Yes, there are big changes underway in the world of Facebook and Google Ads, in case you hadn't heard. Beginning with GDPR, the trends are slowly moving in the favor of consumers, and advertisers are being challenged in accessing the same amount of rich data they used to be able to more easily obtain effective digital marketing advertising results.
What should your business do to measure your digital marketing ads ROI in a non-trackable world?
This is the topic of an informative interview I had with Elijah Kirsch, CEO and Founder of Zonder Marketing and also one of the leading consultants at Mayple Marketing Solutions.
Some of the things we discussed include:
Key Highlights
[02:42] Introduction of Podcast Guest, Elijah Kirsch
[04:42] Elijah's Journey to Digital Marketing
[06:27] The Evolution of Digital Marketing
[10:32] Look Alikes and Remarketing
[12:10] Changes in Social Media Platforms
[13:03] Changes in Paid Digital Marketing
[15:00] Things That Businesses Should Be Doing Now
[19:44] Attribution On Multiple Touchpoints
[23:12] Elijah's Favorite AV Testing Methods
[26:42] Hidden ROI Measurements
[30:57] How Mayple Helps Businesses
[34:15] What To Look Foward In The Next Years
[36:30] Connect With Elijah
Notable Quotes
Guest Links:
Learn More:
Yes, there are big changes underway in the world of Facebook and Google Ads, in case you hadn't heard. Beginning with GDPR, the trends are slowly moving in the favor of consumers, and advertisers are being challenged in accessing the same amount of rich data they used to be able to more easily obtain effective digital marketing advertising results.
What should your business do to measure your digital marketing ads ROI in a non-trackable world?
This is the topic of an informative interview I had with Elijah Kirsch, CEO and Founder of Zonder Marketing and also one of the leading consultants at Mayple Marketing Solutions.
Some of the things we discussed include:
Key Highlights
[02:42] Introduction of Podcast Guest, Elijah Kirsch
[04:42] Elijah's Journey to Digital Marketing
[06:27] The Evolution of Digital Marketing
[10:32] Look Alikes and Remarketing
[12:10] Changes in Social Media Platforms
[13:03] Changes in Paid Digital Marketing
[15:00] Things That Businesses Should Be Doing Now
[19:44] Attribution On Multiple Touchpoints
[23:12] Elijah's Favorite AV Testing Methods
[26:42] Hidden ROI Measurements
[30:57] How Mayple Helps Businesses
[34:15] What To Look Foward In The Next Years
[36:30] Connect With Elijah
Notable Quotes
Guest Links:
Learn More:
The world of paid advertising I'm talking Google ads, Facebook ads are undergoing tremendous transformation because of new privacy updates not just from Apple, but also in the pipeline from Google. As digital marketers, what can we do to measure ROI in a non trackable world? We are going to invite an expert on to answer those very questions on this next episode of the digital marketing coach, podcast. Digital social media content influencer marketing, blogging, podcasting, blogging, tick tocking, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SEO, SEM, PPC, email marketing. Whew. There's a lot to cover. Whether you're a marketing professional entrepreneur, or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neil, on your side, because Neal Schaffer is your digital digital marketing marketing coach. helping you grow your business with digital first marketing one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach, and this is Neal Schaffer. Hey, everybody, Neal Schaffer here. Welcome to episode number 255. Of the your digital marketing coach podcast. This is obviously your digital marketing coach. Neal Schaffer, how are y'all doing today? I am excited because well, tomorrow that sort of tells you when I'm recording this. But tomorrow, I'm off to speak at my first in person event of 2022 in Louisville, Kentucky at the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices annual convention, I hope some of you will be there. And I hope to be sharing what I talk about there in future episodes. A hint hint one is about LinkedIn for real estate agents. And another session is going to be all about reimagining your content for social media. That's going to make a great episode in the future. So make sure you stay subscribed or you subscribe if you haven't. Alright, so today, we're going to be talking about all about measuring your digital marketing ads ROI in a non trackable world. Advertising today is very, very different than it was two years ago, if you're doing the exact same thing, you're probably not getting the same ROI, your digital advertising is not getting the same impact. Now, I don't talk a lot about Google Pay per click or, you know, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, what have you on this podcast, but obviously, it is an important component of digital and social media marketing. And that's why I'm really excited to introduce you all to Elijah Kirsch, who is the founder and CEO of Xander marketing. And Elijah is a true expert. And he'll go into his background on really all things digital, and social, but with a focus on paid ads and analytics. And obviously, these two things go hand in hand together. So obviously, we looked at what is going on in the current digital and social media advertising situation this further push for privacy and its impact on your advertising. We're going to talk a lot about how to measure ROI through a variety of ABX testing methods. And some of these are extremely creative, the ways that Elijah brings up that I think you'll find really, really fascinating and interesting and hopefully impactful for your business, as well as how to discover the hidden in air quotes, ROI measurements in your data. Alright, fasten your seat belts, this is going to be a impactful episode that hopefully will change the way you look at your paid advertising. And hopefully you tweak things. Starting immediately after you listen to this podcast. I've already been informing my clients have some of the things that we talked about, and I do believe it is that impactful. So without further ado, here's my interview with Elijah Kirsch from Zander marketing. You're listening to your digital marketing coach. This is Neal Schaffer. Elijah, welcome to the digital marketing coach podcast. Thanks.
Elijah Kirsch:Thanks. Good. Excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Neal Schaffer:I'm excited to have you as well. You've come highly recommended from my friends over at Maple who I know you work with a lot of what we'll talk more about them. But Elijah today we're going to talk about digital marketing, advertising, digital, social the whole bit. But before we do that, it's always fun and educational, to understand sort of your story and how you got to do what you do today. So why don't we start there?
Elijah Kirsch:Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I've been working in digital marketing for around 12 years now. Started off in search engine marketing, and eventually have run a few different teams, including high level 30 person marketing teams, at a larger company. I also have grown startups like zero to 10 people at the marketing organization at a startup. Currently, I'm doing paid search, paid social analytics, all of those things for digital marketing and consulting, decided to leave in house after about 10 years or so and do the consulting thing on my own and started to build up this, this little boutique agency that I'm running right now, really wanted to kind of provide an extra level of analytics and thought compared to the consultants that I generally ran into are the agencies, I should say, is a better way to phrase that, that I generally ran into and kind of working at at my businesses. And then of course, was introduced, we were introduced via maple, who's done a lot with helping me as far as growing the business, they're a great platform for consultants, to find clients, and then the clients will be matched with a vetted expert. So I've used them a lot, too. So yeah, that's roughly me in in 30 seconds.
Neal Schaffer:So you've been in the space for a while. And obviously, digital marketing advertisement has changed over time. We've obviously seen the emergence of social media, of various platforms, and various ways you can advertise on those platforms. So compared to, you know, a decade ago, and we're going to talk more about the privacy issues that are really top of mind marketers today, how would you, you know, sort of talk about this evolution of digital marketing and what what it sort of means to marketers and businesses, I see it as just amazing opportunities in many, many different ways to advertise and find your target customer, would you agree that it's only been a positive thing up until the privacy issues?
Elijah Kirsch:I think marketing has gotten got so good over the last eight to nine years, you know, Facebook, in the end wound up being the greatest platform for marketing, like ever created by a lot, in my opinion, you kind of look at where we were before, there are companies who could do drop shipping on Facebook, have a decent ad, turn it on and start making money it was it was just so much data, it's crazy to see how it's changed. You know, I I started marketing before Facebook ads was even a thing before they had advertising. You know, I worked on a search engine marketing team, my first first job out of out of college, there were I think about eight to nine people on that sem team, and now that job would be done with one and a half people. So as far as our ability, marketers ability to reach people efficiently, it's until about a year and a half ago, you know, it was kind of exponential growth, not quite exponential, but people like to use that phrase. So certainly, certainly was great. As far as the consumer side. And now, now we've got some adjustments to make on the marketing side.
Neal Schaffer:So let's, you know, talk about some of those adjustments. And there's a lot that's been said about what Apple did. And the, I guess, making it more difficult to track, you know, to to retarget, across apps, what have you, in my conversation with the Facebook ads? Rep. He's like, No, we're just changing from cookie based tracking to server based tracking. So a lot of it is what you can still do. Others I hear well, the amount of data that Facebook has right now is really restricted. So look alike, audiences aren't going to perform as well, and interest. So So sort of what is, you know, how do we get here, I guess is like the first question, you know, what's happened over the last you said 12, to 18 months.
Elijah Kirsch:So Facebook, specifically, I believe that you kind of go look at the history and how the two CEOs of Apple and Facebook interact with each other was restricted from a significant amount of data. Of course, other platforms were but Facebook was kind of the the main one, this caused essentially Facebook to have, realistically, probably 1000, maybe 2000 data points about you to potentially only having one data point about you. And so all these, you know, algorithms that they were using called are not as effective, not nearly as effective. And it took a few months for this to happen. Because like all that data still existed, and you know, people were changing, changing their buying habits. But you know, you mentioned look alikes. My experience with look alikes is before the big change, it was, you know, usually on Facebook accounts, they'd represent around 80% of spend, wow, for performance based accounts. And I would say that's down to 50%. And most oftentimes, interests are doing doing significantly better. So yeah, it's been a little bit crazy. And one thing that I've been jumping into to really learn more and try to get these numbers up. I don't think we're ever going to get back to where we used to be. But the Facebook platform, I'm always surprised by the consultants or agencies who don't like to use the A B testing tool. I love it. I've used it for creatives. I've used it for audience testing. Anytime I know what there's the ABX testing tool? Anytime I have a hypothesis about what a an ad would be, or about the percentages, it works out pretty well. Well, it's it's gotten some hate. But if I were a marketer, if I were in someone else's shoes and not using it, I would I would start using that a lot.
Neal Schaffer:In all honesty in the early days, you probably heard of a tool called ad espresso. And, yeah, it's a tool that I use, because Facebook didn't have that sort of functionality. But now they've really invested haven't they, in the functionality of their own to although it's still complex, but the functionality is there, right?
Elijah Kirsch:Yeah, it's there. And it's great. One of them. One of the clients I was working with with a maple was a direct to consumer health care client. And one thing that I believe in is when you're taking over a client that already exists, and they already have campaigns, don't just run your own, like I've seen that happens so many times where agencies consultants are like, hey, like, I've got a better idea. Like, let's just do this. I did a B tests, like every single campaign, they had look alikes and interests, they had remarketing, a B tested all of them with what I thought were going to be better campaigns. And I was right for look alikes and remarketing. But I was wrong, for instance, and like, that's fine, like, you know, share the data, admit it, and kind of carry on and see how to like, boost up, boost up that specific campaign. So yeah, I'm a big fan of that tool, even though it seems a little simplistic. I'm always surprised by the amount of people who say they've never used it.
Neal Schaffer:Oh, wow. Okay. So with this, I guess, you know, taking a step back from the current privacy issues. A lot of people think of, you know, paid digital paid social in terms of like the funnel, right. So at the very top, it's, you know, the interests, and maybe it's like a video ad and building up that sort of that audience. Right, that's, that's beginning to engage with you. And then taking it one step further, and then obviously, getting into remarketing. And then you have advocacy campaigns, with what's happened in the privacy issues beginning with Apple. But I mean, would you agree that there's more to come and other platforms, I guess, first of all, and then second of all, what does that funnel still look the same? Or how has it changed?
Elijah Kirsch:So Google announced in February, that they are going to start doing something similar, they haven't gone into all the details. You know, I've read the blog posts, but they say they're going to have a beta test in it by the end of the year. So those things are coming. Google's the main one, like once you start, start getting blocked from from there, you're you've pretty much got everyone. It's much harder to block on the on the browsers, at the level that they do on the apps and that kind of that area. So definitely happening need to prepare for it. Or I don't even know if it's need to prepare for it, you need to test for it with iOS and then be ready for what those changes will will eventually lead to with Android. And then remind me of the the second aspect of your question.
Neal Schaffer:The second aspect is just sort of what would with post Armageddon post Yep, you know, these changes? What does the ideal sort of paid digital marketing funnel look like? Compared to what it was before these changes? Yeah, so
Elijah Kirsch:I'm, I'm gonna say something that's maybe a little bit different than what people most people would say, or most people would expect. I actually, like, what I like these changes, I like for what they mean for my job. And I like what they mean for marketing going forwards, the funnel, as you talked about these YouTube, these kind of funnel stuff, everything works so well before that the actual incrementality of these funnel changes weren't really ever measured, in my opinion, like I, you know, talk to people like basically what happens, hey, we're doing so well, like let's start a YouTube campaign, going, let's start click based campaign. I've never seen those be effective on Facebook. Like you're just getting people who like only want to click on ads, and will never buy anything for a performance campaign, at the very least. And so I actually like what will cause it is going to cause marketing organizations to really have to think about their funnel in a much more in depth way, then what I think was going on before, I think it will lead other consultants and agencies to really be able to get involved in that really kind of dive into the analytics of kind of where things are going and what the next steps are. So while this year is tough, just because you have that year over year comparison, I think going forwards with these, you're going to see much smarter implementations much, much more cohesive stories doing putting more effort into those areas than I think what often got done in the past. At small and medium sized businesses, larger ones kind of have the resources to put that out. But small and medium sized businesses I think are gonna be a lot more exciting and a lot more fun to work with as we have to readjust this funnel and really look at it at a high level.
Neal Schaffer:So what are the specific things that businesses should be doing now? I assume it's going to deal with what we refer to often as first party data, right? Just trying to get to that from from the internet as possible. But outside of that, you know, what is it going to come down to just brand new A B testing, with interests in the whole better.
Elijah Kirsch:So I think, where we can really start to make a difference as consultants, and a big part of when I, when I started doing this on my own, I really wanted to be more analytical and really focus on truly adding incrementality to the business. I think five years ago was very easy to say, hey, like Remarketing is doing well. I've run remarketing tests a B test true AV tests on both Google and Facebook. And they are never as incremental as the platform's would have you believe. And so I think what the businesses are going to start to do is really understand what that incrementality is. So a very small example for and then we can talk about how it can be broader is another an apparent client I was working with with maple hum actually had had a website up for, call it three months before I started with them, they hadn't been running anything hadn't been running, any Facebook ads have been running in Google ads. So you truly knew like, okay, they've got one sale per week organically started, started doing some things on Well, somewhere between like 10 or 15 sales per week. It's like, okay, that's not quite breakeven, you know, we've only been running for a couple of weeks, this is not too bad. But when you look at the Shopify data, we were actually getting like 25 to 30 sales. So people were clearly seeing that Facebook ad, not clicking on the ad, or not getting attributed to Facebook and coming back and converting later, through direct etc. So we've always known that's happened. But having that data point, like at a true startup that, you know, had no other data was like really cool for me to see and be able to use and share. So we're going to have to be doing that a lot. Like how do you break that up? Another cool way to do that is you on the Display Network, people say Display is great, Remarketing is great. You can run fake ads, you can run ads that aren't talking about your business and see how many conversions Google's attributing into it, because these are people who would have converted anyway. So you start to show that to your client, and you say, hey, like, I'd really love to test out this other new platform, I'd love to, you know, play a little bit more of TiC tock with SNAP, like, let's take this budget, let's put it in there. I think we're going to start to see some really, really interesting things YouTube, obviously, with the upper, the top of the funnel and seeing, seeing if we can kind of bring that traffic and
Neal Schaffer:it sounds like it sort of forces marketers to rethink the entire approach. And to just think holistically about all of this, right?
Elijah Kirsch:I think we as marketers need to be much more integrated, no longer can we just look at return on adspend and call it a day, another client of working with doing Google Shopping, I've reset up all their campaigns based on their actual margin. Like I got that into the Google Merchant Center, figured out how to, you know, break these out with this custom categories, and all that stuff, custom labels. And now, what we've seen is that though, our revenue has remained pretty constant, our profit is jumped up to x, just because we stopped bidding on products that had a 10% margin and started bidding much more on products that had a 50% margin. And that's something that I really think we need to be adding as consultants and marketers, internally or externally is like, we have to be willing to go kind of jump into that that data and be like, how do we make this work for the entire company? Because otherwise, year over year, it's going to be hard to justify right? You're going to look at the numbers and be like, Oh, it's it's probably it's probably harder than it was last year.
Neal Schaffer:Right? I guess that's part of the problem is, you know, Google Analytics will report sales, but not necessarily profits. So requires the consultant to do a little bit more hard work. And I guess, in that aspect, you brought up a really interesting point at something I hear from a lot of my own clients, which is the attribution, which normally Facebook is showing, you know, way more sales than what shows up in Google Analytics, and then you got Shopify, and just, you know, these these multiple touchpoints. And I know that Google Analytics has some capability to do that. What is sort of your when you work with clients, you know, with maple on the attribution of all this. How do you sort of put all that together?
Elijah Kirsch:Yeah, so it's tough and what's what's helpful about working with maple and clients is having someone else on my side to kind of push push these different ideas. Maples, a very analytical driven organization. You know, they vet everyone and I, they have clients who are, excuse me, consultants who get accepted, I believe it's only like one out of 20, they actually go look at the analytics and what people have done. Really, really impressive stuff. So when I'm working with a client, I'm working with maple, you know, we need to show them all the data. And I think it's also important to understand who your client is, which is, some clients don't like data, right? If you're working with a brand marketer, like you have to think very differently about how you're presenting than if it's someone who's a performance marketer and running you as a as an agency and client. And that's, that's hard to do. And so what we do is we, you know, we show each platform, we show how Shopify is doing the show Google Analytics is doing with show how Facebook's doing, we explained the explain the issues, one issue that I was very surprised started coming up. If you know, for Facebook, the top event is supposed to always record data. But Facebook is guesstimating, that event a lot more than I thought. And I can tell it's happening because I can compare this fluctuations in Google Analytics and Facebook, as they come up. So like, obviously, they shouldn't match exactly. But the swings are huge. And you can kind of see Facebook estimating those. So it's about showing those different ones. If we're working with a very analytical client, we can put together some sort of attribution model, like, what can we say on the back end, like, Okay, we think Facebook is worth about point seven of what it's showing and start to kind of do those all on the back end, my favorite thing side note to say to a CEO, or head of marketing, who's really pushing for this and be like, Hey, we really need analytics, we really need this data. Like, we got to get it. I'm like, Okay, this is actually super easy to do. It's super easy. They're always like, Oh, wait, how's it so easy, like turn the channel off, turn the channel off for 30 days, we will know exactly what the difference is. And then they usually gawk at that. So how do we work around that? How do you create those separate landing pages, right with offers, that's something else that I've been testing recently, which is actually having a Facebook ad that tells them to go to a landing page slash offer seven, or whatever it may be, to see, to try to match that up and try to figure out how many people are going without clicking. Because you send a click, you send a click somewhere else. So you start to like realize, like how many people are actually interacting with this ad, and not clicking on it, which can always be interesting.
Neal Schaffer:As for like this case, study, I remember the early days of Facebook ads, where someone was just posting, it was like an SEO agency in Phoenix. And they were just posting some obnoxious, irrelevant visual, with the name of the company, they knew that no one was going to click on the ad. But they just sent it out so much and got some visibility, I started getting phone calls a few months later, like I see your ad everywhere. So that notion of of really using ad platforms to experiment in many different ways. And I guess that leads in sort of the next topic, which is, you know, measuring ROI through a variety of AV testing methods. And I'm sure the average marketer has done their share of AV testing. I'm curious as to what are your favorite AV testing methods? Well, I guess what is possible with AV testing to prove the ROI?
Elijah Kirsch:Yeah, for sure. So some of these will be similar to what we kind of talked about as they they start to overlap, but I'll get out a couple. So one, don't underestimate a B testing tool for Facebook. Google has one for search, it's not nearly as strong, because they've limited and it's not available for some of their platforms. But it is interesting, you can play around with those stuff. That what we're just talking about is very similar to it and part of the reason that leads into it so well, which is what I was suggesting as far as saying company comm slash offer seven is how traditional banner banner not display banner, not internet banner, but like, outdoor banner, right? Yeah. Actually, magazines ads. Yeah, exactly. And so we already, especially if you're in a big organization, you might already have some data to be able to utilize and kind of go back and find and help include in your AB test as you kind of show different ads and see where they're going. You might have some estimates as far as like, hey, if a person sees an outdoor banner ad we expect this many people like so those are some interesting aspects. The on off I love I love it for small channels and I love it for new channels when you're creating unique landing pages to send people to especially, especially YouTube is probably a better example than Facebook to do this since very few people click through on YouTube there. It really is kind of a reminder, an upper funnel, but having those different, those different landing pages there too. And then what would be the last one that I like to play around with? Oh, I'll bring it up again, which is the the display ads with a showing a fake ad, that that, to me is something that clients can kind of really wrap their heads around once they see that data and what it what happens to it, even just changing how your remarketing looks, can be very useful. Looking at a certain client, I saw that 95% of people were converting within three days after after coming to the website. So one AV test I did is took this was on Facebook, I removed three days. So basically, I said, remarketing to everybody and then remarketing to everybody, excluding people who have seen the website in the last three days, the CP, CP eyes are actually CPAs on this, this case doubled. So you know, from what it looked like, the costs were significantly higher, but we actually didn't lose any, any any purchases, like they were exactly the same. So that allowed us to kind of move this budget around saying, hey, these people are going to get caught by email, these people are going to come back because of DirectX. We don't need to, you know, just take credit for that on our end, we're happy to show that credit. So those are probably the four four main ways where I start to look at that.
Neal Schaffer:Very cool. So you really got to think outside of the box. And I hopefully none of my listeners are still pressing that stupid boost button. And obviously, you can't do anything that we talked about. But really thinking holistically about this is, is going to give you the best results. What about and maybe you've already talked about this, but when we were preparing for the interview, you were you're talking about these hidden ROI measurements that are in your data. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Elijah Kirsch:Yeah, for sure. So, um, there's a lot of things that exist, that you might not be thinking of immediately. And so a little bit of thinking outside of the box. So the first one is, and the easiest, in my opinion is the these profit and margin data, especially if you're working on something like Google Shopping or now or soon performance Max campaign. So we are going to, you can completely change how a company works and operates by understanding that data, it takes a lot more effort. And it's, it takes time. And it takes understanding. And it takes setting setting all this stuff up. But I find it extremely, extremely helpful. Another one is how are you really setting up and automating automating your your reports and dashboards. One thing when I was in house, what would bug me the most is clients or when I had an agency and something broke, like let's say the pixel broke, like it's not the end of the world, yet, we're still getting those purchases. But like, it shouldn't take three days to notice. And I could tell clients just weren't looking at these weren't looking every day, which you don't need to make changes every day. We all know that at this point, but you should at least be looking every day. So I set up a ton of automated Supermetrics reports. Supermetrics great for automating data into Google Data Studio and Google Sheets. By the way, there are other great clients out there, that's a very cost effective one. And make sure that I'm seeing it every single day and where kind of those those numbers are appearing and where they're coming from. And that helps me notice it as it comes out. And notice if anything breaks, I can look check every morning. Okay, it looks good moving on. And I don't have to log into a platform, Google and Facebook and tick tock if I'm doing all three of those, I can just see it in one area, which is very nice. And then working with maple and their analytical teams again, the ability to kind of work with people to have different ideas and different testing methodologies I find very helpful. So what are these weird and random audiences that you might not be thinking of? That exists in your data that you can notice? Either by pulling some demographic data? Either by pulling some what other ones could you have some location data, you could probably start to see some of these audiences. So if you find people you know, I love barbecue, I love I love Texas barbecue, it tends to be more of a southern thing. So if there is you know, swimsuits and you're in the summer, like targeting an interest like that, though, it might seem completely out of nowhere might hit those right people because they tend to be in a in a different low different location as far as like what food they they kind of like. So using those types of analyses, like I found some very weird and very interesting data. So yeah, that's, that's what I what I learned from growing up in in Virginia and one two random ideas that I did not think would work, and then worked out well.
Neal Schaffer:It's really fascinating to hear you speak because we tend to think of digital marketing ads as being a very geeky, data driven, heavy on the analytics, sort of, you know, craft and science. But there's also that art side of it, which we've talked a lot about a really thinking of these of connecting these data points that probably most people don't think of. And I think it's also something we need to have experience. And as humans, you have a team behind you, if if you only have one person doing this for you, then they're limited by their own one person experience. Whereas as part of a team, and obviously yourself having a decade of experience, that's a that's a lot to pull from. So we talked a lot about maple. So I guess people may be wondering, what what the heck is this maple? So maybe we should, before we finish, just, you know, talk a little bit about because they are a very, very unique organization. And I know that you work with them, I've worked with them as well. So how would you sort of describe them to our listener?
Elijah Kirsch:Yeah, for sure. So if you're a consultant, they're a great platform to help you find clients. I started working with them, maybe a year and a half ago now. And it definitely helped me accelerate my business and also gave me a lot of support, to understand, you know, coming in helping clients in different ways, making suggestions, having someone else to push, push us forwards for the right way. And then if you're, you know, your brand, they have vetted experts what you know, I tend to work in like the apparel, real estate, healthcare areas, and you've heard me mentioned, like health care clients, so got matched with a health care client, we started working together. And I already had an understanding of what what he was going through what they were going through. So they're great. And that way, you know, right? Now, the system's kind of tough right to find, find everybody. Maples, a new experience. They're the future of like hiring marketing talent that's flexible, trustworthy, transparent. And you can kind of always go in and know exactly what you're getting. Whereas, at least from the brand side, I experienced this a couple times is, you know, some promises are made, but they, you just you just don't know who you're working with, until until you work with them for a while. So they help with that they help alleviate that a lot from from the brand side. So works works out for both sides. Yeah, there's sort
Neal Schaffer:of an agency of experience experienced consultants with a vetted with a vetting system and a best practices in standard operating procedures. I'm trying to think of like the combination of things, but they are really, really unique presence in the market, aren't they?
Elijah Kirsch:Yeah, they are. And some of the things that I was mentioning, they they also, they also work on that they have some very good analytical people, as far as analytical dashboards for the clients to make sure that they share. They actually have automated reports that both me and the clients get that say, Hey, last week budget was this spend was this, you know, we're on pace, we're not on this. So it takes some of some of the work off of off of the market, or also, because you don't have to put everything together. So can be very helpful in that way.
Neal Schaffer:Yeah. So needless to say, As you could hear from what Elijah was saying, this is a very, very complex science and art. And if you've been trying to do it yourself, it's one thing but if you really want to get results, and you're spending a lot of money on this, you'll want to work with a team of experts. And that's where you should definitely, you know, reach out to Maple, we'll we'll put a link in the show notes, as well as you know, allows you to your own company. But But yeah, I encourage everyone and Maple is not just paid social and paid digital. They do other things as well. But definitely when I have clients that are looking to work with an agency, especially if they're an E commerce, I will, you know, undoubtedly introducing the maple because they're just going to get better served that way.
Elijah Kirsch:Yeah, for sure. Love. I love working with them. I've worked with many clients through maple. So been a great experience.
Neal Schaffer:Cool. So Elijah, I mean, we covered a lot is there anything, any other advice you want to give the the entrepreneur, the marketer, that's, that's listening to this podcast, about, you know, about digital advertising, what they can, what they should be doing or what they can be looking forward to in the next year or two?
Elijah Kirsch:Yeah, the last thing I'll close out with because we didn't talk a lot about it. I love the analytics. That's where I stay. I love to dive into that. Two years ago, you could do drop shipping with a mediocre creative on Facebook, you can't have mediocre, mediocre creatives anymore. They have to be on point. You have to you have to be working with people. You have to be integrated into that brand team. You want to be given them advice, obviously, you know, in a positive way, but that's getting way way more important than it used to be. So though we talked a lot about analytics, don't undercut that like any any agency any team is going need someone who can really think about that and put some put some power behind testing some some creatives and making them look good on YouTube and Facebook and Tik Tok even more so now, out of curiosity
Neal Schaffer:on that point, because I tend to talk a lot about influencer marketing on this podcast, I've seen an uptake and brands are leveraging user generated content, whether it comes from influence or not, but but leveraging user generated content for their creative and if so, is it performing better or worse?
Elijah Kirsch:Um, I would say it's a little bit of an uptick, honestly, I feel like it was more in the last year when brands really started to kind of do that in a much more over the last little bit, it probably hasn't been a huge jump. I find it to be it took to it for it to depend. I think there's any quality to it. Very rarely do I walk in and see a client and say, Hey, like the only thing they're doing is influencer, usually like it's happened fluence or in half something else, whether that's like a nice a premade video that they puts effort in or like just some, some nice images. But But usually, like the influencer is taken up. Probably half if you're not a huge brand, like I'm kind of excluding huge brands, which, which kind of do their own thing. But if you're a small medium brand, I'm seeing that as like half especially in the E commerce, e commerce world for sure.
Neal Schaffer:That's great advice, my friends. So just to end things out. If people want to, you know, connect with you find out more about you and your business. Where can they find you?
Elijah Kirsch:Yeah, so zonder.io that was more interesting. than.com I guess. Find me there elijah@zonder.io For my email address, happy to happy to chat also Elijah Kirsch on LinkedIn search Rozonda. You'll, you'll probably find me there. So yeah, happy to happy to communicate with anybody. And if anyone thinks I'm wrong, I'd love to talk to you even more, like discuss it offer anything that I've said. So
Neal Schaffer:yeah, we could have geeked out about this, like all they had seems. But as you know, we like to keep these podcasts sort of short and sweet. So thank you so much for your time. I know it was incredibly beneficial to myself, as well as the listeners. And yeah, I hope to, you know, be in touch in maybe a year from now we'll have you back on and see how everything with Google's changes how everything maps out.
Elijah Kirsch:I would love to I would love to great. Great to be here. And thank you for having me do.
Neal Schaffer:Awesome. Thanks, man. All right, I hope you really enjoyed that interview as much as I did, it's time to do a reset on how you look at your digital advertising, and tweak things. Using some of the methods that Elijah recommended, I think you're gonna see major impact, major increases in your ROI going forward. And this is only the beginning these efforts for privacy. But you know, we're not going to turn back the clock, you know, Ukraine's not becoming part of USSR, it's an independent country. And those days of being able to access just lots of data. Utilizing these platforms, those days are coming to an end pretty quickly. So you need to readjust. And hopefully this podcast in this episode will help you do so if you need ongoing help with your digital and social media marketing. Obviously, in case you don't know, I have a mastermind community where we meet once a week on Zoom calls, and I'm doing my best as well as other experts in our community to handhold. And really help each of our members, hold them accountable. And really make sure that week by week, they are making progress on their business, leveraging digital and social media marketing as their strategic engine. It's called the Digital First mastermind community, you can go to Neal schaffer.com/membership, to get all the details and to subscribe to the service, or I should say to the community, right there. Alright, everybody. As always, I really appreciate all of the reviews that all of you have. Well, many of you, I don't think it's all of you looking at my telephone numbers, but that many of you have taken a minute out of your busy day, it would really mean a lot to me. If you haven't just go into your favorite podcast player, and just leave a real simple review of this podcast. If you find it helpful to expose it to others reviews are part of the algorithm that every podcast player uses to introduce new shows to their listeners. And I hope that this podcast is worthy enough to be shareable and to be recommendable. And obviously, if you're new here, make sure you hit that subscribe button. And if you're already subscribed, keep tuned. Lots of great episodes in the pipeline. And until next time, everybody. This is your digital marketing coach Neal Schaffer signing out. You've been listening to your digital marketing coach, questions, comments, requests, links, go to podcast dot Neal schaffer.com. Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes and Neal schaffer.com to tap into the 400 Plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's Digital First group coaching membership community he Have you or your business needs a little helping hand See you next time on your digital marketing coach