Episode Description
Key Points:
- The Essence of First Spark Digital: Established in 2018, First Spark Digital has been at the forefront of driving B2B revenue growth through meticulous tracking, messaging, and paid media strategies.
- Challenges in B2B and B2C Marketing: Adam explores the nuanced differences and challenges in marketing across sectors, emphasizing the importance of data optimization and strategic flexibility.
- Economic Resilience: The discussion highlights strategies for weathering economic downturns, focusing on maintaining brand awareness and prioritizing lower-funnel activities.
- Evolution of the Buyer Journey: They delve into how the buyer journey has transformed, stressing the importance of trust-building and engaging potential buyers with diverse, interactive content.
- Pmax Campaign Success: Adam shares his experience with Google Pmax campaigns, revealing how a dual-campaign approach led to improved bidding control, detailed asset groups, and significant growth opportunities.
Summary:
In this episode, Adam Dolan, co-founder of First Spark Digital, examines the evolving challenges in B2B and B2C marketing. He underscores the importance of effective tracking and messaging, especially in tough economic climates. Adam also shares insights on leveraging Google Pmax campaigns, showcasing a successful case that highlights the benefits of personalized retargeting and prospecting strategies.
[Read the full transcript]
pharosIQ: Welcome, welcome, welcome to this week's episode of pharosIQ’s podcast, the podcast that is anything but pharosIQ’s podcast. Each week we jump in, talk to a B2B marketer, a little bit about marketing, what's going on, what the trends are, and obviously ending it with a little bit of inspo. Every marketer brings to the table. A story, a campaign, a really cool, non boring idea for you all of you to take inspiration from.
We've had a ton so far and really, really pumped today. We have Adam Dolan. Adam is the co founder of first spark digital. So we're happy to have him on here. Um, a digital marketing agency established in 2018, um, that excels in driving revenue through paid media. I'm sure everybody's really going to pay attention here, given that that there is some dark wizardry that happens around the paid media space right now.
He's managed over 20 million in ad spend at any given time. Um, and his team really has a great proven track record of aiding, uh, both emerging startups and, uh, established fortune 1000 brands. So Adam, welcome. Tell us a little bit more about first spark before we get going.
Adam Dolan: Thank you, pharosIQ. Uh, yeah. So first spark, as you said, started in 2018.
Uh, me and my co founder Mitch Correa started. Cause, uh, basically we were seeing opportunities in the paid media space and, uh, decided to kind of go in on that as a focus for the agency. So yeah, basically do B2B, B2C, uh, clients. Um, we have some e coms that are kind of like. Uh, some that we've had from the past that we just continue to roll with just because it's a good partnership, but yeah, the main, the primary focus on B2B, B2C brands and helping them grow.
So, um, we do that across all platforms, as you can imagine, uh, main are usually LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, do some Microsoft ads as well. We also do landing pages. We do, uh, content creation. So graphics video as well as UGC as well. And then we handle everything soup to nuts. So everything from tracking set up all the way through, uh, messaging, positioning, all that good stuff.
pharosIQ: You're hired set, but I know you mentioned B to C and B to B. You've had different roles both in your career. You manage different customers across both segments. Now, you know, a couple questions on that. Like, 1st, which do you prefer?
Adam Dolan: Hmm. Good question. B2B is more challenging. So I do like the challenge B2C though, is better for testing and learning because as you'd imagine, B2C, the cycles are, you know, cell times are shorter so I can learn faster and test more client can see results faster.
So we don't have a six month lead cycle, uh, from, you know, a sales pipeline from opportunity all the way to close. So that usually helps almost like a positive, uh, feedback loop and flywheel for brands. So usually B2C. scale a bit faster, sooner, sooner, higher, and then B2B a little bit more of that kind of like, you know, ground game, but there is, there's, there's fun there just because it's a harder, harder one to win.
And, and, uh, once you do get the big ones, usually they're a lot bigger on a value scale. So that's always good. So I guess, yeah, it kind of goes both ways. There's, there's some fun on both sides. Uh, B2C, I would say is a little bit easier. But, uh, overall, uh, kind of enjoy them both the challenges of both.
pharosIQ: Yeah. I mean, just search volumes, volume of traffic, volume of transactions, you know, it's hard to be, it makes it so hard to test and measure. Right. I mean, yeah, in some cases I was talking to, talking to another colleague about like, why, why Yelp works so well in the B2B space. But, you know, the, The review sites for for B2B have been, you know, like slower to jump off than versus the business.
And for me, I was like, it's just the number of transactions, like, you know, 100, 000, 000, 000 people eat dinner a year, right? If even if a small, a small, a, Fraction of a fraction of a percent writer review. You have hundreds of thousands of reviews where it's some B2B software spaces, maybe a couple thousand people by a year, right?
So the amount of engagement and reviews to drive like the true, it's just tough. And I would assume it's very similar and paid, you know, or in some cases your search traffic is thousands, not even hundreds of thousands.
Adam Dolan: Yep. Yeah. And so it's, it's that game of going, okay, when we have such a small sample size of data.
How do we optimize, right? And like, what are we looking at for signals to then optimize on? And so you're just working with a much smaller data set. So it is, as you said, it's just like a harder game to play and you kind of got to be like in the weeds, taking shots based on the minimal data you have versus B2C where you have, uh, Pretty much good, you know, statistical relevance for tests that you're running or anything that you're doing on the, on the platforms.
pharosIQ: So help me out here. Right. Given that this is your expertise, right? Like why is paid, why is paid search and PPC? Why is it so difficult? You know, my I've, I've, I don't want to say I've been a CMO, but I've kind of like ran marketing and smaller shops with a CMO. And obviously like, I'm always having the discussion with my team, where it seems like.
They speak with Google like it's almost like a person. Like it has emotions, right? Like we don't want to pull the spend down because Google could get mad at us, right? Like, yeah, are they just, are they just fucking with me? Or like, is this really a thing?
Adam Dolan: I know. I mean, it is, it's like a temperamental child.
I think we were talking about before we jumped on. Right. And you know, it's like you take the candy away, meaning you reduce budget or you pause and You know, because everything's based on the algorithms and the machine learning and the data that it's gathering that will have an outsize impact. So generally, you know, any change as they say below or above 20% is going to have an effect on the algorithm.
Pausing it will most likely restart everything for you. So generally, if, you know, we had a client who like wants to, you know, slow down during this December or November. We'll then like reduce budget, but never really pause because the idea is like, let's keep it running even at a slower pace, just because we don't want to basically upset the algorithm, which is like funny to say, but it's, I mean, there is validity to it just because of how much the platform depends on this, especially when you're running automated bidding strategies like max conversion or target CPA or target ROAS.
That's using all that data to then make decisions. So yeah, generally it is a temperamental child that you have to kind of deal with. And unfortunately they are, they have some truth to that.
pharosIQ: Did it get more temperamental with GT four? I'm hearing quite a bit, quite a lot of, quite a lot of negativity, if you will, from the marketing space about this new Google, you know, Google analytics platform and it's, you know, and what, what has your, what has your experience been there?
Adam Dolan: So generally for that, we just stay away from that as a conversion tracking, um, like facilitator. We just use the Google ads tag through Google tag manager and let Google basically report one to one analytics generally can give you more. And like, I know that they haven't, they've included some more, uh, things that make it a little bit closer, but generally we have GA four as like secondary tracking just for, you know, okay.
Backup. And then the main one is the Google ads tag. Cause that's just going to give you the best results.
pharosIQ: Interesting. That's fascinating. I mean, I just, I, I'm on LinkedIn a bit and it's always that, you know, I see a lot of that from that. So like down economy, right? How does your strategy change for your customers when, you know, I mean, obviously like search traffic is down a lot of stats, you know, less buyers.
Just less overall budgets out there, especially in B2B. So how does your strategy change for your customers, if at all?
Adam Dolan: Yeah. Uh, yeah, no, that was, that was the big challenge of last year. Right. So everyone's pulling back budgets. Uh, everyone's now going from like this demand gen and just get, you know, awareness and focus on that too.
Well, no, actually, no, we need to show up for the results and get ROI like tomorrow kind of thing. So I think the idea was okay. If, uh, you know, executive leadership is, is a little less concerned about awareness right now, and they're more concerned about, uh, results. Okay. Then this is how we're going to shift ad spend between platforms, which is what we saw a lot of between LinkedIn and Google.
And then this is also what we're going to be doing in terms of like, all right, we're shifting our focus and we're shifting like the attention on lower down funnel activities. And those are going to be the, one of the primary things that we just focus on and drive to. So a lot of the, the brands, even if we're tracking for like opportunities, let's say a lot of them were just kind of going through and going, okay, if we had to cut the fat on a ton of stuff, like, you know, if you had to cut the fat on 50 percent of the budgets you're running, what would you like streamline down into?
And that was just going back until like the CRM looking at what's actually driving. Actual pipeline that's converting into like close one or even just ops. And then using that as a basis for like, all right, let's just like drill into these, we'll keep the other ones off for now, come back to those basically when budgets return and then the same thing on LinkedIn, like truly what's driving results.
And then I mean, much of the fighting and not fighting, but just much of the discussions during that time was like, You can't cut LinkedIn a hundred percent and go cold turkey and expect to have no impact on the rest of the, the, the funnel because it's, it's driving awareness. It's driving action. So a lot of that was trying to say, okay, like if you want to cut back, that's, you know, it's, we can do that, but just keep in mind that there's going to be an outsized impact on all their other channels when you're pulling back on these paid social channels, which have been doing a lot of the lifting.
Now, Google can do that obviously with YouTube. But a lot of the brands we're working with have more content that's more viable for, for LinkedIn and Facebook. And while YouTube is a great channel, they just doesn't have the targeting that LinkedIn has, right. To get that exact customer. So that was the kind of a balanced play of going like still keeping the brain awareness alive, because long term it's going to have the best impact, but also trying to hit those goals as a was required by, you know, executive leadership coming down on the, on the budgets.
pharosIQ: But do you think, I mean, I pretty common and it happens. Every couple of years, and it's happened a bunch in my 17 years of doing this, where there's a lot of talk about the buyer journey has changed, right? From your take, right? Um, has it?
Adam Dolan: Uh, I don't know. I feel like from what I'm seeing, I mean, you know, are there a few other steps in the way?
Maybe? I mean, I think it's generally how it's always been where someone's, Going through, they'll see some ads for a product they're not even thinking about. Maybe they see some organic content, uh, from them. Maybe they give them a follow. And then really it comes down to like the word of mouth. Like someone tried a product, they do a new CRM software, a new email platform.
They talk to somebody else. That person gave them, you know, the recommendation. They may like checked it out. Maybe they checked out some G2 reviews or Capterra just to be sure before purchase. But I think like overall, you know, it is, it goes back to like brain awareness. It's like, how did that first person who told the other person through word of mouth about it, like that person heard about it and took the shot.
On, you know, just checking out themselves after seeing it over and over and over again. I think about like the tools that we use and I think about my buying journey, it's probably all over the place. I'm probably like, I don't, I think the idea of it's like, and I think this has been like discussed. Ad nauseum on LinkedIn, but like, you know, this, this, this kind of like buyer, like, you know, buyer journey path that's well defined and has just a linear view to it, I think is just like, yeah, just maddening.
It's like, that's, it's great. That looks really good on a chart, you know, on a presentation, but it's just not how it is. Like, People jump between these things and even in e commerce, like if you want to buy something, you don't just go to the site, purchase you like, you know, you take, you might see something that's on an ad that's like a testimonial and you see something else that may be like something along on the emotional or the kind of like more reasoning, um, numbers based, something attracts you to it.
So that's where I think the idea is like, Yeah, you just have content that's fit that's hitting someone as they're these general buckets and not so much like down to the This linear path, but just trying to say like hey, here's what this product is. Here's why you might like it Here's what people have said about it.
Here's who how many people use it And then, Hey, let's, let's pull back the curtain and show you what it actually does. And so the more of the content that has like that, I think the more that you see more of a buyer journey going, like, okay, just show me the product. Like, let me play with it. Even if it's a demo, like the more things that people can just allow someone to actually use it, then the better off they're going to be in the shorter, I think you can make that journey overall.
pharosIQ: And I think it really, it's encompassed into two specific segments, right? Like information gathering, and then make me feel good about my purchase.
Adam Dolan: You're right.
pharosIQ: That's what I think the buyer journey has become, right? And historically, 15 years ago, a lot more of the information gathering was delivered by sales.
Right. Like marketing found the person like, Hey, this is our person. Right. And sales was like, okay, I got to educate that person to get them to the point where they're comfortable and then trustable. Whereas now most buyers just don't want the seller for that part of it. They just want to get information themselves.
Right. That's where the key difference is. But you know, I think the seller is still massively important. Right. And I think that's why PLG has struggled beyond a couple of very big use cases like Slack and Atlassian. Right. That's why the. He bowels and other companies who've tried product led growth failed.
Right. Because it's just expensive to it's easy to disseminate information, but so expensive to, to build trust without that reaction, right? Which I think is where sellers need to start focusing on on that side, right? When somebody gets on a call for a demo, it's not like, Hey, how can I, it's, it's how can I get them to feel good about the decision that they've likely already kind of made in their head?
Adam Dolan: Right. Or there, I think, Oh, sorry.
pharosIQ: No,
Adam Dolan: go ahead. And I think if you have like, it's like the tan, like, you know, they work in tandem. It's like, if someone can like experience the product and then they get on a phone call with somebody. Who then like makes them feel like you're saying, like that warm, the warm and fuzzies and like comfortable about that purchase or just even like using the product.
I think that's what it always needs, right? Even if you have a free trial, you should really have a demo. Someone following up with a demo right after that, right? So because someone's gonna get a free trial, I'm not gonna use it 7 day. Definitely not until you get on a phone, you know, until they get on a phone call.
And so the idea is like, oh, I've got a phone call coming up. Oh, I'll try the demo. So I actually have like played around with it and then I'll have my demo, more of a walkthrough and in depth. And I think to your point, like that white glove is still required, especially when we're talking about B2B. It's really hard to sell a product only on just the, you know, a free trial or whatever it is, especially when it's a more complex product.
pharosIQ: You know, B2C, I mean, I, I'm guilty of buying a lot of random shit on Tik TOK. I just
Adam Dolan: like
pharosIQ: those, like those little, like, uh, 3d printed egg dragons, right. I just buy it for my time until I bought her own 3d printer. And now she makes them herself do like, I like, but it's always a video that gets me right.
Like, show me using it. Right. Show me what. Like, that's what always gets me to go like, okay, and that, and like that, that quick. You know, just connect your Amazon account and hit go, right. That app, like those two things have changed my buying cycles as a, as a B2C person, tremendously, just being able to click two buttons and be like, and I bought something, there we go.
Adam Dolan: Yeah. I think some of the best ads we see are, we're doing like a problem solution. It's like, Oh, you have this problem. Let's show you what that looks like in platform and how you actually get the outcome that you're looking for. And so I think it's like going back to the idea of like, you know, Yeah, like all these businesses like can't be hiding their tools behind the demo that you have to pull back the curtain so that someone along the way can see what the experience will be like for them, even if there is no free trial.
So when they jump on the phone call, they are already primed right with the I think I can get what I want out of this. Now let's confirm it and get, you know, more comfortable. And that's, again, as you said, like what the salesperson's job is to do at that point is really like assure them that this is the right decision to be made.
pharosIQ: You have a little bit of an advantage because you've got multiple customers, multiple clients, B2B, B2C, but it's the, it's the big time, right? Tell us about a non pharosIQ’s podcast campaign that you've been involved with over your career. What, what was it? Why did you love it? Did it work? Give us the goods.
Adam Dolan: So I think, and it's, I wish I had a bigger one, but I think it's more of just like the changing of, of things on the platforms.
And, and we were talking about Google, so I'll go back to Google and I think. P max for lead gen for B2B is still kind of one of those things where folks are just like, doesn't work. Right. I don't, I don't think it's good for B2B. It's it's, it's all primarily for, for e comm. And I, I was convinced of that up to even six months ago, I was probably the same, saying the same things.
And then, so we launched basically a test with one of our brands. They, they have a demo request signup. So it's not a free trial, which. Add another layer of difficulty in terms of what I thought would be, would be, you know, worthwhile to test for PMAX. And then we went in with basically a strategy of, okay, we're gonna have two PMAX campaigns, one doing retargeting, one doing prospecting.
That way we can control, uh, essentially who's coming in, what, and then have more control over bidding and then just making more detailed asset groups. So instead of, I think previously folks were running just one asset group and that was kind of the recommendation of Google, but actually breaking them out.
So we're giving more shots and more angles, um, in those PMAX campaigns. Then we started running them, uh, into a pleasant surprise, proven wrong. P max started to outperform, not just, uh, you know, kind of just on a regular campaign, started to do better than our non-branded, and then pretty much just took over the account from a performance basis.
And it wasn't like we were looking at this going like, oh, great, this is all like, front end metrics look great. Cost per conversion. No, like when we actually look at like backend metrics, CRM in HubSpot, what's driving opportunities, P max was dominating and doing it at scale, so. From taking an account that wasn't really, I mean, was scaling, but like pretty slowly through, through just, you know, individual campaigns, uh, and then having these two kind of PMAX campaigns that, I mean, the spend went up six X from, from the start of that was kind of an eye opener into the, you know, potential that PMAX has for, for Legion.
And I know there's a ton of over, uh, attribution and there's a bunch of problems with PMAX. And I don't believe it's the, the silver bullet, anything by any means. There's Tons of problems with that, especially the fact that it's a black box and you can't really see much in it. Although there's plenty of people selling scripts out there that actually help you see more of the data, but which is very helpful, but overall, just, I think it kind of like shot a, uh, You know, a shot through my, my previous conception and really from a performance standpoint, took an account that was relatively slow and growth to like accelerating it massively over, over a short period of time, um, into something that I thought wasn't going to work, like demo requests, P max, like.
No way, man. Like this is, you know, this is, doesn't feel like a good fit. E com needs to be like that by cycle and that's where it works. So yeah, that was, that was kind of a, I wouldn't say massive, but just, you know, more recent top of mind thing that, uh, I've seen change. And I think hopefully is, is a change that, I mean, we're running it more, more and more accounts now.
Um, so it's, it's been kind of consistent there as well. So.
pharosIQ: I think it's awesome. I think what you're seeing right now is a lot of a lot of that challenging the status quo thinking, right? You know, especially, you know, looking at that B to C to B to B crossover things that, you
Adam Dolan: know,
pharosIQ: You know, when, when I don't want to say like, I mean, 2018 to 22 was so strong from an economic standpoint, there was just so much spent.
It was, it was just somewhat easy to capture road. It was, you pull it out. And now what you're seeing is a lot of, a lot of creative thinking because you have to, because it's just not a, it's just not an ATM anymore, from especially Sturridge standpoints. And I really love, that's a great idea. You know, I mean, taking, Any B2C concept and testing it for B2B, even if you think it's not going to work, right?
Or even, you know, challenging your own, you know, preconceptions of things that have not worked and just saying, Hey, you know what? This isn't supposed to work, but we're going to go for it either way. Cause I mean, again, that algorithm changes like that. The market. That right. The way buyers think is just, I mean, again, if I told you just the drastic difference in the markets between 2000, the end of 2022, and now it's, it's a completely different world that we live in, right?
Adam Dolan: So
pharosIQ: as a marketer, I think great, great takeaway here is that it's massively important to just try things that you've historically failed at and, you know, don't hold onto things that have historically been successful just because One way or the other awesome take. So that, I think, I think we're at our time.
It's been awesome. I think the time just flowed really, really specifically. And, you know, I, uh, would love to dive deeper, but I'm not a paid search expert. And, you know, once you start getting into the trenches, I just kind of lose you on that. I'm still the guy who looks at it and says like, is this shit real?
Like really? Google. I see the
Adam Dolan: same thing at times.
pharosIQ: Yeah. A ton of, a ton of knowledge here, guys. And anybody who's looking to, uh, to connect with you, Adam, how can they reach you, uh, most efficiently?
Adam Dolan: Uh, you can actually just reach out to me, Adam, at firstsparkdigital. com. Stop by the site. I'm also on LinkedIn.
If you want to throw a follow there and have a chat on, uh, on the messaging there.
pharosIQ: Well, thanks for joining. You know, those of you listening on your local favorite podcast, Station, if you will, or wherever it is that you listen to podcasts, feel free to go out, find us, give us five stars, give us some likes so we can pop up.
You know, there's a whole lot of thirst for B2B content right now, especially from podcast. And the more likes we have, the more we pop up for new users who could find us on that side. You can reach me at pharosIQ on LinkedIn. Tell your friends about pharosIQ’s podcast, share it on socials.
And, uh, we look forward to chatting with everybody soon. Thanks, Adam. Have a good one.
Adam Dolan: Thanks, pharosIQ. Appreciate the time.
Tags:
