Thinking Outside the Box - Creative Marketing for Meta, TikTok & More | Lauren Petrullo | MMP #011

Thinking Outside the Box - Creative Marketing for Meta, TikTok & More | Lauren Petrullo | MMP #011 Speaker 1: Relevance is, at the end of the day, what is going to allow you to succeed in a world where everyone knows they're already being marketed to. So if you want to get ahead of someone, you have to be relevant for their attention. Unknown Speaker: You're watching The Marketing Misfits with Norm Farrar and Kevin King. Norm Farrar: By the way, did I tell you I enrolled in Tobacconist University? Kevin King: Tobacconist University? Norm Farrar: Yeah. Kevin King: What is that? Norm Farrar: It's all about cigars and you get certified up to being a sommelier for cigars. Kevin King: Can you? Really? Norm Farrar: Yeah. Yeah. Kevin King: So I'm going to have to defer all my questions here to heck with perplexity. I'm going to have to start asking you these. I was just with Manny Coates, you know, the co-founder of Helium 10. I was just standing at his house this last weekend and I brought some cigars up and one of them was, I never know the technical stuff, I just know how to smoke them. I always like to refer to you on the technical, but it had the little twisty on both sides. Norm Farrar: Like a pigtail. Kevin King: Yeah, like a little pigtail on both sides and I was like, you know, the backside, I'm going to use a V-cut and cut it and then the front side, he's like, no, you got to cut that off too. I was like, no, you just light it. And I was like, no, he's like, no, no, you got to cut it. I was like, no, you just light it. My buddy Norm says so, because I used to think the same thing. And so he gets out his phone. Everything is perplexity with him. So he's like, let me ask the perplexity. And perplexity came back and said, yep, you just light it. So I was like, where's Norm when I need him so I can win this argument? Perplexity saved the day. Norm Farrar: Oh man, and you bring up a name that actually got me started in podcasting. My deepest, darkest fear was on the AM podcast, AM PM podcast, which you are the host of now, but it was Manny Coats that asked me to come on and update Amazon sellers. Kevin King: I remember that. Y'all did like a little, it was like a short, like little 20 minutes, like what's happening in the Amazon world or something. Norm Farrar: Yeah. Kevin King: You did that for a while and I remember listening to those back, this is like, what, seven, eight years ago, something like that? Norm Farrar: It was back in 2000. I think it was 2017. No, it was at 2018 because Manny, I got to meet Manny at your Illuminati event. Kevin King: Yeah, the Cancun event. Yeah. That was May of 2017. Yep. Norm Farrar: So it was just after that. And that was a lot of fun. But, you know, just talking about marketing. He did. We should have him on one of these days because he's definitely a marketing misfit. Kevin King: Yeah, he is. Yeah. He'd be a lot of fun, but we got a really fun guest today too. I'm just getting to know her, but you've You had her on your other Lunch with Norm podcast a few times and you're always raving about her like how smart she is and how personal she is and like she's just a ton of fun. Norm Farrar: I've never said any of that. Kevin King: And like you just want to give her all your money because every time you give her money, she like 5x's it like in two days or something with what she's doing. So, I'm like, man, you got to get her to come on the train with us on our Collective Mind Society. You're like, done. Called her, done. I'm like, all right, cool. I'm looking forward to like, I got to see if I can at least 3x something, you know. Norm Farrar: Yeah. And by the time this airs, the Collective Mind Society event will be over. And hopefully, it will be a very, it'll be a huge success, won't it, Kevin? Kevin King: It's going to be. It's already a big success. I mean, we got an amazing lineup. For those of you that missed out, it's sold out. So for those of you that missed out on this, there's a group of 12 of us that we started and we all flew into Vancouver. We had a really badass meal in Vancouver at this special room in this really good restaurant. It's called the Commodore Room. It's like just for us and like a special Kind of like family dinner and this kind of thing. And then the next day we hopped on this train that has these clear ceilings on the top. It's like we're in the first class. You know, we don't, we don't, we don't roll down there with the peasants. You know, Norm, we go in the first class with the, we get breakfast and lunch and you're going through the Rocky mountains and all these snowcapped mountains and racing rivers off the side of the train. And then we stopped in, uh, in that town and had the night. And I think we might've had a cigar or two. And then the next thing we continue, some people drank some wine and I think one guy was just drinking water, but that's okay. But then the next the next day we hit Lake Louise. Norm Farrar: Yep. Kevin King: And that's the Fairmont on Lake Louise is just stunning. I mean, it's right on this lake. And then Moraine Lake is nearby, you know, we popped over there and then we hit the glaciers, did a little walk on the glaciers. And then hit Calgary, had another nice meal. It's, it's badass. That's what you missed. If you didn't go on the collective mind society, you know, I know a lot of people may be like, a train through the Canadian Rockies. Come on now, if I'm going to spend six grand to go on that trip, I'd rather go to Bali, I'd rather go somewhere else. But You know, who goes to a train shop? That sounds like the old people thing, you know, when you're 80 years old, like, no, no, this was a bad-ass time. This is bad-ass, the cool, the smart people go. Norm Farrar: Yeah, like-minded individuals, entrepreneurs, and you are tied in for, what, four days, five days, and all you're doing is having fun, talking about whatever comes to mind, but guess what? You're learning off of these individuals, like when we did the Formula One last year. Kevin King: Yeah. Norm Farrar: How many people, like you don't know each other, like you haven't met Lauren, our guest today. Well, you have met her, but briefly, you're going to walk out of the event as friends. And that happened 100% last year. Kevin King: What if she doesn't like me though? What if she's like, I can fake it for four days. Norm Farrar: Yeah, yeah, I can see that. So, let's get to our guest. Kevin King: Let's do it. Who is it? Introduce her, Norm. Tell the world who we have today. Norm Farrar: I thought you were going to do that. All right, I'll do it. Okay. Today, we have a very good friend of mine. I'm going to let her talk a little bit about her background. But it is Lauren Petrullo. And she is coming on the CMS train with us. So can't wait for that. Although it's already happened, I guess. But let's bring her on. Hello. Kevin King: How are you doing Lauren? Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I'm doing so well and I'm like... Now, obviously, this is after the fact, and I can guarantee that I do love you after spending four days together, so don't sweat there. But I was like, I love listening to the intro. I was like, oh my gosh, Norm is a sommelier for cigars. He's like, okay, so he says, so smell, E-A, since he'll be smelling the cigars. And yeah, so hello, Norm. Norm Farrar: Well, we'll have to get you, you know, started on those as well. Speaker 1: Oh, you not have to get me started at all. I'm already a big fan. Norm Farrar: Oh, my God. Speaker 1: I'm like the sweet cigar, like I'm like the peaches and like the grapefruit fruity flavor ones. But I will chill. I even have like my own cigar cutter. Kevin King: Yeah, we're doing it on one of the days we're doing taking a week. Norm's like, hey, let's go to Moraine Lake, which is close to Lake Louise. It's a really another pretty lake. So, we can go on the little hotel shuttle where you just jump on there with a bunch of families and kids. It's like, Norm's like, no, let's get our own little shuttle so we can go on our own schedule and don't have to wait for someone that's missing or whatever. We can do our own thing. I was like, what time do you want to do it? And I was like, oh, not too early, because you know, we're going to be up to like 3am every night smoking cigars, closing thing down. So it happens every time. 5am shuttle. I got to eat too, you know. So yeah, it's a cigars are part of the schedule. Norm Farrar: Yeah. So Lauren, forget the cigars for now, but I was telling Kevin is all about you, how much I really do adore you. You're awesome. The exact, I wish I could do that, but I can't, I'm old, my hands cramp, but But you are one of the most brilliant marketers I know. I wanted to bring you on to the podcast today to talk a little bit about what you're doing, not only in social, but also your CMO services and maybe some other misfit, think out of the box marketing campaigns you've done. Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, I would immediately think like, you don't know a lot of people if you're saying I'm one of the most brilliant, because that's like such a kind thing. But I know everyone knows you, Norm, like you're the bearded guy. So I'm going to be like, holy smokes, what an amazing compliment. I appreciate that. I really, really do. I kind of love what I do. And you know, who wants to fit in? That's so boring. So Marketing Misfits. Kevin King: What do you do, Lauren? I mean, we're just meeting. The audience is just meeting you. So who the heck is Lauren Petrullo? What's your story? Tell me about you. Speaker 1: Okay, deals. That's fair. That's fair. So I am founder of Mongoose Media. It's a marketing agency. The modern marketing agency, if you will, and you know, the PR ambitious tagline is like, for ambitious brand owners, I feel like they're creatively flatlining. Long story short, we've got a team of 30 plus team members around the US and in Latin America, a few in Europe. And we help brands a lot with Facebook ads. And then we've grown from Facebook ads to supporting For other departments, fun facts like Meta has put me in a movie, they've published me in a book, they had a commercial with me, which is where we've been really fortunate to do so much in the Facebook ad space, but Facebook ads requires, you know, Top of Funnel Contents, we did a lot with SEO, following up on conversations. So some of the misfit stuff we've done with chatbots. I cannot wait to tell you what's working right now. Like really, really excited about that. And just other stuff that supports new customer acquisition and being able to buy new customers from scratch. So that's what we do. My background is Disney. So I did innovation for the Walt Disney Company, which is pretty, pretty cool. And I'm in Orlando because I worked for Disney. And if you looked at the roster when I was there, I was four murders away from becoming CEO, technically. Kevin King: Four murders away from becoming CEO, right? Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kevin King: I love that. Speaker 1: He looked at the hierarchy and it was like, okay, my boss is VP of Creativity and Innovation. Chokes on a blueberry, and his boss, the SVP of marketing, and the COO, Tom Staggs, then there's Bob Iger. I was like, ooh, succession planning. But honestly, that was never going to happen. But it was a beautiful image to look at like, okay. Kevin King: So what does that mean, actually, when you say you're chief of innovation? Something of innovation. What does that mean? Speaker 1: So as an innovation producer, I was on the in-house idea agency. So my background is in design thinking, which is essentially creative problem solving, using toys and acting like a five-year-old and making lots of money doing it. It was the world of how might we and so it's like creating these larger than life experiences that only Disney could offer leveraging their IP so that we could make the preteen experience on a cruise the best experience compared to anyone else on the ship so that those 12 to 14 year old rugrats that can become like energy demons, vacation destroyers don't ruin the vacation for everyone else. Kevin King: So this is Disney Cruises for in-person stuff. Speaker 1: That was Disney Cruise. We do stuff with the Disney Vacation Club, the Timeshare, in-park, resorts, reshaping. Like my team helped renovate Disney Springs to leverage the water and redesign. Like it's all these imagine what if scenarios. One project was like imagine a world if Elsa Frozen the entire Cinderella Castle suite and what does that look like? Imagine a world if we had this partnership with a very famous ice cream brand. If we brought an in-park experience into the different parks at Disney World Disneyland, and what does that extension of that collaboration look like in their ice cream displays? So like making a Stitch's Grape Escape and Infiniti and Beyond ice cream flavors, things like that. Kevin King: Were you there when they did the Star Wars hotel? I think they've just discontinued or about to discontinue it. But were you there with that whole experience? Speaker 1: There was. I was there for parts of the project when it hadn't gone live. So a lot of behind the scenes, my favorite like Star Wars stuff I got to see were like things related to the Star Wars marathon. And before Star Wars had its own designated park, there was a project being worked on to make an intergalactic food and wine festival. And then it just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And then there was talks of like, well, what if we make it even bigger and create an entire resort? So I was there at the pre-conception phases and was really fortunate to be aware of a lot of the stuff that was being built for it. But yeah, now I do stuff on my own. So I have no influence on the current state of those projects. Norm Farrar: This is so off topic and then we'll get right back to marketing. But you talk about Disney Springs. Speaker 1: Uh-huh. Norm Farrar: Were you responsible for bringing in that great cigar shop? That's where I had my first Opus X, was from that cigar shop. It's gone? Speaker 1: That cigar shop is gone. I think it's been replaced by a donut shop. Norm Farrar: Oh, just as good. Just, yeah. Kevin King: That'll work. The door's like, that'll work. Norm Farrar: I'm not Canadian. Speaker 1: Salt and Straw, it's like a Portland-based Donut shop. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I know that cigar lounge. It was a very nice place, but it didn't fit in that ecosystem within Disney. I don't like Disney Springs rent is astronomically high now. But there are some really great cigar areas on property that when you come down to Orlando, I can tell you some secret spots. Norm Farrar: Fantastic. So let's talk about some of the things that you're doing right now. I know some of the work that you've done, but what are you doing for brands or micro brands that's thinking outside of the box? Like what's working? Speaker 1: What's working? So a lot of the stuff that we're doing right now that's outside of the box has been around multicultural marketing or has been leveraging AI beyond just creating ideas. So in the multicultural marketing approach, we made this theory that if we go after the Spanish-speaking market inside the United States, going internationally locally, It would be a cost-effective way to get more customers without having to worry about taxes and international law and whether or not certain products could be sold, other places or shipping issues. And doing that has allowed us to help our clients get as high as 5x average order values for the Spanish-speaking market without them having to do anything other than minor tweaks to their messaging and content. Kevin King: It amazes me how many people ignore that. It's that demographics been growing for years. And so what 60 million something Spanish speakers in the US out 330 and 41 or 42 million somewhere I may have that off solid or that's their first language at home. And how many people just wholly ignore that market? Unknown Speaker: Oh. Speaker 1: Like nearly everyone, like we did a little bit at Disney, we did it for the Portuguese audience, because the Brazilians that come to Florida often come with a lot of money and are looking to spend. But yeah, that's such a neglected audience that when we went deep down into it, If you look at that population, it's like the 25th largest population in the world if it was own country. Kevin King: It's the second biggest Spanish-speaking country. We're the second, I think, behind Mexico. I think the US, it's either second or third. I think Colombia, it depends on if you classify. First language or how many speak it. But I think on how many speak it, we're second in the world behind Mexico. And if as a first language, we're third or fourth, I think Columbia, and there's one other country, because I emphasize that in the Amazon world, how that's overlooked. And there's other markets like that, like Vietnamese and Indian too, that are often overlooked. They're not as big as the Spanish in the US. But there's some really good niche markets that are just not served. They're served by their local community. They're served by other immigrants that open a shop for Indians that has all the breads and rices and everything for them, but they don't get out of that. The big corporate or the big general marketers just market to themselves, basically, instead of to these ethnic groups. Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, 100%. The multicultural definitely goes beyond Spanish. We have clients that we run ads in Farsi, And in traditional Chinese to go after the Taiwanese populations and then the Persian populations in California and the success of those when you're meeting people, even though they may speak English, these individuals might be bilingual, they might not be. You're providing content to them in their language first so they feel already that they know, like, and trust you stronger because you're meeting them where they're comfortable at. And yeah, it's been something, like you said, not a lot of people are doing and it's working very well. Norm Farrar: What about Drilling down even further. So you're taking the Spanish market, even the English market. So if you come to Canada, and you market up north, over to British Columbia, especially in Newfoundland, it's a whole different English. And Kevin, you highlighted that. See, Kevin, I do read your newsletter. You don't read mine, but I read your newsletter. But regionalizing Terms, you know, like serviette, napkin, something simple like that. But in Kevin's, I guess it was a week ago, maybe two weeks ago, he talked about regionalizing search terms, and how he's using AI to do this. And I think that would be more effective. But is that too much drilling down? Or would you drill down that much? Speaker 1: It's always going to be the two favorite and most hated words that I say as it depends. So it's going to depend on budget, it's going to depend on the distribution of your resources. A really good way to show that localization and regionalization is key is if you look at what Tide, the laundry detergent company did when they entered the Spanish-speaking market. All of their commercials previously to this adventure had been in like Venezuelan Spanish because it's a pretty neutral tone. And then when they made Colombian, Argentinian, Dominican based ads using that local Spanish and audiences from that region, it was just like 300% skyrocket in sales or something to that effect. So while that's localization at the country level, it's really easy to see why people would assume, oh, all Spanish is the same. And Tide being a US based company was like, yeah, let's just assume, but when they went that localization, like I said, it's not the same. And like, there are some words that can be really offensive in different parts of the world, depending on how you're using it. So I would definitely drill down for the localization, provided that you have the resources available to do it. It's only going to help you because relevance is, at the end of the day, what is going to allow you to succeed in a world where everyone knows they're already being marketed to. So if you want to get ahead of someone, you have to be relevant for their attention. Norm Farrar: You know, I've got a story about that. And I thought, and I tell people not to do that. Like, don't go in and use translation. Just don't go in loosely and use some other language. I bought a soap club, okay, in Japanese. I put it out there. I didn't think anything of it. I got a ton of traffic. I mean, this turned out reverse. It was really good. I got a ton of traffic, but not a lot of conversions. Turns out the characters that I used to spell soap meant brothel. So I had a brothel club going. So a lot of purchases, tons of traffic. Kevin King: You should have repackaged the soap so it's like clean yourself up after a naughty night. Norm Farrar: Oh, God. Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of opportunity there. It's like when a French bath is not enough. Norm Farrar: I still own it. Kevin King: Well, back to the localization stuff, you know, Norm, in the newsletter before the one you just talked about, I talked about the versions of Spanish, like Lauren just talked about how Puerto Rican and Colombian and Argentinian Spanish are completely different than Spanish, Spain Spanish. There's a lot of similarities. And the same thing goes for English. US and Canadian are very similar, but there's different words. You called a A loo or whatever you call your restroom. Norm Farrar: Washroom. Kevin King: Washroom, that's right. A washroom, it's called a loo. Other places, Australia, England. But I think what you were asking, Lauren, earlier is do you, within a region, instead of within a single language, within a region, like the United States where it's English, the word soda is a good example. Does soda, is it soda? Is it Coke? Is it pop? Soda pop. There's another word somewhere in New England, fizzle. I forget the word. I don't know. There's some other word, but there's like four or five ways to describe that. How important is that to actually hone in on that? How do you do that when you're online and you don't know? Is it IP sorting? When you're running a commercial and you know the audience is in New England, it's a local cable channel, you can do that, but how do you do that? Speaker 1: So, there's fun ways that you can do it, depending on how deep you go into the localization. Ideally, if you can, you have someone that's in the area. Just view the app and I know that's not always as easily accessible because again, it's a resource restraint, but if you're. If you're putting... Do you hear my dog? He's saying hello. Kevin King: Hello. Speaker 1: He's like, I've got ideas. Let me tell you how you localize it for dogs. Kevin King: My dog is laying right here next to me, so we're both... Norm Farrar: Mine's right here, too. Kevin King: Norm is probably... His dog is right next to him, too. Speaker 1: I wish he was here for a hot second, and then he's like, oh, no, I need to go. So, okay, if you don't have access to someone who's locally and he has a really cheap Easy ninja trick if you have a product that has a Facebook group, your audience would be in. I would just go into a Facebook group. That's for that area. It's like, hey, really quickly. Can someone check this? Because on Facebook, people go there to be social and social media. And so. I'm not saying we have done this, but hypothetically, it's really great to go into communities, especially where you have retired individuals who are looking to have a conversation and they love to have their opinion back. There's a group of grannies in different areas that we have allegedly Connected with who have provided some like language call outs for some of those pieces. But then when you like where this becomes really important, if you're targeting Gen Alpha, or Gen Z is like you do want to have especially in the US, someone in that demographic to do like a quick five seconds glance, I don't care if it's your best friend's nephew, or if it's like your neighbor, I can tell you countless examples where Clients we've worked with, mistakes we've made, or brands that we know about didn't at least get a vibe check from someone in that demographic and it blew up terribly in their face. Kevin King: Oh, wow. Norm Farrar: Yeah. Even proper translation. We made some cards once for a US trucking company. They provided us the English and Spanish. We translated the French. We asked them if they wanted the Spanish done. No, we'll take care of it. Well, when the cards went out, we got some huge complaints that it was Merry Christmas, Happy New Ass. Not on us. But they were screaming, how could you let this happen? You told us you didn't want to use our translation service. Kevin King: Wow. Norm Farrar: 3,000 cards went out. Speaker 1: I would say that there are tools. If you don't have the time to go into a Facebook group or to get into the comments, there are other ways that you can do it. You can do Google surveys. Those are quick and easy. You can also leverage chat GPT. Chat GPT 4.0 mini is a really cost-effective way to at least Do a gut check, if nothing else, like we use ChatGPT 4.0 and ChatGPT 4 in our AI chatbots that we build. And those chatbots we program in Spanish and English and have native English and Spanish moderators checking in on all conversations. But where AI is now, our prompts are done in Spanish and English, but we have conversations we're seeing across a wide variety of languages. And when we've had friends double check it, they have been like, wow, the Mandarin was actually on par with what I expected and far surpassed the Google Translate of Merry Christmas, Happy New S. Kevin King: You do mostly Facebook, right? Or Meta? Is it Facebook and Instagram or just Meta stuff? Or is it primarily just Facebook itself? Speaker 1: When I say Facebook, I mean Meta and Instagram and WhatsApp and everything that goes into it. It's just I'm dating myself by saying, yeah, you're a Pinterest pro too, right? For sure. So we do a lot with social media advertising. We do a lot with Pinterest. We've got a TikTok team. We've got a YouTube team. So organic social media stuff, that's been really cool because we've got clients where 12% of their entire company's revenue is coming from YouTube. So we do a lot within their communities. We work with influencers and celebrities and build up some of their social profiles and stuff. So there's a lot that we do. Me, Lauren, has had a lot of my experience in the media buying space for social media advertising and then with a team as large as we do have, we're like a nearly full-stacked agency and where we do like some of the misfits stuff is we'll try to find where is everyone's attention not focused on. So like three years ago, we went pretty deep on Pinterest. And where Pinterest has been so successful has been an opportunity for us to show up on the first page in Google to show up in images and to drive a ton of top of funnel traffic that understands about our clients products and services before They're even Googling a brand. So if you're looking at the problem awareness solution, Pinterest is like an amazing resource that takes One twentieth of the effort that you put into like a traditional Facebook or TikTok or Instagram page to get 1,600 times more impact because Pinterest is a search engine. So your content just lasts 1,600 times longer on average than another type of social post. Kevin King: Isn't Reddit pretty hot right now because Google invested in Reddit and they're fronting a lot of the Reddit stuff a lot higher in Google from like a SEO point of view? Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, that's like, you want to go into something there's a really like, it's kind of common knowledge, I know, at least in the SEO space, because we have an SEO department. So if it's not common knowledge now, but like, I feel like Kevin, you're still on top of this stuff. Reddit is a really easy hackable way to get Great link building, because you can submit a question into Reddit, ask a question, get hundreds of comments of people answering that, and then you edit your original post, have hundreds of comments, and you put in the link of your solution. So you ask a question, then you edit your post to say like, why this is the best solution. And then all of that visibility does help You're Google search terms. But in terms of us having a Reddit team, the team that we have that's on YouTube has been in rumble for like nine ish, 10 ish months. And Reddit is their next platform of exploring. So it's not one that we specifically gone down yet because I don't personally use Reddit besides book recommendations. And I get scared of Reddit because what a wormhole. Kevin King: It's like 10x, I think. It's like 10x, I think. And it's traffic or something just in the last year. Yeah. Speaker 1: Amazing. Amazing. Norm Farrar: So Lauren, I don't know much about Rumble. How do you find it? Speaker 1: Well, it's a test case environment. The audience isn't strong enough there yet. So we've got like a few hundred videos for two of our clients that we've put on there. I can tell you for certain that any Spanish content that we've tested, we've tried has not picked up Any traction, whereas like we have that content, like we'll get, you know, 10s of 1000s of views within 24 hours. So I know it's a smaller audience. It's just a like environment that we're playing and we're testing in, there's not a lot of competition on it. The monetization is a lot faster than it is with YouTube. But it's still at like a pre impact kind of stage. But I see it in the next two years, gaining a lot more with Google's ownership of YouTube and like, this is my like, conspiracy theorist, people are gonna get so sick of these major players that are dominating so much, especially as Gen Alpha comes to the workforce. So there's 16 year olds right now, they're about to come in, and they grew up on YouTube. And they're probably going to be a place of like, my algorithm is so specific. And, you know, it's got years of algorithmic Like stare downs, essentially, of what they've accumulated for you. And they've evolved from who they were when they started their YouTube account 10 years ago, which is why I think like why TikTok has been so successful with their algorithm is their algorithm is brand new. It's like starting with fiber internet, whereas like the Instagram algorithm had to go through dial up, then copper, then fiber. So it's taken a lot and it has all this legacy. So yeah, it's not to the place where I'm like, definitely enacting your strategy, but it's one that we have two people on the team that are actively working on the accounts on a weekly basis. Kevin King: A lot of people say, what's the next shiny object? Should we all be on TikTok? Should we all be on Pinterest? Should we all be on Rumble? But oftentimes, what I hear is that people come back around like, no, you should be on Facebook, on Meta Properties, because that's where it's at. Then other people say, no, the old generation, that's old people. The 16-year-olds aren't on there. But I'm doing stuff like right now in the newsletter space, I'm about to start ramping up about $10,000 to $20,000 a month spend the first month and then hopefully higher than that, but to get new newsletter subscribers. And I'm working with a guy who started, he built The Morning Brew, he built a lot of these newsletters into $2, $3 million subscription newsletters when I'm sold for $75 million. So He's done this for a lot of big brands and he's like, I told him, should we be on LinkedIn? Should I be on X? You know, some of my audience is there. He's like, nope, we're just going to stay with Facebook because it's what has, it will get you where you need to be faster and at a cheaper price. Are you seeing that? Are you seeing that you really need to segment stuff based on who, the age or the demographic of the people? Speaker 1: Great question. So in that, like, where do you allocate your resources? And in confined principles, like, I agree with that meta is the platform that has the easiest place to scale, where I think most people are unable to scale is because they don't have their offer clearly defined. So it has to be relevant for the person who's seeing it, you just have a sexy offer for an obvious audience. And people don't do that most critical foundational piece, which is why they build sandcastles On Meta, that Mark Zuckerberg's wave of cash collection just sweeps it in and destroys that sandcastle. So I agree that Meta is the easiest place and the fastest place to scale and grow. However, I would invite you to look at TikTok's lead gen aspect because it's such an underutilized media buying play, but it is a An opportunity for equal costs, potentially slightly cheaper costs on TikTok, but the burden of operations of having diverse creative is much higher on TikTok, but you get to go after a different audience where you can scale faster to younger audiences on TikTok, but Meta you can scale predictably across all ages. Kevin King: End of the trend now all towards shorts. That's what the hot topic is. You need shorts and repurpose them across YouTube shorts, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, I think it is. Is that where you're seeing a lot of stuff going? Everything's going more towards video versus image and text-based or is that just a bunch of hype or where are you seeing that going? Speaker 1: So great questions. I mean, it depends. I will say, like, we know that a picture is worth a thousand words. So a video is worth a thousand times more. So you can do a lot more storytelling. What I think right now we're seeing, especially like with YouTube ads, like longer, so you're saying shorts. Shorts traditionally are 60 seconds. under 60 second videos. But what I'm actually seeing what's working right now, so like this is 2024 Q3, it's actually longer videos. So longer than a minute video should be as long as they need to be in the shortest amount of time possible. But when you are able to articulate a story and able to keep someone's attention for a minute and a half, three and a half minutes, you're able to talk about the problem, the solution and the details of your offer. And we're not in a time when people are like, Oh, millennials having that amount of Attention span, like, no, that's not true. Because if that were true, then Bridgerton wouldn't have been consumed straight away as soon as it launched out all 12 episodes or whatever without people peeing. Like people want to consume content that's relevant for them. So video as an ad asset is doing better for the most part, because you're able to give a lot more information. And when we say shorts, yes, that type of video, the vertical format where you're telling me a story, that's not a 30 minute webinar. is doing well. I would definitely err on the like four minute cap because you don't want to make this like an episode of something like put that into a podcast. But if you're trying to do a quick sale, yeah, that shorter form video is doing really well. However, conversely, static images are doing really well for retargeting for someone who's already aware of your offer, because we're in this like, Pendulum swing where people were not doing any video because the burden to the operational team of creating a video, editing the video was a lot higher. So those that were doing videos before and no one was doing it, we're winning all day by default. Now more people are familiar with video editing. There are a lot more video editing agencies available so they can do a lot more video. So while video still is Kevin King for Top of Funnel. We're finding now static images and especially carousel as a placement, just on Meta specifically, is doing better because then you get to continue the storytelling without making or demanding someone consume and rewatch parts of the video again, like they don't need to see the full commercial, they're mostly bought in. So statics is doing really well for the hot retargeting list. And then I would invite people to explore carousel and slideshow options, because there's four different ad type of placements. And so those in just sorry, I'm getting like super in the weeds. But if you are buying media on Meta, Those placements are underutilized. So it's always looking at where is people not putting like what's the misfit direction of if people aren't doing a lot of carousels, it means you're going to stand out and be more interruptive. Norm Farrar: When you're doing your carousels, are you doing more storyboarding? Unknown Speaker: Yeah, yep. Speaker 1: So you're allowing someone to progress. Now you have to be mindful that there's the option to have like a place whichever carousel image is best. So where you want to have like dynamic and like who cares the order of what it is. That does really well for reviews when you can overwhelm someone with like name, review, five stars, you get to just see one after another, like, wow, don't take our word for it, take it for take theirs. So that's doing really well. But if you're doing storyboarding, where you're progressing and telling a story, right, of which someone said, like, before you listen to Norman, Kevin, like your iPod, Or sorry, your iPhone's podcast playlist was boring AF. Then you're exposed to The Marketing Misfits and you're enjoying your day. Now you've been consuming Marketing Misfits regularly and you started to see that you're enjoying working in your business again. So having that before and after transitional in a story is doing really well for a retargeting standpoint. If you want, if they're like more middle funnel, but like you can just be like super direct, super straightforward, like marketing misfits or die. I'm not saying to say that don't be that aggressive. But the more aggressive you are in that hot retargeting in that direct response, you're getting people to opt out if they're never going to buy anyways. Kevin King: Is that the same thing on TikTok where I see them splitting the videos up? And it'll be like, I don't know, I just saw one the other day. It's like why the budget airlines are failing and why they're losing money. And it's like a seven or eight part series. And each one is like two minutes. It's got a good hook at the beginning, a good creative hook, and it's got an open loop. And they're like part one, part two, part three, part four. Is that because some people, is that like variations on Amazon where some people will come in on part four and go, oh, There's part one, I need to go find it. Or is that a function of attention spans, like you said, don't do over three or four minutes? Or what is the strategy behind that? Speaker 1: So it's definitely a consumption play and to get you to subscribe. So when you're using that in an organic function, you want someone to feel like there's more. The challenge is though that a lot of people will lose their audience if they're insincere. If the parts haven't been developed, like a tactic that was working at the beginning of the year was starting with a part three. And then someone's like, oh, wait, where's part two? Wait, this is like Canva hack number 67. I need to see all the other versions. And you're like, oh, I like, you know, this is like, A bait and swap kind of moment. Bait and switch, sorry. But when you're doing that, that was just like restrictions within the media size. And then it was secondarily like looking at, oh, if this works, let me make more iterations, because what's working compound that interest. But I would say that in TikTok specifically, what's working really well right now is reaction type of content that's hyper relevant to the current conversation. And then with such a demand on new creatives with TikTok and like that volume aspect, because you can go into an existing conversation, bringing in trending memes, bringing in language that others are talking about, you just will get that natural lift because you're hijacking what's already working. Kevin King: You always say if you want to know someone, they should put this on dating apps or something. When you're on your first date from match.com or whatever service you're using, ask the other person, can I see your TikTok feed? As soon as you see their TikTok feed, you're going to know everything about that person. Spend two minutes on their TikTok feed, just going through really fast, 20, 30 things, you're going, all right, this is who you are. Speaker 1: That should be a gated dating swipe. That's brilliant. Kevin King: That's a misfit thing to do. Norm Farrar: I've seen Kevin's and I was shocked. Kevin King: Mine is just about cigars. It's like there's a soft voice going, the illustrious taste and the smoke going. No, I'm just kidding. Speaker 1: Yeah, no. On social media, I've always said that if someone looks at my Goodreads social media account, they'll know me better than if they look at any other social media platform. Because when you're like, that's the type of stuff she reads? I'm like, yes. It is, 100%. But that's so interesting. Like, hey, are you sure you want to swipe right on this individual? Creep their current For You page and then make a deeper discussion. You're like, you're reading ACOTAR? Me too. Or like, oh my gosh, you attended that BTS concert? Absolutely not. You're a Swiftie? Swift the other direction. Whatever that could be. Kevin King: Swift the other direction. Swift down, right, Norm? Swift down. Cool. So what do you, what do you think TikTok is going to go? I mean, with all the hype out there, it's going to probably be play out in courts and stuff, but what do you think is going to happen? Do you think if Do you think someone can repeat that algorithm? The Chinese have said they're not going to allow that algorithm to get out of China. So if someone buys TikTok, it's going to be a whole different platform. What are your thoughts on where this is going? And I mean, I tell people just make hay while the sun shines right now and don't worry about it. But where do you see the long term of that? Speaker 1: Yeah, so ByteDance being the parent company of TikTok, like the algorithm that they have created, as you said, is so massively impressive. I mean, the consumption is unreal, like and it goes back to relevant. You're on TikTok for as long as we are because the algorithm has found more relevant content for further consumption. Political stuff aside, like where I see TikTok going, how they've From the ad buying perspective, right? Because how does TikTok make money? They sell ads. From the ad buying perspective, I've seen so much go into their data and full funnel. products that they've launched. So like in the last like two months, they've launched, not relaunched, they've launched a new tool that allows you to deeper conversion insights. Because if you think about two years ago, TikTok had a lot of success with like TikTok made me buy it. That wasn't a TikTok company initiative. That was created because of users. Users did the movement of TikTok made me buy it. And then it's evolved so much that I think because it's so user-centric, my assumption is that TikTok will continue to be a really great social media platform. It will allow further multiculturalism. If in the US it does somehow get banned, I just think you should invest in VPN companies because people are still going to use it. They're just going to change their IP address because they're accustomed to that type of format. There's always going to be another Product that's going to try and compete. I think to pay attention the most is. is 13 to 16 year olds consumption of TikTok right now. And the amount of protection that's gone into that platform from a adolescent perspective, leads me to think that TikTok is not going away, despite how people may try. To argue that from a political standpoint, and then from an ad buying perspective, their tools are really evolving. Like I was telling you earlier about the lead gen side, like, did you even know that TikTok for non ecommerce purchase Based ads was working right now? Kevin King: Yeah. Norm Farrar: Okay. Yeah. Kevin King: No, TikTok and they're giving like, you know, we come, Norm and I come from the Amazon world where the data, half the data is hidden. You got to kind of figure it out and guess. TikTok is just laying out on the table. Speaker 1: Yes. Kevin King: Here you go. This is what it is. And here's what your model, this guy over here, this one's doing well, model this, this is what's working. And a lot of people don't realize that the US is not TikTok's biggest market. It's Indonesia. Indonesia and Southeastern Asia and stuff is bigger than the U.S. Are you doing any ad stuff over there or are your clients all mostly U.S. based? Speaker 1: Good question. So we do have audiences that we have clients that have audiences that they can ship and sell whatever, especially for like info products, because that's who cares. Anyone can buy an info based product or like a coaching course or high ticket funnel. But in that same thread, a lot of people, when we started doing advertisements to the Middle East, we would bring products to the Middle East market because Saudi Arabia had the highest consumption rate of Facebook and Instagram from any country. They had more percentage of their population on Meta properties than any other country in the world. So that audience was so neglected from Facebook and Instagram ads that we just started advertising in English American based products and services, because there was an appeal that, oh, if it's American, it must be better to some capacity. So when we had started advertising to that market specifically. It was really impressive because it was like, well, if you look at the data, like, what? 97% of the country has a. Facebook or Instagram profile? Wait, really? So yeah, what you're saying like with Southeast Asia, yeah, we have products that we sell in Southeast Asia, but I include the only, I mean, it's not in Southeast, but in Asia specifically, we haven't been able to crack it for Korea. Just like the one part where it's never been successful for us so far. And we oversee like millions of dollars of ad management per month, and we work with a lot of different clients, but just in like the transparency of it all. Kevin King: Can you talk about how the organic side works with the paid side? Because your agency is on the paid side, but a lot of times if you do a one-two step on those and you marry those properly together, you can have massive success. Can you talk about that a little bit or maybe a couple of strategies around that? Speaker 1: 100%. So I'm going to start off a strategy to not do. Do not do. Like when we audit accounts and we take over profiles, The thing that I hate to see the most is that people are boosting all of their organic content. Don't, if it didn't hit organically, it won't hit paid wise. So what organic, the intersection of organic and pay that works really, really well is if you can make a benchmark of what does success look like. So if you don't have one, look at your last 90 days of content, and then understand what is the average views. So add up all of them, and then use, you know, Google Sheet Formula to tell you the average use that becomes then your benchmark. And every piece of content, does it surpass? on par with or go below what you're expecting for success. Anything that goes above your benchmark, you put paid money behind and it will do so well for you most of the time. I like I can't make guarantees or promises, but I'm telling you when something is done well organically, it does so well in a paid environment. Similarly, if something fails organically, if you're putting money behind it because you've had this like lost fallacy, it's just going to keep getting worse. Like it cannot compete well because the algorithm is your audience. They didn't respond to it. Don't put money behind it. Put that energy and effort into creating better content that might surpass your benchmarks. So that would just be like one, like don't invest behind something that didn't Do well. And by well, I mean, look at your last 90 days and establish what is that average for you, and then determine if it did well, looking at it from a 24-hour perspective and a seven-day perspective, depending on which platform you're looking at. Two, another organic to paid strategy that works really, really well. If you have an organic piece of content and then you have a community, like you have your newsletters, you have your misfits community, it's called like pod work. So if you have a piece of content that you want to do really well from an ad perspective, people look at ad comments the way they look at Amazon reviews. So you need to make sure that you treat the comments on your social posts as sales opportunities. You can't neglect them. Because if you neglect comments, you're going to limit your impression reach. And then if you amplify that with a paid ad, you're going to destroy your brand reputation. Because if you're not responding, people are going to think, okay, well, this is a fake company. They're not sincere. There's a lot that goes to it. So if you're looking at having an intersection of organic and paid, you have to treat the comments for paid and organic as sales conversations. They are the equivalent of reviews on Amazon and I guarantee no one listening to this has bought anything without checking the reviews right away. People dive into the comments and like a TikTok hack that's working right now, specific strategies, you make sure that if you're using rage bait as a type of hook or you're using a hook that's super strong and you're continuing the story, so you're not doing part two, part three, part four, but you're putting more value in the comments, That type of interaction with your content will send positive signals to increase the reach of that piece of content. So it's pretty easy to go viral on TikTok when you have parody of what you're saying in the video with more information in the description. And then you'll also see like probably on your for you pages, like people's like popcorn emojis when they're like, I'm just here for the comments. So you just you have to treat the comments of your organic and your paid stuff like they're sales conversations. And then the last thing I would say is when you get so using that pod component, if you have a piece of content that you know, does well, or is like you believe will do well, you reach out to your community, you get them to reply, you know, 10 to 20 comments, you can incentivize that however you want, but you get a piece of organic content that gets a lot of those comments, then you can take that post Go into the ads manager, add a link to it, and then turn that organic piece of content into an ad. And there's this like magical unicorn number where if you can have more shares than comments, so if you ask your community to comment and then also share, it's what we call a unicorn post. It's going to like be the spinach to your Popeye in terms of ad growth and cost effectiveness. Kevin King: Isn't it shares and reposts matter more than likes and comments? Speaker 1: Yeah, so Elon Musk published how Twitter's algorithm, how X's algorithm works. So he did a formula that I use as a basis and assume, of course, it's the same with everyone else. Are you familiar with when he released that like a year ago? Kevin King: Yeah, I am. Speaker 1: So yeah, that component, it was like if someone shares, it's like 75 points. One share. A repost is like 15 points. Because if you share it to someone directly, it's like, I'm telling you this is relevant for you, Norm. If you're sharing to everyone, you're like, I just click the button and I want you to think that this is relevant about me. So you shape your opinion about me, versus if I share it directly, I'm telling you my opinion about you. So you got a lot more points to that. And then again, that compounding effect of when someone comments, you get like five points. And then if you reply, and they comment again, you get that times five to the nth degree. So yeah, sharing is the most important. Adam Rosari of Instagram, he had said, if you create content that's shareable, Instagram is naturally going to want to share your content. And the Instagram algorithm versus Facebook algorithm have those slight differences. So Adam is specifically in charge of Instagram. It's more or less been true with Facebook, but it's not been as impactful as we've seen it on the organic side with Instagram. Kevin King: Doesn't the Facebook algorithm work in stages where if I've got a group of a thousand followers, I don't know. And when I put a post up, it first sends it out to, I'm just making numbers up here, 25 of them to see what happens. And then if there's interaction or engagement and it meets some metric, then they show it to another 75. And then they keep showing it, raising it all up so that it is not taking off those thousand people. That's what frustrates me a lot of times about trying to post something on Facebook. It's like, I don't know who's going to freaking see it. It might only get to a hundred of them and then it dies. Or it might get to all thousand of them if there's a lot of engagement and stuff. Are you seeing anything like that? Are there any tactics or things to try to get gas that other than, like you said, have people go and make comments and stuff? Speaker 1: So like that pod kind of component is a way to gas it, but you're totally right in the sense that how meta properties will expose your content is to give it to a few of your people and then a few strangers. And they actually care more about how strangers react to your content than the people that follow you. So it's a discovery aspect right now. So like, even like a month ago, we'd look at our account. So people with 100,000 plus followers, people with millions of followers, people with sub 10,000 followers. A lot of their reels, because in the Metaplop reels, it's still reels. If you're doing organic, it's reels. Stories, it goes to your existing people. Reels are your best tool for discovery. But if you can't hit with a few strangers, then they're assuming you won't hit with a lot of strangers. And the compensation, your existing followers, the few that do get to see it, The burden is much stronger. And ultimately, like it's going to a stronger pay to play movement. Because again, like last month, in the last six weeks, you would look at a reel and you'd see like 99% of the consumption is from new people. And you're like, cool. Now my existing audience can't see it in my content, which leads me to assume that in the next six months, Meta is going to essentially make it a pay to play. If you want your existing people to see any of your posts, You pay to get it in front of them. Or you use stories, because that format of stories, those highlights, is only for people that are currently following and consuming you. Whereas if you're posting, you're making that more public. So that's where I assume it's going to get more expensive. Sorry. Kevin King: That's because in stories you really can't put a link or you can't gamify it as much as you can on some of the others, right? So that's why they don't want you posting some sort of ad or taking traffic off of Facebook, which most people most likely do that are your followers. So let's show them the stories that's much harder to do to take them off and the other people, is there something, some logic, is that some of the logic behind it maybe? Speaker 1: So yeah, well, stories you can add a tap to link with reels. Yeah, 100% I agree with you what you're saying. What was really interesting was like a few weeks ago, Meta was testing an in-app ad, like you couldn't watch a reel until you watched an ad. So they were testing it in different marketplaces. They removed that test from the US. But again, it's going to the function of We want to keep you an app. We don't want you to leave every social media platform. Every platform is like that, except for Pinterest, because Pinterest is like the only place where they're like, you're rewarded for getting people off platform, because Pinterest is a place to inspire you to take action. So by someone not taking action and leaving Pinterest is a signal that your content wasn't good enough. It wasn't inspiring enough. It wasn't interesting enough. Um, which is where when we're like, oh, wait, this is this is the opposite. All the other social media platforms are saying, like, stay, stay, stay, stay. And Pinterest is like, no, get them off of Pinterest, get them inspired to take action to start that project to find the solution. But I will say on that, like, model that everyone wants you to stay on platform. A small thing about YouTube ads right now, like what's working right now is YouTube ads Q3 2024. A lot of people were using YouTube ads to inspire someone to get to the landing page. Kevin King: Hook. Speaker 1: Offer, learn more, like a quick ad, like 30 seconds to a minute, because people want to skip ads, right? We don't want to watch ads. But what we're finding that's working right, well, right now, especially for higher ticket products and services, is you have a longer video, I'm talking like 12 minutes, five minutes, like if you get five minutes of fire, amazing, but you could go as far as like 12 Plus minutes, because you're giving so much value. And this is what we would usually see gated on the page, or like you had to get to the page, we're actually like putting all that content now directly in the ad. And we're having more consumption, higher cost per clicks, just because of YouTube, the way that they, they build stuff from that perspective. But yeah, at the end of the day, like, it's relevant content, it's creating stuff where you're providing So problem, solution and details for the offer in a format video is working across all social media platforms. And if your content's not resonating, I would try again, try new content. Don't get frustrated that this post didn't pick up. Just try to see and understand what that didn't work and don't use that in your next attempt. Norm Farrar: All right. Lauren, we are getting to the top of the hour. Speaker 1: Oh, so sorry. Oh my God. Norm Farrar: No, no, I couldn't even like, this has gone by so fast. I looked at it. Kevin King: I was like, just look at the time. I was like, damn, we keep talking for like two more hours. I got a hundred more questions. Norm Farrar: We're going to definitely have you back on if you'll come back on. But Lauren, I just have one last question for you. And we ask this at the end of every podcast. And do you know a misfit? Speaker 1: Oh, I mean, 100%. I don't like not knowing misfits. But one misfit that I would recommend the listeners check out, her name is Keita Dervishi. So Keita is K-E-I-D-A. She's here in Florida based out of Boca. Her and her mom created a company and What she did to find such massive success in under a year, this 22 year old and her mother created this like soulmates collection and what she's doing on TikTok. Allowed her to build a seven-figure enterprise so quickly. And how she did that was by creating a company that didn't follow the line. She made all of these TikToks that went against the grain of what people were looking for. And she was highlighting customers in a way that is almost shocking. You're like, would you do that? And she did. And it worked. It worked really, really well. Kevin King: Wow. Norm Farrar: Well, I can't wait to talk to her. Well, Lauren, I don't know if you have anything else to say, Kevin, but this was awesome. Kevin King: No, this was great. If people want to reach out to find out more about you or your agency or follow you, what's the best way to do that? Speaker 1: Well, they should have joined the trip, obviously. Norm Farrar: Good point. Speaker 1: They should have joined the trip. You could have had me for four full days. Norm Farrar: There we go. Speaker 1: But if you are feeling the FOMO now, okay, good. Have that feeling and remember for the next one. But I'm Lauren E. Petrullo on nearly all the socials or mongoosemedia.us is my company. Norm Farrar: Fantastic. All right, Lauren. Well, thank you for coming on today, spending that hour with us, and we hope that you can come back. Speaker 1: Absolutely. I had a lot of fun. Next time, definitely though, cigars are required. Norm Farrar: I'm there with you. Kevin King: We're in. Thanks, Lauren. It was great. Speaker 1: See ya. Norm Farrar: Bye. Alright Kevin, how was that? Kevin King: That was really good. That was really good. We could have kept talking for a while and like she said, this is why you want to come to like a CMS event because can you imagine? Just being for four days, sitting around having a glass of wine, smoke a cigar, eating dinner, or just hanging out on the train. And you can ask her a question or pick her brain or you never know what comes up in these things. I mean, we're asking questions here and but sometimes, not sometimes, almost every time the best nuggets and the best advice. Norm Farrar: Sitting around the campfire. Kevin King: Sitting around the campfire and the best relationships. I mean, that's where it's at. And that's why we do this. And it's not the traditional way of learning and watching a bunch of PowerPoint presentations or watching a webinar or something. It's real life. It's real relationships and real life. And that's the value. So those of you, like she said, that didn't come, I think you see now why you missed out. Norm Farrar: Yeah. You got one hour of Lauren. Imagine four days. Kevin King: So we're just getting rock and rolling. If you just joined us, go back and listen to some of the previous episodes. There's some great episodes. I remember the first one even, you know, Katie still stands. In my mind, and there's a ton of them. I mean, every episode is good. We sometimes have guests, sometimes it's Norm and I just bantering about telling war stories or talking about, you know, our experiences in marketing and giving our advice. So go back and check out the whole channel on YouTube or your favorite podcasting platform. Make sure you hit that subscribe button. And also, you know, if you want to leave us a comment, leave a comment on YouTube or on Apple podcast or Spotify, wherever you may be listening to this. That helps juice that algorithm just like Lauren just said. We would appreciate that. You can always go to marketingmisfits.co. Is that .com or .co? Norm Farrar: It's definitely .co. Do not type in .com. Kevin King: And follow us there or link out to where everything there. But yeah, Norm, looking forward. These are always fun. Looking forward to chatting again next week with you. Norm Farrar: I think you got to go because you got some special thing happening, right? Kevin King: Yeah, I got a knock on the door. My weekly massage therapist is here to give me a massage. You know how that is, Norm. Norm Farrar: Yeah, painful. Now I'm having memories. Oh my God, I was in pain for days. All right, we'll see you later. Kevin King: Take care, everybody.