Our special guest for episode 326 of the award-winning EDGE of the Web podcast was Joe Martinez, Director of Client Strategy for Clix Marketing. Host Erin Sparks spoke with Joe about how Quora is the up-and-coming PPC platform people are tapping into and getting great results.
Joe Martinez: His Background and Experience
Joe Martinez is the Director of Client Strategy for Clix Marketing. He’s been working in the PPC space for seven years. He is a regular contributor to Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, and WordStream. He has also written for PPC Hero, SEMrush, Unbounce, Leadpages, Optmyzr, and AdStage. He has hosted webinars for SEMrush, Unbounce, Quora and Bing Ads. He regularly speaks at conferences such as SMX (Advanced, Munich, East, West), HeroConf, Pubcon, Confluence Conference, Digital Olympus and more. Joe was named a Top 25 Influential PPC Expert by PPC Hero in 2017, 2018, and 2019. He also recently launched his on YouTube channel called Paid Media Pros that features all kinds of super-useful content. He’s also a lover of metal music, craft beer and all things Star Wars.
The Shifting Sands of Digital Marketing
It’s easy to sink all your digital marketing dollars into Facebook and Google, and yet there are consumers who are and have been moving away from some of the big platforms that just constantly barrage them with ads in every conceivable space possible.
Joe responds to these shifting sands in three ways. First, it’s still important to capitalize on search because it is the deepest way to tap into user intent. If people are searching for what you offer, it still makes sense to make sure you have a robust paid advertising presence there. Second, you have to diversify beyond Facebook. There are still many clients who will insist on first maximizing Facebook before trying other channels. It’s hard to explain to them and convince them that there’s a better way, which is spreading that budget out across multiple channels. Your target audience is not exclusively on Facebook, which means you’re missing out on reaching them where they’re at. Third, it’s important to understand that PPC is a tactic, not a strategy. PPC is a tool you use to implement a strategy.
The approach goes like this: Find out who your target audience is, where they are in the funnel, what they like to do, who they are from a persona basis. Then you go find them, find out where they are and which channel is best for your potential goals. And that’s going to be different for each client. Match type degradations have already happened within Google. Facebook keeps taking away targeting options, meaning it’s not as accurate as it used to be. They’re not the killer solutions they used to be, so it makes sense to take advantage of other options, other platforms that offer more targeting accuracy, are more cost-effective, and so on.
It means not being a lazy marketer because you will have more channels to manage, but it’s what you have to do to achieve results and success. Quora is one of the alternatives where savvy people are getting great results, both from organic and paid efforts. Consumers are multidimensional in terms of where they’re at and how they want to consume content. You just can’t bank on two horses and expect niche success with multidimensional consumers.
Think Your Audience isn’t on Quora? Think Again
You can go on Quora and add an audience for free without ever giving them your credit card information. This is worth doing because you’re going to learn something. When a client says their audience isn’t on Quora, add your audience and find out. Upload your customer list and see how much of them are on Quora. You’re going to be surprised that they are in fact spending time there. Then filter out another audience of people who have converted or your current customers and just do that basic subtraction of all the people who are also on Quora, who have also visited your website, and they still haven’t converted. You can’t limit yourself to Google and Facebook.
Another way people resist trying something newer like Quora comes in the form of not wanting to dive into a platform that hasn’t worked out all the kinks. First, Google and Facebook still have lots of kinks to work out, and Quora is much further along than people realize. And they’ve benefitted from poaching quite a few engineers from both Facebook and Google. The platform is solid and improving by leaps and bounds all the time. They’ve caught up to the biggies in an impressively short amount of time. It has robust features and is also surprisingly affordable.
Quora, in case people don’t know, is an online platform where people ask questions and other people provide answers to those questions. Anyone can play both sides of the equation – going on there to ask questions as well as helping provide answers. People go there to get answers, and also to give answers, so there is a high level of intent – and it’s a deeper level of intent than you get with many of the other digital marketing channels.
Quora also does a great job of keeping its platform well-policed in terms of spammy content and internet trolls. They don’t tolerate any of that. Unlike the way Yahoo answers used to be, they very actively manage the content to keep the quality high. And it has a really solid reputation for providing high-quality answers to questions.
Connect with Joe Martinez, Clix Marketing, and Paid Media Pros
Twitter: @MilwaukeePPC (https://twitter.com/MilwaukeePPC)
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemartinezppc/
Instagram: @milwaukeeppc (https://www.instagram.com/milwaukeeppc/)
Clix website: http://www.clixmarketing.com
Clix Twitter: @ClixMarketing (https://twitter.com/ClixMarketing)
Clix Facebook: @ClixMarketing (https://www.facebook.com/ClixMarketing/)
PMP YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/PaidMediaPros
PMP Facebook: @PadMediaPros (https://www.facebook.com/PaidMediaPros/)
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