Hey there, it’s Dusty Thunder, a.k.a. Dustin Storm, again from Storm Cloud Marketing, here to talk to you more about digital marketing and digital advertising.
In the first video of this series, we talked about the interest funnel—or sales funnel—and how different kinds of digital ads are geared toward different portions of that funnel. There are a million variations, especially in the middle of the funnel, where you’re reaching people who are showing some kind of interest in the solution you offer. That could mean they’re looking at information about their symptoms, their problem, or anything related to that. There are countless ways to get in front of them.
What I want to talk about now is the idea of outsmarting, not outspending. We have this mantra at Storm Cloud Marketing: help our clients outsmart, not outspend, their competition. But what does that really mean?
The Problem with Bidding Wars
One thing I mentioned in the last video is that search text ads happen at the bottom of the funnel. The bottom of the funnel is where people are ready to make a decision and choose a solution provider. They already know their problem, they’ve identified potential solutions, and now they’re picking a provider.
Search text ads are where everyone wants to be because it’s the easy, low-hanging fruit. For example, if someone is looking for a marketing agency in our area, all of our competition is going to be there too. This is especially true for industries like attorneys, personal injury, and other common businesses with marketing budgets. Search text is the first place they go.
What happens then? You end up in a bidding war—a “pissing match”—where the cost to get someone to click on your ad can quickly become inefficient. Not everyone who clicks will convert, so you have to do the math and figure out if it’s worth it. If the competition is too fierce and the costs are too high, it might not make sense anymore.
Outsmarting the Competition
At that point, let the competition duke it out. Let them harm each other in the bidding war. We want to outsmart them.
How do we do that? By using tools we’d traditionally use further up the funnel—like display ads, video, or responsive display ads—but targeting people at the bottom of the funnel in a way the competition isn’t thinking about.
For example, if we found too much competition at the bottom of the funnel for our own agency, we’d target the same people—those looking to hire a marketing agency—but instead of showing them a search text ad, we’d show them display ads or videos. We’d follow them around online, regardless of what they’re looking at. If they’ve shown interest in hiring a marketing agency, they’re a viable target for us, whether they’re playing Tetris or checking the weather.
We’d build our targeting to include people who have shown interest in specific things and are within our geographic area. Then, we’d show them display ads with messaging like, “Hey, this is your pain. We’re well suited to solve it,” or “We can be your guide as you solve this pain.” We’d connect with them using bottom-of-funnel messaging, but with middle-of-funnel tools.
This approach works best for products or services where people do some research before making a decision. If your product is something people buy quickly without much research, this probably won’t work, because you’ll be advertising to them after they’ve already made their decision.
Leading Prospects to Your Resources
We can get in front of these same people and lead them to a resource on our website—maybe a landing page where we educate them more and try to convert them that way. If we’re successful, narrow our targeting, get our bid structures right, and focus on our geographic area, we could end up being much more efficient than we would be at the bottom of the funnel.
This won’t be the case for everyone, and it won’t happen right out of the gate. You’ll need to start with a small-scale experiment, and when you find success, scale it out. It always takes optimization.
The Importance of Optimization
On the optimization side, we use a service called Agency Analytics to aggregate all our data. We look at GA4 activity (the new Google Analytics), what’s happening on the website, and aggregate data from Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and whatever else we’re running. We also look at Google My Business data to see how it’s affecting physical traffic, store visits, website engagement, and phone calls.
It’s important to look at all these things together so you can see how one tweak affects everything. And when you’re optimizing, always take notes. Every time you change something, log it—whether it’s in Google Keep, Notion (which we use), or another tool. Make a record of what you’re changing so you can go back and review the data. If something weird happens—like a drop in impressions or a spike in clicks—you can trace it back to the change you made and see if it had a positive influence. Then, you can do more of what works.
The goal is to get more and more efficient as you go. Always monitor the impact on your bottom line. Sometimes you won’t be able to see the exact cost per conversion, so back up and monitor what you can, and keep an eye on what matters.
Keep Experimenting
Always be experimenting. Don’t just do the easy thing right out of the gate. Don’t just do search text ads because that’s what everyone else is doing—that’s exactly why you shouldn’t do it. Remember: outsmart, not outspend. Be constantly experimenting and taking notes about what you’re doing.
If you need to do all this but don’t have the time, that’s where an agency like ours comes in. If you have a business, product, or service you’re side hustling and need help getting started, we can help. Of course, there’s a level where it doesn’t make sense, but there’s only one way to find out.
You can visit our site at stormcloud.marketing, book a call, and let us know about your project. We’ll see if it’s a good fit for us to help.
