: Such a great point, isn't it? Because I think sometimes people see it as a silver bullet and I'll run an ad and I'll get a client. But unless it is a product where there's an immediate transaction and some immediate return for anyone, where there's either a resistance or reluctance to make the call in the first place, either they're unsure of that you're the right person or they're unsure that they need your service, or they just see it as a big. They're opening the door to a load of questions that they don't really want to go down at the moment, unless there's that ability to see it in the longer play and track the attribution all the way through. It is a multi-stage game rather than just a bad result.

Andy: Well, and I mean, even if you go into e-commerce, I mean, it's not a magic bullet, you know. I mean you can send the right traffic, but if your website doesn't convert, whether it's e-commerce or professional services, you know there's a lot of work to do beyond just running paid traffic to your website.

Stuart: Actually that's a great point. Do you find that a challenge? You come in, maybe the conversation is from the ad perspective, but when you get there and start seeing some issues around the conversion side of things, does that rub up against your ability to deliver? Does that kind of give you problems that you then need them to resolve before it's worthwhile continuing? Or is it the case that you do your best to continue if there are things that they can't really pull the lever on, kind of, at what point is it not worth continuing? Because I guess it depends on each case, but at what point is that line in the sand?

Andy: Yeah, no, I mean it's a huge challenge. I mean, if the website doesn't convert, you can send the you know the most the traffic that should be going there. You know you're selling blue t-shirts, somebody's looking for blue t-shirts, but they're not converting because your website's not any good. I mean there's a problem there. The good thing is that you can get such targeted traffic that typically will convert, but it's definitely something you'll rub up against because it's, I mean, it's all about profitability and you can see how much it costs to generate traffic. If your website's only converting at a half a percent, it's difficult to be profitable unless you have a huge profit margin or selling high priced items. Fortunately, I mean, we're in. You know you can test easily and you can fix a lot of stuff, and there's things you can do where you can see how people are interacting with your website. You can make changes. You know AI has really been big into being able to do a lot of things, so there's it's pretty easily fixable, but it's an ongoing battle.

Stuart: Yeah, and it's a scope creep challenge that people kind of enter the door to your business looking and wanting the answers to one problem, but if you then reveal 10 other problems that they really ideally could do something about, difficult being the. You don't want to be in the situation where people want to shoot the messenger or your effectiveness is being hampered by something that's out of your control effectiveness is being hampered by something that's out of your control For sure.

Andy: You know one tool I'd like to share which would be great for e-commerce or professional services I've been using a lot is Microsoft Clarity. Have you heard of that? Oh no, it is great. Have you heard of Hotjar? Like? Hotjar was the same thing, where it'll measure, it'll give you recordings, it'll give you heat maps, but Microsoft Clarity is completely free, and so for putting that on your website and being able to see how your users are interacting with your website just gives you just a treasure trove of knowledge, and it's. You know, I recently had a client who they're having conversion issues. So the first thing I said is, well, let's put Microsoft Clarity on there. And they're like no, I really don't want to put that on, and you know, at that point there's not much I could do to help. I mean, you need to figure out why, what's your conversion issue? And being able to see how users are interacting either recording or real time is a great step to be able to do it.

Stuart: Yeah, recording in real time is a great step to be able to do it. Yeah, and with that it's an X-ray view into, kind of giving you some knowledge that you would just be making assumptions about otherwise, yeah, yeah.

Andy: You'd be surprised how often you're assuming stuff that's not going to be right, because you're thinking, you're the customer and you're not the customer.

Stuart: Right.

Andy: The customer is a customer, and so this is the way to really be able to see it.

Stuart: You've mentioned some AI tools before speeding up the process to fix some things, and that is one of the benefits. I find it's difficult trying to mark your own homework or edit your own copy because you're so ingrained. You can't put yourself in the position of someone who only has a one-on-one level of understanding. You're coming to it with 10 years of knowledge, 101 level of understanding. You're coming to it with 10 years of knowledge and even at a subconscious level. It's difficult if a button is slightly hidden or not obvious what it does. You've been going to that button for years, so you just don't see it.

Having something like this, it very clearly puts it in front of your face. We've used crazy egg in the past, which is okay. It's a similar kind of tool, but clarity. The benefit of free tools like this, these kind of Microsoft, google, apple, these big player presented tools, is that it just makes the implementation for the most part so much easier because they're going out of the gate trying to appeal to that big, broad market. So it oftentimes makes it much more straightforward for people who don't necessarily have the technical skills to be able to at least do something and get some insights.

Andy: No, on Clarity, Microsoft Clarity, I mean they have integrations for everything where it's really just a plug and play, and they send you directions on how to do it. So, yeah, very little technical knowledge is needed to get it on your website and running.

Stuart: And that's again another one of the benefits. We talk to service businesses all the time, and they're sometimes so from the book creation process. Sometimes there's this feeling of oh, I'm not really sure what to say to people or which particular we do so much I wouldn't even know where to start. But this skill set that you've got of bringing accessible tools to people and then we can talk about your books in a second but bringing this kind of knowledge and together in a bite-sized piece that helps people move their understanding one step down the track, that, I think, is one of the undermeasured benefits of working with service businesses that service business providers also aren't great at talking about Because, again, it's second nature. We think about it all the time. We don't think about the value that someone who's at the beginning of their journey would get from even something like clarity as a tool to use.

Andy: We just talk about it all the time because we're so familiar with it yeah, no, I think it's important, yeah, for professional services to know how people are interacting with their website, to be able to make changes. And you know, often especially professional services the website's kind of forgotten. You know you're thinking that the phone's ringing or you're thinking coming off Yelp calls, but you know it's important that you're communicating and getting clients off of your website if you want to grow.

Stuart: Particularly increasingly where people and their expectation is that they will be presented with a site that looks compelling and has sensible navigation and delivers the information that they want, if there's any. We talk a lot in the books about this kind of idea of the title gets people to raise their hand in the first place is yes, I kind of want this overall solution, but then the table of contents reinforces that, and even with readership rates being low, the table of contents is very often consumed and we want to achieve that same kind of yes, I'm in the right place. I do want this service. I can see the direction it's going. There's an obvious next step.

Let me just jump to that next step and the same with people's analogy right, it's that moving along, it's they voluntarily jumped on the train and all we need to do is keep the train going to the destination and not give them a reason to jump off the train as it's barreling down the tracks. To talk to the analogy a little bit more, but on the websites I mean that does reinforce that point that it's often overlooked because people don't see it as a primary traffic source. But then they forget that it's very often in that overall mix of people's due diligence, before they knock on your door.

Andy: It's going to be part of the multiple touch points that you're going to need today with customers. Unless they're handed a note from a friend or something of a referral, they're often going to look at multiple people and they're going to look at multiple service providers before they reach out to somebody.

Stuart: Right, that kind of multi-touch point or the multi-investigation point on the e-commerce side as I'm kind of on the outside edge of e-commerce just because we don't deal with that many people in that space but the multiple touchpoint scenario does that typically work? I can see it again from my own personal experience. You think about Instagram ads that you'll see and I've more than once agreed to do the thing the 10th or 11th time that I've seen it. Some of that is just getting around to it. Some of it is kind of getting, I don't want to say, beaten down by the frequency, but the tolerance or the acceptance that this is something that I want to do takes a couple of times to get to it. But the multi-channel or the multi-destination type approach within e-commerce is that more of the things these days. So people might see a product or an ad recommended on Amazon and then they might go to the website or they might also see it retargeted in one of the other channels and it's the third or fourth attribution point that actually gets them to convert.

Andy: Yeah, I mean there's going to be a little bit different as far as Amazon. I mean Amazon's going to retarget the products themselves. So if you're selling on Amazon, I mean you can retarget, but you're probably not going to be using people who've come to your Shopify store and then retargeted them to Amazon. But you can, I mean you can retarget. You know, if you got the everything set up so you have Facebook pixels on your website, you can retarget to them in Facebook, even though they haven't come to Facebook or Instagram. They've just come to your website, whether it's from Google. But you can do the same thing. They come to you from Facebook. You're running Facebook ads. Now you can start, and they've clicked on your website. Now you can start retargeting them in the Google network so you really can touch them everywhere. And if they clicked on your ad you're assuming that they're likely that they, but you could set stuff up. They even have to be on there for a minute or so. It doesn't have to be everybody, but it's really. Retargeting is an effective way for e-commerce.

Stuart: I think that you just mentioned there. You can set it up so it makes more sense, so that it's not within a second or two and it's a misclick. There's actually some measure of intent there. Coming from the UK, I mean the cookie consent pop-ups that whenever I go back now and visit family and I'm on my phone or on the computer, I kind of forget how obnoxiously obtrusive they are when they're popping up all over the place because you just don't tend to see them across here anywhere near as much.

But that really was a response to bad marketing, of people going overboard on retargeting and trying to squeeze every last piece out of it. And again, the bad situation that you'd see from personal experience is you'd go and buy a product and then for the next weeks you'd see that same product advertised everywhere because they didn't have anything set up that removed the targeting from people who had actually converted. So do you see that conversation with people more now they're more aware of? It's not just a buy a hose, one solution to everything. There's a nuance to it that really makes a difference both in the effectiveness and the budget spent.

Andy: Yeah, I mean there is a nuance to it and it's kind of funny because people say that they don't. You know they value their privacy online and stuff, but being able to. You want to see ads or maybe you don't, but you're interested in things that are interest of you and so if there were no cookies or anything like that you're seeing, you're going to see ads anyway. But are you seeing ads for stuff you have no interest? It's even more annoying than the ads that interest you and you probably don't even know their ads because they're of stuff that is interest to you. So it's kind of funny with the privacy piece.

Everybody says they want privacy. I don't know if people really do, because you want, when you go online, you want a experience that is unique for you and your interest. So I mean there's that you know. But I mean I guess we're going to get there. I mean the UK is probably the first. I know there are different laws here in California with privacy, so I mean it'll probably get there anyway. It's just kind of a matter of time in the US.

Stuart: Yeah, and like you say, it's a bad. The laws were put in place because of some people's bad experiences, but then the laws themselves also create other bad experiences. Like, exactly you're going to see ads anyway. It's better to see ones that make sense and are relevant and useful and expose you to. I always remember magazines years and years ago. When you kind of get the magazine, there'd be a stack of ads. The ads were sometimes more interesting than the content of the magazine. So it's you definitely want to see the relevant stuff and I think, as business owners, understanding that journey and being able to not just run a banner ad that has a logo and a join us because we're the best, but it's actually delivering value and there's some useful content from the perspective of the consumer, the buyer, to be able to bridge that gap. I think more and more people are thinking in terms of how can they add value right from the beginning of the conversation, not just kind of splurge a banner across everywhere and hope that something clicks.

Andy: Yeah and I mean I think that should be in everybody's marketing is not how do I trick people into clicking on my website, but how do I give them value and how do I provide value at my website. Do I give them value and how do I provide value at my website? And whether you're an e-commerce or if you're a professional service, if you're thinking that way in your ads, you're going to do a whole lot better.

Stuart: Yeah, do many of the clients look to bridge that gap between kind of online and offline or not even offline, maybe, but from website visitors to email? Are many people trying to do that capture and then continue a conversation with them through other channels, or is most of the clients you're working with kind of within that shopping channel, either Amazon or Shopify?

Andy: Yeah, I mean email is still king. I mean there's deliverability problems and stuff, but I mean nothing can beat. Still can beat email for your profitability and your ROAS once you get them on your email list. It's just how do you get people on your email list and you want? You know so many people in e-commerce or I've seen in professional services where you click here to join my email list but there's no incentive, why or even reason why somebody would ever do it, and so that again goes to the how are you going to provide them value? And I think that's where you know you can get creative to get people on there, because once you can communicate with them and kind of establish a relationship, then you're looking to them being able to become purchasers from you and customers Right, and that's a great transition into the book.

Stuart: So obviously our business is helping people create books specifically for that lead generation piece, to add value at the front ends. You also use books in your marketing. Why don't you share a little bit about what the books are to begin with and then how you're using them in this overall world of ads and referrals and all the other ways that you've got of getting in front of the right people?

Andy: Sure, well, I launched my agency in 2014. So it's been 10 years. But I had worked in the private sector since the early 2000s in online marketing, and so I mean I knew what I was doing. But when I launched my own agency, how do I communicate that I know what I'm doing? Own agency how do I communicate that I know what I'm doing?

And so I came out with a book Make Each Click Count right away on showing Google ads, I was just showing pretty much all my knowledge I was putting into the book, and that was 2014 and really just kind of established as an online authority based on the book. And with that I came out the next year with Make Each Click Count using Google Shopping, followed it up the next year with Make Each Click Count using Google Remarketing, and so with those three books, it was a trilogy that just kind of showed how to use Google Ads for e-commerce and marketing. Exactly what I was doing just showing everybody how to do it. You know, with many things, a lot of people read the books but not want to do it. You know, with many things, a lot of people we read the books but not want to do it, and so I got a lot of clients off of Amazon, from just people reading my books and then reaching out to me for different things after.

Stuart: So funny, isn't it? We often talk to people or not often these days, but it certainly used to be more common that people would say I don't want to put everything I know on the pages because then why would people work with me and to try and share with people, particularly from our approach to the lead generation books, a kind of single subject leading people to the next step. So it's not like we're suggesting people do a 300 page analytics compendium of absolutely everything that you could do. So the idea of sharing all of your knowledge anyway is a bit of a misnomer. It's sharing the value to the person at the level that they're starting that conversation.

But the second point like you say, even if you did, the majority of people would then see that, ok, there's more here than I anticipated and it goes way deeper, and I really want to find someone to do this, not do it myself. So was that ever a concern? I mean, the books that you wrote were kind of all the knowledge right away. But did you ever have anyone say to you don't give it away? Or was were you already of the mindset that no people are unlikely to do this themselves and the ones who do aren't going to be customers anyway, so let's share it all in that.

Andy: Yeah, you know I was never really. I mean, with google ads it changes so often. You know, I mean my books. You know it was what 14, 16 and 17. And then I re wrote the one in 14 and 20 and still they're all outdated. But I think it was more of just the power of books and it was. You know, it was funny story. So when I first started the agency, I was saying I took some professional clients. I first started the agency I was saying I took some professional clients, businesses clients, and one of them was a real estate guy and so trying to get people on his email, we did a free white paper of 10 things you need to know when selling your home and it did pretty well. But after he left I decided to go wooly with e-commerce and I ran into him like a year or two ago and he turned that into a book and that same book became like a New York Times bestseller based on the same principle, and he said he has gotten so much business off of the book.

Stuart: Right.

Andy: Even though he had the same thing as a free white paper on his website for years.

Stuart: Yeah.

Andy: So it's. I mean it was more of course. Course, I mean it was larger and in a book format it was expanded but it was the same concept that I had.

Stuart: I had created for him to put on his website, like you know, 2014 fascinating insight because I often say I forget whether it was on a podcast recently or just on another call but saying to people that the same information bound together on dead trees as a book, or even if you use the digital version of the book, but it still looks like a book, the fact that it's together in that format has an outside credibility or authority piece compared to the exact same information delivered in another channel. So I tell everyone that we're a marketing company, we're not a publishing company. We just happen to believe that books are the most effective way to use this particular channel. But I always tell the story on the podcast of the guest that we had on probably six months ago now, a guy called Paul Ross who was a chiropractor and he wrote a couple of books. But what?

His latest one? Super small, 30 pages, maybe my Damn Toe Hurts and it was specifically for whatever the condition that makes your toe hurt. But he'll have people who come in for an appointment not really realize that he's the guy that wrote the book that they read to get them there in the first place. And then we'll have almost like a starstruck moment part way through the procedure because they realize, oh, you're the person who wrote the book that got me here in the first place the ability for books to add that additional value and really kind of amplify the conversation or accelerate the conversation towards that call to action. It's exactly the same experience that you had, even though, as books age and the details change, the value that you deliver and the fact that you want to share this information with someone establishes you as the person in their mind, as the go-to for that particular space, so very valuable yeah, no, I couldn't agree more.

Andy: I mean, it's the authority that you get as an author, unless you're like speaking on a stage. I don't know if there's anything else that is is comparable to it and especially, you know, in today's age where it's never been easier to write a book, I you know, if you're looking to promote your business, I would wouldn't see what the downside would be in doing it right.

Stuart: The one thing that's interesting these days is we were talking before about some ai tools, so increasingly people will ask, oh, why can't I just do this with ai? And our response to that is always well, the outcome, the product isn't the book itself. The product is a conversation with the person. The book is just a mechanism to get to that conversation. So you could create something that doesn't sound like you or represent you, or it's general ideas, but there's no personality and they will know none of your story. Or you could use an easy process like our one to create something that is entirely you and then use AI to promote it and drive it further and create some downstream assets from that one thing that you create. But the idea of capturing your unique personality within the pages because it's ultimately the conversation that you want with someone that's really the difference maker. And I think, going over the next few years, as more and more people, it's like a website.

20 years ago, just having any website was a differentiator, and then having a website that was slightly better than the competition was a differentiator, and now it's the case as you said before not having a website or not having a very functioning website is a detractor, so so it even falls into that negative category.

So books, I see, is potentially following the same trajectory as more people do them, but still to be able to have your voice and your tone so that when people knock on your door or call your phone they recognize and that personality comes through. So bridging that back into ads. What's the balance? For either a E-commerce people again as an outsider obviously it's a little bit more transactional, it's more about the product than the person, although when you think about brand that's not necessarily the case, but I was going to say for service businesses, to a certain degree people assume that the product does what it does, so it's a little bit more about personality. So injecting your personality or your brand's personality into the ads to differentiate you from the other people who are doing something similar, how important is that these days compared with what might have been the case in the past?

Andy: You know, I think it depends on the type of ad. Once you get them to your website, I mean you need to have a reason that they're going to buy from your website versus a competitor, versus not buying. So there's a lot of there. Now, what kind of ads you're running? Is an e-commerce? I mean it just depends. You're running shopping ads. It's just going to show the price, the picture, the item name and that's it, the shopping ads and then they get to your website. But once you get to your website, I mean there's a lot of things you can do, the personality you can put in, trust factors, reviews. I mean there's a lot of things you can do, the personality you can put in trust factors, reviews.

Stuart: I mean there's a ton of things going on that's needed to convert people.

Actually, that's such a good point because we kind of started the conversation thinking about ads and just the ad element of it and we talked about some of the things that might be missing on the website. But I was thinking about it more from a kind of a structural point of view or the responsibility of the website. Again, it's an outsider's silly line to draw in the sand between the two. But when you think about the landing page that you're driving people towards, you've got a small amount of real estate or capital to get them to that point, but then a very strong vested interest to make sure that everything on there is compelling. Do you typically work through kind of like a checklist for the landing page so that there are some of those trust elements you mentioned in there and reviews and supporting material? Do you typically have a strong framework for what happens when they get to the page, or is that more the responsibility of the client and you're trying to do the best outside of that scope?

Andy: Yeah, I mean with our agency, we're not designing the webpage. Yeah, I mean with our agency we're not designing the webpage. But with that said, we're going to look at numbers on analytics, and so we're driving traffic and we're seeing a sub two conversion rate. Then we're going to look and say you're missing this or you're missing that, you should do this and ideas on how to improve. And there's actually there's one of our partners that we use is called OptiMonk, which is great because they do A-B testing for you, using AI to set up the product pages and you can see the discernible differences based on adding this or moving this element here, moving that element there, and so a lot of with our clients. You know we're more than running just ads. We're helping them grow and we have to our clients. You know we're more than running just ads. We're helping them grow and we have to you know if we're sitting traffic in and it doesn't convert.

We're not going to be their their agency partner very long, so there is a lot of things that we help them with, but we're not designing the page form, if that makes sense.

Stuart: yeah, definitely. And again, it's the benefit of that agency model where you as the provider are more interested, kind of holistically, in the success of the overall project, because you want the project to be successful, so they have more ad revenue to spend. I mean, it's really there's a synergy for sure.

Exactly, yeah, exactly, can be, I think, difficult to get on inside teams, particularly where inside teams are new or small, because they don't necessarily always have the ability to bounce ideas off other people or, particularly to your earlier point, they don't have the multiple clients in real time to be seeing those numbers to kind of pull this lever versus this lever, well, or to even know.

Andy: I mean because we work with multiple clients so we can say, hey, this client does this, they convert really well. Have you tried integrating that into your website? And so that's definitely an advantage of working with an agency yeah, such a good point.

Stuart: And the tools now that make split testing and the variations within those split tests more easy and dynamic and faster to create, so you can add that value back in a more kind of iterative sense. It's, yeah, very interesting times. What time always goes fast on these podcasts. It's we blow through the half hour mark pretty quick. I want to make sure that people can find out more about you and what you do and where the organization is. So where would be a good place for people to go if they're kind of thinking either as a professional services company and thinking, oh, this ad world is something that I need to look at more, or particularly as e-commerce and you guys are very specifically set up to help them. So where's a good place for people to go to learn more?

Andy: Yeah, to learn more, go to makeeachclickcountcom. You'll see all the books that I've written there. You'll also see it's really cool Make each click count university, which we just relaunched the first of the year. And so for professional services, I mean, there's some classes on how to do SEO, there's PPC stuff, all sorts of different stuff, and you can even. There's a free starter thing. So just for your email and stuff, you get four free classes right away, and then if you want access to everything, you can get full access. It's $19 a month, so it's really affordable and just a ton of great resources in there.

Stuart: Ah, fantastic. So that is a resource for people who are starting the journey. Again, we talk about books in the sense of the book is a great point at the either the top of the funnel for brand new traffic or to amplify the journey in terms of referrals to move people forward. But the fact that you've got kind of that self-service material for people who are interested we're not quite ready to pull the trigger yet the ability to keep them engaged for that period until today's, the day for them when they do need support Again such a great model.

Andy: Yeah, and I mean there's really. I mean there's material for everybody. So whether you're just starting out looking to list products on Amazon, I mean there's masterclasses on that. Whether you're a professional service looking at how to drive more traffic, on learning how to add SEO, but you can't afford an agency, there's masterclasses showing you how to be able to do that. So I mean there's really a ton in there for everybody.

Stuart: Ah, fantastic. Well, as always, I'll make sure that we include show notes in the podcast player so people can just click straight through or on the website if they're watching. Along with this, on the website, we'll put links to the website and the university and to your LinkedIn page as well if people want to connect directly. Andy, like I say, time always goes too fast. And like I say, time always goes too fast, it'll be really interesting to circle back in a few months and maybe do the next level of this and talk a little bit more perhaps about tying in the book, specifically to an ad funnel and to the pages, and how that might work for people. So, if you're up for it, it'd be great to have you back in a couple of months and dive a little bit deeper.

Andy: Sure, that sounds great.

Stuart: It's been a lot of fun, stuart, fantastic, okay. Well, everyone really recommend checking out the links in the show notes. I'll make sure that's just one click straight through, andy. Thanks again everyone for listening or watching along. Thank you, and we will catch you on the next one.