Advertise Like a Pro: Automating and Optimizing Ad Campaigns with Hest | EP. #88

Advertising is an important part of any business, but it can be difficult to know how and where to advertise. On this 88th episode of The E-Comm Show, our host and BlueTuskr CEO Andrew Maff will be talking with a marketing expert, John Maguire, from Hest about automating ad campaigns, optimizing them for maximum reach, and how to identify the right approach to getting more web traffic.

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Advertise Like a Pro: Automating and Optimizing Ad Campaigns with Hes

SPEAKER

Andrew Maff and John Maguire

CONNECT WITH OUR HOST: AndrewMaff.com  |  Twitter: @AndrewMaff | LinkedIn: @AndrewMaff 

John Maguire

John Maguire is a Digital Marketing professional with over a decade of experience. He excels at developing and executing successful marketing and sales strategies across various industries. John is an expert in all aspects of owned and paid media. He is a proven leader in managing and developing marketing teams, forecasting and analyzing growth goals, and spearheading new initiatives.

Transcript: 

00:00

I think over the next three months, once we really figure out what ads are or the creatives are working, we can really just focus on the creative side rather than the targeting side.

00:13

Hey Everyone, this is Nezaar Akeel of Max Pro, Hi I'm Linda and I'm Paul, and we're Love and Pebbles.

00:21

Hi, this is Lopa Van Der Merch from RASA and you're listening to and you're listening and you are listening to The E-Comm Show Welcome to The E-Comm Show, presented by BlueTuskr, the number one place to hear the inside scoop from other e-commerce experts, where they share their secrets on how they scaled their business and are now living the dream. Now, here's your host, Andrew Maff. Hello,

00:53

everyone, and welcome to another episode, episode of The E-Comm. Show. I'm your host, as usual, Andrew Maff. And today I'm joined by the amazing John Maguire, who is the digital marketing manager over at Hest John, how are you doing? ready for a good show. Good. How are you today, Andrew? Doing good. Looking forward to having this nice little chat with you. I obviously love diving into marketing, because it's always fun to talk shop. I'd love to give you an opportunity to hear and let everyone know a little bit more about your background and a little bit more about Hest. And we'll kind of kick it off from there.

01:24

Cool. Yeah. My name is John Maguire. Yeah. I'm the digital marketing manager over at Hest Outdoors. Yes, some background. I have about 15 years, over 15 years in the digital space. I've been with Hest for about two years now. And has is an outdoors. We're trying to elevate the camping experience in the car camping and outdoor space. So yeah, we've been around for about three, three and a half years. But yeah, we're, we're excited to be on the show today. And yeah, hopefully, we can be open and share some of our insights and secrets that we got going on.

02:09

Beautiful, let's do it. Love the car camping space. And it is growing like a weed. I know a bunch of people that especially in the past couple of years have really started focusing on that. And I know my wife is not a fan of traditional camping. And so I also am getting starting to dig into it as well. So really excited to kind of dig into what you guys are doing there. So your digital marketing manager there, obviously you're solely focused on the marketing side. Yep. What's your approach? What channels are working in? What's What do you but let's start there.

02:42

Yeah, I mean, we're constantly pivoting. We're constantly changing it up. But we were a product and a company that was born during the pandemic. So a lot of us are actually remote, but we're based out of Seattle. And we manufacture and build all of our products out of Seattle, and all of our foam is out of California. But me on the marketing side, and I'm out of Denver, Colorado. So we are very I guess we would go with the flow kind of marketing team. The other brand marketers had a Durango, Colorado. So we're a national brand. But we do like to focus our attention on the markets that are more outdoor focus. But yeah, we only sell in the United States. And primarily all of our efforts are on the digital side. We do open up during the summer during our prime season into the events, a lot of consumer-facing events. So we are still face-to-face with our customers. But we don't have any retail storefront that is our own. We rely heavily on our wholesale partners to actually be able to like touch and feel our products. So we are in mostly all Rei stores. They're our biggest wholesale partners. So you could go there and try our products. But most of our efforts are trying to educate and trying to show the benefits of the product through digital advertising. We primarily focus on the organic content, and also our paid media efforts to really educate. So that's pretty much our focus right now. I can get into more detail. But yeah, I mean, 75% of our traffic is driven by digital paid media. And our organic is definitely increasing day to day. But we're such a young company that we rely heavily on paid media right now.

04:45

Yeah. Which channels are you focused on?

04:48

I mean, we primarily put everything into meta ads and, and, and Google, so yeah, paid search.

04:57

Yeah. So all right. So lets So let's dig into each of those. Let's focus on the metal side. So you've been in this for a little over 15 years, obviously. So VI, so you went through the whole fun iOS change and all that fun stuff. Several years ago, that whole approach has been changed. What is your approach to Facebook ads in terms of creative test landing pages? You know, what audiences tend to work the best for you? Like, what's that build-out look like?

05:28

Yeah, I mean, within the last six weeks, I kind of threw everything out the door with a performance plus, so advantage plus, so we, we've kind of just I could go into what we used to do last year, but we're kind of we just updated our whole strategy, probably in the beginning of March when advantage plus came out. So yeah, we're fully tossing out our audiences and look alike audiences and really putting a lot of effort into the advantage plus targeting. So right now, it's just what I'm focusing on is just creative, like just trying to build the best library of video, primarily, the vertical video. But right now, if you look at our meta ad, right now, our business ads, it's just like, one big ad set with 20 different ads pushing into one advantage plus ad set. So we're really letting Facebook Matta decide on our audience, and it's actually the return is becoming better than what we've had run before with the audiences that we built. So that's our focus right now and meta. continually adding to that and removing ads that are underperforming is kind of our AB Test right now. But I mean, just like everyone else, a couple of weeks ago, we saw the big spike in advantage plus performance, and it's kind of coming back down to reality right now. So I'll see where I'm at in a couple of months. But right now, that's pretty much our strategy in the metal world.

07:03

Is this your first Well, obviously, the advantage plus is relatively new, I've heard the same thing. And I've seen it happen too, with even like the old traditional setups of the first few weeks, the first month or so it was really nice. And then it just kind of the honeymoon slowly goes away. So is your thought like, what's your thought? If that does happen? What's your approach can be?

07:25

Oh, it's happening right now. But I think right now, you can still find ways of winning by adding new creative continually each week. So trying different angles of the creative, but some of them pop. And when you have them pop, you put money behind it. So yeah, I'm not I'm not saying it's, it's completely like I'm still in the honeymoon phase. It's not as nice as it was probably four weeks ago. But we're still finding success. And it seems that the targeting is still better than any audiences that we've ever created in the past.

08:04

Beautiful, and you're still seeing so well, I know you said it's headed in a different direction right now. But you are seeing better ROI than you were before.

08:15

I would say like, we're back to being pretty flat, but it's a little more scalable because you can just add so many ads into one ad set and let it kind of work its way out. So I think over the next three months, once we really figure out what ads are or the creatives are working, we can really just focus on the creative side rather than the targeting side.

08:43

Yeah. Nice. So moving over to the Google side. What's your approach there? Are you focusing on search at all? Are you solely focused on search? are you leveraging shopping? If so are using performance Macs? Like what's that approach? Like?

08:58

Yeah, I think like the performance Max was our winner last year, we still have Max running. But we're getting back down to non-branded, we're constantly trying to figure out new audiences to target and new areas to kind of go into so we have a camp pillow. And we're finding that like, a lot of Airbnb travelers and, and like airlines and flying and trains. So we're trying to open up different markets. So we start targeting non-brand new words that way. But yeah, we're kind of going more traditional this year was just like a non-branded play. We still keep our brand AdWords up. But yeah, we're just expanding on, our non-branded this year and really trying to figure out new audiences to like, open up. But yeah, we still have our blacks running. I don't see the success it had last year. But I think it's still a good tool to be You kind of run in as well.

10:02

Yeah. Now your peak season, I imagine, though, you're just about starting to get into it now. Right?

10:07

Yeah, usually it's like memorial day through Labor Day is kind of our peak kicked off a big Memorial sale this week. But we're finding that a lot of people are opening it up into April. So everyone's looking for a deal right now before the real peak season.

10:28

Yeah, that makes sense. So between those two main platforms, what, like, are you seeing any kind of trends, anything that you're focusing on? Like, what do you where do you think this is gonna end up in the next, you know, between now and the end of the year?

10:44

Yeah, I think like, our big focus right now is gathering our user data, like our customer data. So we're trying to force a lot more people to our website to sign up and gather, like first data. So I want to definitely grow our lists a little more, we're finding that our newsletters and our,, email outreach is definitely the highest performing, and kind of being direct with our customers is a 2023 goal. So organic, branded content, things that people want to learn and read. So we're bringing a lot of people in, I mean, we have an easy space, because we have an awesome, awesome product and an awesome field. So we're showing a lot of like build-outs, a lot of like campers, camper man's truck build-out. So people want to see that stuff that comes to our website. And then like, they could definitely sign up to get more of that content. So we're trying to build those lists continually. And, our organic is just skyrocketing right now to kind of take a little pressure off the paid, which is good. And the other stuff we're focusing on, it seems like it's 10 years ago, but we're going back to YouTube, really focusing on YouTube. Shorts is helping us grow, grow the channel. So shorts are great to kinda like, and get easy followers. But we're going back to long-form video, horizontal video, with a lot of links in it to kinda let the viewer kind of see what's in the video and link out to branded partners. And also just bring in a lot more traffic through the YouTube channel. So we're really focusing on video on the YouTube side. Which is definitely fun.

12:45

Yeah, I bet. Are you so who's shooting the content? Who's editing the content? They're the same person? Like, what's that process? Like?

12:52

Yeah, once again, if you asked us last year, we were spending a lot of money on it. We had producers, we had definitely videographers out there. But I mean, to be honest, over the last couple of months, we've been seeing other channels grow really well in a similar space. And they're, they're, they're not as brands that like, I mean, they're just blogs that are growing in a similar space. So they, they, they shoot it themselves, they edit themselves. So what we're actually doing now is using phones, and just videoing ourselves, just quickly getting a quick video editing and Katka. And just throwing it up. And I'm seeing better numbers with that than any highly produced video that's overproduced, that we've currently have on our channel that like we spent a lot of money on. And we're just starting out with this, like lower quality, quick content. More like authentic, I guess you would call it. Yeah, Avenue. And right now, early successes. I mean, early numbers are pretty, pretty much showing great numbers for the amount of effort we're putting into it. So I think we're definitely going to put more, more time behind that. So

14:14

yeah, it's interesting, I've seen YouTube really start to kind of the creative that's being used on there is really starting to reflect some of these other social channels. Obviously, they started going into shorts, that one's very clear. But even the traditional long-form stuff like that seems to do better when it's actually not professionally shot unless it's a music video or something like that. But outside of that, it's very interesting to see that it's really starting to become that much more of an organic social platform. Yeah, and

14:45

like I just did one probably like three weeks ago and it's just a literal like cribs style walkthrough of an affiliate of ours, truck and it. It's great because he's an affiliate of are so we like his channel, drive traffic to our website and he gets a commission. But then we post it on our channel. And we're giving him exposure. And he's building his brand off of us posting about him. And it's, it was me with my iPhone, it took 20 minutes, not even probably, and then to edit it, it's a long form. So it's very, it's very easy. It's just him talking. But yeah, I mean, like, effort-wise, and cost-wise, it was probably the lowest. But getting 2000 views on something like that, compared to 100,000 views on a real on Instagram is probably 10x Our revenue, like return on like, a return on, like effort, because it's gonna be there forever. And it's just driving organic back to our website. So I'm all in on that. And also that content, like, everyone that's building a truck bed out, wants to see it, so we can do it better and own that space. So like, we're definitely putting a lot more effort into it.

16:16

Yeah, I mean, it's a great idea of doing a crib-style version of walking through some of these different trucks and stuff that are built out. Like that's awesome. It's a great idea. Yeah, all right, you I'm sorry, good. Well, I

16:29

was just gonna say I'm like you type, it's like the influencer or the content creator doing it. This is coming from the brands. So you have your brand up front. And it's also providing the content that the user and the viewer wanted to see. But sponsored by Hest. So the end of the day, like our products, not upfront, but like, has it sponsored the video more or less? So people come in that one?

16:56

Love it, I gotta check one of those acts. That sounds awesome. Because I would love to do one of those. Before you mentioned, you're driving people to the site, you're really focused on growing the list, what's your approach for growing a list? Like, you know, there's the traditional like, hey, get, you know, 10% off your first order or whatever, like that. And then you have like different data content pieces, whether it's white papers, ebooks, checklists, surveys, quizzes, like that kind of stuff. What's your approach, which one of those is working best for you right now?

17:21

Yeah, I think we're, we're pretty traditional. I mean, it's still working. It's definitely the get $1 off promo when you sign up, or whatever the amount is, are our winner in that space. But we are seeing a lot of success, a lot of people are coming in through our blog on like, top five. Top five ways to Sleep at high altitude is our number-one blog right now. So a lot of people are just interested in learning how to sleep in the high altitude, they don't want $25 off or whatever it is, they just want more content like that. So it's just switching up your pop-up or lead form, whatever you call it, for the content specific so we have content specific pop-ups, for whatever channel whatever way you came in. And then like serving more of that content to the person that wants that content being very customized content they want. So definitely the dollar off is our highest performer. But we're trying to be a little more curated by the way you came in and what you actually want to read so then I'll put it into a flow, depending on which one you came through. So I mean, we're scrappy. We're a startup, we're learning, but that seems to be it. I mean, it's nothing new. But that's the way we're kind of handling it right now.

18:49

Yeah. Beautiful. So, obviously, the big hot topic right now is AI and for anyone and everyone who knows about it. Most at least, I mean, it could just be me because I'm biased, but it feels like e-commerce sellers, specifically the people in the marketing department of the E-commerce sellers are the ones that are getting the most like, are you using AI? How are you using it? What are you using? Who can we replace AI with it does everything so much better than everything. It's great. How are we using it? Like are you using it at all? What's your theory on it? What's that whole approach?

19:27

Yeah, daily. I think everyone should be using it I think I think it's the wave of the way we should start mentally preparing ourselves for each day we work I mean, my typical day I mean it changes but like if I'm doing a YouTube post or blog post or writing content for social posts, all the way to like paid ads. I think I start everything With Jegede, Pte. So it's not it's not cheating, it says you should be using it. And I mean an example would just be like a YouTube video like just, you can literally type in like what is the highest performing title for a YouTube video about Land Rover 2002? camper and like it will figure out what the best title is that you should probably use to start your title with as hashtags and that space gives you the list. So I start everything there, even the blog using it to pull out the keywords that you're trying to target to actually put it into your paragraph. Is that plagiarizing? I don't think so. I think it's a good start. I mean, you definitely should start there and then switch it up. So the way you want it to sound and look but yeah, I mean, if you're not using it yet, I think you're already behind. So yeah, it's a good way of also saving your creative energy for like what's important? Because like it just, it's just so much more efficient than us.

21:17

Yeah. Are you using anything else outside of chat GBT right now,

21:21

I'm starting to get into like, I'm not a I'm not a graphic designer. But I do want to start getting into the tools to just help with the thumbnails of a YouTube video, I think like, it will just help you be able to figure out the most clickable thumbnail possible, without you trying to like to describe it to your graphic designer, we have a graphic designer in house. But like if I can start cranking out these videos faster, I think it would just be more efficient to start getting some graphic design AI to just help like, figure out that for me. So I'm in the early stages of that right now.

22:04

Oh yeah. And eventually, you'll be able to have it just create one of those cribs-style videos for you and just type it in and be like use this car this truck use these accessories make one, and then just do it for you and you'll be set.

22:17

Yeah, and then it's over. Like I'm ready to like to have it do the voiceover for me with a voice that likes it's pleasing. Like you don't need to go anymore. You don't have to use your own boys. It's just Yeah,

22:29

yeah. Beautiful. John, thank you so much for being on the show. I don't want to take up too much of your time I know you're super busy. But I would love to give the opportunity here. Everyone knows where they can find out more about you and obviously more about Hesed

22:41

Yeah, check us out. hest.com for elevated camping pads, and pillows that are awesome to kind of travel with or camp with or bring your Airbnb. We got great memory foam products. So check us out.

22:56

Beautiful John, thank you so much. Everyone else who tuned in of course thank you as well obviously really appreciate you all tuning in. Please make sure you do the usual rate review subscribe to all that fun stuff on whichever platform you prefer or head to theecommshow.com to check out any of our previous episodes as usual, I thank you all for joining us and we will see you all next time. Thanks, Sandra.

23:18

Thank you for tuning in to The E-Comm Show head over to ecommshow.com to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or on the BlueTuskr YouTube channel. The E-Comm Show is brought to you by BlueTuskr, a full-service digital marketing company specifically for  e-commerce sellers looking to accelerate their growth. Go to bluetuskr.com Now for more information. Make sure to tune in next week for another amazing episode of The E-Comm Show.