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7-Figure Small with Brian Clark
Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer
Copyblogger FM: Content Marketing, Copywriting, Freelance Writing, and Social Media Marketing
Get More Clients With Smarter Email Marketing
Hack the Entrepreneur
Members Only
Rainmaker.FM Elsewhere
Site Success: Tips for Building Better WordPress Websites
StudioPress FM
Technology Translated
The Digital Entrepreneur
The Missing Link
The Showrunner
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
Youpreneur with Chris Ducker
Zero to Book
Copyblogger FM: Content Marketing, Copywriting, Freelance Writing, and Social Media Marketing
hosted by Darrell Vesterfelt and Tim Stoddart

Behind the Scenes: Adventures in Advertising

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Previous Episode:Trump, Apple, and Facebook Advertising: Content Marketing News for May, 2016 More Episodes Next Episode:Content Marketing Best Practices: Getting Email Opt-Ins

All Episodes:

March 30, 2020

The Advantage of Email Marketing, Featuring Nathan Barry of ConvertKit

March 15, 2020

How to Write Content That Resonates

March 9, 2020

How to Conquer Your Fear of Selling, with Leah Neaderthal

March 2, 2020

How to Build Remarkable Products to Grow Your Business, with Ramit Sethi

February 17, 2020

What You Should Talk about on Your Podcast, with Tara McMullin

February 9, 2020

How to Win at Search in 2020

February 3, 2020

How to Turn Pro as a Freelance Writer

January 27, 2020

Marketing Segmentation and Personalization with Brennan Dunn of RightMessage

January 20, 2020

Podcasting Still Matters, with Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income

January 13, 2020

The New Look Copyblogger in 2020

January 8, 2020

New Year, New Copyblogger

October 23, 2019

The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur with John Jantsch

October 2, 2019

Consistency Will Take You Further

September 25, 2019

The Past, Present, and Future of Online Learning

September 16, 2019

How to Get More of the Right Things Done

September 9, 2019

Why the Future Is Still Email

September 3, 2019

What’s Next for
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August 26, 2019

How Smart, Nimble Companies Are Using Webinars Today

August 19, 2019

The Clarity Method: A Conversation with Tim Brownson

August 12, 2019

Digital Business Trends and the Latest on the Rainmaker Platform

August 5, 2019

4 ‘Naive’ Business Principles for Enduring Success

July 8, 2019

How to Write an Epic Blog Post, Part 3: Polishing and Promotion

July 1, 2019

How to Write an Epic Blog Post, Part 2: Getting It Written

June 24, 2019

How to Write an Epic Blog Post, Part 1: Thinking and Research

June 17, 2019

3 Almost Magical Headline Ingredients for More Traffic, Engagement, and Shares

June 10, 2019

Lessons Any Business Can Learn from an Impressive Influencer Marketing Fail

June 3, 2019

13 Ways of Looking at a Headline

May 27, 2019

The 7 ‘Bad’ Habits of Incredibly Successful People

May 20, 2019

Writers: How to Move from Making a Living to Driving Revenue

May 13, 2019

Choose the Right Frame to Boost the Power of Your Content

May 6, 2019

How Copywriting Teacher Belinda Weaver Reenergized Her Email List for Massive Engagement

April 29, 2019

3 Reasons Why Really Good Writers Sometimes Can’t Find Great Clients

April 22, 2019

3 Slightly Embarrassing Emotions that Drive Effective Copywriting

April 15, 2019

Get 10 Content Marketing Boosters in 20 Minutes

April 8, 2019

Becoming the ‘Chief Empathy Officer’ of Your Copy and Content

April 1, 2019

One of the Most Important Marketing Decisions You’ll Ever Make

March 18, 2019

What Nobody Wants to Hear about Content Marketing

March 11, 2019

Getting Your Big, Scary Projects Finished: A Conversation about Growing Gills

March 4, 2019

When Is It Time to Bring in a Professional Copywriter?

February 25, 2019

Using Content to Systematically Move Prospects Toward a Purchase

February 18, 2019

Understanding the Lifecycles of Your Website, with Pamela Wilson

February 11, 2019

5 Ways to Manage a Stress-Induced Creative Slump

February 4, 2019

3 Ways Strategic Content Can Drive Measurable Business Outcomes

January 28, 2019

The Social Media Platform Every Content Creator Should Be Using in 2019 (Nope, It’s Not Facebook)

January 21, 2019

Real Talk about Generating High-Quality Content

January 14, 2019

A Conversation with Paul Jarvis about Staying a ‘Company of One’

October 29, 2018

The 3 Plus 1 Foundational Elements of Effective Persuasion

October 22, 2018

5 Essential Copywriting Techniques from Copyblogger

October 15, 2018

5 Ways to Recover Your Professional and Creative Confidence

October 8, 2018

5 Stinky Sardine Secrets to Make Your Content More Fascinating

September 24, 2018

The Mindset ‘Hack’ that Frees Your Creativity and Makes You Happier

September 18, 2018

How to Kill Your Sales and Mess up Your Business: Lessons from a Used Car Salesman

September 4, 2018

The 7 Things Writers Need to Make a (Good) Living

August 27, 2018

Are You Making These Social Media Marketing Mistakes?

August 20, 2018

Fix These 7 About Page Mistakes for More Traffic and (Possibly) Better SEO

August 13, 2018

7 Ways to Boost Your Creativity

August 6, 2018

A 10-Step ‘Checklist’ for Your Content Marketing Site

July 30, 2018

The 3 Keys to Publishing Strong Content … Even If You Aren’t a ‘Great’ Writer (Yet)

July 23, 2018

Fix These 3 Points of Failure to Get Better Results for Your Content

July 16, 2018

Big Changes at ConvertKit: A Discussion with Founder Nathan Barry

July 9, 2018

3 Skills to Master to Become a Marketing Badass this Year

June 18, 2018

The Quiet Power of Conversational Copy

June 11, 2018

5 Rules of Thumb to Relieve SEO-Induced Stress

June 4, 2018

How to Use the GDPR to Make Your Business Stronger than Ever

May 14, 2018

‘Good Karma’ Selling that Works: A Conversation with Tim Paige

April 30, 2018

How to Get More Comfortable (and Effective) at Selling

April 23, 2018

Privacy and Permission in the Wake of Cambridge Analytica

April 16, 2018

Seth Godin and How to Create Change

April 9, 2018

Email? Chatbots? Social? How Are We Supposed to Reach People?

March 26, 2018

The Double-Edged Sword that Can Make (or Break) Your Content

March 19, 2018

Make More Progress by Getting (Gently) Out of Your Comfort Zone

March 12, 2018

Are You Doing Content Marketing Wrong?

March 5, 2018

Storytelling for Modern Content Marketing (Part 2 of 2)

February 26, 2018

Storytelling for Modern Content Marketing (Part 1 of 2)

February 19, 2018

10 Quality Factors Search Engines Need to See on Your Site

February 12, 2018

A Simple Content Strategy to Make Your Site Massively More Useful

February 5, 2018

How to Avoid a Heartbreaking Business Failure

January 29, 2018

Hey Writers: Let’s Get You Paid What You’re Worth

January 15, 2018

5 Keys to Making Your Content More Shareable

December 18, 2017

3 Observations on Trends (but not Predictions) for 2018

December 11, 2017

3 Tips Now to Build a Strong Foundation in 2018

December 4, 2017

The 3 Success Factors that Help Writers Earn a Great Living

November 27, 2017

How to Recognize a Great Content Idea

November 20, 2017

How to Cultivate a More Meaningful Gratitude Practice

November 13, 2017

Advice for Poets, Advice for Killers

October 30, 2017

Face Your Business Fears on Halloween Week

October 23, 2017

How to Make Smarter Decisions about Your Website

October 2, 2017

A Series of Unfortunate Content Events

September 18, 2017

The Evolution of a Successful Copywriter

August 28, 2017

7 Ways to Improve Your Marketing by Harnessing the Power of Evil

August 14, 2017

Smart Questions from our Brilliant Audience

August 7, 2017

Does the Web Have Enough Patience for Your In-Depth Content?

July 31, 2017

How to Write (Much Better) Blog Comments

July 17, 2017

Which Works Better: Positive or Negative Content?

July 10, 2017

How to Attract the Exact Customers You Want

July 3, 2017

How to Create Stability and Success as an Artist

June 19, 2017

Two Powerful Resources for Life-Changing Growth

June 12, 2017

How to Turn All that Marketing Advice into Action

June 5, 2017

How to Develop a Compelling Marketing Idea in 4 Steps

May 30, 2017

Getting Over the Fear of Selling

May 22, 2017

Talking Community and Digital Business with Tara Gentile

May 15, 2017

Plagiarism, Self-Deception, Bad Sandwiches, and Other Interesting Disasters

May 1, 2017

Professional Writers: Find Out How to Get Certified by Copyblogger

April 17, 2017

The Painful Core Lesson Taught by 3 Astonishing Big-Brand Fails

April 3, 2017

5 Mindset Habits that Actually Work

March 27, 2017

On Grammar, Usage, and Not Being a Great Big Jerk

March 20, 2017

Creative Strategies for Content Writers

March 13, 2017

A New Ultra-Easy Resource for Creating Excellent WordPress Sites

February 20, 2017

Thriving Freelancers and Clients from Hell

February 13, 2017

Politics, Content Marketing, and the 2017 Super Bowl Ads

February 6, 2017

Copyblogger Book Club: Winning the Story Wars

January 23, 2017

3 Content Marketing Strategy Fails (and How to Fix Them)

January 9, 2017

The 2017 Content Excellence Challenge: Your January Assignments

December 19, 2016

Bad Writing Advice: The ‘Post Truth’ Episode

December 12, 2016

Get Ready Now for a Creative and Productive 2017

December 5, 2016

The 4 Pillars Every Online Business Is Built On

November 28, 2016

Orbit Media’s Latest Survey of 1000 Bloggers

November 14, 2016

Have You Already Missed the Podcasting Gold Rush?

November 7, 2016

Getting More Traffic, Links, and Shares to Your Content

October 31, 2016

5 Quick Wins for Content Marketers

October 24, 2016

Announcing: An Intriguing New Tool for Collaborative Content

October 17, 2016

A New Book to Make Content Marketing Easier

October 10, 2016

Behind the Scenes at Copyblogger: Our New Email Approach

October 3, 2016

The ‘Obligatory’ Structure of Effective Content

September 26, 2016

7 Powerful Content Strategies Borrowed from Advertising Masters

September 15, 2016

How to Handle Demographic and Psychographic Segmentation (without Looking Like an Idiot)

September 8, 2016

Ethics, Professionalism, and Good Manners for Content Marketers

September 1, 2016

3 Questions that Can Haunt Creative Professionals

August 25, 2016

How to Give and Get Exceptional Testimonials, Part Two

August 18, 2016

How to Give and Get Exceptional Testimonials, Part One

August 11, 2016

Are You Leaving Money on the Table with Weak Headlines?

August 4, 2016

Content Marketing for Nonprofits

July 28, 2016

The One-Two Punch that Creates the Most Successful Copywriters

July 21, 2016

Pokémon Go: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

July 14, 2016

5 Suggestions When You’re Writing About Controversy

July 7, 2016

Announcing: A Breakthrough Educational Collaboration between Copyblogger and U.C. Davis

June 30, 2016

How to Break Past the #1 Conversion Killer

June 23, 2016

The New Age of Marketing Automation: Powerful, Simple, Cost-Effective

June 16, 2016

How to Make a (Really Good) Living as a Freelance Writer

June 9, 2016

Self-Publishing, Side Hustles, and Doing It All: A Conversation with Linda Formichelli

June 2, 2016

A Process for Content Marketing Success

May 26, 2016

Content Marketing Best Practices: Getting Email Opt-Ins

May 19, 2016

Behind the Scenes: Adventures in Advertising

May 12, 2016

Trump, Apple, and Facebook Advertising: Content Marketing News for May, 2016

May 5, 2016

Sally Hogshead and the Art of Fascination

April 28, 2016

Behind the Scenes at the Rainmaker Digital Company Meeting!

April 14, 2016

Social Media News, Social Media Constants

April 7, 2016

Strategies for B2B Podcasting, with Clark Buckner

March 31, 2016

Content Marketing Success Stories: Fitness Powerhouse Examine.com

March 24, 2016

Behind the Scenes: An Inside Look at the Rainmaker FM Redesign

March 17, 2016

Our Latest Advice and Resources for Digital Business Owners

March 10, 2016

Should Content Publishers Adopt Google’s New AMP?

March 3, 2016

7 Ways to Get Smarter with Social Media Listening

February 25, 2016

Content Marketing Shout-Out: Orbit Media and Andy Crestodina

February 18, 2016

The Tactic You Should Steal from Copyblogger

February 11, 2016

Content Marketing News for February, 2016

February 4, 2016

Email Marketing: The Misunderstood Powerhouse

January 28, 2016

The Secret Weapon Behind Great Websites: The Role of the Content Editor

January 21, 2016

Behind the Scenes: The Relaunch and Re-Imagining of Copyblogger.com

January 14, 2016

Trends and Predictions for Digital Commerce: A Conversation with Brian Clark

January 7, 2016

2016 Content Marketing Resolutions

December 28, 2015

The End of The Lede, The Beginning of Copyblogger FM

November 10, 2015

Constraints Can Be Blessings (Plus 2 Other Essential Lessons Jerod Re-Learned This Week)

November 3, 2015

Long or Short? The Content Length Question Answered, Once and For All

October 27, 2015

The Simple Publishing Hack That Gives Old Content New Life (Plus 3 More Tips)

October 20, 2015

The Surprising Truth about Earning a Profit from Your Content

October 13, 2015

How to Move Your Audience From Infatuation to Love

October 6, 2015

3 Things Your Audience Wants You to Know about Useful Content

September 29, 2015

Revisiting Authenticity: What It Is, What It’s Not, and Why It Matters

September 22, 2015

Publishing Lessons from Dave Pell, the Most Fascinating Email Newsletter Writer in the Business

September 15, 2015

Why Content Creators Should Kiss Their Programmers

September 8, 2015

Finally — A Podcast about the Superiority of Written Content

September 1, 2015

Hot Seat: Grilling Jerod on Using Audio Content to Seed a Content Arsenal

August 25, 2015

How to Optimize Your Headlines for Content Discovery with Vinegar (Before You Die of Cholera)

August 18, 2015

5 Stories That Explain Jerod Morris (Plus One Massive Marketing Lesson)

August 11, 2015

Lede Potpourri: A Big Idea, Talking About Demian Behind His Back, and Lessons from #PM15

August 4, 2015

How to Attend an Industry Conference Like a Boss

July 28, 2015

Getting the Most Out of a Conference When You’re There to Promote, Part 1

July 21, 2015

How Much Does the Modern Content Marketer Need to Know About SEO?

July 14, 2015

Are Podcasters Digitally Sharecropping Without Realizing It?

July 7, 2015

Celebrating Our 101st Episode (with a Special Guest Interviewer)

June 30, 2015

Why The Phrase ‘Leaders Are Readers’ Should Die

June 23, 2015

Why You Should Think Outside the Box About Online Courses

June 16, 2015

The Proper (and Safe) Way to Republish Old Articles

June 9, 2015

How to Grow an Audience on LinkedIn by Repurposing Content

June 2, 2015

Key Takeaways from Three-and-a-Half Hours with Henry Rollins

May 27, 2015

Rapid-Fire Takeaways from Authority Rainmaker

May 19, 2015

The Proper Way to Grow an Audience on Medium

May 12, 2015

The Introvert’s Guide to Launching a Successful Podcast

May 5, 2015

The One Quality All Popular Podcasts Share

April 28, 2015

Proof That Grit Is the Only Way to Reach Your Potential

April 21, 2015

Do We Celebrate Failure Too Much?

April 14, 2015

Choose Yourself Part 2: James Altucher Fights Back

April 7, 2015

Should We Fear Content Shock? (Or Could It Actually Be a Good Thing?)

March 31, 2015

Should You Really ‘Walk in the Direction of Your Fear’?

March 24, 2015

Is ‘Choose Yourself’ Good Advice … or New-Age Phooey?

March 17, 2015

Is Authority Earned or Bestowed?

March 3, 2015

Dan Pink on How to Succeed in the New Era of Selling

February 24, 2015

Here’s How to Answer the Most Important Question in Life (and Make a Living from It)

February 17, 2015

Sally Hogshead on How You Can Unlock Your Natural Ability to Fascinate

February 10, 2015

How to Learn from Your Successes

January 27, 2015

How to Learn From Your Mistakes

January 13, 2015

Lessons Learned from Conducting Two Monster Audience Surveys

December 16, 2014

Adaptive Content: A Trend to Pay Attention to in 2015

December 2, 2014

The Most Important Lessons You Should Have Learned in 2014

November 18, 2014

How We Built Our Careers Online (And What You Can Learn From It)

November 4, 2014

Interview with Brian Clark: How Customer Experience Maps Help You Develop a Smarter Content Strategy

October 21, 2014

How Empathy Maps Help You Speak Directly to the Hearts of Your Audience

October 7, 2014

How to Ignite a Feeling in Your Audience

September 23, 2014

Are You Overlooking This Cornerstone of a Smart Content Strategy?

June 26, 2014

How to Curate Knowledge, Turn it Into Wisdom, and Build Your Audience

June 19, 2014

How Successful Writers Curate Ideas

June 13, 2014

The 5 W’s of Link Curation

June 6, 2014

Why You Should Curate Content (And How to Do It Right)

May 30, 2014

How Freaks and Misfits Can Succeed in Business: A Conversation with Chris Brogan

May 23, 2014

The 2 Reasons People Don’t Click on Your Buttons … And How to Overcome Them

May 16, 2014

Chase Customers, Not Clicks

May 9, 2014

How to Be Authentic

May 2, 2014

How to Close With Style

April 25, 2014

The Best of Seth Godin on Copyblogger

April 17, 2014

How to Choose Arresting Images for Your Blog Posts (And Why You Should)

April 11, 2014

Removing Blog Comments: The View So Far

April 4, 2014

How to Use Internal Cliffhangers

March 28, 2014

Hangout Hot Seat with Brian Clark

March 21, 2014

How to Tell a Seductive Story

March 14, 2014

How to Create Exquisite Subheads

March 7, 2014

How to Write Killer Bullet Points

February 28, 2014

How to Write Damn Good Sentences

February 21, 2014

How to Use Persuasive Words

February 14, 2014

Michael Stelzner on Capturing Emails and Committing to Quality

February 7, 2014

How to Nail Your Opening

January 24, 2014

How to Write a Magnetic Headline (in Under 15 Minutes)

May 18, 2012

Seth Godin on When You Should Start Marketing Your Product, Service, or Idea

May 11, 2012

How to Attract an Audience by Integrating Content, Social, and Search

March 30, 2012

Why You Should Build an Audience Before You Build a Business

March 16, 2012

How Chris Brogan Built His Content Platform

March 9, 2012

Jay Baer on How to Turn Interested Prospects into Lifelong Customers

March 2, 2012

A 30-Minute Copywriting Course from a Master of the Craft

February 24, 2012

The Path to a Legendary Copywriting Career

February 17, 2012

5 Tips for Affiliate Marketing Beginners

February 10, 2012

Why Not Sell Physical Stuff With Digital Media?

February 3, 2012

Whether You Call it Blogging or Not, Online Content Still Rules

January 27, 2012

Answers to the 3 Biggest Email Marketing Questions We Get

January 20, 2012

How to Newsjack Your Way to Free Media Exposure with David Meerman Scott

January 13, 2012

Steven Pressfield and the War of Work

November 18, 2011

The Strategy Behind the Copyblogger Redesign

November 11, 2011

7 Ways to Create an Email Marketing "Snowball Effect"

November 4, 2011

Warning: If You're Not a Privacy Nut, You're Losing Sales

October 28, 2011

The 3 Kinds of Writing That Builds a Business

October 21, 2011

The Art of Seductive Writing: A Conversation with Robert Greene

October 7, 2011

Why Content Marketing Doesn't Suck

September 30, 2011

Are You Weird Enough to Succeed at Content Marketing?

September 23, 2011

What Works With SEO Right Now and Why No One Does What You Want

September 16, 2011

Are You Flushing Your Marketing Down the Social Media Toilet?

September 11, 2011

Seth Godin on Blogging, Business Books, and Creating Content that Matters

September 2, 2011

The Return of Copyblogger Radio …

June 10, 2011

Answered: Your Most Burning Content Marketing Questions

June 3, 2011

How to Get All the Clients and Customers You Can Handle

May 20, 2011

Is Content Marketing Worth the Work?

May 13, 2011

How to Write Nearly Undeletable Emails

May 6, 2011

Is the Online Gold Rush Over?

April 22, 2011

The Art of Enchanting Online Marketing with Guy Kawasaki

April 15, 2011

The Market for Something to Believe in is Infinite: An Interview with Hugh MacLeod

April 8, 2011

How to Constantly Create Compelling Content

March 25, 2011

The Content Marketing Question You Need to Answer … Now

March 18, 2011

Good SEO is Simple. Really.

March 4, 2011

Did Social Media Kill the Marketing Star?

February 25, 2011

How to Write (and Execute) a Simple but Powerful Business Plan

February 17, 2011

How to Kick Groupon to the Curb and Become a Local Hero

February 3, 2011

Convert … Or Die

January 27, 2011

Attention: Is Your Headline Getting Any?

January 20, 2011

How to Craft Landing Pages that Work

January 13, 2011

Why Every Smart Business is in the Media Business

January 5, 2011

2011 Content Marketing Predictions

December 15, 2010

Tim Ferriss on How to Reinvent Yourself with Blog Marketing

December 8, 2010

The 6 Elements of an Influential Web Experience

December 1, 2010

Your Staggeringly Unfair Marketing Advantage

November 17, 2010

How to Get Some Action

November 10, 2010

The Foundation of All Marketing that Works

November 3, 2010

Introducing Copyblogger Radio

May 19, 2016

Behind the Scenes: Adventures in Advertising

Copyblogger and Rainmaker Digital have always benefited from what Brian Clark has called “brute force authority” — plenty of organic traffic. But we’ve started to experiment with something new.

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This week I talk with VP of Marketing for Rainmaker Digital, Jerod Morris, about our forays into the world of marketing funnels paired with social advertising.

Jerod has created a brand-new course on social advertising, which pairs beautifully with our course on marketing funnels. These are both available in our Digital Commerce Academy — but pick them up now while the price is still low!

The enrollment fee for DCA goes up on May 27, 2016.

In this 26-minute episode, Jerod and I talk about:

  • The business reasons behind diversifying our traffic sources
  • Why this new strategy isn’t as new for us as we first thought
  • How the pieces of a strong advertising program fit together
  • Cultivating a culture of testing for maximum results
  • The first steps for someone who wants to try this strategy out
  • A great price (expires on May 27!) on our newest resource to help you master social advertising

Listen to Copyblogger FM: Content Marketing, Copywriting, Freelance Writing, and Social Media Marketing below ...

Behind the Scenes: Adventures in AdvertisingSonia Simone
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The Show Notes

  • Take a listen to Brian Clark and Jerod Morris’s podcast episode on the myth of “set it and forget it” advertising (and how to approach it the right way)
  • Tweet Jerod on Twitter @jerodmorris and let him know about any great social ads you’re seeing (including your own!)
  • Ask me a question or follow me on Twitter @soniasimone
  • Get the best deal on Digital Commerce Academy before the cost goes up

The Transcript

Behind the Scenes: Adventures in Advertising

Voiceover: Rainmaker FM is brought to you by Digital Commerce Institute. Do you want to build the business of your dreams without squandering time and money, stumbling around to find the right path, or making unnecessary mistakes? The market is ready and waiting for you, but that doesn’t mean it’s gotten any easier. Digital Commerce Institute is here to change that. Go to Rainmaker.FM/DigitalCommerce and get the training, education, and community you need to start building your digital business the right way.

Sonia Simone: Hey there. I am so glad to see you again. Welcome back to Copyblogger FM, the content marketing podcast. Copyblogger FM is about emerging content marketing trends, interesting disasters, and enduring best practices, along with the occasional rant. My name is Sonia Simone. I’m the Chief Content Officer for Rainmaker Digital, and I like to hang out with all the folks who do the real work over on the Copyblogger blog. We’re going to be talking, as we always do, about lots of different resources and ideas. We always have additional links for you in the show notes. If you just go to Copyblogger.FM, you will get access not only to the notes for this show, but to the total archive for the program.

This week, I’m joined by our VP of Marketing, Jerod Morris. Jerod, how are you doing today?

Jerod Morris: I’m doing very well, Sonia. It’s wonderful to be here talking with you back on this podcast.

Sonia Simone: Exactly. Those of you with good memories remember that Jerod was a co-host on this podcast. He’s also got, gosh, he’s hosting The Showrunner, The Digital Entrepreneur, which he co-hosts with Brian Clark, he’s got some passion podcasts, so pretty much Jerod lives behind his mic, is what we’re saying with Jerod there.

Jerod Morris: Basically.

Sonia Simone: Like everybody at Copyblogger and at Rainmaker Digital, Jerod’s job description changes, I calculated, and I think it’s about every 10 days.

Jerod Morris: Seems about right.

The Business Reasons Behind Diversifying Your Traffic Sources

Sonia Simone: Lately, something he’s been working on is something really important and cool, a new growth engine for us, which is the world of advertising and marketing funnels. It’s a funny thing. I was talking with Brian Clark about this at our company meeting. I was saying everyone else in digital business does that first, while they’re trying to figure out how to do a really strong content play.

Jerod Morris: Mm-hmm.

Sonia Simone: We just sort of, I don’t know, we did it backwards. Brian described it over on the Digital Entrepreneur as what we have been doing as “brute strength authority marketing.” I thought that was a wonderful turn of phrase. Diversification is smart, you know, in any business. It’s just not a great idea to only have one source of traffic, so we have been adding ads into the mix. Jerod has really been, I don’t know, leading that charge or herding those cats. I’m not sure what the best description is.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, you know, working with our team, Loryn Thompson, who we brought in, has been doing some great work with learning Facebook ads and helping us put that in. What’s interesting about it is that it’s such an integrated effort because you can have this idea for a funnel and start the funnel with some paid advertising, but that means that you need good design on an image. You need good copy written. You need someone who is there to analyze the data.

You need people on the back end who can make sure that when people sign up and give you their email address, that they’re getting the right opt-in bonus, and all of this. It’s interesting because it really is such an integrated part now, and there’s so many people on our team who have a hand in a piece of this as we go. It’s been a great experience, something new. That’s the best part about the constantly shifting job description, is getting to learn a lot of new things, which I always enjoy.

Sonia Simone: Yeah. It’s really good. I think probably at least half of the folks listening are going to be pretty familiar with marketing funnels, and with this idea that you buy traffic, essentially, to go to those funnels. Can you kind of just give us a capsule view of what that means for people who haven’t really done it yet, or might not be quite as familiar?

How the Pieces of a Strong Advertising Program Fit Together

Jerod Morris: If you haven’t done it yet and if you’re not familiar, then you’re really like I was not too long ago, actually, when I first started learning about content marketing, Sonia. And a lot of what I’ve learned is since I joined Copyblogger several years ago.

I guess I just thought, and I don’t know exactly why this was, but my understanding just kind of came to be that it was almost like you did content marketing or you did paid advertising. It was almost like they were kind of separate things. I think part of that is because that’s just kind of how we operated.

Like Brian was talking about with the ‘brute force authority,’ we had built this authority, built these lists, and so when we’re getting ready to sell a product, we would send an offer out to our lists, and it worked really well. Obviously it sustained the company enough to the point where we grew to as big as we are now and allowed us to continue to develop more products and do all of the things that we’ve done.

Now, as I get into it more and learn more about paid advertising, and learn more about how paid advertising and content marketing integrate, they really aren’t two separate things at all. In fact, they are obviously different disciplines, but they come together. The fundamentals of them are so similar and they work so well together.

You’ve got to think of it this way. If you’re going to succeed with content marketing, that means that you’re putting out really good, valuable content, and that when people see that content, they want to engage with you more, and they subscribe, and you take them along these circles of belief, like we’ve talked about.

If you’re doing a good job with content marketing, what do you need? You need more people in your target audience to come see your content. The most efficient way to do that is to simply go someplace that will allow you to target the specific people you’re looking for and pay to put your content in front of them. That’s what paid advertising is. That’s what social advertising is all about.

If you look at it on the flip side, if you’re looking to get into paid advertising, and you have the best strategy, and you know everything to do to develop a good ad with a great image, and you know how to write the copy for it, and do all this stuff, and you know that you can convert and target the exact, right people, what do you need? You need to send people to content that converts. You need to be good at content marketing.

These two different disciplines, these two different activities, really work very well together. They compliment each other so well. That’s what we’re learning, because obviously we have developed a treasure trove of good content over the years at Copyblogger. Now, as we get into the paid advertising side of it, we’re really seeing the value of that, and we’re really seeing the value of not just sending someone from, let’s say, Facebook to a sales page.

Sonia Simone: Right.

Jerod Morris: But sending someone to a piece of content, giving them some value, getting them on the list, nurturing them, just like you would if someone came to Copyblogger.com. When you have those two and they can work together so well, it really allows you to super-charge your content marketing efforts if you’re coming at it from a content marketing angle.

Sonia Simone: Yeah, one of the earliest posts I wrote for Copyblogger, back in the days when Copyblogger was a brand — because that was a time, not that long ago really, in the scheme of things — I wrote a post called “The Harpoon or the Net.” It was really about what at that time were maybe more separate ways, but yeah. It used to be that a certain kind of marketer bought ads and sent them to these landing pages, sometimes to sales pages. The sales page, if you were doing it right, you could spend ten, twenty, thirty thousand on a sales page because it had to convert this absolutely ice cold traffic.

Jerod Morris: Yep.

Sonia Simone: You had to be at the top of your game to be able to make that work. A few people made a lot of money. A lot of people lost a little money. It was hard. The content marketing model was more ‘create the environment, build the audience.’ I love that now both disciplines have matured enough that we realize there’s nothing wrong with buying traffic.

Certainly, there’s nothing bad about buying traffic at all. It’s just so much smarter to pull them into some kind of a sequence, something made with content that creates a relationship, rather than just slam it and run into a sales pitch. That is a thing you can do. It’s just not necessarily the thing that is the smartest way to go.

Why This New Strategy Isn’t as New as We First Thought

Jerod Morris: Yeah. It’s being smart about things, like a retargeting pixel, for example, on Facebook. We can put an ad on Facebook to a piece of content on Copyblogger, just a straight piece of content, an article. It may have a call to action at the bottom. In fact, it should have a call to action at the bottom.

If the person doesn’t convert at that moment, which we know that most people won’t on their first time, or maybe even their second time or their third time, you haven’t lost them. Number one, maybe they haven’t bought, but maybe you converted them onto an email list.

Or when it comes to advertising, you’ve set what’s called that Facebook retargeting pixel, so now we can actually start a sequence of ads on Facebook. Maybe you clicked on this ad here about meaningful content. Now, we can actually show you an ad that kind of takes the next step on the content journey that you might be going on.

You can set up and you can almost treat the people on Facebook — and Brian and I talked about this on the Digital Entrepreneur — you can treat the people that you’re targeting on social media sites with paid advertising, almost like someone who’s inside of your email sequence, where you’re sending them a sequence of emails.

You can send people a sequence of messages on social media and kind of walk them through a process. And of course, you’re nurturing them along the way, you’re warming that traffic to some sort of eventual end. But again, you’re really seeing the fundamentals of what you want to do merge. Obviously, there are specific elements to content marketing and elements to social advertising that you need to understand, specific strategies. You’ve got to get comfortable with the tools. The fundamentals are a lot closer and a lot more related than I initially thought. That’s probably been the biggest eye opener of this whole experience for me.

Sonia Simone: Yeah, I think for me too. I could sort of see it coming for quite a while because a few of the very, very smart people on paid traffic have been talking for a long time about sending traffic into sequences, but the tools just keep getting better. I’m really impressed by how relevant you can make your marketing message, and therefore get a higher quality. You’re actually talking to people about what they care about, instead of just spewing endless irrelevant pitches at them.

Jerod Morris: Yep.

Sonia Simone: I’m really, really impressed with the way the tools enable that now, in a way that’s not creepy or pushy, because you have to be pushy when you don’t have the right message. Then you just have to turn up the volume. This lets you have a smarter message instead of just a louder message. I really think it’s very cool.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Cultivating a Culture of Testing for Maximum Results

Sonia Simone: You mentioned Facebook, and it seems to me that right now, so we’re recording this in May 2016, things do change. Right now, Facebook really seems to be such a strong platform for this kind of work. Would you agree with that?

Jerod Morris: Oh yeah. It’s great. Here’s the thing, even if you’re not going to put an ad out on Facebook, if you’re never going to buy an ad, I really encourage everybody to just go in and get comfortable with the Facebook power editor, and look at what it allows you to do from a targeting and an audience perspective. Even if you never pay for an ad, you can actually get some pretty interesting information about the potential size of markets just by going in there and kind of fiddling around and looking. There are so many different ways that you can segment and target. Just doing that can be really instructive.

With everything else that Facebook allows you to do, once you get in and learn the tools. And look, you don’t have to know — because there is so much to know when it comes to Facebook, and it can be really intimidating when you get back in there and it’s like, “Oh man. Do I optimize for clicks, do I optimize for impressions? Now I’ve got to do a desktop ad and a mobile …”

There’s a lot, and it can feel overwhelming, but what I’m starting to find is it’s like anything else. There’s about 20 percent of it that gives you 80 percent of the results. When you can identify that, and get good at that, and really zero in and spend the majority of your time in the right areas — and I will say, make sure that you have a culture of testing, either if it’s just yourself or among your team.

That’s one really big step that we’re taking that is allowing us to be more successful at this than we otherwise would be, is really making sure that we’re testing, figuring out which ads work, optimizing landing pages and conversion pages, and all of that. When you do that, then you can really get the results from it.

I think that for people listening to this, you’re probably like I was, where you’re good at the content stuff, you understand the content stuff, you probably have a pretty nice archive. You’re ready to now take the best pieces of that and start getting some highly targeted traffic to it. Facebook is really, once you get in and learn that 20 percent that’ll give you the majority of the results, it can be a little bit scary because you are paying some money, and obviously, you can spend a lot of money really quickly if you want to, but if you’re smart about it, you can also make a lot of money really quickly, too.

Sonia Simone: Yeah. I think that’s such an important success principle. Anytime you’re paying for social media platform advertising, pay-per-click advertising, you really want to make sure it works before you throw a billion dollars at it.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sonia Simone: That’s what’s great about it, is that you can actually invest a pretty modest, manageable amount of money to do your experiments with. And then when you know it’s working, that’s when you turn the faucet up a little more.

Jerod Morris: Mm-hmm.

The First Steps if You Want to Try This Strategy Out

Sonia Simone: I know that right now, Brian Clark is like, “Why won’t this faucet open any further?”

Jerod Morris: Yes, he is ready to turn on the faucet. That’s the thing, we’re working on some tests right now. For instance, we’re doing one particular content funnel where we’ve taken three or four different old posts from Copyblogger, a couple of them are from you, actually. I think one of them is your Digital Sharecropping post. We’ve taken those, and those are at the top of the funnel. We’re putting those out to a targeted audience.

Again, the level of granularity that you can get with the audience is really cool. You can do look-alike audiences, and you can do people who have visited your site before, you can do people who like such and such, someone who does something similar to you and has a big profile, so many different ways that you can target. We’re putting out those three or four different pieces of content. Just general pieces of content, and a little call to action at the end, but really, we just want people to see this content.

They see it, we can set that Facebook re-targeting pixel, and the goal of this is to actually get people to see the Rainmaker Platform, because it’s among the many things it does, it’s obviously a great platform for putting your content out there. People see these posts, and then we retarget them with a content-focused testimonial about the platform. So now they’ve seen the second part. They’ve seen content talking about the importance of content that relates in some way to the platform. They see this testimonial, and then, only then, will we show them an actual link to a conversion page for the platform, that talks more about the platform.

It’s a step-by-step process. We’re testing this. What’ll be interesting is we’ll be able to see, which pieces of content do we get the most clicks for for the least amount of money? Now we can put these other ones away, we can double down on this one, and really kind of allow this funnel to go work its magic — it’s not really magic, what I really mean is just to do its work — and then we can start with another one. You test a bunch of different ones. You see what works best. You do limited, smaller tests, and then double down on what works.

For us, it’s just been a process of getting processes in place to do it, finding the content to get out there, but it makes it so much easier that we have this great treasure trove of tested, proven content, where we can see what really resonated with an audience in the past. And a lot of that content, whether it was a year ago or a couple of years ago, so much of it is still relevant today on some of these fundamental topics. You put it out there, and you know it’ll be useful to people. You’re just paying to make it a much faster process of getting it in front of the people that you want to get it in front of, instead of being a little more passive and waiting.

Sonia Simone: Yeah.

Jerod Morris: The money that you’re paying just kind of shortcuts that for you.

Sonia Simone: Yeah. It’s such an interesting strategy. A couple of things I want to recommend to people. First is you did a neat interview, I thought, with Brian Clark over on the Digital Entrepreneur podcast about the myth of ‘set it and forget it.’ I thought that was great, because I think this idea of buying traffic on a platform like Google or Facebook, and then sending it to a sequence, I think people think of that as the kind of ‘make money while you sleep,’ quick and dirty kind of business model. You can make money while you sleep, but that’s because you’ve been doing plenty of work while you’re awake.

Jerod Morris: Right.

Sonia Simone: There’s nothing wrong with that, right? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I would recommend that episode to people. I will give you guys a link in the show notes, because Brian and Jerod kind of just explored some additional facets. This is one of those topics, and I think content marketing is this way as well, it’s not that it’s hard, but there are a lot of steps. There are a lot of pieces. All of the pieces are something that anybody who’s listening to this can master. It’s just that there are quite a few of them that you need to stitch together, and you need to see how they go together.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, it’s like we always say, it’s the difference between simple and easy.

Sonia Simone: Yeah.

Jerod Morris: It’s not easy because there is a lot to keep track of, and there is a lot of work involved. When you line them up, and when you can kind of follow a proven workflow and a proven format, a proven framework, then it is relatively simple, but it’s an important distinction to make.

Sonia Simone: Yeah, certainly that’s one of the great things about content marketing. There are so many little pieces that a lot of our competitors will just say, “Well that seems kind of hard,” and they won’t do it.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sonia Simone: They’re all manageable and they’re all learnable. You’ve just got to walk through it step by step.

Jerod Morris: Mm-hmm.

A Great Price (Expires on May 27!) on Our Newest Resource to Help You Master Social Advertising

Sonia Simone: We do have some resources for people. We do have, of course, that Digital Entrepreneur podcast. Great podcast. Get your feet wet with some of the ideas. But you have also been putting something together, is that correct?

Jerod Morris: I have, yes, for Digital Commerce Academy. When Digital Commerce Academy launched, we had two courses in there — one from Brian about building your online training course the right way, and then another course from Chris Garrett and Tony Clark on building automated marketing funnels that work. Obviously, then we also have the coaching Q&As in there, and we have the community, and we have all the case studies, kind of the ongoing education that is constantly being updated with new events.

I’m really excited that we have our next two courses coming. And so Chris Lema, who I’m sure most of the people listening to this know and know well, has done a course inside of Digital Commerce Academy on developing WordPress products. Obviously, Chris is an expert in that area. He is going to be speaking at Digital Commerce Summit. He and I even did a case study inside of the Academy on that. He’s developed a great course to walk you through the process of the smart way to develop and sell WordPress products, to enter the premium WordPress marketplace, whether it’s a plugin, a theme, anything like that.

I am actually creating another course called Savvy Social Advertising. A lot of the concepts that I’ve hinted at today we’re going to talk about in there. The big idea is for folks who do have probably a content marketing background and have some digital products that they’re ready to sell and get out there, but they just need to get more people into their funnel, to get more subscribers, to get more people to see their stuff.

We’re going to show you some simple methods. It’s not going to be for the super advanced person, who already knows everything and wants to get just that one percent gain, but it’s for people who have only barely started, who haven’t even really given this much thought, and want to learn the fundamentals, and want to learn that 20 percent that’ll give them 80 percent of the results. That’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to really talk about Facebook, really get into LinkedIn and Twitter, and show you those fundamentals, give you the tools, and give you a roadmap so you can make this work for you too.

Sonia Simone: For those of who you haven’t seen our Digital Commerce Academy, it’s quite a cool model. You pay one membership fee, and then you can take all the courses that are relevant to you. You can take all of the courses if you want to, or you can really focus on one and really make traction on that one. The price is very advantageous. It’s about to become slightly less so.

Jerod Morris: Yes.

Sonia Simone: You can still get in on what I think is the launch price, which was $395 a year. Is that correct?

Jerod Morris: The launch was $295, and then we raised it once to $395, but it’s been there for a while.

Sonia Simone: Again, all the courses that Jerod mentioned, as well as, because this is how we do things, all the things that we add. We’re just going to keep adding to it, keep making it more robust. However, that price expires on May 27, 2016, and then it will hop on up to $595 a year, which is still, considering how much material is in there, it’s still a good value. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Jerod Morris: Oh yeah. What’s funny, Sonia, is that we were doing an episode of the Digital Entrepreneur, and I had my call-to-action all ready, “the price is going up,” and I thought it was $495, because that’s what we’d talked about. I say that, and Brian’s like, “No. I’m changing my mind. It’s going up to $595.” He’s like, “There’s too much stuff in there.” I guess what I hadn’t realized is that for the individual courses, we will eventually sell those courses individually for $595, so if you just want Brian’s course, it’ll be $595. Basically for that same price, you can get everything else. It’s a pretty remarkable value all told when you see everything that’s in there.

Sonia Simone: Yeah, I really like the synergy, to use an overused word, of the courses that are in there right now, because really, it is about you’ve got the course on “courses.” If you need a product, you don’t have a product yet, it walks you through exactly how to create a product, and a product that has the marketing built into it, so that you don’t have to be like a super-advanced marketer to get people to understand the value of your product.

Jerod Morris: Mm-hmm.

Sonia Simone: Then you’ve got your marketing funnels course, and that really helps you create and craft the sequences that will walk people through why they want to buy your wonderful thing. Then we’ve got the new social advertising course, and that helps you get the traffic to those funnels. Of course, if you are in that WordPress world, you know Chris Lema. He is a wonderful guy, a smart guy.

Jerod Morris: And a great teacher. That’s what’s so great about Chris is he is a great teacher.

Sonia Simone: Yeah, it really comes through because he’s just a generous person, so I think that that’s kind of what informs that. Just like our business is composed of all these pieces that fit together, the pieces of the course really fit together. I think you guys are going to dig it. It’s Rainmaker.FM/DCA. DCA is for Digital Commerce Academy. Do hop on that. If you are interested in it, hop on it now. Just might as well get the best price on it.

Jerod Morris: Exactly.

Sonia Simone: No sense in waiting. Yeah, I’m proud of it. It’s sort of maybe the latest and greatest in some of the things that we’ve been playing with, some of the things that we’ve been seeing really work in our business, and we want to share them with you guys because we like to do that.

Jerod Morris: Hey, and you know, I’ll throw this out there, too. If you have seen any great examples of just great social ads, sequences, anything like that, even if it’s your own, Tweet them to me @JerodMorris because I know part of what I’m going to do in the course is just put together some great examples for people to see, and I’d certainly be happy to feature anybody who’s listening who has a great example or one that you’ve seen. Again, just send me a Tweet @JerodMorris because I’m always on the lookout for good examples.

Sonia Simone: That’s really cool. All right, well we’re at the 25-minute mark, so I’m going to leave it there so I’m not over-soaking people’s brains with stuff. Again, that’s Rainmaker.FM/DCA if you want to check that out. I really would encourage you to. There’s a lot there if you are putting together, whether you’re already a digital business owner and you want to just do better with that, or you want to just launch something. Very appropriate for either profile. Jerod, it’s just always a pleasure to talk with you.

Jerod Morris: Same thing, Sonia. I always appreciate our time when we get to chat.

Sonia Simone: All right, good stuff. Take care, everybody, and I will catch you next week.

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