In episode #544, Eric and Neil describe the best marketing campaigns they have seen. Tune in to hear some innovating marketing ideas!
Time-Stamped Show Notes:
- [00:27] Today’s Topic: The Cleverest Marketing Campaigns that We Have Seen
- [01:00] A lot of the YouTube marketers are creating very emotional stories, using them as ads, and making millions of dollars per month.
- [01:22] Billy Gene used a “Wolf of Wall Street” parody that proved so effective, it reached people in Brazil.
- [02:06] Eric saw a very effective Lyft ad while watching YouTube videos.
- [02:25] Lyft was able to evoke emotion based on a true life story about a survivor of the Vegas hotel shooting.
- [02:55] They leveraged an emotional event to market their business.
- [03:52] Re-market videos on YouTube on Facebook: show people what their lives will be like if they use your product or services.
- [05:00] If you are pitching based on emotion and that doesn’t work, re-market them using logic.
- [05:21] Full Story shows people what they can do with your website.
- [05:50] It will show people how to use your website and it’s highly customizable.
- [06:33] You can follow up with people after they’ve seen how your site works using Full Story.
- [07:02] Russell Brunson was giving away free MP3 players, but he created a funnel that got people to purchase his products and services.
- [07:45] He created video campaigns on how to retire using click-funnels.
- [08:18] Dollar Shave Club sold to Unilever for over a billion dollars.
- [08:43] Think about how to put a creative spin on things, like Squatty Potty and their bizarre/humorous ad campaign.
- [09:25] That’s all for today!
- [09:27] Go to Singlegrain.com/Giveway for a special edition of Crazy Egg, the heat mapping tool.
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The post The Cleverest Marketing Campaigns that We Have Seen | Ep. #544 appeared first on Marketing School Podcast.
Full Transcript of The Episode
Speaker 1: Get ready for your daily dose of marketing strategies and tactics from entrepreneurs with the guile and experience to help you find success in any marketing capacity. You're listening to Marketing School with your instructors Neil Patel and Eric Sui.
Eric Sui: Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Sui.
Neil Patel: And I'm Neil Patel.
Eric Sui: And today we are going to talk about the cleverest marketing campaigns that we have seen. So here's the thing with this kind of topic because usually what happens is, we tend to think about the things that are top of the line for us. So I think a couple of episodes ago, Neil, you were talking about Billy Jean. So maybe it's good to kind of talk through that in more detail?
Neil Patel: Yeah, sure. So one of the cleverest marketing campaigns, and it's not just Billy Jean, it's Billy Jean, Alex Becker ...
Eric Sui: Becker.
Neil Patel: ... Ty Lopez, a lot of these video guys, Sam Ovens. What they're doing is creating very emotional stories and putting them as YouTube ads and Facebook ads, and they're crushing it. I'm not talking about crushing it like they're making a million bucks a year. I'm talking about millions a month, is what some of these guys are making. And the reason it's working so well is because how creative they are with their videos.
For example, Billy Jean, took the movie Wolf of Wall Street and he created his own mimic version or mock up of it around marketing, and why you should follow him, register for his webinar, and buy his products. It was so effective that in Brazil, even though he doesn't target Brazil, people there loved his content and started signing up for his products. Keep in mind a dollar USD for someone in Brazil, like they have to end up spending three or four Brazilian Real, right? So it's expensive. His marketing campaigns were so good, that people from Brazil started buying his products even though it would be three to four times more expensive for them.
Eric Sui: Yeah, so here's one that really struck home. It was actually a couple of days ago. I think I was watching YouTube videos as I was eating lunch and this Lift ad popped up. And I thought, "God, is this going to be another basic commercial," and I was getting ready to kind of skip through it, right? But I actually watched the entire ad, which was three minutes. This is a YouTube video or ad.
And what it was, was this. Lift is like, fine, they're helping you get to places. But what they did was, they evoked a lot of emotion from me because this is in regards to the Las Vegas shooting that happened. The Mandalay Bay shooting, right? And one of the Lift drivers ends up telling the story about how this one guy was turning blue when he got into the car. It was because he got shot in the back trying to protect his girlfriend, right? And the whole experience that they were going through. And what happens a little later in the video is that, the guy that got shot ends up showing up to the driver's house, and they kind of get to re-meet each other and really talk through the experience, and talk about how they're going to be lifelong friends.
But, even before that, you know, at the very beginning, the driver ... I forgot her name, but she has four kids. She's a single mom, I believe. And then she's just talking about how one of her dreams is to take her children to the Caribbean or some kind of beach. What happens is, once that guy shows up at her house, the guy that got shot, he actually kind of plays messenger from Lift saying that, "Hey, Lift is pleased to offer you that one trip, your dream vacation with your family." So there's just all these emotions in there. Like the whole Vegas shooting, that guy getting shot in the back, that girl being able to fulfill her dreams. All these different things combined into an ad about getting people places, right?
So, to Neil's point a little earlier, when you're able to evoke some kind of emotion, you're able to tell some kind of story, I actually got a little emotional in that video, and I was just eating lunch. And I actually ended up watching that. So, if you're able to do that, that's clever.
Neil Patel: Yeah, and another thing that I see, and it's really simple is, so many people will visit your checkout page but they won't buy. You're highest converting ad campaign or one of them is going to be re-marketing videos. Not re-marketing banners. I'm talking about videos that you put on YouTube and Facebook that show people what life would be like if they bought your products or services. By doing that one simple thing, what you'll find is, they're going to be like, "Oh, my god. This is what it's like." And it's so high converting that you're going to keep trying to spend as much money on re-marketing video ads versus any other channel. It's like, what you'll find is, you'll get like extra 15% to 20% Lift. You're going to be trying to just drive as many more people through the front end and even pay more for those visitors cause it converts so well.
And here's another trick I learned about re-marketing. And I learned this one from Low Silva. He was like, "Oh, you do re-marketing? Why do you send them to the same page, or the same site?" And I'm like, "What do you mean?" And he's like, "They didn't convert from that page in the first place. Why would you bring them back?" This is so simple, but it works so well. When you're re-marketing people, it doesn't matter what product or service they're looking at, send them to that same theme but a different version of it. So, for example, if you're pitching all based on emotion and they didn't buy, when they come back pitch them on a landing page that's using pure logic. Because if the emotion didn't convert them, the chances are they're probably not an emotional person and logic appeals more to them, right? So by using the opposite approach, you'll notice that your conversions will go up as well.
Eric Sui: Yeah, the other thing I'll add is FullStory. So FullStory, this company basically shows what people are doing on your website and it does show different playback, different buttons are clicking. It shows you a bunch of different things. So what I saw was that FullStory's kind of reach out video to people ... Let's say I'm reaching out to, let's say reaching out to myself, like a marketing agency, right? So, what FullStory does is they basically send like a one-liner saying, "Hey, my name is Neil, I'm with FullStory. Here's a quick screenshot of what our tool does."
And basically, it shows my website going through a FullStory instance and I can actually hit the play button and watch what that looks like. So it's very customized, it's very short and to the point. And it also says, they're not trying to book a demo with me, they just said, "Hey. If you're interested, give it a shot for two weeks. Here's a free link to a two week trial." And, if you actually click on the video, they have little tags in their sales tool that will show that you actually clicked on the link. And then, they'll followup with you saying, "Hey, I couldn't help but notice that you clicked on Link. Would it make sense that we jump into a quick 15 to 20-minute call just to talk through it."
So what I like about something like this, this is like a sales/marketing kind of campaign. I can see that our developers probably helped them with this. But it's very, A, it's very personalized. So you don't necessarily need to have like a custom video for everyone, but if you can even customize like one sentence of it. You know, it starts to make me think like, "Man, you've done your research, you actually care." And then, the type of followup is they're not trying to book a meeting with me, take twenty minutes of my day right out the gate, it's very lighthearted, right? So to me, that's a clever marketing/sales campaign that works really well. And when you're able to scale that kind of outreach, you're going to get some decent results.
Neil Patel: Yeah, another one that's amazing is Russell Bronson's podcast player giveaway. He was giving away a free podcast and shipping. And then, he would drive them into a funnel to get them to buy click funnels, and other products and services. The reason I was saying this was one of the most cleverest marketing strategies that I've seen is, not only do they shoot them to the top of iTunes until they ended up pulling him off ... although, I don't think he was breaking any terms of services, more so iTunes didn't like what he was doing. But, not only did he shoot to the top of that, he also helped build [inaudible 00:07:31] into a hundred million dollar business while doing that, right. It was driving so many signups. I thought it was really sick.
Another thing that he's done that's really smart as well is, a lot of times to grow your business you need affiliates. So instead of just going and heading up people, and being like, "Will you be my affiliate?" He created video campaigns on how you can retire by just selling click funnels and not work. All you have to do is drive X amount of customers. And it was a pretty cool campaign, because people were like ... you know, he wasn't saying you were going to be a millionaire, he was more so saying like, "Look. You can live off of three or four grand a month. If you just drive X amount of customers, you can make that and just chill, and just keep cashing your re-occurring checks." And I was like, that's a pretty clever marketing campaign to recruit a lot of people to be your sales force on "commission only."
Eric Sui: Yeah. The final one I'll add from my side is, if you look at Dollar Shave Club, I believe ... how much did they sell ... was it Unilever? It was like over a billion dollars.
Neil Patel: Over a billion dollars.
Eric Sui: And that video was what kind of what propelled them in the first place. Basically, it was really funny, it was to the point. And even, when you think about Dollar Shave Club, like that's something that can evoke emotion from people, right? And even, here's another example. Squatty Potty, you have a unicorn pooping out rainbow ice cream. A, that's remarkable. B, it's educational. So think about how you can put a creative spin on things. All you need to do is take one thing and twist it a little bit and you are "creative." And that's how Squatty Potty, when I interviewed them on a podcast. That's 2015, they're probably doing better now. They did 20 million in revenues selling Squatty Potties. Dollar Shave Club, you know the result. They sold for over a billion to Unilever.
Neil Patel: Yeah, so that's pretty much it for clever marketing campaigns that we've seen recently. Yes, there's also a ton of old ones, like how Jean Mill did their invite flow, or Mix Max, you know, the strategy they're using to grow. Just keep reading blogs and case studies. You'll find a lot of cool marketing successful campaigns within your niche. And see if you can add those to your arsenal and our own website and business, and see if they also help you grow.
Eric Sui: Great. So before we go, go to singlegrain.com/giveaway to get access to our special giveaway. You'll love it. And we'll see you tomorrow.
Speaker 1: This session of Marketing School has come to a close. Be sure to subscribe for more daily marketing strategies and tactics to help you find the success you've always dreamed of. And don't forget to rate and review so we can continue to bring you the best daily content possible. We'll see you in class tomorrow, right here on Marketing School.
Eric Sui: Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Sui.
Neil Patel: And I'm Neil Patel.
Eric Sui: And today we are going to talk about the cleverest marketing campaigns that we have seen. So here's the thing with this kind of topic because usually what happens is, we tend to think about the things that are top of the line for us. So I think a couple of episodes ago, Neil, you were talking about Billy Jean. So maybe it's good to kind of talk through that in more detail?
Neil Patel: Yeah, sure. So one of the cleverest marketing campaigns, and it's not just Billy Jean, it's Billy Jean, Alex Becker ...
Eric Sui: Becker.
Neil Patel: ... Ty Lopez, a lot of these video guys, Sam Ovens. What they're doing is creating very emotional stories and putting them as YouTube ads and Facebook ads, and they're crushing it. I'm not talking about crushing it like they're making a million bucks a year. I'm talking about millions a month, is what some of these guys are making. And the reason it's working so well is because how creative they are with their videos.
For example, Billy Jean, took the movie Wolf of Wall Street and he created his own mimic version or mock up of it around marketing, and why you should follow him, register for his webinar, and buy his products. It was so effective that in Brazil, even though he doesn't target Brazil, people there loved his content and started signing up for his products. Keep in mind a dollar USD for someone in Brazil, like they have to end up spending three or four Brazilian Real, right? So it's expensive. His marketing campaigns were so good, that people from Brazil started buying his products even though it would be three to four times more expensive for them.
Eric Sui: Yeah, so here's one that really struck home. It was actually a couple of days ago. I think I was watching YouTube videos as I was eating lunch and this Lift ad popped up. And I thought, "God, is this going to be another basic commercial," and I was getting ready to kind of skip through it, right? But I actually watched the entire ad, which was three minutes. This is a YouTube video or ad.
And what it was, was this. Lift is like, fine, they're helping you get to places. But what they did was, they evoked a lot of emotion from me because this is in regards to the Las Vegas shooting that happened. The Mandalay Bay shooting, right? And one of the Lift drivers ends up telling the story about how this one guy was turning blue when he got into the car. It was because he got shot in the back trying to protect his girlfriend, right? And the whole experience that they were going through. And what happens a little later in the video is that, the guy that got shot ends up showing up to the driver's house, and they kind of get to re-meet each other and really talk through the experience, and talk about how they're going to be lifelong friends.
But, even before that, you know, at the very beginning, the driver ... I forgot her name, but she has four kids. She's a single mom, I believe. And then she's just talking about how one of her dreams is to take her children to the Caribbean or some kind of beach. What happens is, once that guy shows up at her house, the guy that got shot, he actually kind of plays messenger from Lift saying that, "Hey, Lift is pleased to offer you that one trip, your dream vacation with your family." So there's just all these emotions in there. Like the whole Vegas shooting, that guy getting shot in the back, that girl being able to fulfill her dreams. All these different things combined into an ad about getting people places, right?
So, to Neil's point a little earlier, when you're able to evoke some kind of emotion, you're able to tell some kind of story, I actually got a little emotional in that video, and I was just eating lunch. And I actually ended up watching that. So, if you're able to do that, that's clever.
Neil Patel: Yeah, and another thing that I see, and it's really simple is, so many people will visit your checkout page but they won't buy. You're highest converting ad campaign or one of them is going to be re-marketing videos. Not re-marketing banners. I'm talking about videos that you put on YouTube and Facebook that show people what life would be like if they bought your products or services. By doing that one simple thing, what you'll find is, they're going to be like, "Oh, my god. This is what it's like." And it's so high converting that you're going to keep trying to spend as much money on re-marketing video ads versus any other channel. It's like, what you'll find is, you'll get like extra 15% to 20% Lift. You're going to be trying to just drive as many more people through the front end and even pay more for those visitors cause it converts so well.
And here's another trick I learned about re-marketing. And I learned this one from Low Silva. He was like, "Oh, you do re-marketing? Why do you send them to the same page, or the same site?" And I'm like, "What do you mean?" And he's like, "They didn't convert from that page in the first place. Why would you bring them back?" This is so simple, but it works so well. When you're re-marketing people, it doesn't matter what product or service they're looking at, send them to that same theme but a different version of it. So, for example, if you're pitching all based on emotion and they didn't buy, when they come back pitch them on a landing page that's using pure logic. Because if the emotion didn't convert them, the chances are they're probably not an emotional person and logic appeals more to them, right? So by using the opposite approach, you'll notice that your conversions will go up as well.
Eric Sui: Yeah, the other thing I'll add is FullStory. So FullStory, this company basically shows what people are doing on your website and it does show different playback, different buttons are clicking. It shows you a bunch of different things. So what I saw was that FullStory's kind of reach out video to people ... Let's say I'm reaching out to, let's say reaching out to myself, like a marketing agency, right? So, what FullStory does is they basically send like a one-liner saying, "Hey, my name is Neil, I'm with FullStory. Here's a quick screenshot of what our tool does."
And basically, it shows my website going through a FullStory instance and I can actually hit the play button and watch what that looks like. So it's very customized, it's very short and to the point. And it also says, they're not trying to book a demo with me, they just said, "Hey. If you're interested, give it a shot for two weeks. Here's a free link to a two week trial." And, if you actually click on the video, they have little tags in their sales tool that will show that you actually clicked on the link. And then, they'll followup with you saying, "Hey, I couldn't help but notice that you clicked on Link. Would it make sense that we jump into a quick 15 to 20-minute call just to talk through it."
So what I like about something like this, this is like a sales/marketing kind of campaign. I can see that our developers probably helped them with this. But it's very, A, it's very personalized. So you don't necessarily need to have like a custom video for everyone, but if you can even customize like one sentence of it. You know, it starts to make me think like, "Man, you've done your research, you actually care." And then, the type of followup is they're not trying to book a meeting with me, take twenty minutes of my day right out the gate, it's very lighthearted, right? So to me, that's a clever marketing/sales campaign that works really well. And when you're able to scale that kind of outreach, you're going to get some decent results.
Neil Patel: Yeah, another one that's amazing is Russell Bronson's podcast player giveaway. He was giving away a free podcast and shipping. And then, he would drive them into a funnel to get them to buy click funnels, and other products and services. The reason I was saying this was one of the most cleverest marketing strategies that I've seen is, not only do they shoot them to the top of iTunes until they ended up pulling him off ... although, I don't think he was breaking any terms of services, more so iTunes didn't like what he was doing. But, not only did he shoot to the top of that, he also helped build [inaudible 00:07:31] into a hundred million dollar business while doing that, right. It was driving so many signups. I thought it was really sick.
Another thing that he's done that's really smart as well is, a lot of times to grow your business you need affiliates. So instead of just going and heading up people, and being like, "Will you be my affiliate?" He created video campaigns on how you can retire by just selling click funnels and not work. All you have to do is drive X amount of customers. And it was a pretty cool campaign, because people were like ... you know, he wasn't saying you were going to be a millionaire, he was more so saying like, "Look. You can live off of three or four grand a month. If you just drive X amount of customers, you can make that and just chill, and just keep cashing your re-occurring checks." And I was like, that's a pretty clever marketing campaign to recruit a lot of people to be your sales force on "commission only."
Eric Sui: Yeah. The final one I'll add from my side is, if you look at Dollar Shave Club, I believe ... how much did they sell ... was it Unilever? It was like over a billion dollars.
Neil Patel: Over a billion dollars.
Eric Sui: And that video was what kind of what propelled them in the first place. Basically, it was really funny, it was to the point. And even, when you think about Dollar Shave Club, like that's something that can evoke emotion from people, right? And even, here's another example. Squatty Potty, you have a unicorn pooping out rainbow ice cream. A, that's remarkable. B, it's educational. So think about how you can put a creative spin on things. All you need to do is take one thing and twist it a little bit and you are "creative." And that's how Squatty Potty, when I interviewed them on a podcast. That's 2015, they're probably doing better now. They did 20 million in revenues selling Squatty Potties. Dollar Shave Club, you know the result. They sold for over a billion to Unilever.
Neil Patel: Yeah, so that's pretty much it for clever marketing campaigns that we've seen recently. Yes, there's also a ton of old ones, like how Jean Mill did their invite flow, or Mix Max, you know, the strategy they're using to grow. Just keep reading blogs and case studies. You'll find a lot of cool marketing successful campaigns within your niche. And see if you can add those to your arsenal and our own website and business, and see if they also help you grow.
Eric Sui: Great. So before we go, go to singlegrain.com/giveaway to get access to our special giveaway. You'll love it. And we'll see you tomorrow.
Speaker 1: This session of Marketing School has come to a close. Be sure to subscribe for more daily marketing strategies and tactics to help you find the success you've always dreamed of. And don't forget to rate and review so we can continue to bring you the best daily content possible. We'll see you in class tomorrow, right here on Marketing School.