Interview with Alexis Galliard: social media advertising

Alexis’s links:

Website
LinkedIn

Watch the video here or read the transcript below if you prefer.

 

Transcript:

Samantha Tonge: Hi, Samantha Tonge, Labrakita Marketing again with another one of my expert interviews. I've got Alexis here today, and we're going to talk about social media advertising. So Alexis, would you like to introduce yourself?

Alexis Gaillard: Good afternoon, Samantha. Hi. So my name is Alexis. I'm from Digitrone Group, which is a digital agency, mainly focused on digital marketing, helping businesses, especially small businesses, get started with digital marketing. And social media advertising is a good example of something that is often scary for business owners. They think it's complex, or they've tried it before, and they didn't get results. So usually, they leave it on the side, and therefore miss a big opportunity. So my purpose with this company is to help them figure out their social media advertising. I help them understand that it doesn't have to be complex. With the right strategy, and if they use it at the right stage of their business as well, it can be awfully great; a very effective lever for their growth. To tell you a little bit about my personal background; when I grew my first businesses, I did a lot of mistakes doing social media advertising too early, or in the wrong way. And so now I want to share my experience and help people do it in the right way and not make the same mistakes I did before.

Samantha: Yeah, that sounds great. I think a lot of people are probably in the same boat as you were. I've certainly spoken to a lot of clients, who are difficult to convince that paid-for advertising is a very powerful tool. When I’d bring up social media advertising, I think they all get the organic side, that that needs to be done. Although they're not necessarily going about it in the right way. But when it comes to paid-for, they have doubts, because they've tried it, or they've heard someone else who's tried it and it hasn't worked. Or in many cases it was too expensive for what they got back. And I think that's partly because people are trying to do it themselves, without, you know, someone like you or me getting involved. Do you find that's the case?

Alexis: Yes, absolutely. I mean, that's a mistake I've done as well. It's like... when you try it for the first time, even if you go to a course, or try to learn by yourself, or have some digital marketing knowledge... If it's the first time, or the first month you do Facebook ads for example, you will make mistakes. And I think it's like everything in life, if you just give up, if you don't persevere, you won't make it, you know? So you need to get it wrong first, in order to learn. Or if you don't want to make those mistakes, and waste a lot of money, as I did; it is better... you will save money by going to an expert who will help you avoid those costly mistakes.

Samantha: Yeah, it is cheaper. We may charge, but it's cheaper in the long run.

Alexis: Yeah.

Common mistakes

Samantha: And what would you say are the most common mistakes you encounter?

Alexis: In my experience, which is in Facebook Ads, so I can give some examples from those. Social media advertising is really powerful, because it allows you to target individuals very precisely, according to their interests, their behaviours and a lot of things. This is only possible with the power that Facebook has. But I would say the biggest mistakes are made by business owners who don't know their target audience well enough, or whose target audience reach is too broad. And therefore when they do Facebook advertising, and they target those people, the message is not tailor-made for the audience, targeting their needs and their behaviours. When we are on Facebook, and we see some advertising, if it's not... if it sounds too generic or if it doesn't specifically address our concerns, or problems, or pain, or what we value, then we feel like the person hasn’t really addressed their research specifically to us. We just keep scrolling, because on social media especially, people don't have much attention span. And so then businesses, if they do this, they just compete with every other business who does the same service as them, who target the same people, and nothing makes them different. Because of that, usually they don't get good performance with their ad. I would say that's the biggest mistake.

Samantha: Right. So it comes back to this... And I find the same. I'm more B2B, so I do more LinkedIn Advertising personally, but that's very similar there. A very familiar story. I think it's getting the basic strategy right, before you go headlong into any advertising.

Segmentation, targeting & positioning

Samantha: But yeah, I take your point, especially with social media, where people have short attention spans, it comes back to your segmentation, your targeting and positioning. STP, as we call it in the marketing sphere. It's about getting those basics right before you go headlong into trying to get results, I guess.

Alexis: Yeah, absolutely. And I would say there's also content as well. Usually, for example, if you post some content organically, you can see which content performs best with your target audience. And then the best thing to do is to use this to target similar people with advertising and promote a similar content, because then you can increase your chances at liked content which performs, instead of... because otherwise, you just spend money in advertising. You are testing a lot of different targets, different messaging, different creatives, you know, basically change everything, one parameter at a time until you find what sticks. But that costs a lot of money, and usually business owners don't have these investments. They can't make 14 advertisements. So usually, it's better to use what they know with organic, and just use this to target the same people, with the same content, because that already works.

Samantha: Yes. We should probably explain to people, who might be sitting there scratching their heads, going: "What's an organic?" So organic is the general post that you put on social media. It's the ones that you don't pay for. It's the ones that you just post. So that's a good tip. If something's performing very well from an organic point of view, as long as you have your target audience following you, it stands to reason that that would also perform well as an advert. Yeah. That makes sense. And I guess the same with any learning that you've had from any of your other marketing as well. If you've had, you know, email campaigns done on particular subjects. I imagine it's the same thing. Do you use avatars as part of your...?

Alexis: Yes, that's what we use. Same thing as like avatars, and a bio customised. So, try to take a paper and put a name, put a photo, put some further details, age, how many children, what do they like, hobbies, interests. Everything that can help you understand their psyche, and the demographic of your target audience is definitely important, because when you have this on paper, it basically helps you figure out who this person really is, and how you can sell to them. And then you can use those points of the avatar to target those people. So as we said before, be much more precise than just targeting an age or gender or anything, it needs to be very specific.

Samantha: Yes. Yeah. So, I guess it's helpful if people look at their current customers. But also think about who they would wish they had. Because sometimes people have a certain type of client, but actually, they'd rather have a different type of customer. And that's why they need to advertise.

Alexis: Yes, but then it's more challenging, because if we take Facebook Ads, for example, you can do what is called 'look-alike audiences'. So, Facebook has the power to find similar people for us, because of the huge amount of data they gather, they can do this job for us. And they will be similar to those few people we already have, our existing customers. So this makes the job really easy. Because then you just let Facebook do the job. And you know, if your message is performing well with your audience and your actual customer, if you target similar people, it's likely to work as well. But if you want to target different people, that's where it becomes challenging, because you can never get it right on first try. That's why you basically have to test, if you want to enter a new market, or target new audience directly with advertising, without using the organic post, as we said before, and without using some kind of feedback on your communication and your overall marketing activities. If you just go into the dark, you actually can't get it right first. And so, yes, that's a risk.

Samantha: True, true. And I should mention, you can do the same with LinkedIn by the way, if you're more business to business. If you've got an existing type of customer, you can tell LinkedIn who your existing customers are, and it will find similar people for you. That's one way of doing it. Or you can just select who you want to target, if you know. So you can go in and select certain attributes, although not to the same depth as Facebook, I have to admit, but it's because it's business to business. With LinkedIn, it's more about job roles and the size of business, the geography, that kind of thing. Whereas with Facebook, it's about behaviours and likes and desires. Which is really powerful, especially with business consumers, sometimes business to business as well, depending on what they do. But sometimes Facebook works there as well.

Alexis: Yes, but it's much more emotional in B2C with Facebook Ad. Whereas, in B2B, you target related to their position, and the size of their company and all those things. That is why account-based marketing is becoming more and more popular. What I said for Facebook Ad is the same thing for you with LinkedIn; it is targeting people according to, not only their position but the size of their companies or industry and then basically your message will be tailor-made for the situation of their company, the challenges the company is facing, the responsibilities of the person in sales, etc. The advertisement isn't just generic for all salespeople, or any company who might benefit from help with their digital marketing, you know?

Samantha: You’ve sort of touched on a point there that's probably worth mentioning. It comes down to helping people solve the problems they have or, obviously, meeting needs, and speaking directly to them. That's really important across all marketing communication. But yes, especially with social media, where you've really got to grab their attention instantly. And sometimes that will mean that you have multiple advertisements running simultaneously. I don't know if you have the same thing, but I sometimes have to run multiple ads for different audiences, for some clients.

Alexis: Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

Samantha: Yeah, because the message might be slightly different. They might deal with people who work in the public sector, and they've got budget issues. And they might also work with people in, I don't know, banking. Just to pick something completely different. And their issues are going to be completely different. It's not likely to be budget constraints. So it makes sense to tailor your ad to the audience for some. I've had conversations with clients going: "Oh, I don't know". They're really struggling with the message because they've got different audiences. But it's fine to have different messages.

Alexis: Yes, yes. That's always what we say with marketing. It needs to be tailored for people and you need to segment your audience. It goes back to what you said earlier.

Samantha: Yeah, yeah. Go back to the basics of marketing. The digital world has changed things in so many ways. But you still got to get those old, traditional, basic strategy stuff right first.

Alexis: I think that's very interesting what you say. I think it's also a mistake people make: they are looking for the latest trends, the shiny object, the quick wins. And basically... it's not about that. You need to get the basics right first, and then optimise your campaigns with the latest trends. But at the beginning, just getting the basics right is the most important. If you take the things the wrong way around, just trying to use the latest trends to get the quick wins. First, it won't work.

Samantha: It's back to front. Yeah. Don't jump on TikTok until you know your audience is there. And you know what to say.

Alexis: Exactly, exactly. And like when we say: "Oh, now TikTok is the best thing, Facebook is the best thing." It actually depends on your target audience. Even if, like, one of your competitors is on TikTok, they might sell the same service as you, but they might have a different audience, you know? There are a lot of services or products that can be for people no matter their age for example. But the messaging won't be the same, and the platform won't be the same, if you target somebody who is 20 or 60. And even if you are a company who target people across age, even if you solve the same problem, the same message, the creative should still be different in order to catch their attention, as you said before. We need to get their attention, because that's very important in advertising. You need to have something that catches their attention and makes people want to learn more about what you want to say. It's a challenge as well. This is where you need to be creative, and you also need to have a strong marketing message. So all those things mixed together are what makes the success; knowing your audience, but also be creative at the same time.

The cost

Samantha: Yes, yes. And within that, in my experience it also helps bring the cost down.

Alexis: Yes.

Samantha: In LinkedIn, certainly. If people are interacting, LinkedIn then prefers that ad, and it won't cost you as much to get in front of as many people. And I mean, Google Ads are the same, by the way. I assume it's the same on Facebook then as well?

Alexis: Yes. It's about relevance, you know? These platforms… it's still social media. So their job is still to propose content that is relevant to their audience, to the people. And they help businesses with that as well, that's why Facebook does the look-alike audience for example. Because then they know that the advertising content they show people will be more likely to be of interest to them. So...

Samantha: Yes, yes. Because it keeps people engaged. So from their point of view... Well, it works from their side as well because they don't want to bombard people with ads that make people turn Facebook off.

Alexis: Yes, incentivising companies for providing ads which are relevant by making the cost, the advertising cost go down as well. So it's a win-win.

Samantha: It is. it is. And I think that's what has put a lot of people off. At least that’s what I gathered from my experience, speaking to them. They've either heard or tried to do advertising themselves, and it's been really expensive. It's been really expensive because they haven't had someone to help them target it properly, to get it as relevant, to get people engaged.

Social Media Advertising & The sales funnel

Alexis: I think another problem as well can be people who do advertising too early. So they don't have a good idea of their customer funnel yet, and they simply want to drive more. “I want this ad, for example, to be about our brand”, but they don't nurture the people they already have in their funnel, or they don't have any idea of the wealth of the people and how to nurture them who are in their funnel. So they just spend money in advertising that don't get results, and they’re like: "Oh, it's not working." Maybe it is working. You drive more, but you need to keep nurturing those people. There are a few ways to do this: maybe by getting their email address and inviting them to a webinar, or email marketing, or even retargeting advertising. People often think that advertising needs to target new people who never heard about your business. But on Facebook, for example, you can target people who already know about your brand, who already liked your profile, or a specific page on your website, who already subscribe to your newsletter. And so this is where you can target people according to their behaviours with your company, not just their behaviours in their personal life. This is very powerful as well, because this again, helps the companies and organisations provide content which is relevant to people according to where they are in the customer funnel, you know?

Samantha: Yes, yeah. And that's a really important point. Like you say, you need to nurture leads. it isn't just about new people. There's been some research actually on this. In B2C, business-to-consumer, the split should be, in terms of how much resource you put into brand awareness versus lead generation advertisements is 60/40. So 60% are those new people, who you were talking about, raising brand awareness, so that when someone, later on, thinks they need your service, they remember You, and not your competitor. And then 40% is the lead generation, and lead nurturing side of things, which is about, like you say, if they're further along in that funnel. So they might be an existing customer. Depending on what type of product you're talking about, they might be further along in the funnel, they might be someone who's purchased from you before, ensuring that he will want to purchase again. And then in B2B it's similar, except it's more of a 50/50 split. So it's slightly less on the brand awareness, a little bit more on that lead generation and nurturing side. So it's interesting you say that. That is definitely something that you need to think about with all marketing communications: “Where is that person in that buyer journey?” Which, I guess in B2B is often a very long funnel, simply because it is a big purchase, a big machinery, or something.

Whereas, in most B2C, with the exception of automotive and that kind of thing, it's going to be ongoing purchasing, you know, your Mars bars, etc. You want them to buy them regularly, you know, have X per week. So you've got to really think about that as well.

Alexis: Yes, and in B2B especially, it's very important to think about that, because, for example, the sales team and the marketing team need to work together. So, if you are advertising and you get people in the funnel, the sales teams need to call them on the phone, or just keep nurturing them from a sales perspective as well. And usually because the two departments don't work together, they work in silos, so they just keep blaming each other for what is not actually their fault.

Part of the mix

Alexis: And so then the organization's business analysis thinks, like, advertising didn't work or the sales team is not performing. Because they cold-call people, when they should just mix that all together and focus on what the customer needs at that stage.

Samantha: Yes. Yes. Funnily enough, one of my first interviews was on exactly that subject. I think we both know Barry Clark.

Alexis: Yes.

Samantha: So check out that video, if you're interested in that part of it. But yeah, that's absolutely right. But sometimes sales just think: "Oh, that didn't work. It was a waste of time." And I don't think they always understand. They're really focused on… and ideally get lead generation, we hope, and take advantage of that. But brand awareness is probably a bit more alien to your average sales guy. So I guess that's the reason, but then it's our job as communicators, I guess, to get that across. We should be able to explain that to them. But yeah. So I think most people think of advertising as the brand-awareness side only. But even within advertising, especially on social media, I find, that people could be at any stage of the funnel.

Alexis: Exactly. I think that's a very, very important point. If we take Facebook ad, for example, you can build some kind of awareness ads. And so then you focus on telling your brand story for example. And if you focus on conversion ads, because on Facebook you can basically choose what is the purpose of the campaign.

Another mistake people often make is that when they run their advertising, they target people who don't know their company. And they want to optimise their campaign. Therefore, they choose conversion, they choose lead, and then their costs of advertising goes through the roof. And it's because when you try to target people who have never heard of you before, it's better to build this brand awareness; telling your company's story, and then do overall advertising, retargeting those people, which is called conversion advertising, once they're further down in the sales funnel. Only when they know a little bit about your company, your purpose, why they should buy from you. Because it's what it is about today. It's about your why. It's not about what you do, it's about why you do it first, and then focus on the second advertising, focusing on the same people, and explaining the benefits for them and what you're selling.

Samantha: Yes, yes. That makes sense. And by the way, it is the same in LinkedIn. You choose what the objective of your ad is. So, you can say it's, you know, brand awareness, or it's lead generation or whatever. That's the same there. And they use different metrics of course depending on what you're trying to do. And yeah, that's very true. It's why brand awareness is so important. If people have never heard of you, are they likely to go with you? Probably not. And we're talking about social media advertising here, which is just one of your mix. And we’re talking about tactics, but it should integrate with all your other marketing that you're doing: your email marketing, your..., you know. And if you're driving traffic to your website, you should think about marketing automation: “How do you turn those into leads?” So one thing to mention is probably, for most businesses, just doing social media advertising in isolation is not going to work.

Alexis: No. No. Absolutely not.

Samantha: Yeah. So yeah, really think about all those other sides of things as well; how it all comes together.

Scheduling

Alexis: Better than post, I would say Hootsuite is very, very good. Which allows you, as we said, to plan the posts ahead. Because, for social media, there’s no general, best practice about what is the best time and day to post because what is true in an industry or an organisation, it might not be true for your customer. So the best thing is to know your target audience. When are they on Facebook, on LinkedIn? When is the best time to post? But if you don't know that yet, or even if you do know that, it's still better to try to post at the best time possible. It will help your marketing efforts. And in order to do that, especially if you don't want to be sitting in front of the computer and have to manually do it, on a Friday evening, for example. It's very important to just also not having to think about it all the time and while you're working, keep thinking: "Oh, it's Friday, I need to post something." It's good to have something like Hootsuite for example to schedule the post ahead.

Samantha: Yeah, so... I use something called SocialBee. And that also can pull in things. It can do some really fancy stuff like putting RSS feeds, if there's a particular feed that you want to promote and that kind of thing. You can have it set to automatically post your blogs and all sorts. For most of my clients, that's probably a bit advanced, but it's still very useful to have that tool when, like you say, you might not have time. You might have time on a Monday, for example, sit down then, do all of your posts and have them scheduled rather than remembering every day to post. Because I think that's another area where people fall down. Like you say, when they're testing and finding out what's the best time, who their target audience is, what messages are working best. When they're doing all that organic stuff, that can be hard work if you're doing it yourself. Especially if you're not using one of these tools..

The power of storytelling

Samantha: The other thing you touched on which is quite interesting, because I observed the same thing, when you were talking about the brand story. I find story content, whether it's a story about the company or employees, that type of content goes out very well. Especially if you're doing something with a charity or something. And the stories in terms of case studies as well, especially in B2B, that's some of the best performing content on social media; whether it's organic, or paid-for.

Alexis: What would you say, for example, is the best type of content to promote for each stage of the funnel in B2B, so on LinkedIn? For example case studies, are they relevant at the top of the funnel, or are they better at the bottom of it?

Samantha: I think that depends. It really depends. There's no sort of hard or fast rule. But sometimes that's further on, when people are like doing some research. If you've got case studies on your website, that's really useful content. That way people can research your business a bit more and decide if they want to work with you. Sometimes though, it's excellent for brand awareness, because: "Oh, I'm the same type of company, I have the same issues."

So sometimes that works really well with people that have never heard of you before. And now they have heard of you. Now, they might think about you in the longer term. So I think case studies can work at different stages. It is one of those rare ones that can work at multiple stages of the sales funnel. But yeah, certainly utilise that at various stages. So if you've got a customer who's potentially interested... if you've got a case study, and they're in the same industry, facing the same issues, make sure you give them that case study.

So yeah, I'd say the case study is one of those things that's really useful, especially in B2B. And it's really useful at multiple stages. It's a kind of social proof as well. You know, I think people instinctively understand the need to look for recommendations, testimonials, case studies, and social proof as well. Of course, you can't always get permission to use their name, especially if you've solved a problem that they shouldn't have had in the first place, one that they don't want to admit. But yeah, especially if you can get a name to it, it is really powerful content on every platform, not just social media. But definitely, if you've got a case study, get that out on social media, because if someone is in that industry, and they see it, it is really, really useful. And yeah, like I say, any type of storytelling, I find... it always gets the best reactions.

Final thoughts

Samantha: And is there any information that we haven't discussed that you want people to know about social media advertising?

Alexis: So, I try to act as an advocate of social media advertising done at the right time in the right way for businesses. I would like more businesses to understand this huge opportunity and how they can leverage it, supported in the right way. If they're the right type of businesses, they already have marketing efforts which are performing. If they know who their target audience is, because that's one that is essential. It only ever works, if they know their target audience, otherwise they won't get any results. But if they are at this stage, I would really like businesses to take advantage of this opportunity, to do something that their competitors are not doing. Especially for small businesses, usually their competitors are not doing advertising. So if your business has a precise niche, for example, if you operate in a niche market, and your target audience is a niche, which is what successful small businesses do; they try to have a niche. Then you can drill down, while keep being specific with your niche, but with advertising you can reach more people who are in that niche. You can reach people in other cities, even in other countries.

So that can be a great way for small businesses to keep growing, while keeping the same customer base, the same niche. And they can keep the same message which then will keep performing, instead of trying to diversify.

Samantha: Yeah, okay. Brilliant. and I definitely agree with that. I think it's a really powerful tool that a lot of businesses of MSE are missing out on. And some of the slightly larger businesses as well. You'd be surprised. Because, I mean, we talked about the funnel. It can be existing customers and so on, but I think you can't get in front of people who don't know who you are via social media without advertising.

Alexis: That's so true.

Samantha: I think that's the bottom line. You're missing out, if you don't advertise. And to tell you the same, I've got some great results for clients using social media advertising the right way. So yeah, if you need help with LinkedIn, I'm probably the best person to speak to. And Alexis is here, if you need help with Facebook Advertising. That's definitely more his bag than mine. But yeah. Thanks very much for that information. It was very useful. And I think it's something that a lot of businesses miss, something that a lot of businesses could make a lot of use of.

Alexis: Absolutely. Thank you Samantha for the interview.

Samantha: Thank You! All right. Thank you, everyone. Thank you all for listening and see you again soon.

If you need any help with your social media advertising contact Alexis on 01313 785583 or email him at alexis.gaillard@digitronegroup.com. If you need help with your B2B marketing contact me on 07791 521439 or email me at samantha@labrakita.co.uk

Interviewer: Samantha Tonge, Managing Director, Labrakita Marketing