S2 E3 - Building Brand Awareness Through Niche Audiences [Podcast Takeover]

Well, this is Chris Denow and I'm here with Peyton Christopher. Today we're taking over the Stacking Growth podcast to talk to you about building brand awareness through niche audiences using paid media. I'm Chris Denow working at Refined Labs for almost, I think it's been about two months now. I work with more small to medium sized businesses and I'm from the Minnesota area.

And I'm Peyton Christopher and I joined Refined Labs about six months ago and I'm a performance marketing manager with Refined and I'm based out of Dallas, Texas. Very nice, very nice. So yeah, again, our topic today is building brand awareness within niche audiences through paid media. So what would you say would be the backstory of needing to fly in niche audience?

Yeah, I mean, for me, it came up with two clients that I'm working with right now and one of them is in the dental industry. And I think within the US, there's like less than 200,000 dentists and other clients, or so within the bet office space. And so I think there's less than 200,000 vets in the US. And so those audiences are already really small.

And even if you expand it out to your practice managers, your admin, your support staff, it's still a pretty narrowed audience. And things like paid search, you could either get a ton of unusual traffic or to find your high intent traffic. The volume just really isn't going to exist. And even through things like Facebook and LinkedIn, like the normal Refined Labs playbook that might not always reach those audiences in the most meaningful way.

You think about vets and dentists, two professions that more than likely don't spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, just being honest. That's not their thing. Maybe their practice admin spend more time on their, maybe they spend more time on Facebook or Instagram, but really trying to figure out, okay, well, our clients, Tam or total addressable market, where do they live and exist within the social platforms that exist out there. And so that's kind of where the need came from.

That's right to hear because my wife works in the dental industry and you're absolutely right. The dentist is never on LinkedIn. Nobody in the office is on LinkedIn. So, you know, if you're looking for a dentist or even somebody who's like an influencer who can possibly make that decision as well or influence that decision, like an office manager, more than likely they're not on LinkedIn either.

So that's great to hear that you really have to dig deeper into it and look around what other audiences or what other areas can you really focus to really hit those because it's interesting that you did say the dental field. And so is there any type of specific research that was needed to find those niche audiences? Yeah, I mean, I think one of the helpful things to begin with really was using LinkedIn as kind of our baseline. And LinkedIn will show you roughly how many users on LinkedIn fit that profile.

So for us, we looked at the entire industry and we kind of excluded out larger veterinary hospitals. Same with the dental industry. So that really helped us kind of figure out how large is this audience that's on LinkedIn. And LinkedIn doesn't give you a perfect picture of that either because there's a lot of inactive users on LinkedIn, but it at least gives you a rough idea of how many people exist out there.

And once you kind of figure that out, then I think the next step is really is learning, okay, well, what other platforms out there have these larger pockets of users like that. And one of the best ways to find that information out is that we just interviewing your customers and even prospects. You can come up with a script for your sales team or your customer support team that feels really organic and just learning more about, okay, where do you spend a lot of time with social platforms? Do you like to use how do you engage with those platforms?

Because each platform is different. Like that's how it found its own way into the broader social atmosphere. So really learning how are they engaging with those? And then lastly, within those platforms, are there any communities that they're a part of that they actively engage with to figure out, okay, well, how do we not just serve them pay ads?

But how do we become a part of those communities to where our voice stands out amongst the crowd and we're no longer intrusive, but we're now actually a part of this community? Wow, yeah, that's great insight on that because it's really just leveraging and understanding exactly what the customer is doing when they're, which social media channels they go to, which communities they go to within that. And I was curious, has there ever been anything that's been, you know, this is definitely just kind of thrown it out there? Has there ever been anything that has surprised people as far as like which communities or which platforms customers or people might be going into?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, within these more niche communities, like I said, like your art traditional playbook for refined labs, like our go to our bread butter is LinkedIn. That's where that's the community that we belong to. But so many of these more niche audiences are becoming, they're building communities around platforms like Reddit, TikTok even, and Twitter. And so really learning, okay, well, we kind of have to take off our refined labs goggles in a way and take a step back and really understand these are traditional people that we're going after.

They don't exist on, it's not that they don't exist on the platforms that we use, but they don't use them in the same way that we use them. So what platforms are they using? And some of those communities are broad and they're interesting. But, you know, for our, my client that works within the VET space, PEP, Dental Month in the US is in February.

And they found this out last year that there's this community that exists on TikTok VET text who do PEP, TIF, Cleanings, and they record them. And it's some of the most disgusting videos you've ever seen. But this year, like recognizing that, okay, there's this community that exists out there, they took the initiative of running a contest on TikTok to whoever has the most disgusting thing. I think they gave them like a $500 gift card for Airbnb or something like that.

So immediately, not only were they engaging with that community, but they also gained the ability to reuse that content and expand on that by, introducing all those people that were participating in that contest to an upcoming continuing education webinar that they were hosting. And so that client was just able to kind of expand on what this already existing community was doing. That's great to hear. I mean, just, yeah, just to be able to understand that there's already something there that's really big in the community.

And then to introduce something that plays into that as well, and it make it even more fun and also introduce, you know, a point of, you know, a gift card into it was really cool. I think that definitely was a really cool insight that I was really looking forward to. Because I was like, wow, what about a community that would be like out there? That was definitely really one to be out there too.

I bet in the dental, you could probably find something here that as well, because now that's almost a play on the pet part, but just with the human part. So that was really interesting. Now, I know, was there ever any time that you have done anything with like search campaigns? Is that something as well?

Yeah, so we have kind of tested out different strategies within search. For example, that pet dental month, when you look at the search volume for that, it's extremely low, but no one else is bidding on it. So when our client came up with, it was this resource page and they did a great job of making that landing page experience incredible. Giving like a social pack for a free social pack to download to use on, you know, someone else's like a vet clinics website or Instagram or whatever.

So they gave that away free. They gave away dental charts for free. All these assets that would actually benefit prospects and even their own customers. They were just giving away and being useful.

And when we kind of compared the cost per click of driving from Facebook or LinkedIn, really what we found was that paid search. In that case, it was super cost competitive with Facebook. So for that, you know, one month we ran this campaign. And I think we spent maybe like $300.

But in comparison to Facebook, it drove similar traffic. It had a higher click through rate. And I think it was maybe like $2 a click. So it was cost competitive.

So it made sense to do that when we're looking to drive things, I think really around special initiatives like that. If you're just doing that, like as almost like an evergreen type thing, I would caution people in that regard and that gets really expensive really quick, even if you're using a niche audience. Even for us kind of filtering out using negative keywords in there to filter out pet parents from looking for some kind of coupon or deal to get their pet teeth cleaned. So it's like our first week running that we noticed, oh, a lot of these are probably actually pet parents.

So making sure we're adding in those negative keywords to make sure it's still that niche audience. So it's I think it definitely has room there, but you have to do your homework to understand is it going to be cost competitive and making that experience actually memorable, useful. And impactful. Otherwise, if you're just going to take them to a boring blog page, I don't know if it's worth it at that point to spend your money in that way.

Yeah, I think that's a really great point because if you're just going to send them, like I said, to a blog page, or you're going to send them to the home page where it has nothing to do with what you're already what your search at copy states. Then yeah, I definitely think that would that would not be anywhere as meaningful. So the fact that they had a landing page built out with that they're already sending that social traffic there. And then really running that alongside that paid search campaign alongside of it is really interesting.

I think, you know, I've heard about different different techniques, but I think using like a specific day that's in your, you know, in your niche market is very interesting. I have, and that's something I really haven't thought of or see much of until now until I was diving more into this topic. So I think that's really an interesting take as well. And the interesting aspect is there's really no competitors in the action on Google bidding for it, then you know, you're really good traffic and you're getting a good, good, good cheap or good targeted traffic for that that's not going to be as much.

So yeah, I mean, being might be something as well to look after that for specific audiences. But that, yeah, that's definitely great. But I have, is there any paid platforms that you've seen, you know, you mentioned Reddit Facebook, LinkedIn is something that we do utilize a lot here. But is there anything, any other people I've seen like work really well?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, everyone and their grandmother getting on to TikTok right now. And TikTok's algorithm, you know, I'm not a wizard, so I don't know how they actually built it, but it works really well in terms of the videos that you're engaging with. And I guess the people that you're following within that really continue to serve you that content, but also slightly enhancing it in terms of like broadening out one step. And so, TikTok does a great job of, you know, facilitating that.

And so I think that for sure is an emerging platform to where if you have a niche audience to where you can really get in front of them and, well, you can get in front of anyone at a certain point, but also serving them incredible content, which like TikTok, with it being a video-first platform, if you're just, you know, showing them like a carousel ad that has motion to it, that's probably not going to stick. But if you're doing something more engaging, that's where it's like those platforms allow users to be more engaged. And even Facebook and LinkedIn are moving more and more towards video-first, giving favor towards ads that are served on video versus a static or a carousel. So I think that would be another suggestion in mind.

So incorporate video as much as you can. We use, we use Canva, like for our creative packs will have carousel ads, so three static images all in a row. But we'll go into Canva and Canva has a cool video editing tool to where you upload those single images and they have really smooth transitions for you to where you can create a 15 second video to use on LinkedIn or on Facebook. And it just, it gives you further ability to have more of a meaningful experience on those platforms.

Yeah, I remember you were mentioning that the other day too, in one of our team chats that we had with that that you were talking about adding those carousels with Canva, building out video ads. Now, have you found that I was curious about those with like the engagement and click-through rates? Have you found that that's still been pretty good with those types of ads that have been built with Canva? Yeah, so I think, so we started at a video abuse campaign for one of our clients maybe last month, and it's click-through rate is actually very similar to that of the content.

That we're running specifically for to optimize for landing page views. And so you have users that are watching almost nine seconds on average of the video, and it has a similar click-through rate. So I think it just makes another case of, okay, well, video seems like it's continuing to work better and better. So it is interesting what you're able to start to compare that with, you know, it's a complete different campaign objective that Facebook is optimizing towards.

Yet it's getting some more results to the other campaign that optimizes for landing page views. So, you know, I don't think we've had a compromise in any way there, but to add on top of that, it's like, you know, we're getting, I think, nine seconds on average with those ads. And we're building remarketing lists on platform for those ads. So it's just another advantage.

We're not, it becomes less intrusive. We're not requiring that person to hop off Facebook to go to a website to then remark it to them. We're able to keep them in our remarketing pool by them watching a video. So.

Yeah, that's great to know. I was always curious about building those on campus. So it's great to know that they have really strong engagement rates and they're doing really well because I think that's something that a lot of people, if you're, you know, if you don't have the video assets that you want for specific ads, that makes it great to be able to jump in and create a video asset right off that. I know like YouTube had its own YouTube video like that builder.

And I know that that can be, that can be decent, but I think with, if you already have that specific creative there and you can integrate it in a video ad that's fantastic. And I think that's definitely something I'm going to have to take a look at too. Is there anything as far as like, like any, anything that like was like a big win or something that was like really that you found while doing, you know, the research and then while doing the strategy and the execution of it. And then later on, do we like reporting on it?

Was there anything that was a big win or something that was, that really was like, oh, this is a, this is great to see this part on this. Yeah, I think one thing that refine labs tries to get our clients to implement is self attributed attribution. So what that is is rather than relying solely on what Google tells you or what a platform tells you is like, attributing to that requested demo conversion because most direct and organic searches, it'll just say it came from direction, organic search. So we try to get our clients to implement this to where whoever's requesting that demo, you just give them an open in the field to explain how do they even hear about you.

And whenever our, that client was running that campaign on TikTok, I think they had like maybe five or six requested demos come in that month from, from that campaign. And that was an organic campaign that they ran. So as much as we talked about paid media, this is them taking the initiative of running an organic campaign and being a part of that community like we talked about earlier. And I know maybe some companies laugh at like six requested demos, but on average that client is getting about like 30 to 35 requested demos a month.

And so six coming from that one campaign is super meaningful. And otherwise it would have looked like it came from brand search or direct organic traffic, but with that self attributed self reported attribution. Then they were actually able to see some of the impact that running this, you know, weird campaign of like finding out like what these vet texts are recording or whatever. It actually had true meaning.

So even though that's not something that we got to run, it reinforces the idea of getting our clients to see beyond LinkedIn, Facebook, paid search and begin testing out these different platforms for both paid media, but also organic media. And how do they actually fit into the larger narrative of that community? Yeah, I think that's a great way to put it. And it's really interesting that you said, you know, that was a, that was organic social that they were doing.

And it was really on TikTok, as you said, correct. So it was organic. It was, it was, it was them contributing to six requests, which they get 30 a month. So I mean, if you look at it from that aspect, I know that there's a lot of people that I've seen that are still kind of on the fence or they don't know if TikTok for me to be make sense, but I think that definitely puts it in a whole new light of Well, if they weren't on TikTok and they weren't posting that content that was engaging, that was really for a community on TikTok there, that those six demo requests would likely not be there.

So it's really great to see that thinking outside the box and really not having any of the expectations about a specific platform can also be really beneficial to. Yeah, no, I think this has been, this has been great to jump into this and just kind of be able to see, you know, as far as the beginning stages is talking about, you know, looking at customer research, interviewing customers, getting as much data point as you data points as you can on like which kind of communities they are in. And for those specific niche audiences that you work with, as well as like page search, looking at like those specific types of interesting searches that might be coming through for those specific days, you can capture those as good traffic sources too. And then you said even just like Canva building out your your video ads for that.

I think that's been everything today that you've been talking about has been fantastic to hear. Is there with all that being said, is there anything else that you'd like to mention or any testing or experiments or anything that you'd like to mention on really just the brand awareness within these nuances. More so it's helping. I know a lot of times in particular, see sweet executives that get in this mindset of seeing direct results and seeing them really fast.

And that's a very dangerous game to play anytime you're sitting outside of like B2C eCommerce. So I think, you know, whenever marketers are approaching testing things on different platforms and really driving niche awareness, it's having a long term view of it and understanding you're not going to see direct results over time. But you're not going to see direct results immediately. You will see them over time.

And so it's playing having that mindset playing a long game. Your goal is to reach the niche audience and be in front of them be top of mind be a part of the conversation so that when they decide, you know what, we need your project management software or we need this software. You're the first company that comes to mind. And so you immediately jump to first in mind for them.

And you already have a positive place within their view of you. So it's playing a long game there, making sure you have the right frame of mind and communicating that to your C-suite, to your sales team, that, you know, doing a TikTok challenge is not usually going to result in direct results immediately. Or expanding to Twitter or to Reddit and just being a part of conversations. That's not going to have to rec results immediately.

Later on down, it will. And so it's just making sure you as well as all your teammates have the right frame of mind about how you're approaching this. Definitely. And I think a big part of you touched on earlier is self-reported attribution, because without that in place, when you have, you know, let's say you have a really good, you found, you did your customer research, you found a really good community.

You know, you're targeting a great audience there. And you have really great engaging content as you just discussed of like creating these really cool contests on TikTok ads or just social, paint social or organic. And you go through doing all that. And you're doing these really great engaging, all this great engaging content and product ads for months and months.

And then you're starting to see, oh, we're getting an update in demo requests, but you're just seeing like it directed organic and you're not, oh, well, we can't contribute to this. Well, with self-reported attribution, yes, you're going to be able to really dive into, you know, as we say, dark social and be able to see. Okay, this is really what is actually driving these demo requests. Yeah, absolutely.

Definitely. Well, with that, I think, yeah, we can wrap it up there. I think this has been great. I definitely hope for me on learning all these different parts about the paint search part was really cool.

Canva was definitely great. I think this has been really I-O.