DONE FOR YOU SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING
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Tips on done-for-you Social Media by Justin Hartzman
- At Needls we automatically create 50-500 ads in real-time, and then we do the entire process for you of the targeting of your users as well as the optimization of your ads.
- You have to have ads. It starts with creating the best ads, optimizing them. We’re looking for the variants that work the best.
- What’s exciting for us is taking our software as a service, which is a service right now advertising on Facebook and Instagram, and building out a full, automated platform for the full funnel for small and medium-sized business
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SHARE THIS EPISODE: DONE FOR YOU SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING
DONE FOR YOU SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING
At Needls we automatically create 50-500 #ads in real-time, and then we do the entire process for you of the targeting of your users as well as the optimization of your ads.
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Doug: Well welcome back, listeners, to another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast. Today in the studio I’ve got joining me a fellow Canadian, Justin Hartzman. He is the co-founder and CEO of the first ever RoboAgency, Needls. He focuses on democratizing effective social media marketing to generate true ROI, and for those that are listening, I’m sure we all want a return on investment for our social media efforts.
Justin is a serial entrepreneur. He understands what it takes to guide a startup from a concept to funding and to a multi-million dollar exit. As a motivated, hard-working and ambitious high-level thinker, Justin has a passion for business to inspire other startup teams and to let no obstacle stand in their way of success. As the co-founder and CEO of the first ever RoboAgency, Needls, Justin has identified and filled a desperate need for the understanding of SMBs to learn the entrepreneur mindset and quick thinking that positioned him as a leader in his space.
With multiple exits under his belt, he has built Needls into a scalable business from the ground up, securing millions in funding and expertly planning an exit strategy for the future. Coming from a long line of entrepreneurs and investors, from an early age Justin has worked in the retail in his family’s business. He’s risen up from managerial buying positions and then to lead pioneering position in several markets, an internet visionary, understanding the sales focus and team management, learning from others and what it takes to drive them.
Justin is an avid traveler and investor, a knowledge seeker, a family man, and a Scotch enthusiast, so I can agree with him. I would happily raise a glass of Scotch, happily hop on a plane or sit in an investment seminar with him. So, without further ado, I would like to welcome Justin to the Real Marketing Podcast.
Justin Hartzman: Well, Doug, thank you for having me. That was a real mouthful, so, I don’t know who wrote that on my team, but I think most of it’s true, and I’m glad that the world now knows everything about me.
Doug: Well, I mean, we talked a little bit before we got on the air and you said you don’t drink coffee, and so, this is what happens with somebody who does drink coffee. It’s more of a mouthful. I maybe should have had that glass of single malt or a blend and it would have gone a little bit more smoothly.
Justin Hartzman: That’s for sure. It would have calmed you down a little bit. But no, again, thanks for having me. Hope I can be of value today, offer some good insights to everyone here, and do my little part in the world of being useful, which is my personal mantra.
Doug: So, tell us, what is a RoboAgency?
Justin Hartzman: That’s a good question. A RoboAgency, as we see it, is an agency as you would know it, out there, a typical advertising marketing agency, but all done through automation. So, I can give you a couple of seconds on what we do here at Needls and how we employ that, and I think we’ll give a better understanding.
Doug: Sure.
Justin Hartzman: So, in six simple questions our users will fill out, we know who they are, who they want to sell to and what it is they want to sell, using a lot of different AI methods to do it. We automatically create for them 50-500 ads in real-time, and then we do the entire process for them, automated, again, of the targeting of their users, and I’ll talk about that in a second, as well as the optimization of their ads. So, where we really stand out as a company, being Needls, is we find their perfect user in a completely alternative method to how everyone else does it out there. And that’s by looking for intent to purchase within conversations on social media.
So, the AI piece, the main piece, and we use it all over the platform, I won’t go into every piece of that, you know, the making of the ads, building of them, the optimization, but where we really, really stand out is in the idea that we understand when someone says on Facebook, “My tooth hurts, what do I do?” That they need a dentist and we should show them an ad in real-time.
Going back to the original question of what a RoboAgency is, we are Robo because we are using artificial intelligence to do the entire process, but not only that, we don’t have to have human interaction in that entire process that I just told you about. We actually do that with three account managers over 1,500 customers on our platform, making us one of the largest digital agencies in the entire world based on customer count.
Doug: Wow. That’s amazing. So if I think about the traditional way of setting up an ad campaign, whether it’s on Facebook or Instagram or what the social media platform, I’m going to go in, I’m going to create an account, log in, put in all my payment information in, and then I’m going to start the whole process of my targeting. Who am I going to target? Geographically, age, income, education, interest, other pages they like. That’s the typical approach. Is that right?
Justin Hartzman: That’s right, but even before that, you need to understand the kind of ad that you want to run. I don’t just mean is it a video ad or a picture ad. We’re talking, what is the method that you’re going to look for? Is it about optimization? Is it about branding? Is it about conversion? And a lot of things are places that, while you might know if you really think about it, it becomes very overwhelming when the first question you’re answering has 12+ acronyms, of which none of them that you know. So, it’s a very complicated process. And as we see it here at Needls, or I do personally think of it as, if you’re an entrepreneur of a small business or a solopreneur, you know, 5-10 employees, you should be doing what you’re best at, which is probably your job and leaving some of the marketing stuff to the professionals out there. Especially when there are low-cost services with really high ROI that exist out there, particularly Needls.
Doug: Well, that’s really interesting. I mean, I’ve not used automation in that way in terms of running ads. We’ve always done stuff kind of the hand-crafted way. But I’ve got a huge interest in seeing where you see artificial intelligence moving and machine learning in the whole social media space and marketing.
Justin Hartzman: Yeah. I think that’s a great question, and more than just on the optimization and targeting side, I think it’s the whole how agency focus will work in the future, how we’ll be going about our campaigns, and as a futurist on the spot, I’ve spoken about this a few times, but I really believe in it, that I think that come a few years from now I can sit in front of my Alexa, my Google Home, my HomePod, whatever the virtual assistant that you have or voice assistant that you’re going to have in your home, and we can really talk through an entire campaign, build out your advertising side, your landing page, and your email drips, all just by having that conversation, answering the questions, providing detail, and then the machine learning on the other side building those campaigns and actually running it for you.
So, I see this kind of like the phone booth of the future to get your marketing done on a very non-emotional but data-driven way to actually bring results and take emotion out of the whole process, which I think is super important when it comes down to small business marketing and advertising. You have to take the emotions out of that. I really stress that a lot.
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SHARE THIS EPISODE: DONE FOR YOU SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING
DONE FOR YOU SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING
At Needls we automatically create 50-500 ads in real-time, and then we do the entire process for you of the targeting of your users as well as the optimization of your ads.
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Doug: Well, and yeah, I guess with emotions goes ego. I think of a campaign, a Google campaign we were running for a large restoration company, and we were in presenting the results to their VP of the marketing, of the previous month’s leads it generated. And a discussion began of, “Well, my customers aren’t that sophisticated. They won’t search for that term.” It’s like, “No, this isn’t a hypothesis. This is real. This is your data.” “No. My customers aren’t that smart.” So then you get ego in the way of what the reality was. Clearly analytics was reporting what the data said, and people intervening, in that case, messed with the process.
Justin Hartzman: Yeah. I couldn’t agree more.
Doug: Well, if you think back even of early days, we started doing AB testing and that was done kind of manually. And then you fast-forward a little bit and we get into multi-variant testing, where we’re using software to change out offers or colors of buttons or images or texts, and allow the computer to decide which one is getting a higher conversion. Is this really just a super-charged fast-forward high-end version of that sort of process?
Justin Hartzman: Yeah, I think it is, because … Well, I think this is the preliminary part of it that people don’t realize they need to have before all what you’re talking about. The fact is, you have to have ads, and I say this, you know, like, we’ll click kitty-cats and butterflies because it has to be what people are expecting to see in their social media feeds. They can tell an ad a million miles away if it’s produced as an ad. So it starts with creating the best ads, optimizing it, making sure that we’re doing the best job to figure out … It’s not always the lowest cost per click, but sometimes it’s a low cost per click with a high click-through rate. So, we’re looking for the variants that work the best.
Once we can get the baseline of ads and the right user, then, I think, is when we need to come to the fact of let’s try and actually do the multi-variants across your landing pages, your email campaigns, your chatbot creation, whatever it may be. But people totally forget and they think it’s all done for them on the top part of this funnel, the part that we’re filling, and they’re worried about the back end. Both of them are equally important, but you have to have the front end honed in and working before the back end ever will. Because, you know, if the front end’s not optimized where we’re filtering this traffic, the warmest traffic that we’re bringing in from social media, but it’s not that great, it doesn’t matter how well you change, you might be getting small, incremental changes on your landing pages and your email campaigns, but if you’re knowing that you optimize at the top first, then the changes on the bottom actually have relevancy of are they working or are they not? And you’re really getting to your ultimate conversion at the same time.
Doug: Absolutely, and that’s really what I was referring to. I meant that your tool really is like the multi-variant test. You guys are creating all the ads. Your technology is automatically testing them and refining them and then serving the best solution for the advertiser.
Justin Hartzman: Yep. Exactly. And to that point, some of the times, the best variant that we’ve created or ad that we’ve created may have had a spelling mistake in it. You know? We don’t know. Again, emotionally take it out of it, don’t worry about ego as to what you said. Some things just work, and you don’t know why, and that’s why sometimes. So, that’s why. We’ll actually figure that out. We’ll understand that, by not creating one ad. You know? Someone who’s new to the Facebook platform, Instagram platform, will go and spend three, four hours to have a single ad, and they’re like, “Okay, I’ve done that. Let’s go have a Scotch. I’ll put my $5 in, my $50, my $50,000, and let’s see what happens.”
Doug: Yeah.
Justin Hartzman: Well, that’s not a good thing. We have to have lots of data to actually make decisions, and as you said, it might be those slight variants that really work. It doesn’t have to be completely different thought out process plans. It’s the minor variances that really make the biggest difference.
Doug: And I think one of the points you made there is people think once the ad is created that they’ve done their job, and they often think of web pages the same way. And I’ve said, no, I mean, when you build a website, it’s the same thing. The day you launch it is the beginning of your work. You need to get enough data, enough people through there to see how people are using it, what they like and they don’t like. So to your case, you need to get enough advertising, enough data through to find out what your audience is looking for.
Justin Hartzman: That’s absolutely the case, and I think that’s a … I’m happy to talk about hurdles, even for us and our business. That’s the hardest part, actually helping someone to understand that they need to take the time to collect the data to do it. So, impatience is a really big issue for us. You know, we see it … We have, most of our cancellations that happen the first two weeks are the people who have no patience, and then after they get over that two, three, four-week hump, we see these people stay on for a year. So, it’s really part of our job to educate, help people understand that you have to spend a little bit of money, get that data, understand it. Now, we can really scale it up from that point, once we’ve got into a place where it makes sense for everyone on that spot.
But patience is a virtue here. I know it’s a very cliché thing to say. You got to take the time. You have to have a plan in place. You got to expect that there might be some loss in money at the beginning, but you’re building a long-term ROI positive campaign that will bring you the money and the funds that you need to grow your business if you give it the time to allow it to do that.
Doug: But that’s just good business as well because I often have clients on the other end of the scale who show up and say, “Hey,” you know, “I want you to run a campaign for me. I want to run a PPC campaign. I’ve got $50,000 to spend a week. Let’s go.” It’s like, “No, let’s do the research. Let’s run the ads. Let’s get some data. Let’s get a baseline.” So, in those cases, we’re saying, “Let’s slow down. Let’s not go spend all your money on day one. Let’s get some learning before you just go charging ahead and blow through the budget,” because at the end of the day, they’re going to be like the guys in two weeks. They’re going to be upset that they haven’t got ROI.
Justin Hartzman: Yeah, I’m totally with you. So, it’s managing expectations, helping that learning curve and really letting people know what we’re doing in the background is key. Actually sharing them with the user journey, as we call it, on our side, where you can come in, know what we’re doing, how we’re doing it because people also get nervous. There’s a black box. You’re just saying, “Do something. Here’s money, and I’m hoping to get something out of it.” So we really want to keep our users informed, and automating that to inform them at the same time.
Doug: So, what are the naysayers? Or what’s the big myth around this, the tactic of using AI to automatically run your ads?
Justin Hartzman: I don’t think there’s a myth per se. What I think that we find is that some people just want to have more control and the more control … So, a hard balance for us. The more control that we give them and make available to them, the slower it actually gets to the point where we could have done it if we used the automation that we’ve put in place, that we spent … I don’t even know the number of millions of dollars and time and energy in building this out over a 10-year period. You know, this is a newer company, but this is all things that we have done personally for our past businesses, for our users from our agency in the past, and now we’re bringing it to a software solution. So, that’s a tough question to answer, for sure.
Doug: Okay. I just know that not everybody’s into automation. I like it because I like the fact that … I actually think we’re doing a better job and we’re serving our customers better if we have more information about what they want and what they don’t want, because, you know, I was on your website, I went through the demo, your customer service guy was very quick to jump in there and offer me some videos to look at and see how your service worked, and then, the demo there, it was talking about somebody that was on Facebook and making a comment, “Hey, I’ve got all my wedding planning done. Now I just need a photographer.” And then serving the ad. So, I’m thinking, “Well, that’s interesting, because there’s someone who’s clearly raised their hand said, “I’m having a wedding. I need a photographer.” So, opposed to me just sending Facebook ads to everybody who lives in my area, the only people who are going to see my ads, in that case, are people who are talking about needing a photographer. So, I think we’re being more respectful to the audience.
Justin Hartzman: That’s right. And that’s a very literal example. More than that, what we do is we find people who talk about photography in that area over a period of time to define the proper demographic group. So, I’ll give you an example. While we can’t identify that individual and send them an ad in relative, we do it in real-time and Facebook will serve whenever they want. That’s not really the bread and butter. That’s just … That’s cool. We can build groups around them and lookalikes around those people. But more than that, when I look at a history … I’ll give you a perfect example, and make it easy to understand here. Last night at 11:47 p.m. a gentlemen in downtown Toronto, 45+ years of age, under $100,000 household income, lives in a condo, no children, said, “My toilet broke and there’s water everywhere!??” Okay?
Doug: Yep.
Justin Hartzman: We know what that guy needs. He’s put his hand up and said, “I need a plumber. Someone help us,” and we can serve that gentleman an ad, and then with the Pixel, we can track to see if it actually converted, and so on and so forth. But there are hundreds of plumbers in Toronto, and there’s maybe only one person talking about it in an 11, 12 hour period. So, what we really care about is looking at 30, 60, 90 days, even back to the first tweet ever and years past on Facebook, to find a larger group, a larger network of people who have said something.
So, when we look at that same niche being the plumbing industry, and we look at a lot of data, it wasn’t a 45-year-old, blah, blah, blah, male, it’s typically a 25-31-year-old female with two children with over $100,000 household income living in a home. And now that we know that the majority of people who talk about it look like that we can cast a wider net to that type of individual for the best chance of finding your right customer, instead of just going, you know … Facebook, how it works, I’ll just tell people generally, and it goes much deeper than this but … How you would do it yourself if you were going there is you would choose an interest. So, Doug, I’m going to ask you a rhetorical question here. If your toilet was broken right now, when was the last time you said you liked a plumber on Facebook?
Doug: Never.
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SHARE THIS EPISODE: DONE FOR YOU SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING
DONE FOR YOU SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING
At Needls we automatically create 50-500 ads in real-time, and then we do the entire process for you of the targeting of your users as well as the optimization of your ads.
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Justin Hartzman: Never. Right? So, how can the only method be looking at interests or picking interests for your marketing and for your advertising? So, we just think there’s a better way, and we’re trying to use all the tools that are available to us on the networks to help us do that better job. And quite frankly, I’ll give you an example, I think everyone can talk about CPC rates, CPM rates, what they cost, and I can talk about them afterward, but I think more important to that is across Facebook and their five million users who use the ad platform, the average ad gets a .9% click-through rate. So, that’s from the best marketers in the world to the worst. .9%.
On average on the Needls platform, we’re getting 2.7% click-through rate. So, three times better Facebook’s own average, because we believe we’re identifying the right people much better than the general interest method of doing so, and the ads that we create and the variants of the ads that we do are a lot more homegrown than over-produced. So, we think that’s a huge advantage of what we’re doing on the platform today.
Doug: Now, does Facebook reward the advertisers, then, for having a higher click-through rate, identifying that obviously, they’re more mindful in terms of what their message is?
Justin Hartzman: The answer is I’m pretty positive. They don’t really publicize that sort of stuff, but their algorithm to choose the best quality [inaudible 00:18:44] clearly has some of those pieces involved in it for sure.
Doug: Okay. Now, in terms of the advertising, what are the differences between running the ads natively or using your platform in terms of content creation or video or whatever else that you would typically see people using in Facebook?
Justin Hartzman: The way of the method of doing it? Or just what we’re putting out there?
Doug: So, if I was to compare side-by-side, you were on one screen and I was on the other screen, and we’re both going to create a Facebook ad-
Justin Hartzman: Oh. Yeah. There are 170 clicks to get a single and live with all the things on Facebook, and like I said, six questions and … I haven’t counted the clicks, but probably 30 or less on our, to do 50 to 500 ads for you. So, it’s a complete difference.
We see that anyone who produce the same amount of ads … So, depending on the amount of information they give us, and how many ads that we build, plus the budget that they’ve chosen, but on average, if we’re building 50 ads for someone we’re saving them probably about 10 to 12 hours of your time to just do that piece, which took you under five minutes on our side.
Doug: Right. Yeah. And I know that. I’ve looked at the back side of ad campaigns that have been run by Facebook agencies, and they typically have a lot of ads. They typically have 50 or more ads they’ve created manually, and they’re testing them all and adjusting the spend to make sure they’re optimizing the client’s spend to get the ROI, but again, it’s a manual process, and you’re paying thousands of dollars a month to have that managed.
Justin Hartzman: Well, I want to agree with that. I also have to say there is a lot of agencies in this world, and I think the number for us right now … I think we have 150 agencies on our platform using it to do those sort of things on their behalf.
Doug: Well, you may have one more. [inaudible 00:20:23] interview today, so …
Justin Hartzman: Well, I hope so.
Doug: No, you know, I really found that the information you put out there’s been pretty simple to use, or at least simple to understand, even for a marketing guy like me.
Justin Hartzman: Well, I appreciate that, first of all. And that’s the whole thing. While we are a user-focused platform, we also have a white label. So, if you are an agency out there and you want to let your clients in and do everything, you can do that. We also have an agency platform which is mostly white label, but they don’t let their clients into, where you can go and manage these people’s ads on their behalf by essentially just letting us do it, pulling the reports and giving out to people. So, we offer a solution to every type of agency and just end user out there.
Doug; So, can you share with us a client? Maybe not a client name, but a specific example of somebody who got in and rolled up their sleeves and put a good, hard effort in for six months, eight months, or a year?
Justin Hartzman: I’m going to give you an example I’ve used before on podcasts. I won’t mention which ones, but I think it’s the perfect example of someone who’s come to our site and used it and been very successful. They’re one of our first users. We call our customers users, just because it’s a SAS platform.
Doug: Yep.
Justin Hartzman: Very first one, I think one through 10, I’m not sure, she was a 65+-year-old woman in the Midwest, in the USA, and she came to us and she said, “Hey, guys, I want to advertise.” Obviously not one-on-one talking, but through our chat or getting to know her on a case study … You know, read this case study right on our website. But she was 65, and her goal was, she was a dog walker and she wanted to take it from three dog walks a week to 10, because what her goal was was better Christmas gifts for her grandchildren. Okay? Noble?
Doug: Yep. Good goal.
Justin Hartzman: So, she joined our platform. She went on there. Two weeks in she’s like, “I don’t know, I’ve only found one more potential client. I don’t know if this is for me.” Just really not sure, “And maybe I should cancel.” And you know, our team talked to her and educated her a little bit about it, and it came up, the fact that she said, “Okay, I agree to wait a couple more weeks and see how it goes.” Long story short, a year goes by, and I’ve known her, I’ve talked back and forth, I just asked her some questions to see how things are going. But hadn’t been about six to eight months. I get an email or phone call from her and she says, “Justin,” you know, “I’m going to have to cancel. Thanks so much.” And I said, “Why?” You know, “You’re going, I’m looking at your stats, I mean, your account and things are looking very good.” You know, “Things look great. What’s the problem?” She’s like, “I just got to cancel. It’s just the best thing for me.”
I said, “No problem, happy to do that for you.” We have no commitments, we have no contracts. Just press the button, do it, but tell me why. And she said, “Well, simply, I wanted to get 10 dog walks from my three a week, but now I have six dog walkers for me doing 10 to 20 dogs a week, and it’s just more business than I can possibly handle.”
Doug: Oh, darn.
Justin Hartzman: So, that’s obviously a great outcome, great story. A 65-year-old woman who would never have been able to do this herself. Well, I won’t say never. It would have been much harder, much more time, and she may have never got to where she was today and produced the results that she had hoped for.
Doug: Wow. There you go. That’s pretty cool. So, what are you most excited about? I mean, you’ve been in the tech business, and around the venture capital stuff for a long time, and this is a project that you’ve got a passion for. Like you said, it’s been 10 years in the making. So, what excites you as it relates to marketing in the next six, eight, maybe 12 months?
Justin Hartzman: Well, for us personally, AI in the market, in general, is key. And I think it’s a very big keyword right now, and I think there has been artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence. What is really that statement? You know? What is really the smart intelligence out there? But I’ll talk for ourselves, and what’s exciting for us is taking our software as a service, which is a service right now advertising on Facebook and Instagram, and building out a full, automated platform for the full funnel for small, medium-sized business. So, automatic creation of landing pages, chatbots, email drip campaigns that we can do in either a semi or fully automated, using AI, to help ensure that we get this done and fully automated is something that’s super exciting for us in the future.
Because no matter how well we do on the advertising side, and the numbers don’t lie, we do very well, if you have a bad landing page, or it’s not mobile friendly, or you have no way to follow up to the email that you took, or so on and so forth, doesn’t matter how well the advertising is, you’re never going to convert a customer. So, there’s a lot more than just filling the top of the funnel, and we’re excited to become from a software as a service to a software as a platform as we move forward.
Doug; Wow. That’s quite a big goal.
Justin Hartzman: Absolutely. That’s why we have to go for a nice, big round of funding come to the end of the summer.
Doug: There you go. So, in terms of where the business is going and moving along, what bad advice do you hear people giving in the industry? I mean, you’re probably at lots of events like I am and you talk to lots of people, and I’m not asking you to name names, but, you know, I actually stole this question from a Tim Ferriss book. I just thought, “That’s a really good question.” Because there are always people, that are pushing people in the wrong direction. So, what is that wrong direction that you hear people talking about?
Justin Hartzman: Well, yeah. There’s one particular thing, and it’s whether I’m out, or I’m just on Facebook and in the Facebook advertising groups where people are learning and teaching and I’m trying to mentor and help, and this idea of build an ad, try it with $5 and if it hasn’t performed within 24 hours, just cut it and move on. I just don’t understand that theory at all. The $5 a day test. It just simply … There’s nothing about it that seems to make sense to me. Because did that ad not work because you chose the wrong demographic? Was it the wrong ad that you built? Or were you sending it to the wrong place? Or was it just not a good day to have been testing it? I don’t think there’s enough knowledge.
The fact is, how can you ever do that? If you’re selling a $100 product, a $1,000, a $100,000 product, how do we expect to get a cost per acquisition in $5? It just seems unreasonable. So, that’s advice that a lot of people give that I totally, totally disagree with, 100%.
Doug: That just comes back to, I think, what you talked about earlier, is getting enough data. You need to have enough data to make an educated, and $5, you’re saying, isn’t going to give you enough data points to figure out whether or not what you’ve created is worth running, re-tweaking, or just shutting off.
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SHARE THIS EPISODE: DONE FOR YOU SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING
DONE FOR YOU SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING
At Needls we automatically create 50-500 ads in real-time, and then we do the entire process for you of the targeting of your users as well as the optimization of your ads.
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Justin Hartzman: That’s right. So, for us, the minimum that we will do for our users because it just doesn’t make sense otherwise is $50 a week, and that’s really pushing it as well.
Doug: That’s a pretty small budget. I mean, I’m not saying … I get when you’re bootstrapping. I remember when I started my first company, maybe I couldn’t have done $50 a week, but that’s a pretty easy target when you consider the alternate way of maybe doing this, whether you’re going to create the ad yourself in Canva, you’re going to go to Fiverr and then all the stuff you’re going to need to do. That’s a pretty low barrier to entry for people to get in and get their ads running.
Justin Hartzman: Well, we think so, and quite frankly there’s nothing you can do for you in $50. You can’t have someone flyering. You can’t do anything. And this is getting to the masses. We are getting data, and we’ll move forward. You know, literally, it’s minimum $50 a week, but if you’re doing minimum $50, we lock you in for one month. So, we have four weeks of data. So, you’re going to give us a $200 budget which we think is the ultimate small [inaudible 00:27:59] should have over a 30 day period to gain that information and see how we can actually scale it up for you in the future.
Doug: That brings up the next note I’d made on my page. We’re talking about a minimum, so, how scalable is your platform?
Justin Hartzman: We have people who do the minimum of $200 a more. Wouldn’t suggest it. I don’t think you can move fast enough to get that. And if you’re doing the minimums, I’m going to say this too, it takes a lot longer to actually get that data to start scaling up. So, don’t think we can do it faster because it’s less money. So, that’s one. So we have people as low as that. We’ve had large companies, I’ll keep … Remain nameless at this point, they do $300,000 a month with us. So, it varies across the board.
Doug: So, there’s no upside to your reach, then, in terms of what you guys can deliver?
Justin Hartzman: Nope. There is none. And our pricing model remains the same no matter if you’re at the $200 or the $300,000 in spending. We are meant to be unilaterally the same across our fee structure for everyone.
Doug: Oh, that’s really cool. So, moving forward, is that you’re a smart guy and we both like a lot of the same things, who’s one guest that you think I should have on my podcast?
Justin Hartzman: You know, I’ve been thinking about that, and here … Well, I guess we can define that as someone we think would be interested in marketing, or someone that you just think you have a good conversation with?
Doug: Well, someone who we’d have a good conversation, like we’re having, around business and marketing.
Justin Hartzman: Yeah. So, a good buddy of mine, and I’m not going to promote his podcast, but I think a lot of people have a lot to learn from him, and the way that we are alike is our curiosity of asking questions and sounds like you’re similar to that. I’d definitely suggest Andrew Warner.
Doug: Okay. Andrew Warner.
Justin Hartzman: Do you want me to mention his podcast name? I can tell you or not.
Doug: Sure. Yeah. Go ahead.
Justin Hartzman; Yeah. It’s called Mixergy. Mixergy is one of the top podcasts for startups, you know, asking similar type questions, getting deep into things. It’s an hour long, but I listen to it religiously, and I learn a lot. Even as much as I think I knew, I don’t know anything. I learn every single day five minutes of some great information that I bring back and I use in my company, whether it’s a marketing tactic, an email drip campaign that I didn’t think of previously. I learn so much from it. He’s a super interesting guy.
Doug: Well, cool. I’ve actually listened to the podcast as well. It’s funny, you know because I’m in the space, I listen to lots of different podcasts because there’s a ton of information out there, and I find it an easy way to learn because you can multitask. I can be in the gym, I can be for a run, I can be sitting on my back deck and enjoying some of Scotland’s finest.
Justin Hartzman: Yeah. There you go. Well, let me ask this question. What’s your favorite Scotch?
Doug: What’s my favorite Scotch? I drink a wide variety. If I’m going to drink a blend, I would drink something like Johnnie Blue. Right now I’m liking the more peaty Scotches, so I’m drinking Lagavulin. I also like some of the older Macallan’s. So, I have a variety that is from high-end to low-end, and then I have the really bad stuff that I keep for people who want to add Coke to it or add Sprite to it. Like, “How come that’s not what you’re drinking?” It’s like, “Because I’m drinking mine neat and you’re putting soda in yours, or pop in yours, and you’re going to ruin the drink.”
Justin Hartzman: Exactly. So, I like a lot of the same ones. Obviously, you have some expensive taste there, but I will give you one thing that my dad taught me, and he’s an avid, avid collector. We’re talking hundreds of different types of bottles, and every age. Craziest. That you want to just impress someone, they’re never going to know what it is and it’s not expensive, just buy Johnnie Walker Double Black and give them that. If you just want one that’s not expensive, everyday drink, well blended, no one ever knows, they think it’s really expensive and it goes over very well. But I think one of my favorites, I’m a Highland Park fan, and Oban’s, and obviously Macallan’s.
Doug: Yep. Oban is good. Yep. Absolutely.
Justin Hartzman: Yeah. And, if you guys really want to check it out, you can see … I don’t personally love it, but there’s one from … It’s called the Founder’s Edition from Glenlivet, and I actually did a whole video serious with Founder’s, because the founders were interested in tech companies. And I did an interview commercial with that. So it was a pretty interesting thing if you want to try. Not so expensive, but still pretty good.
Doug: Oh, cool. Well, I’ll leave you with one other business tip, then, that we learned.
Justin Hartzman: Yep.
Doug: I was down at the New Media Summit in San Diego this year, and that’s how I met a bunch more podcasters, and one of the guys down there, I’m not sure how this applies with our Canadian tax laws, but as an American he started a new podcast and blog for wine. His wine then became tax deductible. So, I’ve been thinking of a Scotch and cigar podcast.
Justin Hartzman: Well, first of all, I love that. I think about that and start companies all the time for that reason. No, I don’t, but it is a good reason. Tax laws here don’t exactly work the same, I don’t think you could write off your Scotch that way. But it’s definitely an interesting way of doing it. But listen, we’ve got to pay taxes on our country here in Canada. We love this socialistic society. We love where we live. Let’s keep it that way.
Doug: Yep. Yep.
Justin Hartzman: So, happy to pay taxes.
Doug: Yeah. Absolutely. I agree.
Justin Hartzman; Mostly.
Doug: I just want to pay the amount I need to pay, and no more.
Justin Hartzman: And we’re with you. But being fair at the same time. So, appreciate that.
Doug: So, hey, thanks so much today. I mean, I appreciate you coming on. I was super excited to have you on because I’ve been following your company, and watching what’s happening, and watching what Tim Page was doing, and loving the work that he’s been doing with you guys.
Justin Hartzman: Well, yeah. No, it’s definitely my pleasure. I love doing these things. Obviously, I’m passionate about it or I wouldn’t be doing it, and love to be useful wherever I can. And just if anyone wants to reach out to me, if they have any specific questions, just to say hi, you know, call me an idiot, whatever it is that you want to do, I’m always available, I’m here, that’s what I love to do. Give me an email at JH@Needles, N-E-E-D-L-S, dot com.
Doug: Okay, and website-wise, where do people look you up?
Justin Hartzman: Yeah.
Doug; And social platforms?
Justin Hartzman: Yeah. You can just go to Needls.com, N-E-E-D-L-S.com/RMRF, obviously, for this podcast. We actually have a discount there for everyone who’s listening. It’s 35% off our platform for you for the entire year. There are no year commitments so you don’t have to pay it all at one time, but every month you’re with us, 35% off. Again, that’s Needls.com/RMRF. Love to have you there. You can reach out to me on chat or email me.
Doug: Well, that’s super generous. Thanks for offering that gift to our listeners. I appreciate it.
Justin Hartzman: It’s our pleasure. We just want to help businesses grow. As you grow, we grow at the same time.
Doug: There you go. So, hey, thanks to listeners for tuning in to another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast. I hope you picked up some new tips and some techniques and some ideas. So, if you’re not advertising on Facebook, here’s your chance to get in there and not have to take a six-month course to learn how to do it, and just get started. And if you are advertising on Facebook, my recommendation would be, run two platforms. Run what you’re doing against what Needls is doing, and as a marketer, just look at the numbers and look at the results and see where you should be best spending your money. So, thanks for tuning in. We look forward to serving you on our next episode.
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