How to Turn Around An Underperforming Marketing Campaign

Nobody in the B2B marketing world wants to launch a campaign that’s bound to fail. That said, we need to be prepared and anticipate delays or setbacks in case something doesn’t go according to plan. So what can B2B marketers do to troubleshoot marketing initiatives and generate the right outcomes?

That’s why we’re talking to Skip Wilson (CEO, Draft Media Partners),who shared powerful insights on how to turn around an underperforming marketing campaign. During the conversation, Skip highlighted the importance of recognizing that every campaign has room for improvement. He discussed why a systematic approach is important and why the need for clear audience targeting and effective messaging is paramount. Skip also elaborated on the importance of realigning campaigns by setting realistic goals, transparency with clients, and provided advice on managing expectations internally as the marketing team navigates the process of steering a campaign towards success.

https://youtu.be/bOmE_5fCwPg

[2:02] The common causes of underperforming B2B marketing campaigns

[6:48] Key pitfalls B2B marketers should avoid:

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• Poor planning
  
• Lack of sequential messaging and a clear follow-up strategy
  
• Over reliance on the ad platforms’ algorithms
  

[17:02] How B2B marketers can run the right campaign audit and take the steps needed to improve results

[25:02] How to manage expectations and improve internal communication prior to and during campaigns

[29:57] Actionable tips for improving B2B campaign performance

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• Know your benchmark / scorecard
  
• Figure out exactly what’s not working
  
• Be transparent: Admit when things are not working and propose a solution
  

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  Skip Wilson on LinkedIn 

  
  
  
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  Draft Media Partners 

  
  
  

Christian Klepp  00:01

Nobody in the B2B marketing world launches a campaign in the hopes that it doesn’t succeed. Experience has taught us to always have a backup plan and to prepare for the unexpected. So what do you do to turn around an underperforming marketing campaign? Welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers on a Mission podcast, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp. Today, I’ll be talking to Skip Wilson, who will be answering this question. He is the CEO at Draft media partners who endeavors to help people solve their marketing problems and scale their businesses. Tune in to find out more about what this B2B marketers mission is. Mr. Skip Wilson, welcome to the show. 

Skip Wilson  00:43

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Christian Klepp  00:44

Great to have you on the show. And I’m really looking forward to this conversation because, man, we are talking about something today that is going to make some marketers feel a little bit uneasy. But man, you know, you know what they say about growth and continuous improvement, right? You’ve got to, you’ve got to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. And I’m oversimplifying that now, right? But…

Skip Wilson  01:06

Absolutely, yeah, no, it’s true in all areas of life. I feel like it’s like you’ve got to be willing to be uncomfortable, or push yourself past whatever, like past where you would normally stop, right?

Christian Klepp  01:17

That’s right, all right. Well, you know, without further ado, let’s dive right in. So Skip you’re on a mission to help marketing and advertising professionals get real predictable results and improve their business operations. So for this conversation, let’s zoom in on a topic that has become part of your professional mission, and that’s how to turn around an underperforming campaign. And you know, if we’re going to be honest, like no B2B marketer wants to admit that their campaign is underperforming, but it does happen, right? So let’s kick off this conversation with two questions, and I’m happy to repeat them. Number one, what are some of the most common causes of an underperforming campaign? And number two, where do you see many B2B marketing teams struggle with campaigns?

Skip Wilson  02:02

Really, every campaign, for the most part. I mean, the dirty secret is that I think there isn’t really a campaign that doesn’t have room for improvement. Because always, when you go into a campaign, even if you know, we do the research and the planning ahead of time, and we try to figure out, you know, who should be seeing the ads and what messages we should be doing, virtually everybody does a good job nowadays of like AB testing, meaning testing different creatives or different audiences, or both. But by definition, you’re doing that in hopes that you find a difference between what’s working and what’s not working, implying that at least some part of it’s not working. So I think being willing to admit that, hey, this campaign is has room for improvement. It’s critical. Because, I mean, of course it does. Otherwise, what are you testing? If it’s going to be perfect, right off the bat, there is no need for AB testing. It would only be A testing and so, you know, in nowadays too, I think it’s just so much easier, because you get such immediate feedback. It’s easier to put 500 bucks into a test campaign than it is to spend $30,000 on research or something like you would have had to do 20 years ago. So with the idea that there really isn’t a campaign that’s not going to at least have some room for improvement, the main thing that you want. The main thing that you’re always sort of trying to figure out is the part that is working. 

Skip Wilson  02:10

It’s the same as like trying to fix an engine. That’s the way I think about it. As long as you’re clear about what parts or pieces make up the campaign, like this part gets from here to here, and then this part gets from here to here, as long as you know what those steps are, then it becomes very easy to fix. I would say, the main reason why it’s so such like a mystery sometimes is like, oh, which part should we fix? Or, you know, hey, my client’s not getting leads, or my client’s not getting the sales that we projected. The reason why that that becomes such an unfixable problem is because you haven’t clearly broken out what those steps are, and then also laid in the tracking to figure out how to test each piece, you know, it’s just like, it’s the same as trying to figure out if my laptops randomly not turning on. It’s like, okay, well, is power getting from the, you know, wall to the computer. And is, how is the power getting from the computer to the monitor? You know, it’s the same process. It’s like, all right, are people clicking the ad? That’s the first job, you know, if it’s a digital marketing or if it’s direct mail, are people scanning the QR code? If not, then I’ve either reached the wrong person or I’m saying the wrong message, breaking down the pieces. I would say, like the first step. And I don’t know, honestly, if I answered either of your questions.

Christian Klepp  03:26

You did. You did. You definitely alluded to in your description what the causes are of potentially a campaign underperforming, right?

Skip Wilson  04:57

It is always just two things. It is, if a campaign’s not working, it’s either that you’re talking to the wrong person or that what you’re saying isn’t getting them to do the thing.

Christian Klepp  05:06

Right, right. So the call to action like you haven’t encouraged them to take that next step. So called.

Skip Wilson  05:13

Yeah, exactly. Either you’ve said it in an uncompelling way or you’ve been unclear about it. I would say that we take over this type of campaign all the time where, let’s say it’s a financial advisor or something like that, and they run a campaign that is, schedule a free consultation, and they put that out there. That seems like a good idea, because that’s ultimately what they want, right? They want more consultation. So it’s like, okay, well, let’s do an ad targeting high net worth individuals that are looking to invest, and let’s tell them to schedule a free consultation. 

Skip Wilson  05:47

The problem is, that’s not terribly compelling, because if they wanted to schedule a consultation, they would have already talked to someone right like that ad, if you have a big enough budget, like if you’re buying a Super Bowl commercial with something like that on it. I don’t know that you’d get a return on investment, but you at least would get appointments out of it, because you’re reaching such a massive audience, I still think it would be very inefficient, but that’s okay. But if you’re trying to do that with a, you know, 10 grand budget or something like that, you’re just not going to get that many appointments. No, because nobody woke up today going, let me talk to a financial advisor, right? 

Christian Klepp  06:20

Nope, certainly, certainly not. And, I mean, let’s just brush aside the fact that the Super Bowl ads are, you know, you spend a ridiculous amount of money to give even get in there.

Skip Wilson  06:30

Right. 

Christian Klepp  06:31

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. And so, just moving on to the next question. You’ve kind of alluded to it already, but like, what some of the these key pitfalls… What are some of these key pitfalls that marketers should avoid, and what should they be doing instead? 

Skip Wilson  06:48

The number one pitfall is usually poor planning, like, prior to the number of times that I get a brief of a campaign, our company usually is working two, about two thirds of the time we’re working behind the scenes of another of another ad agency, and so we get handed these briefs of what’s been put together and presented to those things, and they’ll usually do a great job of doing like market research, or they’ll do a great job of coming up with things that are on brand as far as messaging, but the where they don’t do a great job, which is good, because if they did a great job of this, then my company wouldn’t exist. But the where they usually fall down is the actually figuring out of, okay, what’s the sequential messaging? In other words, what is that initial ad did to get somebody who was not planning on talking to this business at all today, to now start considering this category, getting them, you know, so instead of saying schedule a consultation, instead it’s, you know, get up to date market trends. Well, not something that every high net worth individual cares about. So okay, sure, I want up to date market trends, getting them to go from not caring at all to some sort of piece of content, usually not saying sign up for a newsletter, I think that’s a little bit old hat that worked great a few years ago. That doesn’t, that is harder now, not a bad thing, but harder now, especially if you don’t have an audience, but you know, trying to get them to engage with some piece of content, and then it’s like, All right, well, and then now we got to get them back to the page, because realistically, most of the people coming to the first time aren’t going to do anything. They’re going to leave. So getting them back to the page, you want to have a very clear like step. Almost every campaign needs to follow that same structure of cold traffic, gets them to a thing, and then you want a good follow up strategy. Once they get to that thing, it’s whether, you know, Facebook, Google, those types of things, it doesn’t really matter as much. There’s efficiencies there. But if you’ve structured your campaign to where it’s cold audience here, then warm up that audience once they get there, you’re going to have a successful campaign, even if you could get it, you know, if you get a 3x campaign to a 3.6x by moving platforms, maybe, but you’ll have a successful campaign no matter what you’re doing.

Christian Klepp  09:10

Right, right. No, those are some really good points. There was something that you were mentioning earlier, and I just wanted to follow up on that, how much of the underperformance of a campaign do you feel in your experience is related to the team just messing around with too much tech? And you know, the tech is not, you know, it’s not talking to one another. But more importantly, let’s go a level above that, to your point about poor planning, there is actually no plan in place for the technology. It’s like, let’s just keep piling up the tech, right?

Skip Wilson  09:49

Exactly. So almost every platform does get better with time now, like so Google does get better at finding out these types of people click, these type of people don’t. Yeah, but because of that, the number of times that a client is told, Oh, well, you’re underperforming campaign. It’ll get better. Just give it another couple of months. That’s very rarely true. It is true that, like I said, you can get maybe a couple of points like difference, like a, you know, 3.4 ROAs (Return on Assets)  to a 3.5 but if your campaign is just not working, it’s not going to go from not working to working on its own. That’s putting way too much faith in Google or Facebook or trade desk or any of this platforms. It’s putting way too much faith in their algorithm. Their algorithms are great, but they are incredibly like, that’s kind of like trying to clean your house with like, a toothbrush, right? Like it’s great for getting those, like, fine corners and things, but that’s not going to take an underperforming campaign to make it perform. And so I do think that there is a massive over reliance on, oh well, Facebook optimizes within itself, or meta optimizes within itself. So just let it sit there for a little bit. That’s just not true. It can take two or three months, but if it’s taking that much time, you should be testing different audiences and testing different headlines. Otherwise, it’s not going to just magically improve.

Christian Klepp  11:14

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. And you did bring it up earlier, but would you say the part of it is also just going back to the point of poor planning, part of it is also, like, maybe not doing the right research. I’m gonna say, like, there’s working under these internal assumptions that, like, yeah, we know what the customer is. We know the target audience is for this. So we don’t, we don’t need to do any more research on that, because we’re pretty confident we know who this is going on to.

Skip Wilson  11:43

Absolutely actually, just yesterday, it’s not a brand I can mention, but unfortunately, but it is a kava brand, I’ll say that, which is a new type of beverage that is like an alcohol alternative. They’ve had essentially no sales. So very brand new company, huge budget, though, they have big backers and those things, but they came with this very thick briefing on who their customer is, with no sales data, you really have no idea who your customer is, right? Like you can do a little bit of research on who’s doing it in the market, or who’s buying it in the market. But the reality is that’s purely a, what I call a swag or a strategic wild. Let the A stand for itself. Guess that it’s a it and you know, it looks great, but ultimately, when I’m actually putting together like that campaign, I’m going to take that as like a mere suggestion, more so than the hard Bible. 

Skip Wilson  12:42

Very different. For like, a company that’s, you know, had five years of, you know, continued sales and has a strong customer base. In that case, we are building lookalike audiences. But when you’ve had no sales, no you’re just guessing. And for smaller companies, you know, if you’re a roofing company or those things, a lot of times we’ll get the other end of the spectrum, which is, oh, our target audience is homeowners, right? We just care about homeowners. But it’s really not true. You only care about homeowners of homes over 10 years old, right? Because if it’s less than 10 years old, it’s probably still covered by warranty. They’re not going to call you, right? And so you the it’s falls on two there’s danger on both sides of those things, but definitely, you want to sort of be as strategic as you can, but you do want to work from a place of knowledge. In other words, do as little guessing as possible, because guessing is bad and work. But if you do know something you know, play around with it, and think actually, what do I know about my audience? It’s not all homeowners. It’s homeowners of 10 years and older that are in hail damaged zip codes, and now that’s a very easy to target place that’s going to get a much better ROI as than just targeting homeowners. 

Skip Wilson  13:57

Also knowing, being realistic about each piece of this campaign as well. That’s part of why I do think it’s worth always planning out my ads get from here to here. Usually let’s say a platform like Facebook or Google or whatever, to a landing page. Being realistic on what is a landing page conversion? Those are Google able numbers like you two seconds of research. You can find out if I’m a dentist, what should my landing page be converting at you want to know those things? Because I think every marketer in the world has had those meetings where they’ve done a bad job of preparing the client beforehand. And then you walk into that meeting going, you know, hey Mr. Mrs. Client, we got you, you know, 40 leads last month, and then they’re going, that’s terrible. 40 leads. We needed 200 leads. And you go and wait a second, Who told you 200 leads? Right? You know, knowing what’s realistic from a campaign is important, and it is. There’s no excuse for that nowadays. Nowadays, if that happens, and it’s does happen, sadly still, even sometimes, but it’s purely because that step wasn’t done at the base. Getting because you should, in today’s world, if it’s a Roofing Company in Des Moines, here’s what our cost per click should be. And if roofing company is going to convert at 8% you know, or whatever, actually 8% I think, is about right for roofing, but doesn’t matter, you know, those things ahead of time, then you can compare. Because then you because otherwise you end up going, Okay, well, if I’m a financial planner, which has a very low click through rate, if I’m a financial planner, you could, it’s easy to look at like a Google ad campaign and go, you know, 1% click through rate. That’s terrible. When I Google what a ad word click through rate is. It should be two or three. But that’s not true for financial planning. Financial Planning is about one so knowing realistically what you’re what it should be doing before you start the campaign is a critical step.

Christian Klepp  15:47

Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, going back to your point, it’s a very dangerous thing to be speculating, right? So I think you know, in terms of what you mentioned earlier, with the Google ads like that, this generalization of like, Yeah, we should have a 1% click rate, right? But that doesn’t necessarily pertain to your customers, like industry or their niche, right? So people have to be very careful if they’re making these kinds of assumptions, right? Okay, fantastic. Skip. I’m going to ask you to put on your not hat, of you know, the doctor’s outfit with a stethoscope, because we’re gonna, we’re gonna do a little bit of a diagnosis here, right? 

Skip Wilson  15:48

Got it. 

Christian Klepp  15:50

If we’re talking already about underperforming campaigns, walk us through how B2B marketers can effectively turn around a campaign that’s not performing and specifically twofold. So how can they do the right audit or analysis, and what steps do they need to take to generate better results? And let’s appreciate that every industry, as you’ve rightfully alluded to, can be different, but generally, what do they need to do?

Skip Wilson  17:02

So I am a big fan. What I always do. I take a piece of paper, although now I use this like paper listening, but because we’re a paperless company, but quick, quick plug there, but yeah, but you take whatever it is if you have to use regular paper, use regular paper, but you take whatever you write with and just draw two, make three columns. On the far left column, you write basically what the stage is, which would be, usually cold traffic ads, and then whatever you’re trying to get that cold traffic to or to do, and then, so usually it’s going to be ad, and then landing page or content, and then whatever your remarketing or content funnel is getting, that depends a little bit, but you write that on the far left hand side, then on the other two columns. And one of them you write audience, the other one, you write message. And now you just sort of judge each piece. So when I look at the ad, you know, clicks and impressions get a bad rap now because, as they should, because too many marketers have gone into client meetings going, Yeah, I’m sorry you didn’t get any leads. But, you know, boy, look at your click through rate. However, you don’t want to throw the baby out with a bath water, because click through rate is actually a great measure of whether or not that cold traffic ad is actually getting your audience to do the thing that that ad is designed to do. 

Skip Wilson  18:27

So, you know, I do judge it by click through rate. It is a simple Google search to figure out what that click through rate should be based on that platform in that industry, that answer can vary widely, but if you’re half of what it says the average is, then you know that you’ve either got an audience problem or a messaging problem. And so if you find out that you know you should be at a 2% click through rate, and you’re at a point three, then you can circle that as one of your problems. And then you want to deep dive on did I clearly define the audience, and did I say a message that would get that audience to do the thing I’m trying to get them to do? Let’s say that it is. Let’s say that it’s like, okay, well, then that piece is working. We’re getting people to click the ad. It’s a good click through rate, but they’re just not actually filling out the form or a phone call or those things. Now you dig into that. I use Microsoft clarity, but there’s hot jar. There’s so many different tools now to be able to figure out what like, what is actually happening once someone comes to a landing page, if it is, if you are driving to like, a piece of pillar content, like a podcast episode or YouTube, you know, those types of things, then you’re looking at, like, viewership rates. But let’s assume it’s landing pages, because that’s going to be the, I think, the one that applies to most people, if you’re looking at it, and your landing page should be converting at 5% but it’s converting it 1% the thing I look at is time on site, because if you’re getting. In time on site, that’s like under 10 seconds. That means you’re getting a lot of fake traffic, which means that you probably should consider moving platforms. That’s happening a lot. Where you’re looking at, you know, you’re going, Oh, we’re getting 300 people to the website, but nobody’s signing up for anything. If you look on your time on site, I bet it’s in the like teens, which means it’s a lot of robots. And so in that case, let’s not make changes to landing page. We’re going to take a step backwards and make a change to where the platform is that we’re running ads simple ways to eliminate bot traffic. One you can buy, you can buy stuff like click sees and those types of things. But the other way is to make sure that you’re doing things like running, taking like for Google, for example, making sure that you’re running not based off of interest location, but presence. In other words, changing it from US or Canada or Australia or wherever you’re trying to run your ad, and changing it to where presence, instead of interest is the location, little things like that can greatly reduce the amount of bot traffic you have. 

Skip Wilson  21:08

Let’s save your time. Let’s say worst case scenario, one of the hardest problems to fix, which is your click through rates good. Your time on site is good. They’re still just not signing up for your thing. That means that your thing stinks, your offer stinks. In that case, you probably are running something like a schedule, a free consultation type ad, which just has such a low likelihood of working because that only appeals to the person that was going to call today anyway. So you want to figure out, what else could we talk about, you know, is it a, you know, let’s like said, if it’s a financial planner, or, since this is B2B, will say, let’s say it’s an accountant instead of schedule your, you know, booking your bookkeeping consultation today, instead of that, it’s which is only going to matter to somebody who was thinking about calling a bookkeeper today anyway. Instead of that and say something like, yeah, sign up for a free bookkeeping analysis, whatever that is. And it’s the same thing. You’re just essentially rewording that consultation, right? It’s just a lot more compelling, and I’m actually would get benefit from it, even if I wasn’t thinking about talking to a bookkeeper. Or, you know, does your small business need bookkeeping? You know, here’s 10 signs, something like that. Those types of things are going to appeal to a much larger percent of the audience than the 2 or 3% of the audience that we’re going to call a bookkeeper. Anyway, those steps will solve most stuff. The other part of it, I would say, usually, retargeting is kind of simple. If your retargeting is not working, it’s probably because you’re don’t have retargeting set up, in which case do say that solves 90% of that problem. 

Christian Klepp  22:59

Oh, man. Fantastic advice. And I would say even to the bookkeeping, and I do appreciate that not all bookkeepers and accountants do this, but thanks to the effect of, like, how small businesses, or how B2B businesses can save money, how they can bring, 10 ways you can bring your taxes down, right? Like things, 

Skip Wilson  23:02

Yeah, exactly, yeah. 

Christian Klepp  23:03

And I know accountants that you know straight out of the gate say, I don’t do taxes in the taxes, and that’s fine.

Skip Wilson  23:31

Exactly, it’s like, but you know, if you can figure out, okay, well, what do you do that brings value, and then what could you do that would appeal to basically everyone? Now, let’s just center the campaign on that, and if the answer to that is nothing, then you know you’re going out of business anyway. You shouldn’t be running ads. You should be working for someone else.

Christian Klepp  23:52

Absolutely, absolutely, all right, I’m gonna move us on to a question, and I really hope that this never happens to anyone like I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. But you know, all this goes Skip, especially the bigger the organization is, and you’re running a marketing campaign and it’s not performing, then I wouldn’t even say the paranoia begins, but then the micromanagement starts. The senior managers are going to want to have an update on a regular basis of how you’re turning this around and how, how are the numbers. Where are we going with this? And you know, it’s just the worst feeling, I think, for anyone, is just to have somebody like either a) breathing down your neck or b) It’s that feeling of somebody standing behind you looking at your monitor. 24/7, right for sure. I bring, I bring all of that up to say, how do you how should B2B marketers effectively manage expectations internally as they navigate what is going to be this challenging process of turning around an underperforming campaign?

Skip Wilson  25:02

It’s always easier to do ahead of time. You know, it’s always easier. Like if in an ideal world, before you ever spent a dime, you said, here’s the map and here’s the journey, and here’s what we’re thinking is going to happen. And then when it doesn’t, you’re able to say, Okay, we projected a fork. We thought we would get a 2% click through rate here, where you’re getting a 1% click through rate. So we’re revamping that ad. Ideally, you had that conversation beforehand, but let’s say that you didn’t. Let’s say that, no, you find yourself with, yeah, that Vice President that’s just breathing down your neck and going every day, hey, what’s changing? What’s changing? 

Skip Wilson  25:39

In that case, I really think that bringing people on the journey, I think that it’s most scary when you don’t have a roadmap. One of the reasons that airlines still do the like the safety briefing and those types of things isn’t is actually to like, put the consumer, the person buying a ticket at ease, as much as it is for safety, actual reasons, right? Because, I mean, the reality is, if you fell out of a plane at 10,000 feet, like, you know, it doesn’t really matter whether your seat can float or not, the reason that they’re doing that is because it makes you realize, okay, there is a plan, like, if something goes bad, there’s a clear protocol and plan. And really, I think that’s usually what that middle management person is looking for. They’re looking for, okay, this isn’t working. That stinks. What is the plan? And so if you have laid out that piece of paper, I would make it look better, because now take that piece of paper, still do it, like I said, but then take a second to put it on a like Google document or something, to make it look nice, but then you’re sharing it with them of this is what the benchmark should be for this pillar or this piece. It’s not there, so we clearly see what the problem is, and we’re going to keep iterating headlines or variations until we get this piece to perform the way it should. 

Skip Wilson  27:03

Because what I feel most of the time is so frustrating, is we’ve all had those situations where it’s like, I don’t know what the right solution here is. And that’s the part that I think is the scariest thing right like, to use the airplane example, if your pilot comes out and says, you know, both engines have stopped, and I don’t know what to do. That’s… now, everyone’s panicked, right? But if, but if he or she comes out and goes, both engines have stopped, but there’s an airport that’s five miles away, and we’re going there, and everyone’s fine, right? It’s the not knowing or the lack of confidence that is the scariest thing and causes micromanagement half the time. So if you’re able to confidently say, this is the piece that’s not working, this is the part we’re iterating on. That makes everyone more comfortable and hopefully gets that person off of your back.

Christian Klepp  28:00

Absolutely, absolutely. I think a lot of it also calls for some crisis management skills, right? It’s, I think it’s with to your point, in the marketers interest to have that, not just a plan, but also that conversation ahead of time. Like, look, this is, this is what we’re anticipating. This is what we’re forecasting. This is where it could potentially go, for lack of a better description, simulating scenarios. And if scenario A happens, that’s the backup. If Scenario B happens, that’s the backup. And also being able to communicate like, Hey, listen, this is the challenge that we’re having right now, and this is what we’re doing about it. Option 123, right? So we’re recommending option two. What are your thoughts, right? As opposed to, like, what you’re saying, like, like the pilot coming out saying, like, hey, guess what? Both engines stopped working. No solution. 

Skip Wilson  28:57

Does anybody have any ideas? 

Christian Klepp  29:05

Yea, well. 

Skip Wilson  29:06

Now that pilot might be like in tears when they close that door, right? But you at least want them when they’re talking to everyone to like, sound like they know what they’re doing, right? 

Christian Klepp  29:16

Absolutely, absolutely, all right, my friend, we get to the point in the conversation where we’re talking about actionable tips, and you’ve given us plenty already, but like, let’s just assume there’s a B2B marketer out there that’s listening to this interview, and I certainly hope not, but you know, they might be going through something that is that kind of like, Sounds like their campaign could potentially be underperforming. I’m trying to put it as delicately as I can here, but like, what are like, in terms of everything that you’ve said right now, what are like? Three to five things you would advise them to do immediately after listening to this interview.

Skip Wilson  29:57

First thing is recognize that advertising is a science. So unlike organic content and things, which is very much has a place in the marketing world, paid ads is an objective science. So one know that there are clear, regular benchmarks that you each piece should be hitting, or it is objectively not working. So I think that takes care of the emotions of it, right? There’s no emotions in this. It’s either, oh, this is working and we just didn’t properly set expectations ahead of time, or no, this isn’t working. Because there are often times where a campaign feels like it’s underperforming, but it’s actually just that, you know, the they were, the client was expecting a $20 cost per lead, and that’s completely insane for that industry, or something like that. So one you want to know, what is my scorecard and how is this campaign performing against that? That’s step one, is to truly objectify the campaign. It is a scientific thing. 

Skip Wilson  30:56

Or quantify, I should say. The second piece is to then figure out exactly which piece of it’s not working. Like I said, Take that piece of paper, split it into three columns, go through it. And then the third piece is to be willing to admit, I think as marketers, a lot of times, we don’t want to be the ones to say to the client, you know, hey, we’re noticing that this isn’t working. We’re kind of just hoping that they don’t notice. But I think that’s a disservice, and I think you can always gain a lot of respect and and it’s just a better way to do business, to be the first one to go, you know, hey, Mr. Mrs. Client, this is the part that’s not working, and we’re working on it, and we’ve got a plan to fix it, but I get that you’re probably frustrated, and just know that we are working on it and we know what we’re doing. Otherwise, what happens is you just sort of hope the client doesn’t mention results, and you just kind of hope that they aren’t watching, but they always are watching. They’re just, if they’re not having that conversation with you, you’ve got two clients, or you’ve got the client that’s breathing down your neck always, the other client is the one that secretly is unhappy and just not telling you. And neither of those are a good scenario for a business, right? Like you want, you want both of those folks to be, you know, brought into the conversation and talked to and managed.

Christian Klepp  32:20

Absolutely, absolutely, some great advice there. And yeah, you I mean it as difficult as it is, I think as marketers and as agencies, marketing agencies, it’s our responsibility to help the client. And if we’re if we’re doing something that’s not working, I always feel it’s better to come clean now, then wait until the volcano erupts, and then you say, Oh yeah, that’s on us, right? It’s not just about the trust, it’s about their investment as well, right? And the time and the effort and the commitment and all of these. Because you know this better than I do. A campaign. There are so many moving parts in this ecosystem, right?

Skip Wilson  33:03

Exactly, and there are plenty of times where we’ve gone to a client and said, This isn’t working. Let’s even pause things I don’t know that it can work for you. The number of times that we’ve done that and then gotten referrals, or that client come back having fixed whatever problem there wasn’t, you know, operationally, I mean, that happens, that happens a ton. I mean, that’s, there’s nothing that gets more respect than being willing to be upfront and honest with a client. Just a better way to live, better way to do business. 

Christian Klepp  33:32

Absolutely okay, sir, get up on your soapbox. What is, what is a status quo in your area of expertise that you passionately disagree with, and why?

Skip Wilson  33:46

I think that one of the most damaging things that’s about to come out, like one of the things that I think, if you go to a conference right now, that you’re going to hear and that is about to be espoused and preached everywhere, is the re- emergence of the importance of branding. Now I love branding campaigns as an advertising agency, because they’re easy and they’re great, and we have a few campaigns that are like government contracts, where the goal is awareness. Those campaigns are great, right? Because they take a few minutes to plan and it’s all profit. But the reality is, I really don’t think that’s a good move in today’s world. I disagree with the idea that it’s not that branding is unimportant. Branding is important, but the easiest and best way to brand is actually with customer experience. You know, like Apple is a good example of that. You know, their branding is in their packaging and their stores and their customer service. The idea of advertising brand is just a that’s not a great way to for a vast majority of businesses, unless you’re publicly traded, it’s not a great way to truly spend your advertising dollars. But it’s about to be espoused. The reason it’s being espoused is be. Because with the collapse of the cookie and the collapse of the lower level types of tracking that most advertisers have come to rely on, it becomes very difficult to track return on ad spend unless you’re at that sort of mid to higher level of sophistication. And so because of that, everyone’s talking about branding, and I really don’t think that’s a good idea.

Christian Klepp  35:23

Being a branding guy myself. I do, I can totally understand where you’re coming from, and I…

Skip Wilson  35:32

Ad dollars. 

Christian Klepp  35:33

Yes, it’s.

Skip Wilson  35:34

Don’t put ad dollars towards Branding. Branding important, branding good.

Christian Klepp  35:38

Absolutely, absolutely. But I think, and this may have been your point as well, people don’t also quite understand what goes into branding, and that in itself, opens the door to things like what you were saying, let’s just go through this very expensive branding exercise, and they don’t actually quite understand what that’s supposed to accomplish, right? Like you, I’m all for branding, but there’s a time and a place for it, and expensive branding campaigns are not going to fix are not going to fix your product. They’re not going to fix a bad customer experience, right?

Skip Wilson  36:24

Exactly. Yeah. And if you’re and, you know, in the B2B space, if you’re an accountant or something, unless you’re one of the big four, unless you’re Deloitte or you know, Ernst & Young, why would you try to fight in the branding world? My accountant is an older guy that lives down the street from me, right? Like, I’m not working with him because of his brand. And I think that’s true of most, you know, I’m working with him because of the customer service. Now, I do think that branding is important, even in that space of like, late, you know, we have in our office, we’ve got our logo. Oh, there you go. Branding is important, but I’m not going to put ad dollars behind it, because nobody ultimately cares who we are. Well, I mean, we’re a white label service, so actually, I mean, two thirds of our clients don’t actually know that we exist. 

Christian Klepp  37:09

Right, absolutely. 

Skip Wilson  37:10

It’s a… So, yeah, it is a branding is important, mostly for your current customers, I think for most businesses.

Christian Klepp  37:19

Exactly, exactly. Okay. Here comes the bonus question. So I have a good authority that you, at a young age, started looking for writing work because you were trying to impress a girl. And now I’m not going to ask you what you wrote her, okay, that’s for your and her eyes only. But what I will ask you Skip is this, if you were, if you were to look back on what it was that you wrote her, what copywriting advice would you give to your younger self?

Skip Wilson  37:50

So I have the nerdiest answer to that question ever. I’m very much a systems guy. I was even then. So the I had it, I had in my sort of sights on this person who now is my wife, I actually did a lot of research that I came up with. The prior to that, I came up with what I call the great method, which is goal research, put together an action plan, and then execute. And I literally did a bunch of research on what types of things to say even had, like, our earlier conversations, like, sort of, like scripted out of like, what kinds of questions to ask on the phones back when people phone that and those types of things. 

Christian Klepp  38:36

Yeah.

Skip Wilson  38:37

So that I did research on, like, what a first date should be like. And so all of those communications early on were, they weren’t quite scripted, but they were definitely formulaic in terms of, I wanted to make sure that I like, okay, ask a few softball questions and then deep questions and, you know, just things like that. So doing, putting together, figuring out what you’re trying to accomplish, then reading a bunch of books back then you had to go to the library to read books, but the but then doing your research on that topic, how other people that have achieved that goal, put together an action plan and then execute it? That’s, that’s how I wrote this stuff. I wrote to her, and that’s still more or less how I like, how I do things.

Christian Klepp  39:21

Well, it works. It looks like it worked, man. 

Skip Wilson  39:25

That’s right, exactly. I’ve got a 100% close rate.

Christian Klepp  39:30

So fantastic. Such a great story, though, such a great story.

Skip Wilson  39:38

Yeah, she’s gotten used to my ways, right? Like some folks would hear that story, and some folks hear it and think it’s romantic, others think it’s the opposite of that. She sees the romance in it. 

Christian Klepp  39:48

Good, and that’s what matters, right? That’s what matters. 

Skip Wilson  39:51

That’s right. 

Christian Klepp  39:52

Yeah, fantastic. Skip. This has been such a great conversation. Thanks so much for your time and for sharing your expertise and experience with the listeners, quick introduce yourself and how folks out there can get in touch with you.

Skip Wilson  40:04

Yeah. So Skip Wilson with Draft advertising, Draft advertising technology, I guess technically full name, but the reach out to me. Skip@draftadvertising.com or info@draftadvertising.com. Either of those, and look forward to talk.

Christian Klepp  40:19

Gotcha. Fantastic, fantastic once again, Skip thanks so much for your time. Take care, stay safe and talk to you soon.

Skip Wilson  40:25

Sounds great. Thank you.