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Jacob Baadsgaard is the founder and CEO of Disruptive Advertising. Disruptive Advertising offers PPC (pay-per-click) management, site testing, web analytics consulting, and more to help grow your company and its reputation. Disruptive Advertising believes that to have happy clients, they need happy employees. They have worked diligently to create a space where employees and clients alike can work together to achieve goals and develop important skills that will greatly benefit them in the future. In 2019 Disruptive Advertising was named one of SLC’s “Best Companies to Work For” in USA Today.
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[toggle title='Read the Transcript' state=‘closed’ icons=‘fontawesome-plus/fontawesome-minus’ margin_top=‘20’ margin_bottom=‘20’]0:00 Welcome to the thoughtful entrepreneur Show. I'm Josh Elledge, founder and CEO of up my influence.com. We turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities, grow their authority, and help them build partnerships with top influencers. We believe that every person has a unique message that can positively impact the world. stick around to the end of the show, where I'll reveal how you can be our next guest on one of the fastest growing daily inspiration podcasts on the planet in 15 to 20 minutes. Let's go. All right, Jacob
0:05 Welcome to the thoughtful entrepreneur Show. I'm Josh Elledge, founder and CEO of up my influence.com. We turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities, grow their authority, and help them build partnerships with top influencers. We believe that every person has a unique message that can positively impact the world. stick around to the end of the show, where I'll reveal how you can be our next guest on one of the fastest growing daily inspiration podcasts on the planet in 15 to 20 minutes. Let's go. All right, Jacob Baadsgaard, you are the founder and CEO of Disruptive Advertising in Lindon, Utah, and we both share BYU is our alma mater. And so you worked for Adobe for a while, and then in 2012, but so but seven years ago, you started disruptive and so what would precipitated that?
0:59 Yeah, I was I was born working at omnichannel, later bought by Adobe, and kind of help on fortune 500, fortune 100 companies really understand how their digital marketing campaigns are producing. And I had no marketing background, but the data kept showing me the commonalities and trends that were going on. And that's where I started to see the opportunity is that, hey, if these if these big guys don't know how to track and use this information to be smart with their marketing dollars once everyone else in the marketing and the marketing, yeah, so that's where I kind of saw my opportunity.
1:29 So when you started a was the market different than it is today? Because it feels like today, like anybody in their sister can become a Facebook ads expert. And all of a sudden, overnight, you know, they have all the secrets to unlocking, you know, untold riches and Facebook advertising.
1:48 Yeah. You know, it's not that much different. There was a lot of that going on then as well. There's just more of it now. And so that's probably the biggest change that's happening. There. And you know, the nice thing that I had going for me is that most people learn how to do this working on their, their uncle's business or with a really small budget. And so they think that they know what's working, but they've never really worked at scale at volume or with enterprise companies are really back it up with good data. And so that was kind of kind of the the, the niche that I had for myself right out of the gate.
2:24 And so how do you differentiate yourself then? 2:28 And so, for us, I mean, at this point, and what we always lead with is we've now we've got a software that's audited well over 3000 companies ad campaigns now. And what we found is that 76% of those budgets are completely wasted. And that doesn't assume that the other 24% is even profitable of the dollars that are being found. And so we have the ability to very quickly produce an audit that says, here's what's working, here's what's not, here's how we would redeploy, and this is the financial impact it could have for your business. And so very, very data driven Not a lot of smoke and mirrors and hype and emotion to try and close that sale. It's like, Hey, here's what's going on. And you can go fix it if you want. Or if you want someone that knows what they're doing. And that's why companies hire us is they lack the bandwidth or expertise to really do this themselves.
3:15 Yeah, so I would imagine, so most like, say, independent ads managers. I mean, they're just relying on the tools that Google or Facebook may be giving them. And I think what you're saying is that, well, I mean, if you really want to get, you know, the real story on this, you're going to need to dig a little bit deeper. Is that what you're saying? 3
:36 Yeah, absolutely.
3:38 And so what what what, like, what would be an example of something you can learn that that current? Just platform, you know, whether it's Facebook or Google or whoever it might be, like, they're not really going to reveal that information. It's not accessible.
3:53 Yeah, the, you know, it's, it comes back to the age old topic of attribution, right. Every platform gives it gives its As much credit as possible. And so if you're in Google ads, or if you're in Facebook, of course, it's going to try and demonstrate and take as much credit as possible for everything. And so one of the things is to normalize data and to be able to look at performance from a variety of different angles of attribution models, what's really what's working from a first click last click somewhere in between what's the buyer journey look like? So that we can actually see what's driving behavior and driving purchases.
4:29 So if I'm a business owner, and and we have a conversation, what does engagement look like? And who do you work with? And you know what, I get sticker shock if if he said, Well, we're going to do this, but you know, this is what we cost. I mean, howdy. How does that all look?
4:45 Yeah, you know, we're like anything, there's a bell curve for us. So, at the high end of the outside of the bell curve, we've got an enterprise division and we work with some of the largest brands in the country. And on the other end of the bell curve, we work with small businesses that fall within specific categories that we have more of a plug and play solution for the vast are the majority that 80% of the clients that we work with are already spending, usually between about 20 to $50,000 a month and advertising budget on Google or Facebook or a combination of both. They just haven't been able to get the return they're looking for or find a way to scale beyond that. And, and lack the bandwidth, their expertise to do so themselves. Maybe they've tried an agency or two. And that's typically where we just publish everything that we do, we don't have secrets. And so we have a great, you know, we have a great audience that follows our blog consumes our content for free. And then a lot of the times people say, hey, looks like you know what you're doing here. And so that's, that's what we do.
5:45 And so in terms of the value, or how easy it is to win at let's say for example, with Facebook advertising, how has Facebook evolved? are changed over the past 12 months.
6:03 You know what's interesting, the biggest change that I've seen is that good marketing is is good marketing is good marketing. And the latest fashions or trends tend to ebb and flow. And for a long time we were seeing every company expected, we expect you to not only grow our revenue, we expect you to do so at a very specific ratio of dollars and cost a dollars in revenue. And it has to stay in that range. And so what happens is, and so it's often referred to as return on ad spend. And so, it typically contradicts itself. And when you're focused on return on ad spend, what most marketers will do is they start to eliminate turn off or reduce the lower performing audiences or campaigns. Yeah, they can get that return on ad spend up. Well what happens when they do that is now all the sudden the retargeting starts to perform. Lower because there's less going on funnel, there's less direct and organic traffic coming through branded and those types of things because they've got less visibility. And so all the sudden they're chasing this, really, it's a conflicting goal, we have to hit this return on ad spend, and we want to grow. And by focusing on the return on ad spend, what we're finding is that a lot of clients are overly focused on that, and slowly shooting themselves in the foot and, and hurting their top line growth. And then, you know, basic contribution margins fall into play, which is you still got your fixed costs, you've still got all these other things, and we've got to hit volume goals in order for this to all work. And so that's what we've seen kind of a shift back towards that is, you're going to have campaigns and audiences that don't perform at the same level of return. And that that can be a very appropriate approach in a marketing campaign that's addressing several different audiences at different buying stages in the process as well. And so that that's what we've seen a shift kind of coming back that way with people better grasping, understanding and, and moving in that direction, versus we have to hit this return on ad spend results. It's not working. And so that's that's kind of the shift that I've seen. And not that that's changed. That's actually what's always worked is that people are now more, it's more common and people are more accepting of that.
8:19 Now, I know you don't have the crystal ball from Menlo Park. But if you were to predict what will see out of Facebook for marketers over the next three years, what's your prediction?
8:35 I think so. So my prediction for coming from Facebook themselves or just in general with what's going to be effective on Facebook?
8:42 Yeah, I mean, the effectiveness of Facebook advertising or how is it going to change for advertisers? You know, I guess is, is is it ever going to become too expensive, so that small businesses are going to get kind of priced out. I mean, I've heard some people Guess at that. I don't know if that's your perception of that or not.
9:05 So what I've seen in the maturation of any ad platform is during that maturity cycle, the ability to target becomes more and more granular. So for those that are smaller, they can run a more targeted and specific campaign that doesn't have to produce as much volume. So that's what we've seen in Google, right? Like, because cost per clicks on Google in most industries have leveled out. Some of them, they're still increasing, some of them they're decreasing, etc. But then within the platform, there's always a place for the small player, because they can have a differentiated message to a very, very, very specific subset of an audience and still be able to compete with the big boys that are spending a lot of dollars on there. I see the same thing happening in Facebook now where a lot of the small companies can approach it that way where a lot of the large companies continue to treat it more like media buying and just looking for eyeballs. And so it still allows both to kind of accomplish what they're trying to get after.
10:00 if, let's say I was unable to advertise on Google or Facebook, are there any other platforms like Twitter? I mean, have you? Have you ever gotten Twitter to work for anybody? I mean, is it who would it work for? And in what case do you think?
10:16 Yeah, so the the situations, now again, understanding that 95% of 98% of the budgets that we manage on Google, Facebook, Instagram, right? Yeah, that's what that's what we do. And then for some of our larger b2b or influencer, b2c customers, Twitter still has a place in that for them. But it's not typically a direct response driving an ROI. It's more of a now share a voice in the market and understanding those things. And so that's where we've seen that to be effective, but the goals and objectives are very different. And that's also you know, that's not our specialty. That's not what people are coming to us for,
10:56 right yeah. So maybe just more of a business. ability to play Oh, I'm not going to click on anything and Twitter, but I saw it is still may be top of mind awareness. You know, just like I've seen it a few times read it is another one. It seems like, gosh, it's such a great platform. But I don't know that I've heard any success stories of anyone marketing through Reddit. And that seems like a tricky one.
11:20 Yeah. And you know, I think we've all read the articles of how to hack it and how to get things to go viral there and things like
11:27 oh, yeah, organic play, I mean, but not through their paid promoted advertising program.
11:33 Correct. And that's and that's what we've seen is that there is hit or MIT hit or miss on the organic side. And then on the paid side, again, that's just not an area that we've spent a lot of time or energy on, because we have been able to find that consistent model that's repeatable.
11:48 Yeah, how about YouTube Live yet?
11:51 Yeah. YouTube is actually a fantastic channel that's also run through the Google Ad platform, right and we've found that to be very effective from a variety of angles. Number one, I think everyone should advertise on YouTube, doing digital advertising from a retargeting standpoint, if nothing else. If you've already done the legwork to get them to your site or to interact with your brand and in a way that you can now pixel them staying in front of them in a very inexpensive manner on YouTube, and having a media platform that you can better present educational, inspirational and entertaining, creative. Yeah, it's inexpensive, and you can take advantage of that audience that you've already worked so hard to build up to get them to your website in the first place.
12:37 Hmm, interesting. Well, good. And so if let's say that there's a small business and like, you know, maybe they're a little risk averse, and they go, well, Jacob, you know, how can we you know, what's the best way for us to start if, let's say we want to spend like 1000 $2,000 I mean, is that something should they hire an agency for that? If so, is that something that disruptive would do? Or what? How would you recommend they get started? If again, they say, Listen, I'll spend the money, but I don't think we could stomach you know, gambling, you know, five to $10,000 in a month, but I'll I'll try it out at the lower levels, what would you think make would make best sense for them?
13:25 Yeah, so my answer would depend on the industry that they're in. Because in some industries, for example, a dentist's office can spend one or two grand a month and actually get a pretty good amount of patients through that. Um, you know, I had a practice. If I if a law firm came and said, Hey, if I spend two grand a month would that work? I'm like, that'll get you like, they'll get like 10 clicks to your website.
13:45 Right. Right.
13:47 And so that it really is going to depend by industry, which is where I would actually say to start, is any business it's just worth making sure that your website is is is technically structured appropriately to be indexed by Google Well, for SEO and organic purposes, that you get your Google My Business filled out and filled out? Well, yeah. And that you work on getting some reviews on social media on Google on some other areas that are relevant. And to me, once those things are in place, you actually are going to be more successful with any paid ads that you run at that point. So that's where I would start as a foundation. Because if you don't have a reputation online, if you have no social proof or credibility, and you start running paid ads, the effectiveness is just going to be a lot less. So that's where I would start.
14:34 Yeah, that's in America. That's what we, that's our service. So, you know, we we believe that, you know, if you look at consumer behavior, and I've studied and kind of lead it for 12 years, you know, you look at consumers are more skeptical than ever before, and they'll they're not afraid to do their due diligence before they engage. And so I think it's really important to make sure that Yeah, you know, your social media profiles look good. Your You know, social proof is always really great, you know, authority through associations or success or your branding is on point, like, all of that stuff is going to really make a big difference in terms of ROI. So that's, that's a we kind of do so so I'm curious. So for a company like in my space, so, you know, obviously we do a lot of media placements, we're really successful at that. You know, I've got a strong personal brand along with that we've got some decent social proof, influencer engagement, we do a lot of that. I haven't really had any success haven't had much success historically, with Facebook. You know, our b2b marketing through LinkedIn is bonkers compared to other stuff. But where do you think that, you know, aside from what we're already doing, like you would say you might want to, you know, what, where would you lead me to, I guess first in our industry.
15:59 You know, it's interesting We actually have found that Facebook, you can get a pretty well targeted audience similar to LinkedIn at substantially lower cost per click. And, and so typically, that's very common for me to hear in the b2b space that it's like, hey, we've spent on Facebook, and we don't get anything out of it. Yeah. And so or the
16:19 or the quality is, our problem is that the quality just seemed really poor, because people didn't have the opportunity to engage and kind of experience our authority. And maybe our funnel wasn't designed very well to, to maybe invest in the relationship first. But and I think what we were doing is Facebook ad directly into lead capture. This people really just didn't have enough time to get to know us. So like, if I was talking with them on the phone, they're like, all right, what do you sell? And I was like, I just I'm not going to do calls like that.
16:55 You know, and so here's, if I were to go through a progression. Yeah, how Any b2b brand would leverage Facebook to be successful. And when I say that Facebook I'm also implying Instagram because both platforms are run through the through there. Yeah, and retargeting is right where I go back to because retargeting the, you can never spend too much on retargeting so long as your audiences and your frequencies are set up correctly. Yeah, and then you'll be good to go. And you can just maximize anything else that you're doing. You can upload your your customer lists, your prospective lists that have opted in, you can target them specifically, as well as just anyone that you've pixel that's interacted with your ads or gone to your website. It's hard to spend too much there. And that's how you can continue to warm up perspective or keep warm, existing customers right and buy more or introduce them to a new principal or concept. So these would be people
17:51 and these are the people they visited website. They got pics old Yeah, that you had the facebook pixel embedded on the site. And now you just got follow them around and stay top of mind, kind of like what I see with disruptive advertising because I visited your website a few weeks ago.
18:07 Exactly. And so not only that, but then we actually upload all of our customers into Facebook and we push ads that say, thanks for being a customer. We love working with you. Yeah. Right. And they never even click on him. So it like it doesn't even cost us anything, because we're running out.
18:24 And so there's only display
18:25 advertising.
18:26 Yeah, there's a lot that you can do with that. The second thing that we do, because we tear our budgets on on Facebook, and we actually have a lot of success from it, is we have a content console. Yeah, truly to help and benefit our the audience in the industry. And that we promote to those that would be more of our ideal customers to just demonstrate, hey, we know what we're doing. Well, guess what, when they see that it's just a blog post that they just get to go and read and they don't have to opt into anything they don't have to write. Well, guess what? They're now cookies and I get a retargeting them and continue to give them a message. Based on those that click through demonstrated some interest retargeting, drive them back to something else. So that's where we start with our budgets. And then through that effort, we've actually been been able to narrow down some specific audiences that we actually can run direct response, lead generation campaigns, and have them produce at a good rate. Quality is never quite the same, because that's not what people are going on Facebook to do is I'm on Facebook to make a b2b purchase. Right happen. However, those are the steps that we that I recommend companies go through to get the most value from those social media platforms, and that it is possible to have a section of that budget producing direct response leads that turn into sales, that we have good quality.
19:46 Yeah. So Jacob, what's a great way for people to kind of get to know disruptive or, you know, producing great content that you'd recommend, you know, what would be like a great first step in Begin maybe they're not maybe not necessarily ready for your services. They'd love to get to know you what what would you recommend that first step to be with with disruptive?
20:09 Yeah, we've got a very popular blog, we have a couple hundred thousand people a month that that read the content we publish everything we do there
20:17 and how we do it. And so for those that are interested in learning for themselves and making it happen, just go to disruptive advertising. com Go to the blog, sign up, you'll get newsletters that tell you the weekly rundown of what we've published and and that would be the easiest way to become familiar with us how we do what we do, and do it yourself or you know that that's okay. 20:39 Yeah, so just kind of browsing some of the headlines of producing a lot of content. It looks like you know, looks like about three to four posts every single week. Facebook groups for your business have 112 fast email copywriting tips that will boost your conversion rates. down a lot of good stuff here.
21:01 Yeah, we produce a lot. We've published over 1000 posts at this point.
21:05 That's at disruptive advertising. com slash blog. So well Cool. Well, we'll Jacob bads guard and by the way, bad scarred word. If you do your family history back, where does that lead you to
21:17 Denmark?
21:19 Ah, okay. Yeah, it seems very Scandinavian. Well, good deal where you're the founder and CEO of disruptive advertising, of course, who gave the website address disruptive advertising calm, and do check out the blog. There's a lot of good content here. Again, that's a disruptive advertising.com slash blog. Jacob. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Josh. Thanks for listening to the thoughtful entrepreneur show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up my influence.com slash guest. Now you've got something out of this interview. Would you share this episode on social media just to a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or posted on the socials. A few do that tag us with the hashtag up my influence. Each month we scour Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. We pick one winner from each platform, and you get crowned king or queen of that social media now what do you win? We're going to promote you and your business to over 120,000 social media fans totally free. Now. Can you also hook us up now in your podcast player right now? Please give us a thumbs up or a rating and review. We promise to read it all and take action. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. Your feedback helps us fulfill that mission. And while you're at it, hit that subscribe button. You know why? Tomorrow? That's right. seven days a week. You are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed 15 minutes a day. And my name is Josh Elledge. Let's connect on the socials, you'll find all the stuff we're doing at up my influence.com Thanks for listening and thank you for being a part of the thoughtful entrepreneur movement.
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