Sam Henderson

It’s wild how effective UGC ads have been over the last 12 months. They’re the best performing content type in almost every account we manage. For example, this one piece of content cost about $1200 all in to create. We put $86,761 of spend behind it. To date, it's given us back $889,982 in revenue. From ONE video. Gone are the days of paying your favourite Love Islander £10k for a story that has zero business impact. The quality of the creative is one of the single biggest drivers for paid social success, and your customers want to see people that look and sound just like them. My advice for anyone wanting to smash BFCM this year: - Find epic creators that fit your niche - Tell them what you want to achieve - Pay them - Let them do their thing in their own unique style. Yes, some pieces might not land. That's part of the game, and it’s exactly why we script, build & edit the videos in a modular format so we can stitch various hooks & assets together to find the best performing combinations. But when you land on a few that do, you can scale them to the moon. P.S- if you want a great Black Friday this year, the priming for it starts now (before ad costs & competition get ramped up disgustingly in November). Chop chop. #Marketing #Advertising #MetaAds

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How to design a high-converting page? (This example will show you how) Lucent Globe is a fast growing ecommerce detergent brand in Australia. Here’s how I would improve their landing page (in 3 parts): Part 1: Headline & Supporting Texts → Clearly state what your product is & what makes it different → Make headline text bigger so it stands out → Highlight product benefits in the supporting text beneath headline → Make supporting texts easily scannable & readable (bullet points would help) → Bonus: Showcase reviews from 220,000+ customers Part 2: Main Hero Image → Pictures speak a thousand words → Select a clear, close up image of the product → Clearly highlight to the user what the product is & what makes it unique → Premium image that builds trust with the brand Part 3: Call to Action → Showcase featured publications for social proof → Used “See How It Works” rather than “Shop Now” → Because it’s a unique product, users will be curious to find out how it works → Risk-reversal: Make it a no brainer for customers to buy with a money-back guarantee Making these changes will capture someone’s attention. And make them curious enough to want to browse the website further. Which is an important first step in getting someone interested to make a purchase. Want to learn more about how to design a high-converting landing page? I’ve compiled 10 landing page examples from some of the top ecommerce brands in the market. Click my link in bio to get the full editable templates.

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I’m still trying to figure out the exact format I want to use, but I think I’ll just start by giving you updates on the 3 Shopify EMD projects, on a weekly basis and I’ll let the format develop over time. Out of the 3 EMD projects, 1 targets the US, and 2 target Australia, we’ll call the US project, Project A, and the Australian projects, B and C. Here are the updates! Project A) Spent the week arranging a lot of the access, moving billing details from one card to another, getting a VA in place with my business partner, to fulfill the orders, and identifying a great potential candidate to run the operations and manage the project. We’re still figuring out exactly what we’re going to do with the prices (we believe we need to increase prices to become profitable on Google Ads), but we’ll give it some more time. Until then, the main focus is collecting as many 5-star reviews as possible, and getting Google Ads profitable, we’ll also start building out some email flows/automation shortly. Project B) This is the project that made 4 sales last week, exclusively from organic traffic with no links, no content, no collection texts, just 100-something collections created, on-page optimized, and indexed, along with about 250 products added to the store. This week we added about 200 additional products from new suppliers to further fill out the collection pages, and the majority of the week was dedicated to image enhancement. Unfortunately, the images we get from suppliers usually aren’t of the highest quality (this is a super good opportunity for any supplier to up their game by the way - improve your image quality). Because of that, we’ve bulk-exported all product images, and we’re using an AI image enhancer to bring up the quality of the images and make the entire brand look more premium. We should have this fully done in the next few days, and on Friday we have a meeting to launch Google Ads, which I’m incredibly excited about. Project C) This one is the most insane because we literally haven’t even created any collections, we haven’t added anything to the homepage and the site doesn’t even have a navigation menu… Yet, somehow we got a $300 order in last week. Absolutely nuts. This is a higher ticket store, which has the potential to do a few million a month in revenue once it’s running at full speed… But because the project is so massive, with so many product categories, it is taking us quite a while to plan out all the keyword research, as we’re going to be targeting over 6M keywords. I’ll be getting an update shortly from my team on when this will be ready, but other than that, this week we mainly planned out the homepage, the theme we’re going to use and we’re going to start with the site layout build-out process. Other than that, I also added all 3 projects into our indexing tool a few days ago, to ensure as many product pages get indexed as possible, and that’s that. Any feedback on the format of this post?

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Did you know Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) have launched three new paid options for Business profiles? Interestingly since this launch we've been fielding between 8 - 12 Spam Comments, DM's & Notifications DAILY on client pages we manage, since the announcement and launch last week into Australia, New Zealand & Canada. Mere coincidence? Share your thoughts! P.S: Tired of managing your Social Media accounts and consistent posting? Let's talk! Send us a DM or book a call with me. https://lnkd.in/evFkPam #MetaUpdate #DigitalSuccess #MarketingLeap #2024Strategy #DigitalMarketing

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To say someone (an HubSpot partner for instance) can set up HubSpot for you is a bit misleading. It sounds very tempting doesn’t it? Get it set up and working and show us the ropes and we’ll carry on doing our business. Just import our data, clean it up a bit, build a few workflows, maybe add a pipeline or two, a couple of reports and we’ll be good to go! Of course we can all do that, and many do. In order to hit a price point you might have in your mind, or perhaps a price point someone else suggested, partners often do this fire and forget approach to onboarding. It’s what the customer asked for after all. The trouble is it doesn’t work. Your data needs ongoing care and maintenance Your systems and processes will need ongoing optimisation. There’ll be additional software to build in, or integrations to fix. And how long do you think it takes someone to make a change to the way they work? As in, fully adopt HubSpot as the system of record and the operational tool kit for your business? I estimate, based on the large transformation projects I have led, it takes about a year… So not the two weeks of HubSpot training you were hoping to get away with. If you are going to invest in HubSpot, do it properly. Use it through out the business, connect everything up and plug everything in yes, but care and tend to it there after. And above all, teach and train the leadership, managers and teams that will use it. Support them to get the most out of it. This is why we have created HubSpot coaching to go along with our implementation work with our clients. Time and again it’s revealed to be the most important piece. You’d get a coach to keep you fit right? I’ll keep HubSpot and your business fit. #TheHubSpotCoach #HubSpotPartners

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HubSpot is not a strategy Using its tools to do the job doesn't mean you are going to achieve your objectives In fact without that strategy thread running through HubSpot, its unlikely you will even get full use out of the tools in the first place We call it the HubSpot Adoption Gap The difference between buying HubSpot and getting everyone in the business to use it so that you can benefit from its enormous potential ✅ Getting all your customer data into once place in one record ✅ Making decisions based on a complete picture of the data ✅ Enabling your teams with first rate digital tools But even that isn't a strategy... This doesn't have to be difficult The most strategic tools in HubSpot are the dashboards and reports, the forecasts, goals, pipelines and campaign tools These will give you direct feedback on your plans to hit your objectives 💲 Dashboards and reports speak for themselves really. Approach them as a management control system - a way to understand how the whole business AND your adoption plan is performing You don't need to be running ADDITIONAL reports by exporting data from HubSpot and putting it into spreadsheets 🙄 💲 How many people use the goals and forecasts properly? Want a pulse check of the business? A quick look at monthly and quarterly revenue and activity performance Both your pipeline AND sales peoples forecasts tells you what you need to know FAST Are your sales leaders running pipeline reviews and coaching? Good sales manager know the status of every conversation and client in the business. How? By following the pipelines with their people. And how about that vital input on overcoming an objection? Or helping to close a deal with a well timed discount? All there in pipeline management 💲 Do you flex your marketing spend on the most successful of your channels? The Campaigns tool pulls every impression, click and new contact together and associates it directly to a deal - meaning real time ROI on your Ads, emails, social media and content funnels Are you even aware of what your most successful channels are? These days its not appropriate to keep spending on what you always did. Times they are a changing Getting strategic both closes your adoption gap AND drives business performance Get on that #HubSpotIsNotaStrategy #TheHubSpotAdoptionGap

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Let's cut the BS and discuss why your Meta and Google Ads aren't performing. You're pumping money into these platforms, watching those fancy dashboards, and... crickets. Maybe a trickle of sales, but nothing close to the "7-figure scaling" gurus promise you. I've seen it all. Every seven out of ten founders I speak to butcher their ad spend on these platforms. And it's not entirely their fault. Meta and Google make it look easy. "Just boost this post!" "Let Smart Bidding do the work!" Yeah, right. So why are your ads flopping harder? Let's break it down: ❌ You're treating Meta and Google like they're the same. The intent on these platforms is wildly different. Someone scrolling Instagram isn't in the same headspace as someone Googling "best running shoes." ❌ Your targeting is broader than the Pacific Ocean. Adding Demographics and age isn't targeting. You have to understand their buying behavior and their present situation. ❌ You're creating boring ads. Period. It doesn't matter if you like your ad, you are not your customer. ❌ You're optimizing for the wrong metrics. Clicks and impressions are vanity metrics. If they're not leading to cold, hard cash, who cares? ❌ You're not leveraging the full power of these platforms. Retargeting? Custom audiences? Dynamic ads? All need your equal attention. You don't need "secret hacks" or "underground techniques." Use Meta and Google Ads how they're meant to be used- Strategically. Data-driven. Customer-focused. Everyone is fighting for attention, you can't afford to be ineffective. Not with your ad spend, not with your strategy, not with anything. Are you making the most of your ad spend? #metaads #googleads

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'You need to be everywhere online to succeed.' This might be the most expensive myth costing digital businesses millions. Last month, I audited a $2M agency that was burning $40K monthly trying to maintain presence on 6 different platforms. Their profitable channels? Just 2. Reality Check: Platform overwhelm is killing your ROI. The most successful digital businesses I've worked with focus on: -Mastering 1-2 platforms where their ideal clients actually hang out -Creating deep, meaningful content for those platforms -Reinvesting saved resources into client experience Stop spreading yourself thin. Start going deep. ↓ Share below: How many platforms is your business trying to maintain right now?

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Are you an early-stage startup? 👉 Get free $600 in free advertising credit on Google Ads. 👈 It's much higher than I've seen recently, and a great way to dip a toe in. Please like, comment and share this to help as many Aussie and Kiwi startups get started generating customers! Link in comments!

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⏳ 2014: On stage at an Easy Weddings event I told an audience of skeptical Australian wedding professionals that Google Analytics conversion tracking meant they could track every conversion back to the referrer. Simple. Marketing works! ⌛ 2023: At a DTCX event in Austin I am asked in front of an audience of DTC marketers for my thoughts on attribution, and if I had a preferred platform. My response was "attribution and all the attribution programs are RUBBISH" (sorry American friends... "trash") In this day and age, there's too many variables, online, offline... AND too many barriers (see below), to make any of it more than guesswork. So I'm all in on SparkToro's advice of 🎉 Measurement over Attribution 🎉 Of course you need to understand which channels are working, which are not, which work well in tandem and at different points of the buyers journey and to different objectives, where are your customers spending time, etc etc That's marketing! The era of "take this pill for all your attribution woes" is over. H/t Rand Fishkin and Amanda Natividad #attribution #marketing

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This is how I simplified a Lead-Gen Account (that had +𝟳𝟬 𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 +𝟱𝟮𝟬 𝗮𝗱 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗽𝘀) for Maximum Results A well-established art gallery in Australia with a complex Google Ads account: 70 campaigns and 520 ad groups!  As their agency partner for over 4 years, I initially relied on a SKAG structure and optimized based on limited real-time signals. My focus? 𝗠𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗖𝗣𝗔 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻 𝗮 𝟲𝟬-𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗼𝘄. (this is still main KPI to focus on btw) 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗵𝗶𝗳𝘁: Over time, my understanding of the lead-gen industry and the client's specific needs evolved. Here's how I've simplified the account for better results: -> 𝗥𝗲𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗲𝗱 𝗖𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗖𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁: Down from 70 to just 10, streamlining management. This one best descision I embraced tbh, It saved me ton of hours just doing this switch and performance only improved afterwards. -> 𝗧𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗔𝗱 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗽𝘀: Combined audience layering with tCPA can control your ad group well (if you have large budget) -> 𝗦𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗕𝗶𝗱𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 & 𝗕𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝗰𝗵: This one (switch) was easier to apply than I was thinking. Broad match can easily adapt on larger accounts that have big traffic -> 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗹 𝗔𝗱 𝗧𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴: The core messaging (benefits, CTAs, location targeting) has remained consistent, eliminating the need for frequent ad variations. Thus having x1 RSA per ad group was easy to control (plus if you have 60% of headlines and description that are static and used in other Ads as well) 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆: This journey from 70 campaigns to 10 isn't just about "𝗯𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀." It really highlight how much Google improved over time. To decrease that number of campaigns and still achieve better results was blowing my mind and really shaping my way of thinking about everything. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗕𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗲𝗱. This journey isn't about following "best practices" but rather adapting to Google's continuous evolution. For businesses with dedicated budgets and a culture of testing, the future is bright. Clients who focus on their value proposition and website optimization, coupled with expertise in leveraging cutting-edge tools, are the recipe for long-term success. 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗲 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀.

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I've managed Meta Ad Accounts spending $50/day to over $5,000/day. These two things are consistent inside successful accounts at any spending level... 1. Simple Campaign Structure Your campaign structure doesn't matter as much as you think it does. Most brands could be scaling performance with 1 or 2 broad targeting campaigns. Full-funnel campaign systems with complex ad sets are officially a dated "best practice". Test audiences for yourself, but keep your campaign structure simple and don't spread your daily budget too thin. 2. Consistent Creative Output & Testing of New Ads Creative is the name of the game right now. You need consistent quality and diversity of new ad assets. Every great media buyer needs to think like a creative strategist to figure out which angles, copy, and static or video are delivering the best results. Your campaigns should be getting new ads published on a weekly or bi-weekly basis to find the next winner. Whether you just launched your first campaign or you are trying to improve the efficiency of your budget at scale, these two factors are hugely important. Keep it simple and create new ads every week. When you find an ad concept or angle that works, lean in!

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It's not enough to: 1. know your customers 2. be stat sig 3. have 'the' tool 4. hire 'A' players To push on growth and experimentation (my jam) I'm seeing that the core to scale is to change or address the 'HOW' you work. Not what you work on, or where, or by whom. The 'where and what' are related, but not the core of it. (this has been hard for me to grasp) The 'how' has to do with ways of working that integrates principles, practices, and competencies focused on where you are creating value for customers and consumers. Question: What's the job to be done of any business? I THINK it's to create a customer. Thus HOW you do this as you scale ends up following one of two paths: Path 1 - Industrialized and predictable: e.g., this is the management style and the 'how' of McDonalds. And they do well with it. Path 2 - market driven and innovation focused: e.g., this is the 20% time in Google, this is the failure tolerance at Amazon, this is in the soul of the biz over at 3M. It's true that McDonalds can be market driven and innovation focused at the global and marketing levels...more than one thing can be true for any org, in any given team or department. The question is, who do you want to work for? Walmart or Walmart Labs? Do you want to be a cog in a machine, or a maverick customer advocate? And then how do you 'scale' a system of maverick customer advocates?? "Growth Experimentation" or "Experimentation Operation Systems" is the answer. It's the how, an operating system. It is not CRO, optimization or finding local maxima. It is a systematic approach to driving value through discovery....ideally at ALL levels. It can apply at an org level as well as within an SEO team. EXL+Unite Conference, October 10-11th in Austin Texas will focus on this operating system. We will be from ALL roles and teams within the org. You'll hear story after story of this in action, about failures and successes. You should come, contribute your part of the story! I'll buy drinks. DM me with questions!

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The stuff I've seen in the Google ads space is CRAZY. Audited a brand doing $500k/mo. Their Google agency was asleep at the wheel. This is a WELL KNOWN agency. They made this brand spend €20k... For €558 in sales. All the spend was going to underperforming products. This is why you need to run scripts in your account. Exclude the products that generate 0 sales... And push the products that are winning.

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5,145 users viewed the article 785 clicked the link (15.2% CTR) 136 (or 17.3%) then purchased $5,598.94 in sales Not bad for 1 week promoting a new guidebook with zero paid amplification! Digital publishers largely sit top of funnel, but where there's a niche, trust and a highly engaged audience, we can also add clear calls-to-action inside content that creates immense results like this. Power to the trusted voices of independent media ✌️

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I've made $50m+ for my clients over the last few years with Google ads. Want to know when the majority of that revenue was made? You guessed it... Q4. That's why my team and I are taking it to an entirely new level this year. Whilst most in the industry are peddling the same tired old strategies from years ago... We are constantly pushing to stay on the cutting edge of what's working. Without further ado, here's our updated Google ads strategy for Q4 of 2024: 1) We make an aggressive volume of creatives in-house for our clients Google is no longer a simple game of keyword bidding. The platform is shifting towards interest based targeting on 'social' platforms. (Mainly YouTube, YouTube shorts & the discovery network.) Therefore, in order to scale these top of funnel channels aggressively... We need to be testing a high volume of creative (just like on meta.) It blows my mind that precisely ZERO other Google ads agencies are doing this. YouTube ads campaigns are our highest spending campaigns in 60% of our accounts. 2) We capture demand generated by paid social and outrank your competitors Spending thousands per day on Meta & YouTube ads creates a TON of searches. Think about it, if someone sees your ad on Meta but doesn't click & convert THEN & THERE... The first place they'll go to try and find your product again is Google. This is where the whole bidding on keywords thing comes into play. But my team approaches things entirely differently. We don't spend thousands for people that are already searching up our your brand name... Instead, we only target customers searching for cold product related keywords. 'White t-shirt', 'bella hadid necklace', 'mastic gum' etc. The MAIN mistake that most Google ads agencies make... Is letting branded traffic slip in at this level (especially within pMax.) 3) We retarget your website visitors everywhere ou know those image ads that follow you around the web? Or those YouTube ads that you just keep getting and can't get out of your head? That's probably us! Whilst almost every brand is retargeting customers on Meta... Very few are retargeting them on YouTube & display. This is a huge missed opportunity! (Just think about how many people go to your site during BFCM.) That's everything! Thanks for reading. Want me to walk you through this strategy in greater detail?we've implemented Then book a zero pressure 1-1 Google ads strategy session with the link in my bio!

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If you are still not sure if it’s worth spending on content, here’s some more proof. Ads will generate leads but it’s the right content that will help convert them.

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OpenAI launch SearchGPT in a direct move against Google and SEO is dead again💀 Is it tho? 😇As much as it would be amazing to hear the SEO community unite in a rare moment of "I told you so", I don't think we can plan that funeral (and our next career pivot) quite yet. 🤖 In case you missed it, here's the announcement from OpenAI and a link to join the waitlist to be able to test out these flashy search engine capabilities https://lnkd.in/efc5KXkw My questions/thoughts: 1. "While this prototype is temporary, we plan to integrate the best of these features directly into ChatGPT in the future" - will these search abilities be available for free? If not, Google will remain market leader and SEO is alive indeed 2. This model is similar to Perplexity AI that already exists, but I've not seen it used by the masses yet, so both Google and SEO are still around. 3. "We are committed to a thriving ecosystem of publishers and creators. We hope to help users discover publisher sites and experiences, while bringing more choice to search." - with the closed beta featuring mostly big trusted publications, how will smaller publishers find their place? How will bigger publishers get included when many already block ChatGPT from crawling to prevent copyright infringement. Google still survives and SEO does too. 4. There's nothing in this announcement on how the process of inclusion (indexing) would work, beyond a contact email. Since there aren't any official OpenAI guides on how they choose the links that they do feature in answers currently, I wouldn't hold my breath on them providing best practices on enhancing your site's presence within the search engine. Google might not give you a specific answers on your site, but they do provide numerous best practices guides that SEOs use/learn from/interpret daily, both still kicking. 5. Fact checking and quality assurance (!!!) - there's no information within this announcement on how they would trust the information or sites they would be presenting in the results. So far ChatGPT always has a % of hallucinations in its answers and it's not able to fact check itself (trust me, even asking it directly doesn't help) - say what you like about Google, but it's pretty good at surfacing reliable information (if we for a sec ignore AI Overviews and past disasters), and they in turn leave us SEOs with no other choice but to provide the highest quality and most authoritative info to have a chance at ranking. Still alive✅✅ Last but not least, Google went all in on Reddit and user generated content (UGC) to an extent that as of these days reddit content is exclusive to Google (with the main goal to train their own AI). Right or wrong choice, it doesn't seem like SearchGPT takes UGC into consideration at all. Possible win for Google here? Or OpenAI? In this case SEO got injured, but still, not dead. I wish OpenAI fixed these issues before moving on to the next flashy toy, but maybe that's just me #seo #searchgpt #ai

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Every day I speak to agency owners who struggle to hit $10k/mo in their agency. And they don't realise that they are missing these 3 things 1. Offer 2. Attention 3. Sales I made a video going over how I used these 3 things in my agency to scale to $50k/mo in under 90 days. Here you go: https://lnkd.in/gDJV5c8a

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