Combining Programmatic and Search Engine Marketing to Increase Direct Traffic | Josh Richardson

David McBee: Hello and welcome to Simpli.fi TV. I'm David McBee. Here on Simpli.fi TV we highlight thought leaders in digital marketing, providing you with wisdom that will help your clients grow, help your business grow, and help you grow as an individual. Our guest today is Josh Richardson. Josh has held several positions with national media groups managing the changing landscape of media and its transition from legacy products to the digital products of today. He is a leader in his field and a trendsetter in the marketing industry, creating campaigns specific to his clients' needs, and setting the bar for how others in the industry do marketing. Josh is currently a partner/owner of his own firm, Influence Digital Agency LLC with two offices in North and South Carolina. Proud husband and father of four beautiful kids, Josh, welcome to Simplify tv. Josh: Thank you, David. Thank you for having me. David McBee: It's always a pleasure to chat with you, my friend. So let's jump right into it. Your intro mentioned that you build campaigns specific to your client's needs. Now why is that so important? Josh: Well David, I've been in the industry for several years, well, 25 years I've been in marketing. It's been my career, and you know as well as I do, coming up through those years of digital in its infancy, there were a lot of ideas. At first it was how many impressions do I need to get? And we were selling campaigns based off of making sure we had enough impressions and then it graduated to clicks, and then now it's graduated into conversions and people are getting a better understanding of how this stuff works. It's also, as business owners, as people who sell this, we need to make sure that we are doing what's best for our client, not just trying to put something together that is general to everybody. So the more specific a campaign can be, the more tailored to a client's needs that it can be, the better it's going to benefit them and the better it's going to benefit the space all around. David McBee: Do you have an example of a client that you created a really customized proposal for that you can share with us? Josh: Just recently this last year, and then again we're going to be doing it again this year, I've been working with the CARVC, which is the Camping Carolinas Association, it's an association of Campgrounds for the states of North and South Carolina. And in this campaign, what they wanted to do was launch their new website and let people know who were looking to come camping in Carolinas, that they could go to their website to find places to go and ultimately to drive traffic to the people that were part of their association. So doing that, I mean the first thing we do is we layer into geography. Well, geography for campers is not just North and South Carolina because people aren't just coming from those two states to camp there, but it would be unrealistic for their budget or anybody's budget to target the entire United States. So what we were able to do is we were able to utilize lookback technology and target campgrounds, RV lots and camping stores during last year's camping season and pull the records and the IP addresses of all the people that visited those locations during last year's camping season, which negates the need for geography because they showed that they were there and they were interested in staying in that space. So we targeted that audience through addressable Geofencing and social media, by name, because we also pulled their email addresses. So we were able to target them that way. And then at the same time, we targeted the current camping audience by using regular geofencing in those locations, layering in a little bit of contextual targeting, and of course retargeting from their website to have a full campaign. The results of that were pretty astounding. We actually increased the traffic to their website, even organically, their traffic to their website increased by 27%. Their direct traffic increased 97%. And then the ad campaign itself, we were able to track almost 300 people that we were targeting through the addressable to each campground. Let them know what campground it was, what day they visited, and where they came from. David McBee: I can't tell you how much I love hearing about the organic traffic element of that story. I'm currently researching the value of combining search engine marketing and programmatic, and one of the things that I keep hearing people say is, "The more programmatic you have, the more direct traffic you have, the more brand searches you have." Would you say that is what happened there? Josh: Yeah, absolutely. And I was actually watching one of your previous interviews where they were talking about taking some of that money that they were using on paid search and using it through programmatic and how that increased the effectiveness of brand search on paper click, and that's genius. I'd had not even thought about it that way. So I'm already learning some stuff from the videos that you've already made. David McBee: That story, I just want to get on top of a mountain and shout it to the world. It's, one feeds the funnel and one captures it at the other end. It's really that simple. Josh: Yeah. Well, and that's the value in having a holistic approach to the digital marketing space is, and people need to be taught that. They need to learn that that's the way that things work. It's the same story that you talk about in your training, that we talk about in advertising in general, and I've talked about my entire career is, I get an email about it. Maybe I click on it, maybe I don't, but I at least saw it. It sets that thought in my mind and now I'm seeing you on my social media. I'm seeing you on my weather app. I am seeing you on my television, and then when I get to that final point where I'm looking for you, I'm a warm lead. I'm not a cold lead, I'm a warm lead because I've already feel like I know you in a sense. So I think it's very important to drive the effectiveness of paid search, of direct traffic and then, this client, their overall goal was organic traffic. They wanted to have people think of Camping Carolinas when they went there to look for someplace to stay in Carolina. So. David McBee: Great story. Thanks for sharing that. So 25 years. 25 years in this industry. I mean, there was hardly even an internet industry 25 years ago so, what has made you successful all these years? Josh: Probably the thing that's made me the most successful is I've just continued to remain teachable. And in our industry it's like feeding from a fire hose. I mean, it's constantly changing on a daily basis. We've gone from having the five mainstays of media to having these thousands of different options that you can invest your advertising dollars in, and being able to be taught and remaining teachable on how those things work and making sure that I have enough education to go and talk to my clients about that, that's what's made me successful. David McBee: I love that. All right, so you're such the big success. I love that. I've come to work for you or I'm chatting with you over lunch. What's the best piece of advice you can give me? Josh: The best piece of advice that I would give anybody in our industry is to remember that it's a service position. I'm successful through my clients being successful, and doing what's right for them sometimes means telling them no. And sometimes it means telling them that their budget is better spent elsewhere. Not that I ever want to say that, but giving people honest advice and being upfront, setting expectations, doing the things that are going to educate them on what the success of their campaign should be, that's the biggest thing I would say is, if you put them first, then you will be successful. David McBee: That's really good advice. All right. Well, we're going to wrap things up, but before we do, do you have a book or a favorite educational resource that you'd like to recommend? Josh: Well, there are several of them out there, but I will say that I definitely use the training that you offer through Bullseye. I work with several, so how I'm set up, I actually work with small media groups and small agencies that are trying to establish their programmatic budget so that they can go direct with some of the vendors that I work with, and in doing so, I use Bullseye. I honestly use that. I'm doing courses right now where I have about an hour a week with two agencies and two small media groups, about 30 people, that I'm walking through. Bullseye 1, actually, we're in Bullseye 2 now. So thank you, David for offering those resources. David McBee: I'm a little embarrassed by that answer. You be sure to tell everyone we did not, I did not coax that out of you. Josh: No coaxing. Just the truth. David McBee: Well, that's really kind of you. Thank you very much. Josh: Absolutely. David McBee: All right. Well, we're out of time. This was absolutely fantastic. Some really great golden nuggets in there. So thank you very much for being my guest today. Josh: Absolutely. Anytime. Thank you. David McBee: And thank you guys for joining us on Simpli.fi TV. I'm David McBee. Be awesome, and we'll see you next time. Josh is currently a partner/owner of his own firm, Influence Digital Agency LLC with two offices in North and South Carolina. Proud husband and father of four beautiful kids. Josh, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. That was like brilliant timing. I was just practicing and you just- Josh: I though, "Oh my God, I'm late and I'm going to have to just start right off." That's awesome. Freaking me out, David. Oh my word. David McBee: You were like, "What's going on?"