B (2:22)

But I'm the host. The host is the most is. Yeah, I mean I know that like We've been talking about like the funnel and how, you know, consumers aren't ducks anymore. Like following in a line that say, I'm only going to do this and this and this because you told me to only click on this one button. So I think we should talk about the goodness of funnels and goodness of funnels. Okay, the crisis of funnels. How did they.

A (2:45)

Is the funnel as we know it dead? Or what does full funnel actually really mean when people say, oh, full funnel.

B (2:52)

I have a full funnel situation. I think in that is that you're accommodating someone across the different levels of the problem and solution awareness stage. So just as we had talked about how like coming at people from different angles, providing them information for where they are. I think that is a component of the full funnel, but not the only thing.

A (3:13)

It's interesting that so much focus on the funnel and how a funnel or the customer experience or whatever it is that you want to call it, the customer journey is so focused on just the front end, which is the ads, the advertising, the SEO, the email, the

B (3:30)

destination you take them to, the thing

A (3:32)

that gets the click, when in fact it really is. It's everything. It's all together. I mean they always say 50% of the effectiveness of all your advertising is everything after the click. But probably 50% is probably undervaluing the rest of the actual equation.

B (3:47)

I would argue that more than 50% is of your advertising's effort is solidified by the after click experience. But I think right. I mean it's hardly. I'm always going to lean more towards meta or even like Amazon ads. The before the click power of comments and reviews that has a lasting impact that I think people often neglect. And where I see that is when I look inside of ad accounts and I'm looking at ads that are generating a lot of comments and they're having like these terminal types of responses. So I'm counting this as like the full funnel experience can be like meeting the consumer with the information that they need wherever they are in relationship to your brand and your solution. But I think there's more to it because it's, it's over delivering for the consumer what they're not even thinking about needing. So yes, it's providing information, but it's also showing up to them and being visible to them about what your brand represents. And where I see that the most is like within comments on ads and what I don't like. And if you're listening to this and you have someone on your team that responds to comments. Amazing. Good start for having someone. What I would invite you to have them or encourage them to do is not reply in terminal comments. So like it's you say, hey, this is an amazing iPad. I love this. And my reply in a terminal faction would be thanks, don't thank me, let's continue the conversation. Social media is social first. So when you're not continuing the conversation, you're just stopping it. Like, appreciate those words. Oh, have a great day. No, don't tell me have a great day. Tell me how to get deeper involved in your brand. So if you're like, hey, this is a great iPad, I love this. Like, oh yeah, we've been using it for four years. It's actually won these three awards. What are you using your iPad for? Or if Engagement. Engagement. Like, but it's engagement back. Because when Elon Musk released the algorithm numbers as it pertains to X point scoring. So if you had a tweet and you had a comment, you had a follow, you had all these things, he published it, what you get from the algorithm. So I've used that and assumed it's somewhat similar because I mean all those companies just borrow people. It's very incestuous with coders.

A (5:56)

They all sort borrow the same kind of algorithm and changes the exception to that, I think TikTok kind of changed it forever.

B (6:02)

Well that came from a different location. So with that kind of component where you have like such a terminal step, you're ceasing the conversation from continuing. And I think conversations lead to conversions. And there was a statistic I saw that 85% of people are not going to leave comments. So the 15% of people that are and you don't respond to them, you don't engage with them, you don't extract more from it, you're missing out on the opportunity for that person to learn more. But you're also missing out on the 85% that would be creeping. So that's a before the click one that I think has an impact that's like a silent impact that no one talks about.

A (6:33)

You said 15%.

B (6:34)

The statistic I found and it was in meta, something that they sent. But only 15% of people engage in comments. That means for me 85% are voyeurs. They're wanting to see it even higher.

A (6:45)

Like just off the top of my head, I would higher.

B (6:47)

Like more than 85% and less than

A (6:48)

15, it would be higher than 85%. Hey, one of the reasons why you're probably listening to this show is because you're trying to figure out how to finally scale and grow your business. And if you've been a longtime listener here, you understand that a lot of the things that we talk about are because we've tested them and done these exact strategies, including creative diversification, all the Andromeda changes, all the stuff we talk about with Google, with social, with email, website conversion, CRO, all of that stuff. If you're listening to this show, you're probably wanting some kind of deeper level of understanding of what does this all mean to you. Well, we want to prove that to you by giving away three of our $10,000 deep dive audits. In that audit, we'll look at your creative, your media buying, your campaign structure, your website, your actual business metrics, including all the NPIs that we talk about on the show all the time, to discover where the gaps are and why your growth has stalled. Now, this isn't one of those AI audits that's automated. This takes our team about two weeks to put together and it's so comprehensive, it blows away customers like this. So here's the catch. We only have three spots to give away here. So head on over to tier11.com audit to claim your spot right now. Fill out the form and, and let's see how we can scale and grow your business in the coming year.

B (8:18)

I would agree, but I'm, I'm those commenters. I'm the person that leaves reviews one stars or five stars. I don't say anything when it's three, but when something is great, I leave a review when it's not.

A (8:27)

Sorry, you don't or you do?

B (8:30)

I, I do. When it's. I try not to leave a bad review, but when I'm leaving a bad review, I'm, I'm being consistent and I leave more, way more five star reviews than one star. But when there's one star and they could not rectify a situation or something was bad, I'm talking about like ruining a 400 coat.

A (8:47)

So we're talking about engagement, having a social team or you like, how does, how does somebody approach this? If they say they don't have the time to be able to engage.

B (8:58)

So you don't want sales or you

A (8:59)

should have somebody on your team.

B (9:00)

It's a sales position. Your salesperson should be doing it. DMs are sales, comments are sales. Comments on ads are sales. I like, literally, I invite anyone who's looking. Check out the comments on your ads. Most of the time when people are leaving comments, it's because they're interested in the actual product, they're raising their hand. I've seen, I go into accounts and I audit them and I see, hey, do you have a location near me? Hey, do you ship to this state? Hey, does this work with my current medicine?

A (9:25)

They're asking questions.

B (9:27)

Oh, oh, my God. That's the worst. And the reply is, it's on our website. Oh, I want to slap someone in the face. We need to handhold these individuals. They just said, I don't know where to buy this. We have to assume sometimes people don't follow directions, and so we want to give them nice directions.

A (9:42)

There's a link as to where you

B (9:44)

can actually buy a link is a great solution. Or if there's like, whatever that process looks like. A lot of products that we have, that we have worked with have customizable elements. So say you're doing a custom jewelry or say you're doing a custom piece, like you're doing a tailor and you're trying to figure out which jumpsuit it is. If you have 2000 plus SKUs and you're in the fashion space sending them a link without knowing or understanding what they're looking for, it's. It's like someone coming into your store. Think of the brick and mortar space and saying, hey, can I get help? And then there's no one on staff.

A (10:12)

It's unbelievable to me. And I think, I mean, we're all guilty of it sometimes. I mean, yeah, yeah, stuff gets in the way, we get busy, et cetera, et cetera. So, I mean, there is that a busy business. Owners, like, they're doing other things. They think it's the last thing in the world that they want to do. However, if you do have a sales team, you have a dedicated time every single. Like I actually have time every single week where I go in and actually respond to comments. Now, if you're watching this right now and I haven't responded to one of your comments, I might be a little bit behind this week.

B (10:40)

You're human.

A (10:41)

The point is, is that we dedicate time specifically to that because it is a sales indication. It's engagement. It's. In an ideal world, probably my sales executive should be coming in edr.

B (10:54)

Like I say sdr, it's a social center.

A (10:56)

Questions are a little bit more technical. So I end up answering those questions because.

B (11:01)

But that's. That's an escalation thing. Like I would say we. We call it a social setter because if it's high ticket, it's like, I'M trying to figure out if you're interested in getting on a phone call. Right. So if you're like, hey, yeah, this sounds good. I'm like a setter that's like trying to get you to get on the phone. I'm trying to get your appointment booked.

A (11:16)

I think the big point to this is that it used to be try to get everybody off of social and onto your sites. That was the goal. Like we're sort of old school marketers and the fact that you just want to get the click, get them off the site, not do a lot of the selling on the site and then the website does the selling. I think that trend has completely reversed because as John and I have said many times in some of our ad Lab lives, it's like we're a bunch of wally fat people. Like we just, we just want stuff coming to us and just to be able to touch screens. I don't want to have to click, I don't have to put in my email, my phone number. I don't want to do any of that. I want everything to auto populate.

B (11:57)

Yeah.

A (11:57)

So a lot of the experience is really has gone online and to your point, comments I think are really one of the under the seemingly undervalued and overlooked resource that I know a lot of businesses neglect.

B (12:10)

Yeah.

A (12:11)

And then when we. When the same thing that we see is like when we are looking at an audit in the first couple of stages of our onboarding process. I believe like the second, this is not the second or the third stage of our onboarding is examining all the pages, all the social content pages and looking at. And then actually using an AI tool to pull in comments through the API that then creates ideas for ads, consumer insights. Yeah, like Claude Cowork does this by the way. Like there's AI tools out there that are enabled to that. But yes, we use that for ads and for messaging and for all that stuff. However, what we find more often than not in that stage is that most of the comments are. There's no response. Wait. My marketing manager finally convinced me to run a wild experiment in this episode because we want to prove what the conversion engine can do for your brand. We are giving away three of our $10,000 deep dive audits for free. Free. We're going to look at your creative, your media buying, your actual business metrics to find exactly where your growth is stalled. This is two weeks of our best work, but we only have three spots. So go to tier11.com audit right now. Fill out the form and let's see how we can scale your business whatsoever. There's no.

B (13:38)

Oh, I hate. If you're going to ask people to come into your store and be invited to learn about your product or service and then you're going to ignore them. It's like I invited you to a party but I didn't give you the address.

A (13:47)

Yeah.

B (13:48)

Rude.

A (13:49)

It's. It is, it's such a simple thing but it. And it can be resolved. I think it's really, it's just a matter of dedicating time to it. And I do think that oftentimes like the busy business owners that I talk to are directors of marketing. They just like they have other things, they have other priorities.

B (14:06)

But, but you can use AI tools like there are AI tools to do the responses and you can. It's potty time.

A (14:14)

Or you just allocate time to it. Because I think that the downfall of it oftentimes is that when you go on social for express purpose of doing

B (14:25)

comments like oh, you get distracted.

A (14:27)

You get completely distracted. So the way that I do it, for example, like inside the YouTube back end, for example like to answer our YouTube comments, there is by video, there is comments and you can actually click on a number. So you're not getting distracted by being on YouTube but all you're really doing is you're going in there for a job which is click on that comment and then you can actually answer the comment right on the back end of your YouTube so you don't get distracted by oh, look at that video. Because YouTube like for me it's like guitar videos and you know, it's baseball videos sucked in algorithm. All of a sudden I'm like where the hell the last 45 minutes go. I was just. Guy came in. What did I come in here to do? To answer comments for sure. So I think that's the, that's the problem. I think with a lot of the reason why I don't go on TikTok for sure. Examples. Cuz they have me so dialed in like I'll never get off.

B (15:18)

Yeah.

A (15:18)

You know, I'll never leave because it's so addictive.

B (15:21)

Yeah.

A (15:21)

So but if there is a way where you can discipline yourself to answer those comments, YouTube is as a great platform for that. You know we also do. We have. My social team does it for Facebook and for instagram but on YouTube specifically that is a great.

B (15:35)

Your team covers the comment responses for your clients.

A (15:39)

No, for us.

B (15:40)

Okay. I was like I never do that. I. I tell clients like they're like, what do you mean you don't cover comments? I'm like, that's a sales or customer service job. Every comment is either a customer service inquiry or a sales inquiry. I've never seen it be either or. And don't outsource your. Yeah, customer service sells.

A (15:57)

No. As if it's something you can really outsource. You really do have to have an internal team to be able to do it. Like, we do do the social media marketing for a lot of our clients, but we don't do.

B (16:05)

But still you, you create the content. Yes, that's content marketing. That's not. It's not customer service and it's not sales. And like you can outsource it to. To someone that. That's what they do. I just, I wouldn't put that on your performance marketing team because the other thing too is like someone who's in sales could be way more aggressive versus conversational. So that's why I like it being an internal person. We used to do it, we don't do it anymore. I know. Again, it's resourcing. We use high level. That's our CRM. And so we have in the conversations that can allocate all. But I think a lot of it is people neglect it and there are software solutions out there. If you are someone who's like a distracted David. Yeah, absolutely.

A (16:43)

Do you have any tools you can think of off the top of your head that might help people with this issue? This is totally overlooked. It's undervalued and like you said, it is a sales conversation.

B (16:54)

And there's a piece of the funnel.

A (16:56)

Yeah, it's a piece of the funnel. And we'll get into the other pieces of funnel in subsequent episodes here. But I think this is a really good one.

B (17:01)

I think like, so we use high level because that's where our CRM is. HubSpot might have some solutions that you can do depending on what degree you're in, but there's hootsuite, there's. We use this one called Not Looker, but it was a loomer or something like that. We use that for a while. But social media scheduling apps generally have a place that you can crawl it. What I like. Oh, gorgeous. Great solution because you can fill in other locations and you have that back end and you can put in emails for years.

A (17:28)

Yeah, Huddler is another one.

B (17:30)

Oh, I've never used it, so I can't speak to it.

A (17:32)

But I've heard of it automated. Then you can also answer comments in there.

B (17:35)

As well. And Gorgeous is like I think $100 a month. So it's on the higher up end, but it has the most integrations and is set up well. If you're doing an AI bot solution like manychat allows you to do it, Chatbot Builder allows you to do it. Manychat, you can start at $15 a month and you can cycle in all your stuff if you're trying to avoid that item. But I definitely lean into what software do you currently have before buying a new software for learning. Anyone check your tech stack and then

A (18:02)

chat GPT at Gemini. Claude, cowork it. I just figured out that one. I think that's probably your best resource. Like, here's my CRM. How do I best respond to comments?

B (18:12)

What's here's my tech stack? Like, yeah, I'd say here's my tech stack. Are any of the tools I already

A (18:16)

pay help me understand or give me a solution that will allow me to respond to comments and engage with people who have commented on my social posts.

B (18:23)

Yeah.

A (18:24)

Without me getting sucked in by social media. There's your prompt right there. Find that. All right. This is step one of the entire funnel. We're going to be getting into other overlooked aspects of the sales funnel because the sales funnel itself is really the old school way of doing things is

B (18:43)

your customers aren't ducks. They're not following your directions in a line. They are all over the place. You're in a store. You don't believe that your if you think your customers are still ducks that are just going to follow the one click upsell and only look at the rest of that and not be interested in anything on your website, you're wrong. Go into any store and look at people googling their stuff while they're trying to buy a product in store.

A (19:05)

All right. I like it when you run these podcasts. They're pretty good. They take us in a completely different direction. Commenting. Who would have thought? We didn't even come into this show today thinking we were going to talk about commenting. But anyway, a really good one. So how do you end the show?

B (19:18)

Thank you so much for joining my podcast. We're so happy to have you here. If you want to tune into other episodes, you can visit it perpetual traffic.com YouTube, especially if you want to watch them online and see our amazing setup inside of the Orlando library. Shout out to all libraries. Thanks so much for joining us on behalf of my amazing co host.

A (19:42)

See ya. Oh, ciao, ciao.

B (19:45)

Well done. All right, see ya.

A (19:47)

Bye.

B (19:50)

You've been listening to perpetual traffic, Sam.