0:00

Matt Haycox here and welcome to another

0:02

episode of No Bollocks with me,

0:05

Matt Haycox. And today we've got Ben

0:07

Heath in the virtual house with

0:09

us. Ben's the founder of Heath Media.

0:11

He is a Google Ads expert,

0:13

Meta Ads expert, and I guess what

0:15

we call in the trade, a

0:17

performance marketer. So Ben, welcome to the

0:19

show. Thank you for having me.

0:21

Looking forward to talking. Before

0:26

we get into the specifics of performance

0:28

marketing and meta, where do so

0:30

many small businesses go wrong with their

0:33

marketing? And I guess a more

0:35

direct question of that is why don't

0:37

business owners know how to market?

0:39

I think a lot of business owners

0:41

do what I did and they

0:43

start with something that they want to

0:46

sell, product, service, whatever. And they're

0:48

almost surprised when they start their business

0:50

that no one buys it. just

0:52

because it exists. So they approach the whole

0:54

thing from a, okay, I now need to

0:56

learn marketing to sell this thing that I'm

0:58

really interested in and want to sell, as

1:00

opposed to it being a core part of

1:02

the business. So I think a lot of

1:04

business owners start their marketing journey a little

1:06

bit kicking and screaming because it's not what

1:08

they wanted to do. It's kind of a,

1:10

they see it as a necessary evil. And

1:13

so that sets them up to fail in

1:15

the beginning. And then I think from then

1:17

on, they get into the world of, okay,

1:19

how do I do this? They might consume

1:21

some content online. And there's lots of people pushing

1:23

the idea that if you just click the

1:25

right buttons on a certain ad platform, or if

1:27

you just do a bit of this or

1:29

a bit of that, that it's really easy and

1:31

you're going to generate leads and sales. And

1:33

they don't approach it with the mindset of this

1:35

is a skill. And I've used this analogy

1:38

before, but I think it's a really good one

1:40

for... business owners thinking about getting involved, you

1:42

know, marketing their business and doing this properly. No

1:44

one would ever start playing tennis for the

1:46

first time. Play two or three rounds with a

1:48

friend or something like that. Then enter a

1:50

tournament at the weekend and expect to win. They'd

1:53

get smashed. They'd be playing against people who've been

1:55

playing for years. Of course, they'd barely win a point,

1:57

right? And you would expect that with tennis. No

1:59

one would then say tennis doesn't work. But that's

2:01

exactly what business owners do with marketing.

2:03

So they will watch your YouTube videos,

2:05

have a little go at something. didn't

2:07

get any sales, didn't get any leads,

2:09

marketing doesn't work, or this form of

2:11

marketing doesn't work. So they completely approach

2:13

it from the wrong mindset. It's a

2:15

skill. It's something that you can develop

2:17

over time or work with people that

2:19

have the skill if you've got the

2:21

funds to do it. But it's absolutely

2:23

an integral part of the business. And

2:25

if you want your business to go

2:27

beyond something really small, you're going to

2:29

have to find a way to consistently

2:31

and reliably generate customers, and that's what

2:33

great marketing does. I like your analogy,

2:35

because I'm an analogy guy, but I

2:37

always have one particular analogy that I

2:40

wheel out when it comes to talking

2:42

about business in general, and I guess

2:44

why I think so many people are

2:46

bad in business. And I always use

2:48

the sporting analogy of the fact that

2:50

because business has such a low barrier

2:52

to entry, and because there is no

2:54

scorecard, I mean, okay, we can say

2:56

that how much... you make is the

2:58

scorecard, but it's also, you know, can

3:00

be subjective. And I think that's why

3:02

it gives people such a kind of

3:04

a deluded ego when it comes to

3:06

business. I always say, listen, if you

3:08

picked up a football for the first

3:10

time today, you would never possibly think

3:12

you should go and stand on a

3:14

pitch at the weekend with Beckham and

3:16

Messi. You shouldn't even think you should

3:18

be playing five a side. And you

3:20

just inherently know that. But because you

3:22

can start a business by literally opening

3:24

a company for 10 quid or not

3:26

even opening a company, just being a

3:29

sole trader. and that barrier to entry

3:31

is so low, people just naturally then

3:33

think they're in the same territory as

3:35

an Elon Musk or a Richard Branson

3:37

or somebody who's got 30, 40, 50

3:39

years of business and success behind them.

3:41

And it's a very dangerous place to

3:43

be. And I think because... Things

3:46

like sport have official coaches, official teachers

3:48

and stuff, which people would take no embarrassment

3:50

in learning. If I want to play

3:52

tennis and I want to play better tennis,

3:54

it's an obvious statement to say I'm

3:56

going to go and get a tennis coach.

3:58

But it's almost embarrassing, almost akin to

4:01

saying, oh, I need a life coach or

4:03

a psychiatrist or something. To say I

4:05

have a business coach, people seem to look

4:07

at it so badly. And tying that

4:09

back to marketing as a skill, I mean,

4:11

for me, Marketing is just something that

4:13

is so fundamental to business. Because, I mean,

4:15

ultimately, business doesn't exist until something's sold.

4:17

And it's very difficult to sell something if

4:19

you haven't got a nice flow of

4:22

leads of people who want to buy it.

4:24

So I think, know, for me, as

4:26

a skill set, a business owner needs to

4:28

learn. You have got to live and

4:30

breathe marketing all the time. And that's not

4:32

to say, obviously, as any business grows,

4:34

you delegate and delegate as things move on.

4:36

But for me, marketing is something that

4:38

can never be. truly delegated and pushed off

4:40

yes you might work with an expert

4:42

like yourself in meta ads you know yes

4:45

we might work with an external creative

4:47

or or whoever it's going to be but

4:49

unless you understand those nuts and bolts

4:51

of marketing and what does that look like

4:53

to your business i just think your

4:55

business is doomed to failure well this if

4:57

you i like to break things down

4:59

today like basic core elements and then you

5:01

can expand from there it helps simplify

5:03

for me so if you think about a

5:06

successful business there's three core parts to

5:08

it there's you've got to sell the thing

5:10

you've got to deliver the thing and

5:12

then you've got some sort of operational system

5:14

that makes sure that everything runs properly

5:16

and that's at its very core that's what

5:18

most businesses are so selling the thing

5:20

is like you said absolutely important and really

5:22

key there's another thing you mentioned around

5:24

people being skeptical around business coaches and and

5:26

they do that in the marketing space

5:29

as much as anything else and i think

5:31

that's whereas they wouldn't in say a

5:33

sporting activity seem much more natural i think

5:35

in part that is the the coaching

5:37

industry's fault because if you hire a tennis

5:39

coach and you start playing tennis and

5:41

they're not very good you can see that

5:43

obviously and immediately and think okay i'm

5:45

not gonna keep working with you not gonna

5:47

take your advice like you're not very

5:50

good um whereas there are a lot of

5:52

business coaches earning five grand a month

5:54

it's like do you really want to take

5:56

that guy's advice. He's probably not the

5:58

best source of information. So I think, yeah,

6:00

there's been a lot of people claiming

6:02

to be what they're not and trying to

6:04

sell coaching off the back of it

6:06

that has given people a lot of scepticism.

6:08

But that doesn't mean you have to

6:10

just completely ignore. That whole side

6:13

of things in marketing as a rest of

6:15

the business, there's going to be really

6:17

good people that you can learn tons from

6:19

and can speed you up on your

6:21

path to getting to where you want

6:23

to go. Well, let's talk marketing specifically in

6:25

the context of your business and what

6:27

you do for people. When I introduced

6:29

you, I called you a performance marketing expert.

6:32

For those who don't know what it

6:34

is, how would you describe performance marketing? Yeah,

6:36

so it's basically clients will come to

6:38

us with a budget and they want

6:40

that back with extra. effectively and performance marketing

6:42

is or good performance marketing is being

6:44

able to get the largest return out

6:46

of what they give you back to them

6:49

that's going to vary massively between businesses

6:51

some are going to need much larger

6:53

returns than others depending on well margins and

6:55

volume and what it is they're looking

6:57

to do but at its core that's that's

6:59

what performance marketing is and in a

7:01

lot of cases it's going to be

7:03

nowadays things like instagram Facebook advertising,

7:05

Google advertising, a client wants a 4x return

7:07

on ad spend. So they've got £10 ,000

7:10

a month to spend and that needs

7:12

to generate £40 ,000 a month of sales

7:14

for it to work. Anything above that, great.

7:16

Below that, you've got an issue. So

7:18

yeah, and it's basic. That's what it effectively

7:20

is. Yeah, mean, I guess just the

7:22

cherry on the top, if you like, for

7:24

me is that in that performance marketing

7:26

definition, there's a very... ROI target. You know,

7:29

like you say, somebody wants a, you

7:31

know, X return and ad spend, but you

7:33

know, with performance marketing, you can very

7:35

much track it. You know, many other advertising

7:37

channels, okay, you know, they work too.

7:39

You might even know they work positively, but

7:41

with performance marketing, you know, I've put

7:43

one pound in and I've got one pound

7:45

and seven back or 93 pence back.

7:48

And until I can make that be in

7:50

excess of a pound, I can't scale

7:52

it. Yeah, I do think that, and that

7:54

is great. And that is really helpful.

7:56

And that, helps justify the marketing spend on

7:58

a lot of these things because business

8:00

owners feel much more comfortable knowing what they're

8:02

getting back. I do think that over

8:04

the last decade that has led to too

8:07

many businesses being too focused specifically on

8:09

the immediate return and not thinking enough about

8:11

the longer term or the brand. I

8:13

gave a talk recently where I was comparing

8:15

McDonald's average order value so how much

8:17

someone spends one time when they're coming to

8:19

McDonald's versus their lifetime value. And the

8:21

average order value for McDonald's is about $9

8:23

each time someone goes in. But the

8:26

lifetime value of a customer on average is

8:28

$5 ,000 plus. So that's an extreme example.

8:30

But if you're... making your calculations as

8:32

a business thinking right we only get nine

8:34

dollars in every time we make a

8:36

sale what can we afford to acquire that

8:38

customer in advertising costs three dollars maybe

8:40

a three x return on ad spend maybe

8:42

as a maximum well that basically rules

8:45

out any form of advertising you're not going

8:47

to get customers at scale for three

8:49

dollars each it's not going be possible but

8:51

if you realize your customers are worth

8:53

more than five thousand dollars each you could

8:55

pay a hundred times that and still

8:57

be really profitable for you to acquire a

8:59

customer so It's a good place to

9:01

start from, but the next level is to

9:03

go, you know what, maybe we can

9:06

make a slight loss on that initial customer

9:08

acquired because we're going to make it

9:10

up and then some over the long run.

9:12

Maybe we do need to put an

9:14

ad in front of someone 15 times for

9:16

them to buy. And when you've paid

9:18

for 14 impressions, you can see it as

9:20

a cost, but you haven't got anything

9:22

back in yet. That extra impression gets them

9:25

over the line and covers and then

9:27

some all the costs of the previous advertising.

9:29

So in all those scenarios where you're

9:31

looking at ad spend and the

9:33

short -term cost versus the short -term

9:35

return your actual return is significantly better

9:37

than that because of what I just

9:39

talked about all that compounding effect those

9:41

people that refer someone else in three

9:43

weeks time that's not accounted for

9:45

in the numbers yet so yeah just

9:48

something people need to watch out for

9:50

because I've seen a trend towards that

9:52

for sure so whilst I couldn't agree

9:54

with you anymore I also feel like

9:56

you're giving your prospects far too

9:58

much credit in being able to have

10:00

these kind of conversations. I mean, how

10:02

often does an SME business owner come

10:04

to you and understand CAC and lifetime

10:07

value and how that is going to

10:09

allow you to lose their money

10:11

on an upfront advertising campaign? It depends

10:13

how many of my videos they've watched,

10:15

to be honest. Because I get

10:17

people who've been watching my stuff for two

10:19

years and they get it, right? But I

10:21

say that in jest, but it's so very...

10:23

you know yes because there's so many ways

10:25

you could look at it and you could

10:27

say well we can how can we tweak

10:30

the funnel how can we tweak the funnel

10:32

to make it more profitable at the front

10:34

end or is it is it never going

10:36

to be profitable and there's a million directions

10:38

you can go in but unless you have

10:40

the knowledge to understand the the difference between

10:42

lifetime value and a minimum order or not

10:44

minimum order but one -off one -off order value

10:46

and then effectively have the the balls to

10:48

see it through and the upfront and the

10:50

upfront funding to do it then then you're

10:52

going to be you know you're going to

10:54

be fighting an uphill battle from day one

10:56

aren't you yeah for sure that's nearly always

10:58

us having that conversation we're the instigators of

11:00

it when we're having that with clients but

11:02

often people will say things you know we've

11:04

worked with clients before where we're getting a

11:07

10x return on ad spend so spending a

11:09

thousand dollars we're getting ten thousand dollars back

11:11

for example we have a lot of us -based

11:13

clients so i often use dollars as the

11:15

example get ten thousand dollars back and they'll

11:17

be like oh It's a bit disappointing. We're

11:19

like, really? What are your margins? Unless your

11:21

margins are terrible, like this should be caused

11:23

to celebrate and scale. So there's a lot

11:25

of mindset shifting around that, reframing that this

11:27

can be fantastic. And I've spoken to also

11:29

a lot of small businesses that never gone,

11:31

never been down the route of getting any

11:33

external funding and almost seeing, you know, I've

11:35

had the conversation with quite a few people

11:37

where they say, well, why would you? Why

11:39

would you want to give a piece to

11:41

your company? Why not just go a little

11:43

bit slower and self -fund? I think what

11:46

they're missing is often that part is that.

11:48

Yes, but a lot of these funded companies

11:50

will be really aggressive on their marketing with

11:52

that budget. They will acquire an enormous amount

11:54

of customers that will pay off over time.

11:56

PayPal might be one of the classic examples

11:58

from many years ago where they literally just

12:00

paid people to start using PayPal. Everyone got,

12:02

I think it was $10. I think they

12:04

increased it maybe to 20. And then if

12:06

you referred a friend, you both got $10.

12:08

And when they were doing this, they were

12:10

absolutely hemorrhaging cash, but they were building a

12:12

massive customer base. And now most people will

12:14

use PayPal at some point. Or you can

12:16

study religiously the Russell Brunson Expert series of

12:18

books and learn how to make every day

12:20

one off for self -liquidating. Yeah. I mean, yes,

12:23

you can. I

12:26

was going to say, you absolutely can. And

12:28

like in my business, we would never acquire

12:30

a customer for anything close to what we

12:32

make, even on that initially. Like we're well,

12:34

we're really comfortable in that. But there just

12:36

is a place for some businesses to be

12:38

able to go beyond that and be more aggressive.

12:40

Most aren't there. To be honest, what you're

12:42

saying around your struggle, talking with a lot

12:44

of SMEs around convincing them, if we can

12:46

often get them to the point where the

12:48

initial transaction is self -liquidating, even that's a

12:50

struggle. A lot of the time, they won't. there

12:52

to be more margin in there. Unless your

12:54

business is geared up to be one -time

12:57

purchase or infrequent purchases, this could be great.

12:59

You deliver a great product or service and

13:01

then it keeps going. And I think part

13:03

of the reason why there's a lot of difficulty

13:05

for business owners to get their head around

13:07

that is because they don't have enough belief

13:09

in what they offer. I think a lot

13:11

of them will go, yeah, and they might

13:13

not say this out loud, but when they're

13:15

thinking to themselves later, they're going, yeah, but

13:17

are we really going to turn that person

13:19

that buys one pair of shoes from us

13:21

into someone who buys... 20 more pairs over

13:23

the next five years. Is our stuff really

13:25

good enough to do that? Because for this,

13:27

what I'm describing to work, that has to be

13:29

true. That has to be the case. So

13:31

that factors into your initial marketing as well.

13:33

Like how good is your stuff really to

13:35

be able to get people to come back

13:37

and buy again and again? Because that changes

13:39

your front end metrics. Most

13:42

business advice, it's motivational fluff. It's empty

13:44

promises and it's untested ideas by people

13:47

who have never even tried to apply

13:49

them. It's bollocks, but you're not going

13:51

to get that here. And that is

13:53

why I call it No Bollocks. The

13:55

No Bollocks newsletter is straight talking, high

13:57

impact, zero time wasting, tried, tested and

13:59

immediately actionable. Two emails a week, insider

14:01

strategies, brutally honest insights and the answers

14:03

to the questions that you're asking. Or

14:05

you should be asking. And the best

14:07

part, you're going to learn more in

14:09

10 minutes than most people learn in

14:11

a three -year MBA. Over 20 ,000 people

14:13

a week are already in. So don't

14:15

be the one that's missing out. Hit

14:18

the link in the show notes because

14:20

you just need one email that could

14:22

be the one that changes everything. So

14:26

business owner picks up the phone

14:28

to you. They've got budget for

14:30

paid ads. They don't

14:32

know exactly how they're going to

14:34

spend it. How do you

14:36

then... for them whether it's Facebook,

14:38

whether it's Instagram, whether it's

14:40

TikTok, whether it's Google Ads? Is

14:42

it business dependent? Should they

14:44

spread their eggs? How does that

14:46

conversation go? It is business

14:48

dependent. I'm not a huge fan

14:51

of spreading budgets across multiple platforms unless

14:53

you've got one to work and there's extra

14:55

budget to play with. I think otherwise

14:57

you spread yourself two things, particularly small business

14:59

owners, and then it's easy to panic,

15:01

feel like nothing's working. Whereas if you've got

15:03

one that you know is producing a

15:05

return as long as you're not taking that

15:07

out for other reasons you've got some

15:09

funds to play with to like expand to

15:11

other platforms most of the time when

15:13

a client contacts us they will have tested

15:15

one or multiple platforms so we're rarely

15:17

start and i think that's more and more

15:19

common nowadays where they'll diy it a

15:21

little bit and have a go so most

15:23

of the time we are going to

15:25

look at the data they already have and

15:27

use that to decide. If they don't,

15:30

if it's a business that's not done anything,

15:32

they've gotten to a larger scale to

15:34

the point where they can work with a

15:36

company like us from some other form

15:38

of marketing, rarely, I was going to say

15:40

referrals, rarely is it purely referrals, but

15:42

they might have some cold calling or some

15:44

sort of strategy for acquiring customers consistently. Honestly,

15:47

we'll just look at our existing... base and

15:49

what we've done previously because we've worked with

15:51

something like four close to five thousand clients

15:53

across the world over the last almost decade

15:55

so we have worked with just about and

15:57

because of the nature of how businesses find

15:59

us is through my content we work we're

16:01

not niche specific so we work with every

16:04

type of business in all types of industries

16:06

so we Just have a look back at,

16:08

oh, okay, yeah. So one of our media

16:10

buyers is working on that account. What did

16:12

you do? What worked for them? This is

16:14

a similar business. Great, we'll go ahead and

16:16

implement the same thing. So let's kind of

16:18

drill that down into a real -life example.

16:20

Let's pick one of my businesses, just to

16:23

give it a bit of colour and context. I

16:26

have a business called Funding

16:28

Guru that provides business loans to

16:30

SME businesses in the UK.

16:32

Now, if I'm adding the marketing

16:34

knowledge I've got, I'd say,

16:36

well, we could go Google Ads,

16:38

which would be search -based. Someone's

16:41

putting their hand up and

16:43

actually saying, yes, I want a

16:45

business loan. come up there

16:47

or we go meta you know Facebook

16:49

Instagram where I might be able to

16:51

target it to people that I think

16:53

fit the audience profile of a business

16:56

owner but ultimately they're not searching for

16:58

business loans it would be more interrupt

17:00

based type content I mean if I

17:02

have come to you in this semi

17:04

real life example having not spent money

17:06

in either of those two departments yet

17:08

how do we pick one or the

17:11

other because you know they both sound

17:13

like they've got their logics, but they

17:15

also sound very different. Yeah, so there

17:17

I can draw on real world example

17:19

as well. So there's a mentee part

17:21

of a mentorship program that has a

17:24

very similar business in the US. I've

17:26

done quite a bit of work with

17:28

him on discussing this. So what they have

17:30

found with that business is that Meta

17:32

provides the largest volume of leads. LinkedIn works

17:34

quite well in terms of advertising for

17:36

being able to reach people quite specifically. So

17:38

whilst that cannot provide the same volume,

17:40

the quality is really high. So they've consistently

17:43

run ads on both. That company stopped

17:45

running ads on Google, and I can explain

17:47

why. Because there is the intent to

17:49

advertise with people searching, looking for business loans,

17:51

going to pay a lot more in

17:53

terms of cost per click there than you

17:55

will on somewhere like Meta or even

17:57

LinkedIn, which is going to be more expensive

17:59

than Meta. works for you

18:01

provided you can make more money than

18:03

your competitors from those people that have

18:05

that search intent. Now this business specifically,

18:07

the example that I'm talking about, they

18:09

don't offer as large a loan size

18:11

as a lot of their competitors. So

18:13

because of that, they're not able to

18:15

make as much money on average as

18:17

their competitors, which means their competitors can

18:20

effectively outbid them for that relatively small

18:22

number of high intent searches that you're

18:24

going to find on Google. So in

18:26

determining whether or not Google will be

18:28

viable for you, that would be my

18:30

question would be what are your loan

18:32

sizes in comparison to your competition you

18:34

offer as much can you offer more

18:36

and can you make as much money

18:38

if you can make more than your

18:40

competitors you can outbid them happy days

18:42

google's gonna be a great place and

18:44

we can mainly use meta for retargeting

18:46

in that instance without that Meta's going

18:48

to be better for cold. Would you

18:50

see another downside of intent -based search,

18:52

the fact that whilst it's a good

18:54

thing that someone's got intent, the bad

18:56

side of it is that they've probably

18:58

got the intent to shop the market

19:00

heavier and that invariably if I'm getting

19:02

a lead from Google pay -per -click, then

19:05

five or six of my competitors are

19:07

probably also getting it at the same

19:09

time because they're smashing it out to

19:11

everyone. Whereas if you're interrupting someone semi

19:13

-unexpectedly who just happens to fit the

19:15

right order. audience avatar they're probably not

19:17

in the mood to go and uh

19:19

to go and be disloyal so early

19:21

in the game yes we do find

19:23

that with a significant purchase that will

19:25

be true for more impulse purchases for

19:27

significant purchases like taking out a business

19:29

loan even if they've been interrupted on

19:31

better most customers once they say have

19:33

an initial call with a company or

19:35

begin the application process might then look

19:37

to shop around so i think they

19:39

might do it anyway but a little

19:41

bit later on less so with something

19:43

that's a less significant purchase I

19:46

think with any intent -based advertising, so

19:48

primarily talking here about Google search,

19:50

having an offer that is superior to

19:52

what your competitors offer and having

19:54

that offer be demonstrably superior is beneficial.

19:56

So in the case of more

19:59

business loan, it's going to be better

20:01

rates, better terms, more likely to

20:03

approve, something along those lines, right? So

20:05

if you can clearly show that

20:07

in your Google ad, then the shopping

20:09

around doesn't really matter as much

20:11

because you have the superior offer, you

20:13

have the better rate. People are

20:16

going to come to you. If you

20:18

can't demonstrate that, yeah, that's going

20:20

to be difficult and you're going to

20:22

find it harder to get that

20:24

conversion. So I had a performance marketing

20:26

guy on the podcast over the

20:28

last couple of weeks who is more

20:30

specifically into meta. He doesn't do

20:33

any Google ads, but very specifically into

20:35

meta. And I oversimplified the conversation

20:37

we had. He basically said, we don't

20:39

do any manual meddling on the

20:41

Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns. We leave

20:43

it all to the algorithm because

20:45

ultimately with all the data points I've

20:47

got and all the AI... that

20:50

they've got they they'll either do it

20:52

better than us or we can't

20:54

economically do it better than leaving it

20:56

to them and the only place

20:58

you can add value in the place

21:00

you will add absolutely massive value

21:02

you know to the either great success

21:04

or great failure is in the

21:07

actual content the actual creative that you're

21:09

showing on those ads i think

21:11

that's partly correct what he said there

21:13

so if you can optimize for

21:15

the end objective so a sale you're

21:17

advertising for an e -commerce business. That's

21:19

spot on. Meta knows exactly what

21:21

you want. They know how to optimize

21:24

for it. They have all the

21:26

data points, far more than us advertisers,

21:28

and can therefore go and get

21:30

you the best results. But there are

21:32

other types of businesses where you

21:34

don't want to, rarely do you want

21:36

to fully take control and try

21:38

and manually override lots of different things.

21:41

But there are times where you

21:43

might need to do so partially, depending

21:45

on the business. So if you're

21:47

optimizing for, say, a lead, well, unless

21:49

you have relatively sophisticated tracking setup, this

21:52

is not going to know which leads

21:54

go on to convert. So you might need

21:56

to sort of put your finger on

21:58

the scale. to say I know

22:00

meta that these leads here cost a

22:02

little bit more than these other leads and

22:04

you would normally just default to getting

22:06

me the cheapest leads possible but we need

22:08

to factor in conversion rates as well

22:10

so I'm actually happy to pay 20 %

22:12

more for these other type of leads so

22:14

yeah so I think what he said

22:16

is mostly right but there are times where

22:18

you need to do things like that

22:20

there are also scenarios where you can't track

22:22

the end conversion let's say you are

22:24

selling something through a third -party website not

22:26

through your own website one like the big

22:28

e -commerce players then you can't necessarily track

22:30

the conversions that come through your amazon

22:32

in which case you are going to need

22:34

to more manually adjust things on the

22:36

campaign level, the ad set level, in order

22:38

to direct not just traffic to that

22:40

Amazon page, for example, but the better quality

22:42

traffic that is more likely to convert.

22:44

So provided meta has clear visibility over the

22:46

end objective, absolutely fine. Without that, I

22:48

think... you're asking too much of the system.

22:50

So you've got a very popular YouTube

22:52

channel of your own. You've also hosted a

22:54

podcast for a while as well. Talk

22:57

to me about the power of personal

22:59

brand, how important that's been for building

23:01

your business and why. Or why not?

23:03

Everyone should have one. Yeah, I'm a

23:05

huge fan of personal brands. It's absolutely

23:07

what's allowed. We have 60 plus people

23:09

in my team. We've spent 150 million

23:11

plus on ads. There's no way we'd

23:13

have been able to do that if

23:15

it wasn't for people seeing my content,

23:17

being retargeted with my ads. That's a

23:19

big part of my personal brand is

23:21

not just organic content, but put a

23:23

lot of time and effort and budget

23:25

into. advertising as well so seeing my

23:27

ads and having that personal brand that

23:30

has led led to all these customers

23:32

clients wanting to work with us so

23:34

it's been really beneficial it's allowed my

23:36

business to grow much faster than it

23:38

would have otherwise because of the potential

23:40

reach it's like on my youtube channel

23:42

i have nearly 30 million views and

23:44

this is for detailed

23:46

tutorials on meta ads primarily. I've got two separate

23:48

channels, one for Google ads, one for meta ads,

23:50

the meta ads one is much bigger. So

23:53

it's really high quality interaction. Someone wants to

23:55

know how to run an ad campaign, they

23:57

come through, they might spend an hour watching

23:59

a tutorial, really getting a lot of value

24:01

from it. Of course, if they're ready in

24:03

a few months time or a few years

24:05

time to work with someone, I'm going to

24:07

be one of the first person they think

24:09

of and they'll get in touch with our

24:11

company. So it's tremendously beneficial. But I think

24:13

going down the personal brand route, there are

24:15

some things that people absolutely need to be

24:17

aware of. If we take

24:19

YouTube channels that are meta ads focused,

24:21

there might be a thousand, a few

24:23

hundred, I've no idea. I would guess

24:26

that those of us with the five

24:28

biggest channels in the world get 80 %

24:30

of the leads and people wanting to

24:32

work with us. Absolutely. Any personal brand

24:34

organic content strategy, it absolutely concentrates the

24:36

reward. You can get around that by

24:38

being maybe more niche. So instead of,

24:41

for example, I talk about meta ads

24:43

broadly, you could be like, we just

24:45

do meta ads for local businesses or

24:47

something like that. Okay, well then you

24:49

might get the lead instead of me

24:51

because you are seen as more specific

24:54

for that type of person. But the

24:56

downside to that is your cat. So

24:58

that's something we need to be aware

25:00

of. If you're going to go down

25:02

the personal brand route to build a

25:04

business, you have to be one of

25:06

the best in that space to really

25:09

win. The other thing is that... your

25:11

business grows, it's the one thing you

25:13

can't delegate. So I can't, I've got

25:15

other people within my business to do

25:17

absolutely everything. I don't do anything other

25:19

than make content, plan content and build

25:22

my personal brand because we know that's

25:24

where we get so much of our

25:26

business from. I can't not be the

25:28

person. I can't hire someone to come

25:30

and do this for me. So that's...

25:33

That's tricky from a building your business and

25:35

scaling standpoint. It also makes my business

25:37

very, very difficult to sell. Like I would

25:39

not be able to sell my company

25:41

without some sort of really onerous earn out

25:43

where I've got to continue making content

25:45

for five years or something because that's where

25:47

so much of the leads come from.

25:49

If I had my... Chance to do it

25:51

all over again. Would I go down

25:53

the personal brand route? Absolutely. I think the

25:56

positives outweigh the negatives, particularly in a

25:58

business like marketing agencies where there's an enormous

26:00

amount of competition and differentiation is incredibly

26:02

important. You talked earlier about barrier to entry.

26:04

There's no barrier to entry to starting

26:06

a marketing agency. You just need a phone.

26:08

I was going to say add a

26:10

laptop, probably just don't even need that. Probably

26:12

just get started with a phone. But

26:14

a phone and a laptop and off you

26:16

go. So differentiation is absolutely crucial. So

26:18

I would do it again, but there are

26:20

downsides. You also have to be... come

26:22

from a camera you know if you get

26:24

big enough it might start impacting your

26:26

life from a privacy standpoint or i think

26:28

that's the fear of that is overblown

26:30

so um you know you don't find yourself

26:32

walking down the streets and people going

26:35

that's that google ads guy very occasionally yeah

26:37

i'd say like i'd say like yeah

26:39

so just for context of people i have

26:41

just over a million followers across social

26:43

channels with 400 000 plus subscribers on youtube

26:45

right and i maybe get recognized in

26:47

real life once a month And it will

26:49

be someone who's very friendly, will come

26:51

up to me at the gym or something

26:53

and say, have I seen a video

26:55

of you talking about Facebook? Yeah, yeah, that's

26:57

right. You've seen me. That's it. The

26:59

only time I get properly recognised is if

27:01

I go to like a marketing conference.

27:03

And those are really fun because I say

27:05

to people who ask me about it,

27:07

it's like I basically get to be a

27:09

celebrity for like two or three days.

27:11

Because if that audience is into like meta

27:13

ads, Google ads, and then there's a

27:16

good chance that, you know, a high percentage

27:18

of them will have seen my stuff.

27:20

So that's really fun. No, it's, I think

27:22

even if I had an audience 10...

27:24

the size it would not get in the

27:26

way of my life in any way.

27:28

Do you only really generate business then using

27:30

the personal brand and the YouTube channels

27:32

etc you don't have let's say non -branded

27:34

sources of source? No we might get referrals

27:36

from existing customers but we don't do

27:38

any active marketing that is not branded so

27:40

whether it's organic content or paid ads

27:42

it's all me. So it's all going to

27:44

feature me in the content and going

27:46

to come in that way. We don't do

27:48

any cold calling, cold emailing, cold outreach,

27:50

anything like that. So you can give my

27:52

audience a lesson in business whilst giving

27:54

yourself a potential brainstorming session at the same

27:57

time then. You've

27:59

already identified that you've got a bottleneck

28:01

to sell your business in the fact

28:03

that it's too reliant on you. And

28:05

yes, you could correct that with a

28:07

long time earn out, but it might

28:09

not suit either. If you say, well,

28:11

look, I'm... to go from here to

28:13

a sale in five years' time. I

28:16

have got five years' time to make

28:18

my personal brand, the business less reliant

28:20

on my personal brand. Let's make it

28:22

the cherry on the top as opposed

28:24

to the utter essential. How would you

28:26

redraft a marketing plan to go and

28:28

generate business now and start to diversify

28:30

your income channels? Yes, I think there's

28:33

a few different options. I've definitely thought

28:35

about these in the past. One would

28:37

be diversify. the people. So have other

28:39

personalities and create almost like a suite

28:41

of people that could be known. There

28:43

are people that have done that. Your

28:45

staff, your staff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If

28:47

you felt like you had people within

28:49

the team that could do it or

28:52

you could look at bringing in people

28:54

externally to do it who specifically have

28:56

that role and they consistently create content,

28:58

you sort of mix that in with

29:00

my content and over time, it's not

29:02

all about me, it's me and a

29:04

few others. That still introduces key man

29:06

risk. Those people would probably get a

29:08

sniff that they've become very, very valuable

29:11

and want to... compensated accordingly, which would

29:13

eat into margins. I'd imagine if someone

29:15

feels like, you know, I'm bringing in

29:17

five million pounds a year worth of

29:19

business and you're trying to pay them,

29:21

you know, a hundred grand, they're going

29:23

to want significantly more than that. So

29:25

that, you know, starts to become a

29:28

significant cost or they threaten to walk

29:30

away and they could take some of

29:32

their audience because the audience is loyal

29:34

to the person as opposed to like

29:36

the company brand. I've

29:38

thought about that and decided not to do

29:40

it for those reasons because I think

29:42

there's too many potential issues. I think

29:44

the other way in this is probably...

29:46

is the way we would more actively pursue

29:48

is that we've worked with a lot

29:51

of small businesses, a lot of medium

29:53

sized businesses and some larger companies. What I

29:55

want us to be able to do

29:57

is work with more and more of

29:59

those large companies. And then the structure

30:01

of the marketing is going to be quite

30:03

different. It's going to be less reliant

30:05

on my personal brand. It's going to

30:07

be more reliant on we've produced some fantastic

30:09

results for these companies. We are going

30:11

to look to. um leverage that to

30:14

work with other larger companies and operate in

30:16

that way so we're part of um

30:18

like the top tier of agency partner

30:20

programs in in the uk and there's

30:22

only there's only 50 agencies uh with meta

30:24

that that are in that size and

30:26

when we signed up to it the

30:28

and you have to have a certain level

30:30

of spend in order to get there

30:32

i don't know exactly what it is

30:34

but it's quite a lot millions every

30:36

month and when we signed up to it

30:39

the rep that manages the partner program

30:41

was absolutely shocked at how many ad

30:43

accounts we had we had something like just

30:45

over 800 ad accounts in our business

30:47

manager between our mentorship program and our

30:49

done for you clients and she said

30:51

that this is not how any other business

30:53

gets to this level of like ad

30:55

spend and things like that all the

30:57

other businesses they work with you know let's

30:59

say 12 to 50 much larger companies

31:01

with much larger budgets whereas we've often

31:04

worked with smaller companies with budgets in

31:06

the tens of thousands or low hundreds of

31:08

thousands as opposed to the millions. So

31:10

yeah, so I think our path to

31:12

sale is to move more towards that higher

31:14

end and larger contracts, less reliant on

31:16

people watching my content and coming through

31:18

that way, I think is how we do

31:20

it. But like, I'm not concerned. Personally,

31:23

with selling the business, it's not something I'm actively

31:25

looking to do. I'm quite happy to be the

31:27

personal brand. I even think with the personal brand

31:30

approach, once you get big enough, it starts to

31:32

matter less. So if you think of all the

31:34

biggest companies in the world, like all the big

31:36

tech companies, they all have personal brands associated. But

31:38

like Mark Zuckerberg could sell Meta tomorrow, no problem.

31:41

Even in the agency space, you look

31:43

at Gary Vaynerchuk, who's built VaynerMedia. He

31:45

very much built that off his personal

31:47

brand. But I'm pretty sure now it

31:49

would have enough standalone value where he

31:51

wouldn't need to be actively involved just

31:53

because of the scale they've reached and

31:55

the massive clients they work with. So

31:57

what is the next step for you?

32:00

What's the next few years of business

32:02

hold? So I have a business partner

32:04

that very much focuses on the operational

32:06

side of things. And he's brilliant. He

32:08

obsesses over things like client churn. retention,

32:10

fighting for those extra percentage points, how

32:12

can we delight customers, keep them longer,

32:14

things that have really grown the business

32:16

recently. He's quite a detailed guy. I'm

32:18

much more of a, I want to

32:20

try and swing for the fences and

32:23

do something that can 5x, 10x the

32:25

business. And from my side of things,

32:27

I think the only way to do

32:29

that is to... up my personal brand

32:31

and take me from a million followers

32:33

to 10 million followers try and get

32:35

on a lot more podcasts and get

32:37

a lot more media exposure grow my

32:39

social channels and try and branch actually

32:41

we talked about personal brand quite a

32:43

lot try and branch out of one

32:46

of the places i've ended up which

32:48

is in that niche of meta ads

32:50

google ads and not just be seen

32:52

as the meta ads guy the google

32:54

ads guy but also being seen as

32:56

a marketing personality as a business personality

32:58

that has the potential to have a

33:00

much larger reach larger audience and you

33:02

know even if i don't think that

33:04

if i'm talking about marketing in general

33:06

basically that would still translate into us

33:09

being able to get more clients for

33:11

our meta ad services because how many

33:13

businesses are wanting to run ads on

33:15

meta or google like most at some

33:17

point are gonna are gonna try that

33:19

but yeah but the the potential reach

33:21

is that much larger if you go

33:23

broader. So that's my plan. Well, listen,

33:25

Ben, it's been a pleasure talking to

33:27

you, buddy. I wasn't

33:29

familiar with your channel before, but I am

33:32

certainly going to subscribe myself. And for anyone

33:34

else who's been listening, who wants to find

33:36

you, whether that's just to watch a bit

33:38

of content or whether they've heard something you've

33:40

said and they've got a business and they

33:42

want to reach out, we'll put some stuff

33:44

in the show notes, but what's the best

33:47

way for people to contact you? Yeah, so,

33:49

I mean, they can literally just search Ben

33:51

Heath, my name, and I'll pop up on

33:53

YouTube. or other socials I'm not the professional

33:55

poker player I'm the other one because there

33:57

is a professional poker player that's a Ben

33:59

Heath but yeah I'll pop on all the

34:01

socials and people can find out stuff there

34:04

or they can come through to our website

34:06

which is heathmedia .co .uk and they can get

34:08

in touch there if they're interested in services

34:10

they can book a free call all that

34:12

stuff perfect well thanks a lot again buddy

34:14

it's been a pleasure awesome thanks for having

34:16

me great to chat right let me just

34:18

press stop Thanks

34:22

for tuning in to No Bollocks with Matt

34:24

Haycox. act

34:27

with actionable insights. And I'm super, super

34:29

grateful that you joined us. Now,

34:31

our community now boasts 160 ,000 downloads

34:33

a month of this podcast. And that

34:35

is a testament to entrepreneurs just

34:37

like you who refuse to settle for

34:39

mediocrity. So don't miss out. Subscribe

34:41

now and gain exclusive access to the

34:43

conversations that can transform your business

34:45

and transform your life. Also, while you're

34:47

at it, if you could visit

34:49

www .mat -haycocks.com or click the link in

34:51

the show notes below and please

34:53

sign up to the No... newsletter. That's

34:55

like the sister newsletter that lives

34:57

with this podcast. Every week I send

34:59

two emails and in just 10

35:01

minutes you're going to gain more knowledge

35:03

than most people do in a

35:05

three -year MBA. So please subscribe, rate,

35:08

share this episode with someone who needs

35:10

a no bollocks boost. And until

35:12

next time, keep hustling and keep winning.