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Hey everybody, Navah Hopkins from Optmyzr here, and I am thrilled to bring you a Whiteboard Friday on one of my biggest passion topics — turning your offering into helping people. Because let's face it, we are people, and we want to be helped. And if we're marketing at or selling at our customers, we're not helping them, we're pushing them into a transactional “we have to be perfect, or we're gonna lose them” versus that really meaningful long-term relationship.

So before we get into the nitty-gritty of the marketing, and we are gonna talk quite a bit about the mechanics of the different channels and how to think about your budgets and allocation, let's take a step back and think about what goes in to your people.

The first thing is actually their learning styles. How do they process information? There was a 2014 NLM study that found that 65% of people learn best by seeing. That speaks to the visual content. You'll notice that there's a lot of ad platforms in even organic, that are really leaning into visual content. And that speaks to the fact that the majority of the population learn best by seeing.

However, there are also people like me. 30% learn best by hearing. And to give you a context

about what that means, when I read something, I'll actually say it aloud in my head so that I can hear the information. It's not just reading. So you wanna be mindful that some of us do actually learn best by hearing.

Finally, there's by doing. So for those of you that have trials or that like to put out little testers of your product, this is the group that's gonna do best by that. And it's worth noting that only 5% of the population did, in fact, learn best by doing. So don't leave your customers out in the cold to figure things out. Acknowledging that most people actually do need a little bit of guidance.

Next, 75% of folks will abandon a product if they do not agree with values. HubSpot found that when you look at a product or a company, you will abandon a service that you loved, a product that you loved, simply because the values don't make sense.

I can speak to this in my own user experience, and I mean, let's pick on Budweiser for a little bit. Budweiser, whether you agree or disagree, actually did lose customers based off of their campaign.

80% of customers love to see user-generated content. So think reviews, comments,

testimonials, whatever. So for those of you that have been struggling with that 65% visual, this is the group to tap into.

When we're thinking about all of these pieces of the puzzle of what goes into human behavior and how you can really connect with your customer, that then speaks to what channels will be best suited to reaching them. But then also from a budget constraint.

Visual content does tend to be cheaper because candidly, people are afraid to use video, and that is the biggest opportunity you have. So if you take one thing away from this Whiteboard Friday, it's to lean into visual and let everyone else be afraid.

Now, in terms of the channels that you can go through, and I will acknowledge I'm paid. So a lot of this is paid-specific, but there is some organic pieces here too.

Google

Google does cover both search and visual content. Whether we're thinking about Performance Max, whether we're thinking about videos and visuals coming into the search result page, whether we're thinking about YouTube, the second largest search engine, there is a visual component there. But the startup costs and time are pretty high on Google. So if you need to go quickly, you may need to look at some other channels. On the other hand, you may want to say, "You know what? I'm gonna build in those two to four weeks to get my creative set up, to get my account going, to invest, so that I can take advantage of that really big market share."

Microsoft

Microsoft is kind of the best at being second place, but it's the cheapest of the lot. And Microsoft's audience network actually has some really beautiful hidden gems that if you use it correctly, can really serve you well. Microsoft is on average, 30% cheaper than Google, and from a search result page standpoint, actually does do really meaningful things for high-income users and those that maybe are more educated. Don't sleep on the fact that Microsoft now powers DuckDuckGo and Baidu as search engines.

Amazon

Amazon is one of my favorites that no one thinks about, at least from our world because let's face it, Google and Microsoft tend to be pretty siloed from Amazon, which historically has been seller-only. However, Amazon is now launching a new solution to empower customers that don't sell on Amazon to use Amazon audiences. So if you've been really struggling with your privacy-first world and you're targeting, Amazon could provide a really meaningful way for you to speak to your customers if you know who they are and what kind of content they really wanna consume.

Social

Finally, when we think about social. And I'm gonna move just so that we can have our social. One of the things that's actually very interesting about social is that Meta, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Snap, Pinterest, all of these get lumped into social, but they all have different rules of engagement, different mechanics. And so at the end of the day, from a pricing standpoint, and how much you need to invest from testing and creative is really dependent on the channel.

That said, and I'm gonna move back over so that we can look at good old Google, nothing is gonna compare to Google when it comes to the cost for setting up creative and time because at the end of the day, Google does need conversions to run on the paid side. And on the organic side there's just a pretty big ramp-up period as opposed to social.

So at the end of the day, when we're thinking about what channels we want to use to reach our people to help them understand needs and wants, we need to also be mindful about our budget constraints.

So I would like to finish this with a really simple thought. When it comes to communicating with your customers, it should be a communication. It shouldn't be talking at a wall, throwing spaghetti, taking an order.

Listen and hear what sort of objections they have, what sort of feedback they have, and factor that into your creative so that you can have that really meaningful conversation. And be mindful that customers will pay attention to where your ads or where your content is serving. So going back to those brand values, if you know that your brand cannot serve amidst another channel, be mindful of that.

Now finally, I have a ton of information I would love to give to you. We only have seven or eight minutes here. So if you want more, ppctownhall.com has a number of really great podcasts featuring some amazing guests from Optmyzr and the entire marketing world, whether that's paid, organic, social, CRO, you name it. So if you wanna learn more from amazing experts, but definitely subscribe to Whiteboard Fridays and like pay attention to Whiteboard Fridays. But if you want more content beyond that, PPC Town Hall is a great resource.

Thank you so much for investing a bit of time with me. I hope this was helpful. Cheers on the path to profit and victory. Bye guys.