Do you know, 97% of first-time visitors on your website leave without buying anything, and then they are lost forever unless you bring them back?

Retargeting campaigns help you to reach out to your website visitors after they leave your website without buying. These campaigns allow you to retarget your visitors with relevant visual or text ads when they visit other websites. You can set up your retargeting campaign with Google Ads, Facebook retargeting, LinkedIn Ads, and other retargeting advertising platforms. Retargeting builds visibility for your brand and serves as a vital tool to connect with your prospects to increase sales.

Catch Shannon Murphy and Scott Millar as they discuss why every IT Services business needs a solid retargeting strategy to drive prospects to conversion.

Key Takeaways:

1. Is remarketing right for your IT business?

Yes, remarketing helps you to re-engage with your prospects with the technology services and solutions you provide. And, the cool thing with remarketing is it doesn't just have to be a product or solution; it can be any type of content that you can put into that remarketing to help kind of convey your value in the marketplace.

2. What needs to be in place before someone can launch a remarketing campaign?

Remarketing is not always about Ads. Contents like engaging blog posts about new tech, case studies, videos work well with remarketing. So, you can start the remarketing campaign with any form of content.

3. What separates a great remarketing campaign from a bad one?

Keeping the content fresh. Change the content on a monthly basis to hit different pain points of your target audience. Repurpose the contents from previous campaigns with high conversion rates to generate more leads. 

4. Retargeting ad budget: How much should I spend?

It depends on how much web traffic you get into your site because that'll dictate the size of how many people are in your retargeting audience. So you can start at $50 a day as the budget until it maxes out.

5. Ways to leverage video remarketing.

• You get the advantage of saving your live video on Facebook. 
• Work on the saved video to create short remarketing videos. 
• Repurpose the videos with better conversion rates. 

6. ‍Tips for creating valuable and relevant videos

• Do videos on tickets from your helpdesk 
• Develop a content pillar with your company’s mission statement 

7. How to fit remarketing into a larger marketing plan?

Remarketing can be one tactic of your overall marketing plan. Remarketing helps educate those prospects on the technology solutions you have and your value in the marketplace.

Transcript

Shannon Murphy:

Welcome! Thank you for joining us for Retargeting Prospects and Gaining Customers with Smart Campaigns. I'm Shannon Murphy, Chief Marketer at Zomentum - the Sales Acceleration Platform built exclusively for the Channel. 

Today, I’m joined by Scott Miller, Chief Marketing Geek at IT Rockstars. A systems engineer at heart, Scott saw an opportunity at a young age to generate leads for his break-fix computer repair business using online marketing techniques. This evolved into the managed service space where Scott has worked for over 15 years. Now, the founder of IT Rockstars, he's helping fellow MSPs, and IT business owners generate more leads and win more sales. 

Scott, you are such a unique mix of IT and marketing chops. The marketer in me, a fellow SEO, Video geek, loves it. Thank you so much for being here with us today.

Scott Millar:

Yeah, Jack of all that spike and Master of none, Shannon . That's what I'd say. Thank you.

Shannon Murphy:

No, I don't think that's true. Guys will see me, maybe give a little nod to it at the end of the webinar. But now, Scott has written a video marketing book for MSPs, so, like he's more legitimate than he's leading on with you guys right now.  

So background, when I start talking to Scott about what he's passionate about, obviously hugely passionate about marketing and has so much to offer with the MSP community in that regard. So, for example, we talked about remarketing, and I loved hearing his perspective on it because I've been talking with many different marketing coaches who have programs for the channel, and nobody was talking about remarketing. So I think it's hugely valuable. 

You spend so much time trying to get traffic to your website; what happens afterward? So jumping in, I think this can sound like a heady topic for some MSPs. So, how do you go about explaining it, Scott?

The Leaky Bucket Theory & How does Remarketing Work?

Scott Millar: 

Okay, so I'll try and keep it simple and not get bogged down in any technical detail. So, I call remarketing as like the leaky bucket that is your website. So you've got a bucket that you're trying to fill with water. And that is, prospects, leads you’re trying to reach, people interested in coming back to your site, most of the marketing you're doing, Shannon. So, this is all about getting people back to your site somehow so that you can convey your message, wherever that might be. And, probably a very high percentage of the people who come to your website bounce off. So they're like holes within the bucket; no matter how much water you fill in that bucket, you've got holes in it, and you're never going to be able to fill the bucket up. 

So, what remarketing can do for you is plug some of those holes, which allows you to have another chance with your prospects that are potentially interested in the services you're offering. So that's like a very sort of high-level, non-technical view of what remarketing can do for you.  

‍

“Remarketing will allow you to get another chance with your prospects who are potentially interested in the services you're offering.” 

Scott Millar: 

What is remarketing actually? You've potentially already experienced this yourself. And that is, you're looking at a product on an e-commerce website. So if you're maybe on Amazon looking at a product, for some reason, you get distracted, you don't buy the product. And then, half an hour later or an hour later, then the next day, you see that product in your timeline, and it's just Amazon, reminding you, 'Hey! you never bought this product, and it's still here for you to buy.' 

Well, you can be doing the same thing in your MSP with your technology services and solutions. You can remind your prospects they've already interacted with you digitally and that you're still there. And the cool thing with remarketing, it doesn't just have to be a product or solution; it can be any type of content that you can put into that remarketing to help kind of convey your value in the marketplace. So Shannon, hopefully, that kind of answers it. Is that clear?

Shannon Murphy:

Yes. So, I love the leaky bucket analogy. With remarketing, I think we're trying to put some gum in those holes. Have a little less of that water coming out, losing less of those leads, holding on to them, maintaining and staying engaged, right? 

Scott Millar:

Yeah, I think it is one of the biggest things. So, when you're looking at your website, you'll speak to some of those websites. They talk about getting the right copy in your website, the right site structure, making sure it's usable, making sure that the user is not going to get lost, and you're trying to lead them down a path. And, all of those things, they kind of help plug some of the gaps in that bucket. But remarketing - it's almost like a superpower because, as I mentioned, you can have different - like an invisible list that you can market to on various platforms. So, do you want me to get the name of the remarketing platform, the ones that are available? 

“Remarketing is like a superpower that provides you with an invisible prospect list to which you can market on various platforms.”

Shannon Murphy:  

Yeah, let's get into it.

Why Facebook Remarketing? What’s the Added Advantage?

Scott Millar:

The one that I love is Facebook. And, it's not like the immediate one that you would think of when you're doing sort of B2B sales like ‘Facebook, why would I want to advertise there?’ But when it comes to remarketing, it's one of the most flexible platforms - you can start with any budget, the first thing. The second thing - there's the added benefit that it's not just Facebook when you run remarketing campaigns on Facebook; you're also getting the advantage of being on Instagram as well. So it's like a two for one. 

And you’ll find that 95% of your prospects or audience coming to your website are more likely going to be on Facebook or Instagram at least once a day. So, that sets a big opportunity for you to have your marketing message in front of them daily. So, Facebook is like the No.1 go-to. But all of the major platforms support this. 

“95% of your prospects or audience coming to your website are more likely going to be on Facebook or Instagram at least once a day.”

About Other Remarketing Platforms. And, Why TikTok?

Scott Millar:

The next one is LinkedIn, develop retargeting on LinkedIn, that's pretty much like an obvious one. Then there's the Google Display Network, Reddit, and Twitter. And there's one I mentioned to you last time we spoke, Shannon; it’s TikTok. So, I'm sure some of your audiences are on TikTok.  

I am on TikTok and I'm like, 'Okay! I see one B2B ad on TikTok <on-live> as some legal guy hoping to sell.' So I'm telling you, it's the next big platform. And the thing with this remarketing is you might not want to get into it just now. But, at least get the pixel set up on your site, so you're building these invisible audiences. So that, when the time comes, you'll have those invisible lists across the platforms to go to, and you can tap them. So, you can start this today - speak to your web person, and get those pixels installed, which allow your website to drop a cookie on a mobile device or a desktop browser.

Shannon Murphy:

Yeah, I was just about to say that similar to how you guys have, like Google Analytics running in the background of your website, the pixel is just some invisible code that I think you're all familiar with cookies, right? So, that is, if somebody's not cleaning them regularly like Scott said, if you drop that now, but you create the campaign a year from now, we'd still have that data; you're gathering that invisible audience. So actually, this kind of leads nicely to my next question. 

What are the Prerequisites to Launch a Retargeting Campaign?

Scott Millar:

So there's the ‘Pixel’ having that retargeting in place, but then you need some form of content to put out there, onto these platforms. As I mentioned, it could just be a straight-up ad. So you're just reminding people, 'Hey, you're on our website.' And it could be something like a lead capture form. Both LinkedIn and Facebook have really good lead capture ads available, where the user doesn't even have to leave the platform, though they can literally click the ad and it auto-fills the user's information into the lead capture form. 

They worked really well for certain campaigns, but other types of content are maybe not as direct as lead capture as it says, maybe just you conveying the value in the marketplace, your local marketplace, or trying to allow your prospects to understand the technology solutions that you offer, why you may be better than your competitors. And, it could be something like the content to have a content marketing strategy. So, that is, like your blog, your articles that you publish, educational, entertaining, but also useful content that you can actually put up into that remarketing campaign to get clicks back to your site again.

Shannon Murphy:

Yeah, absolutely right. So you can have the lead form on LinkedIn, which might actually still be a piece of content, like something you would have gated on your site, like an ebook. But, I'm sure some of you are doing content marketing programs, with various agencies and the content that they're creating for you, ‘Seven Considerations for Cybersecurity” that you haven't thought of right, help educate the buyer and make them a more intelligent prospect in terms of evaluating solutions. So, that sort of content is always going to be a win for them.

Why is it Essential to Have a Mixture of Content (Video vs. Blog)?

Scott Millar:

It is! Yeah. It works best if there's a mixture of content because certain types of content are going to work for certain types of individuals and also depending on where they are, and if they're on their mobile devices, or in a subway, they're potentially maybe not going to be able to hear a video but they'll be able to read a blog post. Or, it could be the opposite. That could be sitting at their desk, and they've got nothing else to do, or they're just in that sort of video viewing mode. And, they've just come off a TikTok and are looking at other videos on another platform, then you might have some videos in there as well. And, videos are by far my most favorite of all the different types of content available to you.

“Certain types of content are going to work for certain types of individuals and also depending on where they are”

What Separates a Great Remarketing Campaign from a Bad One?

Shannon Murphy:

Yep. What do you think? Because I think we're talking about things you can do, platforms you can use, types of content, I like to get a little comparison in here. What do we feel separates a really great remarketing campaign from a potentially bad one, somebody who takes these techniques and tries to utilize them, but it just really doesn't hit the mark? And you, as an expert, could help clarify that for them.

Scott Millar:

I think it's about keeping the content fresh. So not just coming up with three or four content pieces that you're going to use for the next 12 months. The way I like to explain the content in your remarketing campaigns is almost like a digital newsletter, that you're paying Facebook, Google, LinkedIn to show to your prospects. It changes every single month, and it's fresh. Because you might find that you'll have prospects in that invisible list (that invisible audience that has got the cookie on their browser), they might not be interested in cybersecurity as such, they might have another pain-point in their business, it could be something to do with Office 365, or just managed services are the slow response for the current provider. 

But if you're changing the content on a monthly basis to hit these different pain points, you're far more late, and to generate more leads, based on that sort of method of changing it up. And the other thing is that you can look back once if you've got 12-months worth of digital newsletters and content, you can look back and see which ones have worked really well, had the best click-through ratio, most views, most comments, and then you can use them again. So, six months from now or a year from now, if you're not having much content, you can repurpose it. And that's like, 

I do this at IT Rockstars - we did a whole video series back in February and we were here in the UK in lockdown, so I had nothing better to do. But, there are lots of marketing videos for MSPs. So I went 20 days straight with a Facebook Live video that we took and we turned it into retargeting videos as well. And every three months we run that same campaign and it does wonders for us. So, that's how you should be thinking about your retargeting. It's quite flexible, and you can leverage it. 

Shannon Murphy:

Absolutely I love it! Well, newsletters are fresh, they change every month right. So, I love that lesson. But also, in a lot of cases, that's kind of where you're putting other marketing-worthy news. So, we are talking about the hypothetical newsletter, right. So that's it, the advertising is an additional distribution method for that, right? 

I'm thinking about our own newsletter in Zomentum, which - 'if your customer, make sure you're looking for it because we launched it more recently,' but that has all of our product updates. So if there were new service offerings that an MSP had that they wanted to publicize, that's very conversion-oriented. But if you recently won an award in your local community, that's also newsworthy to promote right in the newsletter, and then you can have your content or your testimonials. I think, wouldn't that be kind of niche if you went to an MSP site and then later you saw that remarketing ad that had a testimonial from a happy customer, right. You've generated that case study, you put effort into that? 

Scott Millar:

Yeah! And it's another face, it's not just your face. So even, it's like a video testimonial, they work really well on someone else's face. If you're operating in as a local market or if it's another local business, but you're kind of promoting them in the testimonial or maybe you're starting to work with them, that can have a double-edged sword because not only will your audience engage with it and the business that you're promoting in there was engaged with that as well and their followers so and allow you to bring in more people into that retargeting audience. 

How to Retarget Social Media Audience?

Scott Millar:

That's another thing I should mention here with the retargeting platforms. It's not just about people visiting your website, you can actually set up the retargeting so that if people engaged in any of the properties that you have across say, for example, Facebook. So if someone's been to your Facebook page, or if someone's watched your video on Facebook, then you can remarket to them. So you could, for example, have a video or a blog post, share it with a local Facebook group or LinkedIn group, a business group. And then anyone who engages with that piece of content in that group, you can actually add them to your retargeting, and they can be added to your digital newsletter.

Shannon Murphy:

Guys underline that in your notes circle. That is gold right there. Because sometimes when we're marketing our services, we're not looking just to attract eyeballs, we're kind of looking to steal them from related areas, right, somebody else has built a really great community.

Scott Millar: 

I wouldn't use the word steal, acquire.

Shannon Murphy:  

Acquire, sorry! Stealings from competitors, right? I mean, like, there are those engaging in your community within that radius of the geo that you serve. And maybe they've built a robust digital community, and you can post relevant content there. And once they watch that video, you can add them to your list.

Scott Millar: 

If you can post a useful video for that community, it's going to gain traction and as an added benefit, you're going to have those people on your remarketing list.

Tricks to Developing a Good Remarketing Ad

Shannon Murphy:

Well, that! Have you found that there's any and this may be my marketing geek side? Have you found that there are any words or phrases that really help move the needle with these ads? What is that bold statement that I want when I see remarketing ads?

Scott Millar:

So from an MSP perspective, and like who I target, like my target audience, but also from an MSP perspective, you're probably doing business with certain types of businesses, you're trying to attract certain types of businesses or certain companies or industries that you're working with, that you get on really well with, and trying to attract them in your copy in the ads. It's called a 'Dog Whistle', it's a term coined by Dan Kennedy, direct response marketing. He's like God, when it's marketing, for me. I follow him everywhere he goes. But, the dog whistle is basically calling out the people that you're wanting to do business with, in your copy. 

So for example, say you were looking to attract accountants and you've managed to find a LinkedIn group where accountants all got together and they were talking about 'Xero', an example of one of the financial products. Well, you could in your copy, say, 'Hey, we provide IT support for' or we start out 'Hey, accountants are using Xero. Check out our IT services.' Now, that's a really bad example. But the Dog Whistle bit, the first bit of copy there and actually mentioning the people that you're looking to attract in the copy, their ears will literally perk up and they'll take notice. 

And, I do all the time in the ads here at IT Rockstars one of the first things that I mentioned is 'Hey MSPs', 'Hey IT Business Owners', 'Hey Cybersecurity Businesses', and then I go into my copy. And, that always gains more traction than just having something a little bit blander. I'm trying to call out who it is that you're looking to attract in your copy.

“Dog Whistle approach: Calling out the people that you're wanting to do business with, in your copy.”

Shannon Murphy:

Yep. What's in it for me? Right? We're all very egotistically focused on ourselves. So I want to know specificity and relevance. Yeah, this is made for me.

Scott Millar:

And it's tricky. Yeah, there's some really spooky stuff that you can do in some of the platforms based on that. So you can go down to the level of detail of targeting people on the month of their birthday. I've seen ads like this, 'Hey, your birthday is in September and you're an accountant. We've got this special offer for our IT services.’ And, that gets kind of spooky but that's like the level of detail you can go down to with this.

Shannon Murphy:

Oh here! I thought it was just the birthday deal from Sephora or something like that.

Scott Millar:

I know. 

Shannon Murphy:

It's funny because from an e-com perspective, we see it’s right for the shops. But, accountants want a little love come their birthday too maybe. I don't know. I'll leave that with you to figure out how to do that. Okay! So what if somebody said I tried remarketing, my agency tried remarketing and I don't feel like it worked. What would you say to that?

Scott Millar:

I would probably look into the campaign to see what type of engagement was there. When it comes to these remarketing campaigns or any type of digital paid ads, it's all about testing to see what works. So if you fail at something when it comes to retargeting, then it's actually not a failure, it's actually a lesson. It's like, Okay! that didn't work, let's try something else instead. What I would say is that you have to be careful, when it comes to retargeting based on your website traffic. You may get quite a lot of website traffic and you have to make sure within that, you're retargeting to people that are actually interested in what it is they're looking for. 

You might be ranking in the search for something completely different, but for some reason, people are visiting your site, and they're not finding what it is that they're after. So there are tricks that you can do there to kind of filter that out. You can tell the platforms, only retarget to people who have been on my website for at least 30 seconds. And, it's the right type of people that you're looking for because they've obviously landed on your site, and they kind of engage in your site a little bit. Yeah, failure is a lesson here and it does take time to master, it's not going to be just one of these things that you can turn on and immediately start to see leads and it calls into your MSP.

“Only retarget people who have been on my website for at least 30 seconds, because they've obviously landed on your website, and engaged in your site a little bit.”

Shannon Murphy:

Yeah, that's a great point. You're not going to, with any marketing method, just <snaps fingers> and it's about anything you do, then chances are they're not going to be high quality, right? Because we've just kind of known the specs, like you said, of how do you find the audience down?

Scott Millar:

I had this experience just three weeks ago on YouTube. I have mentioned in that intro, Shannon, that I used to break-fix. This is back like 10, 15 years ago, break-fix IT for residential. And, I used to do Google Ads back then, but since then, I have no idea how it works. And I thought, okay, let me go back to it now. I thought, YouTube ads, this is going to be really awesome. There are some really cool targeting methods within YouTube, burnt through like $1,000 on ads, and got three Gmail addresses from it. And it's a lesson learned. 

The lesson here is basically that the types of people that I'm looking for are really hard to target on YouTube. But if I were to go and do the same thing on LinkedIn, that might be a different story. So it's about testing. So there's a lesson there.

How can you Repurpose your Marketing Videos with Remarketing?

Shannon Murphy:

Absolutely, it's important. Okay, so YouTube, maybe for you, is not the best place for remarketing. But I think, walk me into (because I think this is pretty cool), how did you get into video marketing? Well, I think it was like a New Year's resolution, or you were testing before that.

Scott Millar:

So IT Rockstars, we used to be an MSP.  And we pivoted to solving a really big pain-point in the marketplaces, the pain-point that I had, and like putting her in front of prospects, business owners, attempting to sell managed services that were actually really easy when you're in front of them. It was finding the prospects in the first place people are looking for technology solutions, that was really difficult. So we pivoted to helping MSPs generate more leads for their business; quality leads, not just rubbish or trash. 

So I had the idea that I'm going to go live on Facebook, and then repurpose that Facebook Live and onto LinkedIn, for like 60 days straight. We did it back in January 2019 and we went live every single day and we generated a lot of business based on these live videos that we did. We did go live on Facebook, there's a cool thing that you can do on the app there. Once you're finished LIVE, there's an option to save it down to your device, then you go into LinkedIn, you can publish that same video up onto LinkedIn. And, that was the New Year's resolution, from the video. And there's a lot of experience learned from that 60-Day streak.

Shannon Murphy:

Yeah, like anything, right. It's repetition. And sometimes you just have to get started, right.

The Superpower of Video Remarketing

Scott Millar:

Yeah. And one of the hardest things for myself and it's probably anyone's thinking about doing it is actually just going in front of the camera in the first place and pressing the record button. The cool thing with LIVE is that, if you mess up, you don't get a second chance. So the human element and we're doing it right here now, because this is LIVE just now, we're not going back to edit this. All of the things that you mess up, actually show a little bit more character and a little bit more of you, it's not as well polished, but people start to get to know you a bit more. 

So you take those live videos you're doing every day and then you work them into the remarketing campaign, your prospects and the people who have already engaged in your website and your digital properties will actually start to get to know you. And they'll start to potentially like you and follow you. And, there will be a percentage that'll absolutely hate what you're doing, hate the sound of you. But there'll be a small percentage that will love it, and they'll start following you. And that's the following that you're trying to gain attraction within videos. The way that I explained, this is like a superpower. 

So when you meet with these prospects that have seen your content online, specifically video, it's almost like a celebrity status that you have with them, because they've been following you on the web and they've seen you on LinkedIn. And if you're up against other MSPs, maybe they want to replace their current provider and there's maybe another two or three MSPs looking at quotes. Well, you've just got this unfair advantage because they know who you are through all of the videos that you've done, and elevate you to authority as well. And, that you just can't get through any other type of marketing.

Shannon Murphy:

True, that's the value of video, right there in a nutshell. It builds bonds, even if it is one way like you're saying. Although, if you're going live like in some cases, I'm sure you get reactions and things like that, that are kind of fun to interact with the audience. So I think this was something we've talked about before, then people would be like, alright, so I go live, you've gotten me over the fear of it, I just need to be myself, forget the haters. What should they put in, in these videos, as they're trying to make themselves known in their community? 

Tips for Creating Useful and Relevant Videos 

Scott Millar: 

Okay, I call it delivering results in advance. So any of the content that you put out there, it could be a video or just blog posts, articles, or any content you're doing, it should be something that's going to be useful for your prospects, your potential customers, something that they can take action on today and walk away. So, that was a really useful video. I'm going to go and implement that in my business today or I'm going to get in touch with someone that can. 

So I'll give you an example of that. We're using a piece of software just to help open up the doors when it comes to people landing on one of our landing pages. And, I went through in the video (it was yesterday's video), how to actually use this piece of software and how to make it work and the results that we had. So, that's what you have to think about in regards to your prospect's minds and your audience. It is like, how can you be helpful to them, that's the number one thing. You shouldn't really be talking about yourself at all, or your business. I certainly give a quick plug at the very start of my videos, I go, 'Hey! if you're looking to generate more leads for your IT business, your MSP, check out itrockstars.net,' before I get into the video, but then I go into helping and being of value. 

If you're looking for topics or content that you can talk about, and keeping it fresh, there's probably no better place than your helpdesk system. Because every single day, you've probably heard this one before, every single day there's a number of tickets that come in, there are different problems that you can actually discuss in a video. And it's a really good place to start with it. Some of those tickets are fairly straightforward. But don't forget about the ones that are like, Yo, we just reboot the system and people need reminding that sometimes it's just the basics. So, try and keep that in your mind. Don't get too complicated.

Shannon Murphy:

Yeah, it's almost like dual Help Desk / Marketing collateral, building that out, because then once you also have like a great video that walks somebody through it. Well, you might be saving some time on tickets too, right?

Scott Millar:

Yeah and we know we can align that. We have content pillars, and I talked about it in the book that I wrote. And it's too kind of help frame your videos in a way that you're not going to get lost if you go down this route of publishing it on a regular basis so that you're not going to get lost in that help desk. So, what's your business's mission statement? & what do you stand for? There should be like three things that you stand for. So for us, here at IT rockstars, 

1. We'll help you build an audience. 
2. We help you educate the audience on the technology solutions that you have. 
3. And, then we help you connect with our audience. 

So the question for you is, what are the three content pillars that you can base your videos around? And I switch that up every day. So one day I'll be talking about building the audience, the retargeting audience, or the email audience. And the next day, are we talking about actually picking up the phone, and speaking to those prospects that you've been marketing with? So that's the way that can help guide you through it if you do it on the route of queuing every day. But, I would start with a help desk. You could go in there once a week and pick out the most interesting ticket that you see there are the ones that your engineers had the most problem with? That's always gonna be a good one to talk about.

Shannon Murphy:

Yeah, I love that. And I think something to underline here is that you're constantly overwhelmed by all these different marketing options that you can have available to you guys. But I love how Scott is simplifying this in terms of the mission statement and three content pillars. Because when you do that, when you remove options, you retain focus. And, your prospects or your customers know what kind of content that they can count on for you. But I think that it helps you guys from becoming overwhelmed by all the options of things you could address; create that mission statement, and stick to that. Anything that falls outside of that is probably not important to the core of the business.

Scott Millar:

Yeah, it is amazing how helpful that is to have a mission statement and some core pillars in place. Like, I remember the first time when I was in business, and I was just in my break-fix thing. I remember going to like a chamber event and someone was talking about having a mission statement. I was like, really? How can this be useful for my business? It just absolutely made no sense. But certainly, in today's world, it makes a whole lot more sense. And when it comes to marketing your business and the values that you stand for that you can convey on the screen, and to others locally, across the screen, and across this digital divide that we have.

Shannon Murphy:

Yeah, absolutely. I want to kind of just give Scott a little bit of a wrap-up question, something that I wanted to address. 

Where does Remarketing Fit into the Marketing Plan? Or What should be the Next Steps for Somebody Who Wants to Get Started with Ads?

Scott Millar:

So yeah, it does kind of fit into a plan or an overall strategy. I mean, what we're talking about here is one tactic of an overall plan. And, as I mentioned, like the pillars that we have, or that the plan that we have, we help MSPs with, we start with building that audience, start with listing out types of companies that you want to do business with. And it fits into the second sort of step within that is actually educating those prospects on the technology solutions that you have and what your value in the marketplace is. So the remarketing element fits into the sort of the second stage in that. And they say, there is a third stage as well. 

And, I've explained this before, it was quite a controversial way that I explained this, but maybe we can liven up here by going down. The truth is, no matter how good your marketing is for an MSP, you're probably going to have to do the legwork in regards to getting some sort of response from your prospects. And the reason for that is most business owners see IT Support minor services as a cost. They don't see it as an investment in technology and an investment in their business. So I explained this in the past, this is a bit like who cleans your office, who cleans the toilet in your office? That's potentially what they think about managed services. 

So how would you get past that barrier? It doesn't matter how good your marketing is. You need to somehow get past that buyer. So it's not just about setting up your social, setting up the retargeting, setting up your SEO, your Google ads, there has to be that element of sales as well. And pushing the dial.

Shannon Murphy:

Awesome. Awesome. I do put up a little share of some awesome things that we each have going on. 

Scott Millar:

Yeah, there's the book - Video Marketing for MSPs. It's available in all good bookstores.

Shannon Murphy:

Well, I think, yeah, everyone's heard a lot from you.

Scott Millar:

Yeah. So it basically goes through the whole experience that I had, doing a video for 60 days straight. And the whole remarketing side of things kind of goes into detail on the tactics within that book.

Shannon Murphy:

Awesome, awesome. And if you do decide that you want to sign up for Zomentum, who's bringing this series to you, do a kind thing for Scott and use his code and his link. 

Question and Answers

Q: Is there a business TikTok option? I thought that it was used mainly by kids? 

Shannon Murphy:

And I will tell you, Scott, we only got like one hand raise from our attendees on TikTok. So I know, you think it's the future, maybe walk through people kind of like maybe what you're seeing from businesses on there, in terms of how MSPs could use that.

Scott Millar:

Yeah, I literally just scratched the surface of it myself. But, what I would suggest you do just now is that you can get your pixel installed (the TikTok retargeting pixel), you should have that on because you might not think it's the next big thing just now. But you might have a different view in 12 months from now. So you don't have to miss that opportunity. There is a business option too. There are TikTok ads, there's a whole business suite. And they're similar to the Facebook business suite that they have. 

I have seen a few professional services advertising their business, as I think I mentioned, there's a legal business down-sell from here and they're on it, they come up on my timeline. And I'm in their target audience. I would get the pixel set up if that would be the first step with us. But yes, it's who uses what platform like you could, I have no idea about Snapchat, or Instagram is another one. But, my wife, she's all over Instagram. So, it's not about you, it's about where your prospects hang out.

Shannon Murphy:

Also, as you were talking, I was thinking this through to Alan, it's like, these kids grow up, right. TikTok can be used by college kids. I was in college when I first got Facebook. And they have all this data on me as a result, and if you'd reason why they bought Instagram, as well, right? That's purely an advertising platform for them. So there might be something to be said for participating. So that you can, as Scott said, start grabbing that.

Scott Millar:

But it's all about testing as well. So you have to go and test to see what happens. You might not get any views on your retargeting audience, or you might get quite a lot of use. So you gotta test. 

Q: How do you market a new service to non-technical users? What would be the strategy?

Scott Millar:

Yes. Is this something brand new in the marketplace? Is it something brand new that you're trying to explain non-technically? That's a really good question. I again would probably start with video because you're going to be able to convey a little bit easier across video than you would potentially in a blog post. The way that we kind of help our members, IT Rockstars - what's the pain-point that the solution solves? You're not really talking about the solution, what's the pain point? So I will probably go down that route.

Shannon Murphy:

Yep, absolutely. I was just thinking the same thing as that. Whatever solution you're offering, maybe it's business ops and efficiency, you're packaging together these different SaaS products like Calendly and other things to optimize their workflow. What you're trying to do is save them time so that they can be more efficient throughout their days. So I think that's what you lead with. And then, service is the method through how that is accomplished. 

Q: How do you balance SEO, SEM, Social Marketing, direct mail, and cold mail?

Shannon Murphy:

We could probably teach a whole masterclass on this.

Scott Millar:

How would you handle it? How would you juggle it? So from IT Rockstars, we have a roadmap that we take our members through, like, our core services or marketing content that MSPs can use, and they can use it anyway they want. But we have a bit of a roadmap on how we probably will get the most value out of using that. So we start with the social side of things. Getting that content up onto all the various social platforms, there are some tools that can help with that. And once you've got that running, it's a lot better automation that's in place. So getting the content put up on a regular basis, getting it published to all the platforms, then going down the route of connecting with the people that you're looking to do business with, on places like LinkedIn, actually connecting with them. 

And if you're going down a targeted approach to this, if you've got good prospects list of people you actually want to do business with, sending them out something in the mail and I think we mentioned this last time, Shannon when I was speaking to you, that our members can use the newsletter for their own business that we give them. There's a QR code within it, so if you send them something in the mail, like a cold mailing item in the mail, put this QR code on that, and then embed your cookie on that as well. It means that if they're sitting and opening that mail and they're looking at the newsletter, you can get your retargeting cookie onto their mobile device. So really a slick way of doing it. 

And then they're in your retargeting audience, and it means that if finally become in your retargeting audience, if you're doing the digital newsletter, when you go and speak to them in places like LinkedIn, or if you're cold-emailing, which I don't really like, you're going to find that they're going to be a little bit more receptive to actually speaking back and like replying to you if you're going down that method of opening the doors first offline, and then hitting them online.

Shannon Murphy:

Awesome. And I think, in a way, I also like to say because you're mentioning how content is so central to the strategy, right? I kind of view all of those things that you mentioned to Alex as like, those are distribution methods. And I think that how you decide to get it out and maybe slightly change the content each time might change. But those are distribution methods for your marketing content. 

Q: Hey, Scott, how do you feel about LinkedIn ads versus Facebook ads, cost-wise, and overall efficiency rates? 

Scott Millar:

Thank you. So Facebook ads are going up in price. That was one of the main reasons we were looking at YouTube a few weeks ago last month, and they're just going up in price. I have no idea why that is. And I think some of it's got to do with iOS 14 and that you can no longer track the device through all of the apps on an Apple phone. And so the retargeting isn't working as well as it used to. It still does work, though. But comparing the two, I've heard that LinkedIn and I've seen the story, and LinkedIn lead ads worked really well at the moment. And they're probably the lowest cost type of ad to do on LinkedIn. 

The other cool ads that run on LinkedIn, and I've been targeted with this myself recently, is that you can run ads to groups on LinkedIn. So I know groups aren't that popular, but they're still there. And you can actually run ads on the LinkedIn platform to people in specific groups, that are members of groups. And that's something that you can't actually do on Facebook. But, it comes down to testing, you'll probably find that there's a bit of a strategy for both, I think LinkedIn from an MSPs perspective, and from my perspective, that's the best place to target your top of the funnel and then going down the Facebook group for the sort of middle of funnel people that are kind of in your audience.

Shannon Murphy:

Awesome. That's fantastic. Where should we be using it and at what stage of the funnel? 

Q: How do you structure your videos for MSPs?

Scott Millar:

If we're talking about the daily videos, live videos, the structure we have, as we do mention at the very start of the video, we mentioned a website address and that is extremely effective. I go back into my Google Analytics once a month. I look at the people that directly came to itrockstars.net, the majority of the traffic is people typing the actual website address into their browser, they're not famous on Google or anything like that. And it's based on the fact that we're mentioning the URL within the video. 

So the very first thing I do is, it's almost like that instant clarity headline, they know the sentence that we have here IT Rockstars - if you're looking to generate more leads for your MSP and check out itrockstars.net. So that first sentence for your MSP, you should be building one similar, and then I just go into the actual content for the day. One thing to note with the live videos that you're potentially repurposing and retargeting, you have a limit on LinkedIn with 10 minutes. So if you're making a video longer than 10 minutes, you can't post that up onto the LinkedIn platform as yet.

Shannon Murphy:

Gotcha. Okay. Yeah and as far as Scott mentioned a few times with recycling, I know his process has been saving those Facebook Lives. That's why that's kind of his platform of choice. He downloads them and then he reposts them to LinkedIn. So that's just one of those little annoying nuances as they develop these different video products within each of the platforms is like what functionality? Do you have any, each of them? And that's why his system of choice is because of his capability to do it.

Scott Millar:

Yeah, the app allows you to save the video that you've just gone live on to your device. And then you can post it to LinkedIn, YouTube, or wherever else. So it's a bit of a nightmare, but it's just one of these processes you can have to bake into.

Shannon Murphy:

Yeah, I think the age of social media and all is that's why when you were like Shannon got on TikTok. I like that another platform.

Q: Have you got a recommended step-by-step guide to actually set this up from getting the pixels set up on the website, through to actually getting campaigns into social platforms? 

Shannon Murphy:

I (Attendee) asked this because I've recently gone to put a very simple ad on Facebook, and since I have to switch up, switch to a business suite. And he feels that you need a Ph.D. in astrophysics, to actually get through all of this. So yeah, I think he's looking for that if we can plug it in. Does IT Rockstar have a resource that you're willing to give to our audience?

Scott Millar:

Yeah, we actually have a course within an IT Rockstars membership, that takes you through this, it's called the MSP video Academy. And it's six modules, and it takes you step by step through this, as well as the membership, we have a marketing surgery every Thursday. So if you're getting stuck with that type of thing, you can come along to the surgery, and we can work through it together. We have that resource in place and there are videos on exactly how to get it done. But yeah, you're right on Facebook, you don't need to have that rocket science degree to tell you the truth, though. Facebook is one of the easier platforms to use. Things like Google AdWords, geez, get my head around that again, haven't used it in 10 years. And it's like, wow. It's just one of these things that you have to kind of invest the time in.

Shannon Murphy:

Yeah, I would say it's true. Invest the time or find somebody qualified to do it. I think that both Scott and I run businesses, it's this challenge that you face all the time, right. 

Q: What should the retargeting ad budget be for someone just starting out?

Scott Millar:

I used to be in the thought that it depends on how much web traffic you get into your site because that'll dictate the size of how many people are in your retargeting audience. So you'll quite quickly either run through the budget that you set. So I used to start, like with $5 a day, it was fairly minimal, because I had maybe like 50 people coming back to the website, on a regular basis. But after speaking with some experts in this, they suggested that you should set your targets in a way that's only people that have spent at least 30 seconds on your website. So that its people are actually interested in what it is that you've got to offer. And you basically just set the budget until it maxes out.

So start at something like $50 a day. You won't probably get through that. But you'll find that Facebook or the Google Display Network, not going to show your ad continually over that one day to that one person so you don't have to worry about that. So you want to try and max out the budget. But from the experience, I've seen with my members, and here IT Rockstars, you're probably looking to start about, you look probably around about $5 a day to start with as an average.

Shannon Murphy:

Okay, awesome. That's, that's great Intel. Okay. Well, I think that's it. We don't have any other questions. We've almost started at 35 past with questions. So this is a really active audience. I'm glad that we got to get to everyone's questions, and virtually no drop-off. So I think that you all were fans, please, I put our LinkedIn reach out to us. Message me if you have any other subjects you'd like to hear about, right? We have weekly series, and we're going to be doing even more of these in the coming year. So that's a wrap. Thank you all for joining us. I really enjoyed this conversation. And thank you, Scott, so much for your time.

Scott Millar:

No, Thanks, Shannon, for having me on. We worked really hard to put this together. So thank you. 

Shannon Murphy:

Yeah, yeah, of course. All right. Thank you all. Have a good rest of your day. Bye.