Digital Advertising Unwrapped: How It Can Help Your Website with Peter Doak
Peter and Ellie delve into the powerful fast track of paid digital advertising and how it can drive website success.
Learn how to leverage digital ads for maximum impact on your website's performance.
My special guest is Peter Doak of PDG Advertising, a dynamic agency that has achieved remarkable growth since its inception in June 2017. With an impressive roster of 20 global clients, they specialize in delivering and managing exceptional digital ads across platforms like Google Ads, Meta, Tiktok, and running outstanding Email Marketing Campaigns. But that's not all – they wrap it all up with an incredible analytics package because they truly care about results.
Transcript below!
You can connect with PDG Advertising here:
Listen to their full story here:
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Hello welcome to another edition of unlocking website success I am Ellie
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McBride um I am the founder CEO whatever you want to call me of calibrated Concepts
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and we focus on websites and simple business systems for micro businesses to
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make day-to-days easier today we have Peter Doak here uh Peter and I connected
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I think originally on Instagram quite a long time ago um and Peter is an expert in digital
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advertising and so I really wanted to bring him on today to talk about things like paid adverts we've actually had a
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couple of clients and uh common and so like I've gotten to see Snippets into what he does and he is very good to talk
0:47
to about this stuff and I'm going to be very upfront and saying this is probably the conversation that I know least about
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behind the scenes it's probably the area of this conversa of this series that I've probably done the least of as a DIY
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attempt in my own business so I'm really excited to learn from Peter alongside of
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all of you and um that's pretty much it Peter thank you so much for being here and for bringing
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your expertise um would you like to introduce yourself and PDG advertising
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absolutely thanks Ellie um it's really nice to be asked to come
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and talk to you on your on your series I've always enjoyed all the uh work that
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you've done and that I see on Instagram and on your on your pages and so much so that I was really happy to be able to
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work with you on some uh projects for some of our customers and they're really
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happy and I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about some of the stuff um that we've done there later on but I um
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um the owner of PDG advertising it is a
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little advertising agency uh based here in portadown in Northern Ireland and uh
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it's it's been it's existed for eight years I realized a few days ago that
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um it was like an anniversary of eight years of working more for myself than I
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ever had for anybody else so the last proper job that I had I was in it for
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something like seven and a half years and then whenever the eighth year anniversary of working for myself and
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building this business M camera was like huh that's pretty cool you know you uh
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that is really pretty damn cool you think that it's gonna uh you're gonna close within weeks of opening and eight
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years later you kind of wake up and you're still still here and and what what I've been doing for those eight
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years is um my passion and it's communication and
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technology and and that really manifests itself for me and trying to help
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businesses um get more customers and how we've done that through the years has has changed
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um but it more or less follows a pattern of you know Google ads meta ads
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um email marketing uh Tick Tock ads uh taboola art brainards anything that's
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paired to drive an audience uh quickly
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um we PDG we have you know about 14 regular customers over we are some come
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in and some come out through the air with different things happening um we that they're all over the world
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they're in Australia they're in Canada America here in Europe South Africa
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um all all corners of the of the world uh PDG actually stands for Peter doke
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Global advertising uh when I started the business it was called that exactly it
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was called Peter dog Global but I figured that was a little bit too self-indulgent so as shortened it down
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to PDG and kind of stuck and it's something that we've kind of uh grown with
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um those customers that I mentioned they are in different sectors like e-commerce health and education and
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um it's not just myself I have a little core team here in portadown of uh Ethan
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and Becky and then we have some wonderful contractors uh around us as
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well and and our day is really just spent you know figuring out what the
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best um foot forward for our customers is in terms of the online world and in terms
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of uh digital um advertising uh and and that is that
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is what I spend my time doing that like
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very very good I admitted myself because I thought that was probably the proper
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thing to do because I tend to be noisy no matter what I do um
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but I think that that's really really interesting that you are able to have such a global impact with what is a
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relatively small client base um and that you're essentially choosing
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to work in a really intimate and sort of
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um I guess really really impactful on a business by business scale and I'm I
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know we've had the opportunity to work together and it just means that like say our mutual client in America is just
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able to touch base with both of us and it's a really interesting thing because you're obviously from here I'm from
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there practicing you know very close to to him and still living here and so it's
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just it is really really interesting the the way that online business has brought us forward has brought connections
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forward and has brought PDG advertising into such a unique space
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I really like it I there's some I don't know whether it's a glitch in my brain
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or something like that that just makes me really love um like don't get me wrong I really
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enjoy here Northern Ireland like I enjoy Ireland I enjoy the UK that that those
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this group of irelands the islands that I live in I really really love it I really like it uh but uh I love travel
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and I love um other cultures and I'm fascinated by other cultures I'm fascinated by my own
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culture and fasting about other languages and other other things as well and I feel so lucky and grateful that we
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live in a time where the internet can connect us up in seconds with you know
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people from all over all over the world and there's a reason for it in my
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business it's there's a couple of things I think if if you become insular and you
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only service people that are like you or people that are in your local local area
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I feel your world becomes small and you don't get the benefit of all those experiences and people and ways of doing
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things and and that's really important from uh uh you know
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uh business standpoint to to reach out to different areas and find out about
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them because that creates a little Hive of experience in my in my agency
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but more so I can look at it similarly with you know the industries that we work with so we we don't work with just
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uh e-commerce or just health or just education or just technology or just
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Finance we work with a mix of different customers because just like in different
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cultures and different languages and different experiences there are opportunities to be had by mashing all
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of those together and learning from each of them what what works and and what
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works well and and there's a phrase that I'm grasping for at the moment but the the whole is greater than the sum of the
8:10
parts or something like that you know it's it's important to have different perspectives and different experiences
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so it's it's wonderful to be able to work with those um different customers across the world but also it's equally weird but you're
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from there and here and that we're working with a customer together across the across the ponds yeah yeah like
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America like somebody in base in California and I'm from for those of you don't know I'm from or organ that's like
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right above California a lot of times I live in Northern Ireland and a lot of times somebody's like oh where are you
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from and I'm like Oregon and they're kind of like kind of like the what about California because if I just say Oregon and this is
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a perspective of the US that happens quite a lot but it's pretty much like Florida New York California and nothing
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else exists yes that's it um so I'll tell people that's the one about California and they then sort of
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understand where I'm from um okay so we're here to talk about
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paid advertising and web so for somebody who has never touched
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anything about what you do tell me like and the Very Basics what is paid advertising
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yeah um it's interesting whenever you ask you know you really get to know what the
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words are and the the words really are are important so pet advertising is I
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would call it almost like a cheat on any other type of advertising I would call it an accelerator I would call it speed
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um specifically it's let's say you have your website on
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Google um or you have a website and you want
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people to to know about it who wouldn't normally uh and you want people to you
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know engage with you or go to your website to take some sort of action we
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pay platforms like Google meta um you know any other pad platform Tech
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talk or you know tabula outbrand those types of ones to get your audience in
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front of people who might not know who you are but might want what it is that
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you that you have to have to offer and each of those platforms that I mentioned
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like let's say Google or Mata they all
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have you know a back end that has uh you know configuration system where you can
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pay money and get your advert in front of people who otherwise wouldn't know wouldn't know who you who you were so
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the difference between maybe let's say the equivalent of having a
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um you know advert in a newspaper or even taking a biker step handing at a flyer to someone in a in a street uh the
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difference really is scale and speed and Hyper targeting so
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you know they know about us they know who we are they know what we do we've got these phones on us all the time the
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track where we are and what we're looking at so our profile on the Internet is something that advertisers
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like me go in unpair to get in front of of those of those people it's it's very
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creepy and it's where my world uh lives most of the time is
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two comments that I think will will hopefully bring this conversation really in focus relatability to a lot of people first
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off all of us have received targeted advertising you've been on your Instagram account or your Facebook
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account or Twitter or whatever it is and you've got an advertisement for
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something and I think the thing is you're right it's creepy so it knows for me that I like to look at
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ethical drinks I get like an absurd amount of advertisements for like
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kombuchas or like non-alcoholic spritzers and I drink
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alcohol I don't know why I got so many of these but um I get a lot of like ethical type clothing ads
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um and because it knows me it knows that my I I choose certified B corporations over anything else it knows that I'm
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willing to spend a little more money if I believe in a company's ethos like it knows this stuff and it sends these things to me occasionally gets it all
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for it'll be like a really trendy tick-tocky dress and I'm like but
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mostly it gets it right the other thing is is it nose who I spend time with so it knows that
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my husband lives in the same house as me and it knows that overall women tend to
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be the people who spend the money in a household and so it advertises me things that it thinks he will like so there are
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some things that you probably all experienced um or things that you started talking about with your
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friends and somehow the internet knows um I know there's all these myths out there I don't even know what they're
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missed sometimes they're myths depending on your devices and your tools that you're using in your world about your
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devices listening on you sometimes it's probably true and sometimes it's probably not but they do know everything regardless
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so that's one thing that's hella relatable we've all had the internet go you should buy this thing and sometimes
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you just buy it because it knows and I've heard that Tick Tock is particularly good at this I don't have a
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tech dog but um no I don't have a tick tock I don't think I'm gonna get threads
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um we will see but because a lot of my Instagram crew and my Instagram Community is sort of flocking there and
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the only reason I'm on Instagram anymore is for the community I don't even post to the grid anymore
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um but the other thing that is really interesting that I want to say is if you've been running an online business
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or any kind of business for a couple of years especially if it was
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at least four plus years ago you will know how often Instagram has been like do you want to boost this post do you
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want to share this and then they will try to do the like targeting for you
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right they kind of give you some really basic parameters to put in and you pop it in and it's like sort of works but
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probably mostly doesn't um because I for example who've done this
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I'm not you I don't know how to actually make that successful
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um so those are I think our experiences that a lot of like people who've been in business for a little while have probably had both feel like they've been
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targeted and then you've maybe tried to play with targeted ads or boosted posts
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in things like Instagram or Facebook or uh Pinterest I did a Pinterest targeting
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ad once trying to when I was doing uh Squarespace templates actually a couple
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years ago and it was really good for attracting people it
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didn't actually convert very well and I think to convert very well we would have had to make some good changes and we'll
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get into those in a moment because I have questions but but my point is
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um I guess a beast that most of us have had some interaction with even if
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we haven't tried to deal with it like if we haven't tried to become an expert like yourself in it
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I I think um so so much they're like the the the tech
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talk uh algorithm you mentioned briefly it is it has learned from all of the
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10 years of meta hyper targeting and asmata has faded out rightly Facebook
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and Instagram Tick Tock has cover addictive um and uh brings you down that filter
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bubble Rabbit Hole very very very quickly you you write um
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there's I think with any type of advertising it's not easy it's not
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something that's that's easy to to do um quick quickly if you've never really
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done it before and the platforms do a very good job of making it easy to press
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a button that spends money with them um so boost this it's it's easy it's
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fine I I might go to this example a couple of times but my father runs uh Driving School here in Northern Ireland
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and he um does Those ads on on Facebook and Instagram and
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um he's he's pretty Tech solving he's not he's not he's he's pretty he's pretty good with with the technology but
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he one week whenever he was boosting some of his posts on uh Facebook people pass
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their tests and he takes a photo of them everybody's happy and smiley and it's amazing post to go out there because it shows social proof and good business and
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this person can actually do what they say that they can and then their granny sees it and shares it or yeah it's it's
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every every I always love that example because it's so perfect it just hits all the right buttons for a for a Facebook
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post so what he what he has done is he amplifies it a little bit by boosting it on on Facebook
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and that's a lot of people can be quite down on boosting on Facebook I'm not it's horses for courses like you can you
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can utilize it in an example like that to give uh organic post a little bit of
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an edge you know a little bit of boost into the news feeds of other other people but
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um it did it wrong he he sent the post uh he boosted it to people in uh England
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rather than here in Northern Ireland so the the system didn't bring him properly
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through you know this is how you do this it's it needs to you need to be because there's no point advertising our driving
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lessons to people in England whenever we're here in in Northern Ireland and believe me that's a that's a very small
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example that happens all over the place in very big businesses of a mismatch of
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your desires of where you're supposed to Target and where you actually um actually Target so they're certainly
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a learning curve on that yeah I think the thing is is a lot of these types of software course Services Etc even a lot
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of them are built designed and grown in the US even if they have contractors and Company you know there's
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a lot of hqs based in Ireland there's a lot that are in other places in the
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world um that said it seems like a lot of the driving forces of a lot of these big companies is in the US and I the US is
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not known for being extraordinarily globally competent and I what I mean is our
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socially politically of other nations so for example
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we recently applied for what is known in the US as a petition for an alien relative it's the first part of getting
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a green card for your spouse when you're outside the country and we my husband's born and raised here
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in Northern Ireland and we put in to the US government they received a form that
19:21
said or his birth certificate his birth certificate says Northern Ireland and they say we need one from the UK or from
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Dublin and you're like that's not how that works here so we literally had to like submit a letter
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that explains how the British Isles work right so I think that they're when a
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Nuance is some people don't know that Northern Ireland is technically its own
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country that it's part of the UK and the part of Ireland but let alone any politics involved with that it's hard I
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don't know how you explain that in any way except for doing a huge letter or maybe maybe I don't know it's a YouTube
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video that's quite good at it actually you can send people it's got a map and it says these are the British Isles this
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is Ireland this is the UK this is Great Britain and there's like all these circles and it explains why but it's
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it's about a four or five minute video that I don't think I could send my immigration attorney
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um but my point is is that when the nuances like that from other countries
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are complicated enough it's it's hard to explain it to an algorithm it's hard
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enough to explain it to say some like someone like your dad who's trying to click through his way to meet that
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algorithm function for him it it can be yeah it can be quite a lot
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yeah you know you also you get things on the like you've been
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doing you know you're you've been working on your business for so long Ellie that there's there's probably
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things that they just don't you know that that come kind of naturally to you because you've spent the ten thousand
20:57
dollars or whatever it is to become competent on what you're doing so there's things that you might it's not
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in the guidebook of matter or of Google it's stuff you just you just know there's this really interesting one as
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well about um scaling campaigns on uh our ad
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systems so on matter and on Google um we have had campions whenever we
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first started we had campaigns that were doing well and when I say well um it's
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important to be able to track what you're doing with with anything you know I suppose the example is if you want to
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drive people to a certain page on your on your website um and you want to use a Mata or a
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Google advert um you want to know that you can track the actions that those platforms have
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taken on your website you using analytics or or maybe separate that web that part of the website out so no other
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traffic is getting to it so you know the effect that the um Google and Facebook traffic is is having but if if let's say
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you wanna whenever we had a campaign that was going well and it was achieving
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maybe you know we would spend 10 pounds on a day or ten dollars on a day and it
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would make you know thirty dollars and the customer was very happy with that it meant he was getting good profit and
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that and it was all good so the first thing whenever that golden moment happens which is the moment that we're
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looking for whenever you know customers making money and is happy um everybody starts to think how can we
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scale this how can we make more money because ten dollars per day is completely feasible if we're making lots
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of money but if you suddenly push up the
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um spend on the Campion if you push it up to let's say a hundred dollars a day you want to go crazy on the on the
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campaign that campaign can completely break and tank and won't work because of the action that you've taken to push
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more uh budget into it I have no idea why I don't know why it is it's just
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something that I know from working on the platforms for for so long and going through the pain of trying to discover
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that where if you're gonna do something like that like scale your your campaigns you want to be increasing by about 20
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every three days or so instead of going big bang and and all out and those are
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some things that you know you just don't know from um trying it out once once yourself and
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not deliberate I don't think that in every industry that are sort of that like Unwritten rule book right
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like the the things that you don't know unless you know that the unknown unknowns but the the reason why it's
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important is you know you're not going to get it right on the first go with pads advertising uh I will openly tell
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customers there's no way that we're gonna crack this on the first go with your with your business because there's
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too many factors there's so many different interest groups there's so many different targeting options there's
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so many different creative options there's so many different website parts of your website that we can send them to
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that we won't know that we need you need to test and have real patience whenever
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you're doing pad odds because you start off and it feels exciting because you can cheat the system pay money and get
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traffic into your website that maybe hasn't had it but when it doesn't have the impact you then get disillusioned
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and you think this isn't so this isn't so so good um I don't know why this hasn't worked
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and sometimes you feel a bit dumb where you're like this is not working it's my fault but but actually the the real
24:23
trick is patience testing and you know make sure you can track and look for the
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successes in in what you're what you're doing so if you were to start talking with
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with a client and you were going to say okay like
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obviously this is on a Case by case there are goals all set out all these
24:46
types of things but say let's just use me as a case example because I don't have anyone else to pull from but for a
24:53
case example like I have a new service that I'm launching in two months it's
24:58
called the Simplicity solution um this is the first place I'm talking about a publicly
25:03
but essentially it's going to be bringing back some of that up I did as a tech virtual assistant but at a higher
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level essentially it's systems and simplicity coaching for
25:15
small business and I will be doing that alongside of my website design
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so if you're going to be talking to somebody like me like how do
25:26
you get the word out for somebody like how do you choose the right platform the right demographic the right et cetera et
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cetera Etc um I think my biggest struggle is that I work on it like you yourself is on a
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global um with a global audience so targeting by location is not something that really
25:47
works for me um but I think yeah I just would be curious I think what I'm getting at is
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if somebody were to be like all right like I want to get like the trial run of
25:59
this done myself I want to get my hands dirty I want to figure it out before I hire someone so I know have a little bit
26:04
of a know-how before I get somebody who's expert because I think this is one of those things that like
26:11
in business there's so many things you could like get your hands dirty and do yourself but this is one of those things that you
26:17
can get your hands dirty do it yourself and have like moderate success but if you ever want real success you're
26:22
going to have to get somebody who really knows what they're doing um and it's not something you can in my
26:28
opinion like half-ass so um I just want to hear yeah I guess your
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thoughts kind of around where someone should get started yeah it's a great question the
26:41
it actually doesn't I don't believe it differs so much from person to person
26:46
business to business industry industry to Industry you've got a new service or
26:52
even if you had a if you had the service for a long time you you've got something that you want other people to pay for
26:59
and to to do so step step one I'm
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smiling because you're in the room you Ellie and anybody that's listening is in
27:09
the room where we work work this out we call this room the Fishbowl so I don't
27:15
know why we call it the Fishbowl it's maybe because there's glass here and there's glass in in front of me and it
27:21
feels like whenever myself and the team need to work out the plan for a new client we will
27:28
um fish bullet and that means we come into this room right here and we put
27:33
ourselves in the position of the customer we put ourselves in the shoes
27:38
of the customer for for a moment so we sit and we just go if I was Ali and I
27:45
had a new service uh that you know help people with their systems and their processes something that I desperately
27:50
need um you know what what would be my first steps where who am I and where do I hang
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out online where where is my attention uh right now where do where do I do that
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and let's say we were fish bowling right now if I had the hazard of gas I I'm I speak
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from personal experience I know that I have put into Google
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um uh search term of Process Management of system systems management teams
28:19
management um efficiency and processes uh all of those different keywords that you know
28:26
equal um you know probably what your services uh do for for that so if if in my head I
28:34
know that I'm in the room and I I do that and I go onto Google and I search for those things then immediately My head goes I want an advert in front of
28:40
those people that are searching for that I want to skip the queue of anybody that's organically showing up and I want to put an advert uh on on there so in
28:49
terms of in terms of where to go to um there's many many options but the
28:54
first step in my opinion is to literally try to mirror what a customer would do what would they do and where would they
29:01
go and how can you interact and direct with them um I would love to touch on the other
29:08
other networks in in this example you know you really want to just
29:14
find the people who need what you have and but who wouldn't normally find you
29:19
and get in front of them so I think there's a really great opportunity on LinkedIn to do that for for this
29:24
particular um service ads are very expensive on on LinkedIn um but there could be uh beneficial
29:31
specifically for for this um no that's phase one is on Google and on LinkedIn getting in front of people
29:37
in the first instance so that's important possibly on matter you know why not there's business interests there
29:43
on matter of you know uh getting in front of of people and then uh Twitter
29:49
to head advertising on Twitter as well and then also on on Tech talk for for
29:54
sure why not put a little bit of uh budget in there and there's two things they just want to want to say about that
30:00
one is you don't have to spend a fortune like you can start off with a couple of
30:05
dollars per day on each of those platforms you don't you don't have to spend ten dollars or a hundred dollars
30:11
or ten Grand on that you can go really micro because a click maybe gonna cost you about 50p or 30p or so to get a to
30:19
get a click on one of those adverts so you definitely don't have to go go massive the the online advertising space
30:26
is a great leveler because you can get in front of people and soak in Coca-Cola or so can you know Nike or or any of
30:32
those other other businesses so you can go small on that but getting in front of people first is is really important but
30:39
here's the thing it's not going to be successful on the first pass you're not gonna you're not gonna get every click
30:46
is not going to be a be a customer there's a certain amount of brand awareness and you know getting in front
30:52
of people and I see it as a five-tiered system one get in front of people that
30:57
might be interested two whenever they are interested they go your website pixel Lam and then retarget them as
31:05
they're floating around the internet you know look at the pictures of cats or whatever it is that they're looking at
31:11
on on the internet then three uh send another advert with an offer or
31:16
something that gets an email address for follow-up personally on on email and
31:22
rarely uh if a hundred people go through that that process will you not see maybe
31:28
one or two people that are are interested after that rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat and do it over and
31:34
over again and and basically prepare to fail for about two months on this and
31:40
then start seeing some gold and start seeing some people that are coming through that are actually interested after after testing it out over over
31:48
time I think that's something that is really easy to as
31:54
so I've tried and failed at a lot of things in business I think anybody who's been doing this for some time has you
32:00
try a service you try and offer you try a a thing and it doesn't quite go the way
32:06
you plan it does um but I think that's the thing is that because there's like
32:14
it's funny because I failed at other businesses in like uh business Investments and been okay just sort of
32:20
been like for the most part there's been a handful that I haven't but when it comes to
32:26
advertising investing it feels different and so I don't know there's so much to
32:32
it because there's some of it that's probably my own personality and some of my own values um so I don't want to muddy the waters
32:39
too much with that I have a question later for that but I think there's something that is very much like
32:46
it can feel very sticky to spend your money with these big corporations
32:52
that and know that for the first while it probably isn't going to get you
32:57
anything because you're training yourself you're targeting the right people and you're training their
33:03
algorithms to help you target those right people yes I agree 100
33:10
feels wrong feels horrible feels feels absolutely diabolical and
33:16
um if if you spend with the platforms and you don't get any return from it it's
33:22
gone it's not coming back like you've literally you've literally you've you've spent you've spent that
33:29
um the only the only thing there's only two things that kind of kind of save it um
33:35
one is um brand awareness is in a in a busy
33:40
world uh never a bad thing someone knowing about your business you know building up that small little fleeting
33:48
connection with someone where they've heard about your business um is is very very valuable so
33:54
um it's hard to quantify and it's hard for that to be to be uh tangible and the only effective way to do that at scale
34:01
especially globally from one place is going to be on those you know online uh
34:07
platforms um also it's the marketplace you know
34:12
it's it's just the mechanism to accelerate like you can contact every person that you think you
34:19
can manually go in and contact every person you think might be interested in it but the cost time benefit ratio is is
34:27
to to low or high for for for me so being able to bypass that and get in
34:33
front of a bunch of people on Mars is is very strong but but I tell you what you really have to have your world in
34:40
order you know if you're going to do pet ads so your website as we were talking about you know recently
34:46
um it has to be on point like there's literally no point in spending any money on ads if the place where you're sending
34:52
them to is garbage and it doesn't work or this the amount of times I have come
34:57
uh started working with customers that have been doing paired ads the landing pages where the form doesn't send the
35:04
email anywhere is is mind-boggling and we're not talking like small businesses
35:09
we're talking huge Global corporations that are spending thousands and thousands of dollars on those pet ads
35:14
and they're going into the website and literally they're they're wondering why they're not getting any leads and it's because no one has tested the form and
35:22
it's going to The Ether of nowhere and they end up not getting the the business that that they want so
35:28
um yeah there's a there's a lot to it and unless you have your world in order
35:34
um you know it does make it very difficult to justify spending on the on the advert and it doesn't help that
35:39
these corporations are huge and also have done some pretty shitty things over over time yeah I think that the thing is
35:46
at the end of the day whatever form of marketing you're doing the and it is to drive people to whether
35:54
it be brand awareness which all these things eventually mean sales right there's lots of smaller goals you can
36:00
have that eventually mean that people spend their money with you and it was a very good point you made about
36:05
brand awareness because I know for sure that one of those is funny I tell you I get these ads for
36:11
me because I actually click on them because it knows um but these for these non-alcoholic like semi-wellness type ranks and one of
36:19
those is trip I don't mind name robbing I get it all the time but do you know what I want to do a hole in a Barrett to
36:25
pick up something else the other day and do you know what else I walked out with it was a trip it was on this call with me last time
36:32
like so it clearly works um to start getting so into somebody's
36:37
head and start getting your messaging and why you matter um in front of somebody because even if
36:43
they're not gonna buy through that ad they still might buy yeah the the you would I I totally see
36:49
what's what's happened there because I consider myself arrogantly and incorrectly that I am immune from ads
36:56
that are on my system so I thought yeah I I'm not I'm not ever gonna because I I do these ads so I'm never going to get
37:03
pulled into an offer or anything like that there was a business that did um Facebook advertising there's a lot of
37:10
with the ad platforms there's a lot of like companies that have sprouted up around that there are platforms that say
37:16
that they can do your ads better so a little piece of technology that you can plug into the meta or Google ad account
37:22
on your website and it makes the connection better where it gets out faster or more more relaxed over time
37:29
I've learned that that's all garbage you must go native whenever you're working with the platform but race not recently
37:36
maybe a few years ago there was a YouTube advert that was just so well done it kept on every time I was coming
37:42
back to YouTube it would come up and it would be a different layer to the story of their business about how they had
37:48
helped customers and agencies get more value for the for their clients in the back of my head I know it's garbage
37:53
because I'm working plugged into the system and I know that you can't game the system anymore than what you can do what you can do natively but yeah I went
38:00
for that offer because I was like all right you got me and it's it's really powerful whenever you look at it from a
38:07
and get in front of them repeatedly yeah and what I mean is not all of them are
38:13
Matt sometimes I've gotten ads for companies that are these gorgeous micro businesses that are semi-local I've got
38:20
there's one uh that I have like a hairpin from that unfortunately my hair is too slippy to use but it's beautiful
38:27
and I got it because I kept seeing the ad there's this amazing Scottish whiskey
38:33
that is small brewed completely carbon neutral ethically see this is what happens for me you can sell my my Niche
38:40
or what you know what it's getting to me but the bottle I put on my Christmas list Paul got it for me
38:45
um and it's something I still enjoy um now like a year and a half later so
38:50
they're not all bad um it's just so it's not always getting I guess sort of tricked into something
38:56
that you know like you were saying doesn't and maybe work the way that you expect it would work true um sometimes
39:02
you get ads for things like sometimes you get ads for things you know you already use all the time I get ads for vented and I'm a Vinted addict
39:10
so sometimes it's it's but it is people paying to play
39:15
um and so my I guess my questions is so we know there's like a million different
39:20
places to choose there's Google which is important because that's how people are searching there's YouTube which is an
39:26
extension of Google uh in a weird way because it's video based more you have
39:32
like The Meta World um you have Twitter you have Pinterest
39:38
which is such a visual um and different experience I know a lot of people who sell the reason I tried
39:44
there is because when you sell um templates people are often Googling
39:50
like Squarespace um you know so we're looking for inspiration or
39:56
whatever kind of in that world where you're like looking for that that visual thing
40:01
um people often would say maybe something like a digital or or a freebie does
40:07
fairly well on something like Pinterest especially if you were a Target demographic is a millennial woman
40:13
because we're all on Pinterest right so
40:18
um those kinds of things so how how do you discern where to start
40:24
did it's not it's not easy I I have a bit of a uh focus on Google at
40:32
at the moment just just because it we're really mastering that area
40:39
um so the intent is so so High um on matter people are not on matter to
40:48
purchase they are there to be entertained on Instagram and on
40:54
um Facebook and the other uh areas they're they're there to communicate with people find out what other people
41:00
are doing and be entertained at times they're there to Doom scroll for for a
41:05
while so the if I compare that advert putting that advert in front of someone
41:13
compared to on Google where they've literally typed in that I'm looking for this right now and this is exactly what
41:19
I what I want that I'm shopping for for this similar to Amazon ads you know you're even more hyper targeted in
41:26
Amazon if you're searching for for something you know because you're you're in that shopping mindset on Google
41:31
you're even you're even the intent is a bit a bit less so for most things I
41:37
can't think of any business where Google isn't a valuable weapon to start with and to understand the audience so even
41:45
for any business I can say Google is is probably probably important
41:50
um there is a you know you mentioned about the millennial woman you know if
41:55
you know that that's your Target demographic there are you know you will and Millennial men as well there are
42:02
certain adverts and certain creatives and beautiful creatives and products that just lend well to you know
42:10
um their uh thing so it can't depend on what your what your product is but if I
42:16
was taking that step back and you know working with a new client I would definitely sit down and say what are
42:21
your customers doing where are they where do they hang out and here's some here's another absolute trick asking the
42:28
customers that you know already where they are what they do you know having a it can it sounds ridiculous for picking
42:33
up the phone the 10 customers and saying you know we just wanted to chat about what you do where do you where do you find your your similar type products and
42:41
things like that and that little thought can instead of you guessing and trying to figure it out you know going back to
42:47
the source and going back to the people and saying you know where do you hang out what do you do online um what what do you search for what
42:54
would you search for if you were looking for product X um is very is very important so yeah
42:59
they're just so important so important and it can be such an easy like hard thing to like nail but I think it's like
43:07
I just got through a market research piece for this this service that I'm offering and and I tried to follow like
43:13
the mom test or essentially you didn't ask them any direct questions you just asked them lots of open-ended Dairy
43:19
fairy questions so that they can't lie to you and say that sounds like a great idea right
43:24
um but I think you're right like asking your clients almost I think the thing is is a lot of
43:30
times I can feel really intimidating but more often than not people are really
43:35
really really happy to share right they just like people love to know that their opinion is valuable
43:41
um in the way Society has gone over time like we used to be very very Community Based
43:48
there's a hunger in people especially post-pandemic for community
43:54
so anytime you can do anything like that like don't be scared of it people like your people are gonna answer you
44:00
and I feel like as a side thing is if you can incentivize it it's not that
44:06
people don't want to do it it's that we all live busy lives so I tend to incentivize it with like I'm giving out
44:12
three gift cards to a small business of your choice so I will raffle off anybody
44:18
who is willing to hop on a call with me whatever I'll raffle office and gift certificates and it's not because these
44:23
people wouldn't get on the call anyway it's because life's busy and it means they'll get on the call tomorrow right
44:30
yeah the the search for that information is really the game so on understanding
44:37
what your customers want and how to put something in front of them that matches
44:42
that is is there's there's no there's no shape to it there's no trick to it there's no play Above to it it's just
44:48
something that takes time to understand and time to to test out and time to to
44:54
figure out with uh action um and all of that will help you do what
45:00
you talked about earlier which is mirroring with that Searcher would do and whatever platform that would be
45:06
highly likely Google right because they sort of Run the World
45:13
um but yeah I think so that's interesting so my question is so we've talked about
45:19
it a little bit this but it's y paid so we talked about how it's an accelerator how it's sort of a
45:25
cheat code um how obviously it does take a couple of months to get going but once it does
45:33
it's going to be very very different than say the slow build of this YouTube
45:39
channel or the slow build of word of mouth or the slow build of networking or even potentially this logo build of
45:46
something like affiliate marketing right it's going to be very very different to all those other beasts that we use in
45:52
businesses so I would love to hear a little more
45:57
so it's like building for the future cheaply so
46:06
if if I have if I sell candles and I have 50 candles to to sell there's no
46:14
other way that I can think of it to do it better than to um get an advert up on Google shopping
46:21
or on Amazon to say this candle is is available and in an afternoon I can get
46:29
that I can get that product in front of 50 000 people for about 20 quid
46:36
um and not that candle I can get that stock level of candles in in front of people so the ability to create an
46:44
advert and get it out there um is accelerated for sure with
46:50
um with with paid ads no it's not as there's other forms of
46:56
traffic that will come to your website like organic traffic that's people type in and bypass the ads which most people
47:02
do um because nobody likes ads I don't like ads but they would like them too yeah
47:09
they don't show up here yeah and then they'll um go to the organic traffic
47:14
that's super intent you know the intent on that is really good so it's more valuable but it takes a very long time
47:20
to build up that that kind of traffic um in an afternoon today tomorrow you can go on Google meta you make it very
47:27
easy to um create those those campaigns
47:32
um so uh you can get in front of a huge audience very very uh very quickly the
47:38
only thing that you're sacrificing for that uh time speed up and that hack is Cash uh money and
47:46
um that's another point I would suggest to fail quickly and cheaply in online
47:51
advertising because um before you know it you can run up huge bells on those um ad accounts I've
47:58
heard horror stories of thousands of poems being run up by the platform and without the user knowing about it so
48:06
um it's important to understand how to manage a budget and how to look after um a budget I think the key is to
48:13
monitor it very regularly like literally daily and know where the on off button is on the ads I think that's important
48:20
so that you can you can turn them off whenever you you uh you need to um also
48:26
I think communicating about it if you are interested in doing odds or you're
48:31
interested in you know trying it out for your for your business like reach out I
48:36
I know a lot of advertisers and a lot of marketers and Belfast Northern Ireland across the world I don't know any that
48:43
wouldn't have a 10 minute conversation with someone about their ads without expecting you know to uh you know be
48:51
paid for it or to do that I maybe I'm maybe I'm wrong about that but certainly for me or I can recommend some people to
48:58
talk to about it as as well where you know just reach out and um talk talk it
49:03
through before maybe try it on your own and maybe get that wrong or a bit off
49:09
yeah totally I think the thing is is in everything I've talked about and this has come up several times in the series
49:15
but it's something I talk about a lot in my business is there is this Trinity right of like where we spend in our
49:23
business and it's you're either spending time money or energy and you have to
49:28
choose really strategically if your business is going to succeed where you're going to spend those things so
49:33
essentially what you're saying is for the increased brand awareness for the increased
49:38
um sales and the like median terms so SEO as we know we've talked about those in other ones as well like a minimum of
49:45
six months before it really starts taking over it's really a long game and
49:51
it's really truly like a years on years on years thing um but before you see real results at
49:58
all you're looking at a minimum of six months so you're saying that in a month or two you can start having results with
50:04
ads which is quite a bit different and it's obviously probably going to be where search
50:09
engines are like directly for someone who's looking at a very specific thing you're looking at people potentially
50:16
depending on where you're marketing people who are looking at maybe a more General thing but end up looking at the
50:22
exact right place because you said somebody's looking instead of saying somebody who's looking for ethical
50:28
organic candles made in Glasgow they're saying ethical organic candles UK and it
50:34
just is coming up right totally and what you're saying about the
50:39
month or two months or so that that's it could be quicker you could do it quicker but the thing is you're not going to
50:45
master it and you it's it's not the it's not the platform's gonna take time it's you're gonna it's gonna take time for
50:52
you to figure out the movements of the odd platform you know how much to put in
50:58
on any given day who to Target at what locations to to Target do you go full
51:03
country or do you go um or do you go very local down to uh uh
51:09
postcode or zip code um something that's very important as well
51:15
um I believe another one of those known unknowns by me of just over time
51:20
understanding understanding it um doing an advert on Mata or in Google
51:25
that encompasses two countries like let's say North America let's say Canada and the USA
51:32
I believe that confuses the algorithm and I believe that gets you less results
51:37
than if you separate it out into two different uh countries so interesting
51:43
yeah so let's say you want to do Europe you knew you had a product like like it really comes to its own in SAS you know
51:50
whenever you're advertising for online platforms because they don't test necessarily have borders except for the
51:55
language in in each of them so it may be reasonable to send an English advert all across uh Europe not totally advisable
52:02
if you're doing it right you would need different different language but Canada and USA is a very good example of if you
52:08
put it across North North America the algorithm doesn't work so the Campion might not get any results might
52:14
not get in front of the right people and might not do that because it's trying to cross a border in cyberspace and I
52:21
believe that it doesn't doesn't like that and I know that we would never do that here now but you would never know
52:26
that until you had um seen the seen the testing of doing it doing it both uh both ways
52:34
um and hopefully that's a tip for someone out there well I'm sure it is because you've got to think that like
52:39
even if you're looking at so maybe your Niche just because maybe this is just YouTube videos I've watched
52:46
lately but like say digital Nomads so let's say you're looking at digital Nomads
52:51
um that are coming from primarily native English-speaking countries and you're trying to get them to say go to Croatia
52:58
or Portugal and all these places that are sort of recruiting digital Nomads right now like you could think make the
53:05
mistake of thinking you can just send ads to all those places I think people like natively speak English and you're targeting based on the fact that they've
53:12
worked from their laptops that's a really I could see really really easy mistake that you wouldn't even know you
53:17
were making yeah absolutely can you imagine Portugal I think we have a shared love of uh
53:23
Portugal of Lisbon and pastel the pastel de nada
53:28
oh my gosh they're so good I think it's because when you were down in Dublin like a couple months ago and you
53:34
literally posted seven years of the wife said I had to bring these back in Dublin uh
53:41
I did yeah I went when I went and March a couple weeks after you posted that um I've also there's also one over that
53:48
by I'll have to tell you there's a new one but um that I don't think is as quite as like trendy but still very very good
53:55
um but other girls see you can make connections over all kinds of things
54:00
but um so I guess my thing is originally I think my thing against and against my
54:07
business doing digital ads was like the like okay it's a big thing because not
54:13
if I'm gonna pay for it um I'm gonna have to pay someone who knows what they're doing and then I'm gonna have to pay for the ads right and
54:21
as a service based it just didn't seem to make sense at the time but I think the other thing is as we've
54:28
talked about like my personal brand personal values which then leak into my brand values because my business is me
54:34
it art is really to support small it is to support ethical it is to support the
54:40
verse it is to support uh carbon neutral and so it's like
54:46
I think running ads goes against a lot of my personal values
54:52
so I don't really know how to reconcile that no it's not possible that is that
54:57
is impossible to reconcile running mad about meta ads against
55:02
sound moral values I think I I don't I don't think those two those two uh exist
55:10
it's very difficult to hand over money to such a huge organization when you
55:15
know they the only the only thing you get into an ethical argument about it the only thing
55:21
that I can maybe say in its defense possibly is are they were they too big did they
55:28
become too big too quickly to be able to handle being at ethical and I don't know
55:35
if that's even a legitimate argument it's the only one that comes to comes comes to mind but I would certainly
55:41
agree it's it's very if if you want to if you want to put ads if you want to get business and put odds on on any of
55:49
the big platforms uh you could certainly make arguments that that it's not the
55:54
most ethical way to to do it for for sure I would definitely agree with that yeah I think the other thing though is
56:00
is I have I have this total two Wars Devil's Advocate thing too is that as
56:05
we've talked about a little bit already but I have found several of my most favorite ethical Brands because of this
56:12
right like and getting within like just TMI Tuesday on a Friday like I have wear
56:18
like weird like underwear that are like made from trees I found them on Institute I'm
56:24
pretty sure through an Instagram ad and they're compostable
56:30
my weird organic carbon neutral whiskey that I like like
56:35
um that's like sort of my special whiskey to be fair like I don't sits on the Shelf I don't touch it as much as the others but
56:42
um the bottle's beautiful and hand painted and stunning um but some of these things
56:48
like I've picked them because these ethical companies have decided that reaching out to the people that are
56:55
going to spend their money with them through maybe not the most ethical channel was worth their while
57:00
right and it's worked it's it's a very tough one to to
57:06
reconcile it's like so social social media and ads could you
57:11
combine could you compare them before there was Facebook Instagram and Google
57:17
like before that there would have been the phone the telephone um the telephone used for all sorts of
57:23
things like that aren't isn't isn't ethical but is it you know do you not use the phone because of because of that
57:30
I don't even know are you not spending your money with say yellow or it was
57:39
there's no there's literally no uh there's no justifying
57:45
um it's a tough one I agree I would prefer small uh ethical uh businesses in
57:51
this world before this like you were saying before this the Advent of the internet really
57:58
you would have still been spending if you were a small business you would have been spending money on the Yellow Pages or the white pages or whatever it is
58:04
depending on where you lived you probably were spending money to be in your local newspaper which some of those
58:09
are propping up massive horrible corporations and themselves some of these newspapers are owned by NASA
58:15
horrible corporations so it's it is I think it's just an evolution of the
58:20
game that is well I already learned something on that because you know you
58:26
do as an Advertiser you do lose it you know you do lose that you can lose that um
58:32
that ethical awareness of of the ads to me it's it's not even a second thing and it's weird it's a bit like it's a bit
58:38
like Sea World you don't see it you don't you don't you don't see it until you're reminded of it or you're told
58:43
about it and actually you know it's an it's an important uh it's a very important um point and something that
58:50
I'll definitely be taking away from this conversation that you know we do we need to think about that and we're currently doing our strategy for the next quarter
58:57
and for all of those things and um I think I'm really glad that we talked about that because uh I'll
59:03
certainly want to include it in our in our work oh I'm really glad to hear that well
59:08
we're about well we're exactly out an hour so I would love for you to tell people where they can find you so that
59:16
uh we can yeah have everyone with their beautiful days you should be able to
59:22
anybody that wants to should be able to Google Peter doke and you'll find a bunch of stuff on there you'll find our
59:30
website you'll find my podcast the PDG advertising podcast you'll find all of
59:35
our social channels on Twitter on on a LinkedIn business is called PDG advertising our website is PDG
59:41
advertising dot.com and I really appreciate Ellie you making the time for us to
59:48
um do this today it's it's awesome as I said we have really benefited a PDG from
59:54
your work um and your businesses work on our uh customers I I could think of one
1:00:00
at the moment where the website that you developed up has um and built has
1:00:06
continuously been generating leads for that customer in California it has
1:00:12
helped my business because we know you and it's been really useful to have to be able to work like that together
1:00:19
oh thank you it's been really good to work with you as well I think when people
1:00:24
essentially it could just be such a like a I don't know the word I'm looking for essentially when you have people in
1:00:30
complementary fields that you can trust right to share people when people ask me a question about that I'm like I don't
1:00:37
know go check out Fiji advertising Instagram because that's not a not in my wheelhouse right
1:00:43
um and so it's one of those really nice things to have other business owners that you can really trust I don't know
1:00:49
have we actually ever even met in person don't think so I think
1:00:56
type of things um one of those networking networking things and then you've been on our
1:01:02
podcast our video cast business conversations uh before on phone calls
1:01:07
but at some point um we'll we'll catch up for sure yeah absolutely it's a
1:01:14
it's up here in my co-working space before and that's right now hiding in this little like uh glass pod place that
1:01:22
stretching code space so we'll get a people who've been on my
1:01:29
LinkedIn recent will notice like I have been like really geeking out over this is my phone
1:01:35
so that's that's my phone and I've been playing with these little clips that you can just magsafe here and have a much
1:01:40
much nicer webcam so anywho well thank you so much for joining us today everyone like Peter
1:01:47
said you can find him over at Peter doke or PDG advertising obviously with what
1:01:52
he does it's pretty easy to find him if you look a little um and he is just a wealth of knowledge
1:01:59
him and his company are fantastic so thanks to you everyone for joining thanks a lot
