Tired of the same old marketing tactics that don’t deliver results? It’s time to embrace a more independent approach to marketing your business. In this episode, Juliet Clark welcomes marketing expert Jason Renno, who discusses how authors can use data-driven strategies to boost conversions and achieve marketing independence. As the founder of Definitive Edge Marketing/Data Accelerator, Jason discusses how authors can leverage their own data instead of relying solely on ad platforms, ultimately transforming their marketing approach. Discover how these strategies can help you stand out in a competitive market and achieve your marketing goals!
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Marketing Independence: Because Your Business Deserves Better Than ‘Just’ Ads
Jason’s Career Journey
Welcome to the show. We have a unique guest who’s going to talk about Google Ads and some of the data that his company collects when they do advertising and how it could benefit authors. Before we get started, I want to direct you over to PlatformPlanning.com. In 2023, we did an event called Platform Planning Palooza, and it was $1,500. This year, because so many people, and businesses are struggling out there, we want to do it for free.
You can register at PlatformPlanning.com. It is November 1st at 9:00 AM Mountain Time, and it’ll be about a 90-minute workshop. We’ve got lots of forms we want to give you and a look at what you did this year, what got accomplished, what you didn’t get accomplished, and what you want to move forward with to build your platform next year. The best part is I’m going to teach you guys how to break it down into baby steps. You can actually get it done because I think that’s what holds people back the most they get overwhelmed and then they don’t either do it at all or they don’t do it well. PlatformPlanning.com November 1st, get yourself registered.
Our guest is Jason Renno. He is the Founder of Definitive Edge Marketing and Data Accelerator. He believes that every business deserves a chance to own and control their own marketing data instead of relying on ad platforms. I cannot even tell you what an amazing concept that is because you should know what your data is and own it.
With over twenty years of experience in marketing and sales, Jason is passionate about helping businesses grow. His focus is on finding innovative ways to leverage high intent data ensuring companies can capture, own, and utilize this valuable resource to enhance their marketing efforts and achieve remarkable growth. Stay tuned for my interview with Jason.
—
Jason, welcome. I’m pretty excited to have you because you’re going to dive into something that’s a little complicated and people never want to do it themselves, but you make it really easy when you do it for them.
That’s a great introduction.
Let’s talk. How did you get into this? How did you transition from being a mortgage broker into this business, which I know you’ve been doing for quite a while now?
It’s many years now. I guess it is rooted around just spending time with my kids. In the mortgage business, you’re trying to hold open houses on the weekends. You’re working seven days a week, and it’s just in line with trying to spend some time with my kids. Switch from the mortgage business into marketing. I always used to joke around and say, really we’re just marketing experts. We just choose to market mortgages. Then I jumped into marketing and then I’ve been here ever since.
That’s so funny, I went from advertising and I wanted to spend time with my kids to real estate, which I think I spent not much more time with my kids into this.
Not if you want to stay busy in a competitive area, I guess.
People don’t realize in real estate, those people who make quite a bit of money are 24/7 players. You really have to be in that industry.
It’s not so much almost the amount of hours. I guess it depends if you have a good assistant or TC or something, but it’s really more the hours because you always work in the opposite of everybody else. When everybody’s getting off work, they’re like, “Mr. Realtor, let’s talk about our loan. Let’s go see a house, whatever it is.” It’s just the hours that you have to work, the evenings and the weekends at the episode.
Omnichannel Marketing
It definitely is. No,w you are a data company, you do omnichannel marketing, and I think for authors, this is going to be a real eye-opener on how to use all this. Talk a little bit about Omnichannel marketing first. What does that entail, and how does that little pixel you use facilitate all that?
Great questions. I’ll start with the first one there, omnichannel. Omnichannel means creating that spider web effect. You’re not just relying on one channel. It would be setting up your funnels where you’re utilizing data so you can target the right individuals in what we call the middle of the funnel because traditionally a sales funnel is top, middle, and bottom. What we’re saying is we can take our data, and plug it into the middle of your funnel.
You can deliver your ads and offers. We can drive them to the website. We give you your own custom pixel that you can capture more data and then you can retarget them. Really in essence, that’s where we take out the wasted ad spend at the top of the funnel, and allow you to set up your funnel with the two-stage approach utilizing data. Then in terms of where the authors go, like we had talked about before we jumped on here, they’re obviously trying to sell a book.
Then they’re typically going and trying to sell something further like, “Here’s my book, but also, I can help you with this. I can add value here. I can do X, Y, and Z.” As you’re selling your book or driving influencers to landing pages that you have set up or websites, however, you’re selling your books or services, whatever it is, that’s where the pixel comes in where we could capture that data. That’s the pixel data. That’s the post-click data, which you mentioned.
When you’re doing that, the benefit for authors, obviously, is now we’re driving traffic to this low-cost item, and we’ve got a list, we’ve got targets, and now we can turn around when we release that course, and retarget those people into something else.
Let’s say they get 5,000 people per month to their websites or landing pages, and we have a pixel on there, and we deliver back 2,500 email addresses, 50%, let’s just say. Let’s assume, I don’t know, call it 2% converted on their website actually purchased something. 98% bounced away. Statistically, 60% to 70% of them aren’t coming back at all. Now we have the ability to capture a large portion of those non-converting visitors and directly stream them into that omnichannel retargeting approach.
If they’re running paid ads, for example, now you can take that person that bounced off your site and retarget them directly. I don’t care where they came from. I can take that click from anywhere and retarget them everywhere. I can take that Facebook click and then put them into display ads, put them into YouTube ads, put them back into Facebook ads, put them into TikTok ads, wherever the client’s ad spend allows. Even if it’s for authors specifically, I don’t want it to seem like, “I’m not spending money on five different ad platforms. That’s not going to work.”
It works very effectively, even if you’re just using Facebook ads, for example. The main thing is you’re going to own the data. Now, even if it’s just, for example, you take the data that comes from Facebook ads and you’re using our pixel captured around 50%, you now own that 50% of the data. You can see the name and the email address. You can put it back into an email CRM. You can analyze the data. Where are these people coming from? Oftentimes, we can provide demographic and firmographic data. Not on everybody, but what percentage are making these different income brackets, and what percentage are homeowners? There’s a lot of valuable feedback that comes along with the data as well.
Using that data, this is where it’s really important, guys. Your company, when you do this, they own the data. Most companies don’t do that. Is that correct?
Yeah. The author would own the data. For example, if we engage with an author, we provide them the pixel on a daily basis wherever the author needs us to send the data, because it’s a daily stream, it’s all automated, which is nice too. That way, once it’s set up to Facebook, all the Facebook automation is set with sent API calls or I don’t know all the techie terms to be frank, it’s updated on a daily basis. Once it’s all setup, nobody really has to do much.
The data is there. We help the clients monitor it on a consulting type of basis where we’re going to help set KPIs and see what type of KPIs we’re looking for. We can help set up emails. We’ve been helping companies use the data for quite a while now. We know how to use it. We know different ways to use it. We’ve seen different funnels and email copies and different business niches and that type of stuff. From a consulting standpoint, we try to provide a lot of valuable feedback to make sure they get the most out of the data.
If you’re an author and you’re building your platform, they should start with that initial opt-in with you guys to start collecting. Would that be the place to start, like driving traffic to a landing page with an opt-in? I’m trying to walk them through how they can do this.
The simple answer is that you want our pixel on, or technically their pixel, anywhere that they’re driving traffic, from that first click to even down the road. The pixel, when we’re installing the pixel, we’ll tell them. For example, if they’re duplicating landing pages as we talked about at a high level, where they’re duplicating landing pages, there’s a Facebook page, a YouTube page, and a TikTok page. It’s just XYZ.com/Facebook/YouTube, whatever it is. The pixel will tell you where those clips came from. Then you can possibly retarget them differently or it’s just segmenting out the data depending on where they came from.
I think you guys just heard there, you can drive traffic to your website, which I don’t typically do because I get so many referrals, but if you’re going to target it to your website, do you want to find out how long they’re staying on that homepage or maybe the sales page? You’d put it on every page and then give them data back, correct?
I wouldn’t be able to tell you how long they stayed on those pages. There are some other tools that you can install that will tell you how long they stayed on different spots on the website and how far down they went and like heat maps that type of stuff. No, the pixels, that’s a form of identity resolution. We’re going to put on the pixel. We’re going to grab the cookie crumb that’s left on the website. We’re then going to take it offline, de-anonymize the cookie crumb, and then give you the data that’s attached to it.
The other thing that you can really use that effectively for is looking for glitches in your funnel as well. I know we used to do that a lot. Can you talk about that a little bit? Somebody might land on your landing page and probably go to your Thank You, but email three inside of your funnel may have a headline that is like nobody’s opening. How can that work to give you feedback on how effective your funnel is as well?
It’s going to tell you when the clients are clicking and help you. What we like to say is we want to close the loop and duplicate the buyer’s attorney, which I think is what you’re referring to. Yes, where did they click? Where did they convert? How can we track? For example, we feed the data into a demand-side platform.
For authors specifically, if the author, a specific genre, or something, let’s just say on the demand side platform, we only want to target people specific to this, people searching these terms from the in-market data, people that have bounced off the site and look just like these people and that are into this type of genre, whatever the book is tied to. Let’s just say history, I don’t know. Now, what’s a typical genre for your authors?
We have mostly non-fiction books, psychology or spirituality, things like that.
Let’s just go spirituality. Let’s just say people are searching for spirituality. People who have bounced off the website, it’s highly targeted. It’s set into the demand side platform, but oftentimes what we can do there is we can get very low CPMs and CPCs, and then oftentimes drive traffic, but it’s intent-based traffic because it’s using data onto a landing page or website.
From there, we capture that data with the pixel and now we feed it into the omnichannel retargeting approach. What we often find is the demand side platform doesn’t convert a lot, but it grabs attention. Then it gets them to the site, we capture the data and then they’ll convert on a platform that’s more comfortable for them, say off of Facebook or Instagram or something like that.
When he says retargeting you guys, that the original target, these are people, like he said, that probably aren’t coming back. He’s putting you in front of them again. There is a percentage that you’re keeping them top of mind, basically, right?
Yeah. If one of the authors is running paid ads, whether it’s doing paid ads, influencers, SEO, or whatever they’re doing to drive traffic to a site, to sell a book, to sell a program, to give away something. I mean, it doesn’t really matter what you’re driving traffic for. Even if you want to give away something, just say, “Come here, download this free copy of this XYZ on spirituality. Download it for free and just drive as much traffic there as you can.” From there, you can ask people for their email address. Then if you don’t, you still have the pixel there that let’s just say you drive 5,000 people to a site that way.
Now we’re going to put about 2,500 people, email addresses in your database at the end of the month or on an ongoing basis because it’s automated throughout the month. By the end of the month, let’s just say then, we’re going to put 2,500 people into your database that you grabbed their attention, you did all the heavy lifting, you did something out there or an influencer, or like I said, SEO, paid ads, whatever it is, drove those 5,000 people to your site. Now we’re going to put about 2,500 people into your database for you to email, remarket to if you like, as well as put back into paid ad retargeting, depending on your ad spend budget.
For all the authors out there, can you see if you do this while your platform’s being built before that book ever comes out? You now have a built-in database to promote the book and then turn around and retarget again for the course. You already have. I don’t think there are many authors out there, in fact, I cannot think of any who have ever come to me and said, “I have an email base of 2,500.” That’s a pretty good list.
Obviously, you got to get to 5,000 people there. In my opinion, I mean, for an author and I unfortunately don’t know exact budgets and I’m sure they vary per author and things of that nature. What I would say, I think that’d be a great way. It’s like, “Here’s a free PDF. Here’s a free download. Here’s a free video.” Something along those lines to add value, get them there, add value to whatever niche they’re in or whatever the books targeted and whatever their target is, target audiences, add as much value as possible, give something away, drive traffic to the site.
Now we’re capturing data for them. Now we can retarget them with testimonials, and some more email addresses, and then continue to add value, build trust, and build credibility. Now it’s like, “By the way, I wrote a book. Here it is for XYZ dollars. By the way, do you like my book too? I offer coaching.” Kind of takes them down the funnel. I guess it depends on the niche. I don’t know with spirituality, but it depends on what type of coaching you’re doing, but there’s a lot of competition out there. Everybody’s trying. There’s a lot of people out there trying to be a coach, trying to coach in this, trying to coach in that. You really have to build trust and set yourself apart.
Oftentimes you cannot do that on the first click. Let’s be honest. Like, how do you make a website so perfect that you’re going to capture their trust? You’re going to ask for money. You’re going to do this. Like they’re going to build credibility. Deliver your offer that has to be perfect, all of this stuff for them to just go and type in your credit card and purchase something. It’s just so tough nowadays to build that perfect landing page. Frankly, I don’t even know if it exists. That’s where the data comes in, capturing 50% of the traffic regardless so you have that opportunity for retargeting.
There's a lot of competition out there. You really have to build trust and set yourself apart and oftentimes, you can't do that on the first click. Share on XExactly, and you’re right about it. A lot of people, that’s why the retargeting’s great because a lot of people are hesitant to give their email addresses these days. Opt-ins aren’t working as well as they did ten years ago. Let’s face it, ten years ago, you could have a webinar and people would click away after the webinar. I don’t think they do that as much anymore either. They want to talk to you. They want to see, do you resonate with them? Do you trust? That’s why you guys need to start this so far in advance because there’s a lot of tweaking to do and you have to give them the free stuff. They’re not just going to click and buy, even if it’s a book. You guys, even a $20, $30 book, they’re not going to click and buy most likely until you’ve won.
If they do on the initial click, if that half a percent to 1% do, then wonderful. You have a decently performing landing page, but then the other 99% that bounce away, we’re going to capture half of those. I was just about to say something now I’m brain farting.
Don’t we all when we get to a certain age?
Trust me, it’s going downhill fast. There’s not enough vitamins in the world.
Consultation For Authors
I know. All those supplements, I’m the major brain one at 63. I’m fading fast. If we wanted to work with you, how do we find you? Do you have a consultation that you can do for authors?
We do, basically, free consultations or discovery calls for anybody to see if we’re the right fit. If the budget works out, the target audience works out, the overall goals work out, and then we do a 60-day ramp-up period and our contracts are month-to-month. The budget fluctuates depending on the client’s needs. Do they just want the data automated and then consulting on some circumstances? We do do media buying for clients. If they need a media buyer, then possibly work that out into the budget. We do a free, no-cost discovery call. DataAccelerator.ai is the website.
There’s about an eight-minute video on there that explains this a little bit further for anybody who might be as slightly confused as it is. By the time you do, the simplest way to put it is you have a pre-click in market data, which is targeted by keywords, people searching for your product or services that are in the market for your product or services that we’re going to feed into your ad accounts. Now you’re marketing to a warm audience, driving traffic to the site. The 1% that converts, is great. For the other 99% that bounce away, we have a 50/50 chance of capturing that data and giving them the ability to retarget.
Then whether it’s our media buyer or whether we’re coaching their media buyer, we’ll show them how to even take that pixel data, the people that have bounced off their site, which the in-market data is one layer of intent, but then once they start clicking into the site, that’s the second layer of intent. Now, we take that data and then we’ll start putting it back into the middle of the funnel.
Now, we create look-alike audiences with that data because technically there are two layers of intent there versus one, for example. What we talked about earlier, closing the loop. It’s like, here are conversions. Here are people that we’ve already got to click that we’ve attracted their attention. Now, go find more people like that. Once we get the conversions, then we start closing the loop even further.
A key thing you said there is month-to-month because when I’ve done advertising in the past I had to sign a six-month contract. It’s just like I’m paying you and the spend and I’m not getting results and I’m stuck. I think that’s key. How long would you say is reasonable if I hire someone like you? Is it two months? Is it three months? When do I start seeing results? I know before people would say, “You’re going to have to wait six months.” Here I was like 40,000 in and seeing zero results.
That’s actually a great question. What I like to say is that plugging in the data and being able to use the data look alike audiences, what I like to tell clients, and it’s always not the best thing to say on like a first discovery call. It’s like, I can fail faster than anybody else. That’s the name of the marketing game that can basically fail the fastest to find the winners because like you’re saying, “It’s going to take six months.” It’s basically the marketing company is like, “It’s going to take six months for me to figure out.”
Excuse my language. It’s going to take six months for me to figure things out and figure out what ads are going to work, what offers are going to work, what headlines are going to resonate, and what landing pages are going to work. Is it short form? Is it long-form or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? The biggest thing is how are we going to find the right audiences. Now with Facebook and the ad restrictions, and then somebody it’s like, I got a converting Facebook page or a Facebook ad account or a campaign, whatever you want to call it.
What if Facebook shuts down your ad account? What if Facebook now limits something, says something’s wrong, flags something to whatever, now it’s like 100% in your funnels and Facebook. That’s like where we’d like to show people is utilize the data and spread it out a little bit, drive some traffic from demands display ads. What’s nice with us is we have a seat on the Trade Desk, which is one of the nation’s largest, most reputable demand-side platforms. Then combined with all of our clients, we meet the minimum requirements.
We’ve already paid the set of fees. An author can come in and spend as little as 1500 bucks a month or so just on display ads to drive high intent traffic based off data, based off their passive visitors, etc, whereas if they went to Trade Desk directly, their minimum ad spends, I don’t even know what it is. There’s 25, 50,000 a month, something like that. That’s another benefit. There’s no additional charge. The author would just have to put up the ad spend. We plug in the data, the author provides us the content, and then now we can target and retarget people everywhere outside of social media.
This is so crucial. I’m sure you’ll agree that marketing is a guess. You can have the keywords, and you can have the best design, but until you actually test it, it’s not going to work.
Everybody is afraid to test. Everybody wants, everybody expects somebody to hit the nail on the head. It’s just not realistic. What I like to say with the data is it takes a six-month down to a six-week, 6 to 8-week type of timeframe. What we do when we charge, for example, is we do a monthly month to month. We figure out what works within the client’s budget, what we’re providing, what they need, what they don’t need, etc, etc. We come up with a reasonable monthly budget. We charge that upfront, but then that gets them what we call a 60-day ramp-up period.
Everybody is afraid to test and expects somebody to hit the nail on the head. It's just not realistic. Share on XThey pay us one time upfront. That’s for the first 60 days or sorry, two months. You can look at it as 50% off if you want to look at it that way. That way we can find the data. We can start capturing data from their website. We can start auditing their campaigns or helping them set up whatever’s necessary, whatever we’re doing for them. Then that gives them a solid 45 days to see the data at work, to see my team and me at work. Then they can decide to move forward on a month-to-month basis from there.
At the same time, do you guys build the funnels for them? Do they have to have their funnel already built by the time they get there?
No, we can do a full build-out if they need to. That’s where it’s like, everybody’s like, how much do your services cost? It’s just like, depends on what you need. I mean, we have some clients, we just dump all the data into a large S3 bucket, and they take it from there. Put it in their data lake and send it to their Facebook ad accounts and do all that themselves. Then we have other clients that large addiction treatment centers, things like that, where we’re doing full funnel build-outs on every single platform from TikTok.
We have an in-house video editor, we have an in-house graphic designer because the toughest thing about like even running video ads, for example, on TikTok is the TikTok video format is different than YouTube, is different than Facebook, is different than Instagram. You have to have somebody’s like, “I have somebody that does my videos.” It’s like, “Yeah, just send me the raw videos and I’ll take it from there or my team will take it from there because I don’t have time to wait on five different versions.” I have a process now where we can do that or help out with that.
That’s so funny. I didn’t know that because I only use YouTube and Rumble, but I am addicted to Instagram Reels.
Obviously, whether it’s TikToks, I don’t know, horizontal, vertical format, and there’s the 16×9 and there’s the 9×9, whatever it is. I forget. I don’t know. I see all the different formats flying through the Slack channels, and luckily that’s not my department.
I actually had someone on LinkedIn, “I have to delete you because I don’t like the way you’re presenting your Opus clips.” I was like, “Okay, whatever. Doubt you were going to be a client anyway.” Jason, so if we go over to DataAccelerator.ai, they’ll be able to watch the video. Will they be able to schedule an appointment also?
Exactly. There’s a link right there that will take some to my Calendly page so they can take a look at my availability, probably starting as recently as or as soon as tomorrow, if not whenever they’re available. Then yeah, book in time. They’ll get sent a few reminders and we can hop on a Zoom call. That’s the best part of this job for me is learning about businesses, seeing what they’re doing, and seeing if we can make something work. Then it’s not just, I guess, even like for authors, for example, as most people, it’s when you start using the data and start like targeting, it makes things so much more efficient.
Ad spend dollars go farther. It allows you to scale faster. What I like to say is the word scale should fail. It’s like, how fast can you scale? It’s like, let me figure out how fast we can fail. Then those terms should be intertwined, frankly, because that’s what it takes is fail to scale. Showing people how you can do that and how you can do it on multiple platforms is what’s fun. Caps for the data, track it through the funnel, start closing the loops, and all that. All the fun stuff that the big companies do that most kind of small businesses call it, because that’s what I guess in this case an author really is, is a small business.
Most small businesses don’t even know something like this is even available to them. Opening their eyes to something like this, showing them the investment that data can be in their business long-term. If somebody clicks on your site today, maybe they’re not interested, but I’m assuming maybe they’re going to write another book, they’re going to have another coaching offer, they’re going to have something down the road. Somebody that was interested today, maybe it wasn’t good at the time, but you send them an email in twelve months from now, and all of a sudden they’re going to click and buy your book and buy your coaching call.
Now when you own the data, you can retarget these people forever until they’re ready to what would say, I guess back in the mortgage business, whether you buy or die. As long as you’re doing it in a respectful manner, like in an author’s case where it’s like, put them in a monthly newsletter or something that’s adding value, something that’s tasteful and ethical, giving them the option to unsubscribe and all that type of fun stuff. Let’s just say you’re driving 10,000 people to a website and we’re capturing 5,000 people.
At the end of 12 months, that’s going to be 60,000 people in a database. Now you go to launch a new book or let’s just say in 24 months for now, there’s 120,000 people in there. Now you go to launch a new book, launch a new coaching program, whatever you’re going to do. It’s data that you own. Let’s just say a friend’s launching a book and it’s like, “Your book’s similar to mine. Let’s swap.
Do you want to shoot an email or I can send an email to my database, my warm database, people that have been interested in my book, referring your book as a recommendation, something like that but give me a referral code as an influencer and let me get 20% of the sales, something like that.” When you own the data, you can control that. Now on top of trying to sell your products, now you can cross-sell and get referral fees or referral fees might not be the exact term, influencer fees, something along those lines but owning the data would enable you, to give an author the ability to do that. Give you different ways to monetize it, I guess.
Benefits For Authors
For you authors that are tuning in, where this really benefits you is are you looking for a traditional contract? In that traditional contract, when you write the proposal, the first thing that the agent that you’re trying to get to sell your book looks at is your audience. If you run the formula and we have a worksheet and I’ve mentioned before what the formula is, if you don’t have those followers and the book sales for them to do more than break even and make a profit, they’re not going to take your book and you’re going to be paying for publishing. That really is a benefit there. They want to see a minimum of 100,000 followers. This is a way to start a good year before your book comes out or before you write your proposal and build that audience in advance. Wouldn’t you say?
Absolutely. I mean, if you’re looking for 100,000 followers, I’m assuming on Instagram is what you’re referring to or just collectively via all social media.
Collectively, they want to look at how many people listen to your podcast monthly. How big is your list? What’s your open rate? What is your social media look like? What is the engagement? They look at everything, but initially, when they get the proposal, I’ve had several literary agents tell me they look at the numbers before they even look at the proposal. If you don’t have what they’re looking for to be able to sell your book to a traditional publisher, your book goes in the round file. Doesn’t matter how good it is. They look at the audience first.
For example, in that case, obviously, if these authors are trying to build up their social media following, I mean, once you have the data that can be part of the follow-up process is getting them to following you on social media, but then vice versa as the social media is growing and then grows organically as people follow them on social media. It’s like, “By the way, come over here and click and possibly purchase X, Y, and Z or purchase my book.”
Obviously not everybody’s going to purchase. Now we have the pixel on that page as well. Now we’re capturing that data and taking organic clicks and getting the click to the site and now putting them in the email database where, yes, I mean, it sounds like it’d be hugely valuable for an author to stroll into a publisher in a year from now. d I don’t know the numbers that publishers are looking for when they’re looking at a decent, let’s just say database, an email database, what type of numbers is the publisher looking for?
They’re looking a lot of times for in excess of 100,000 aggregate. Between everything that you’re doing is my understanding from the literary agents.
A hundred thousand email database, social media, following.
Yeah, all of it together. The other thing that’s part of that is when you’re organically growing the social media, you need to get them into your list because Mark Zuckerberg owns Facebook. If you’re like me in 2020, I was just deleted one day.
That’s the whole point of the Omnichannel presence and then owning your data. You just exactly proved my point. Did I just say that to start off the call?
Sorry. Yeah, I was one of those bad people who made some comments and got deleted.
My partner, Alvin, got deleted twice for some stupid comment online a couple of times.
I did too, but that’s why you want it. I’d been working to transition all of my social media into my list far beyond that before that. It didn’t really impact me other than I figured out addicted to Facebook because I was like, “I cannot get on I’m shaking.” That was the whole point. I had seen that that was from an experience with my space. One of my best friends had a magazine to subscribe to over 300,000 subscribers and she didn’t get them into her list. When MySpace went away, she lost her sponsors, she lost everything. That was an early indicator, but that’s exactly what Jason’s talking about doing as well and why you need to do it.
Let’s just say it as an author, figure out a way to get 5,000 people to a website every month. I’m not saying that like, “It’s a piece of cake like everybody should be able to do it with the blink of an eye.” I’m not trying to downplay it by any means. It would probably take some paid ads, like some investment in some paid ads, something along those lines. Getting people to the website where we put the pixel on, let’s just say you get 5,000 people there and we’re capturing 2,500 email addresses.
Now you’re strolling into your publisher in twelve months from now with 30,000 email addresses. We’re not saying, we have followers, people that might’ve accidentally followed a bot, whatever. We have a list of 30,000 people to whom we send a monthly newsletter that gets a 33.3% open rate. That’s nine plus thousand a month, give or take, I think if it’s 30,000 or something like that. About a 9% open rate of people that we can grab their attention every single month and deliver our product to. We now obviously that 30,000 people in the database. Now you take that and show them the rest of the numbers with the social media following things like that.
In my opinion, and I don’t know how a publisher looks at it, but in my opinion, having the email addresses, the database, people that are opening up emails, watching your YouTube channel. Once you grab that attention and the thing about the Pixel too is its personal email addresses. Especially from an author standpoint, you’re not sending them an X, Y, Z company that people are going to switch companies every six months, that type of stuff. It is their personal email address. You’re hitting them at Yahoo, add Gmail and things of that nature.
That is so crucial to do this. You guys can find Jason at DataAccelerator.ai. If you’re at the beginning stages of writing your book, have a conversation because this is the way to build up that audience and get that proposal or get whatever you need for your next steps of publishing. Jason, thank you.
I just want to say real quick, even if an author tuning into this, even if they don’t think they’re ready, I’m more than happy to do a 20, 30-minute discovery call because a lot of the time what happens is I can give them a couple ideas where if they implement it now or kind of think with the end in mind, like at the end, I want to plug in the data here, here and here. That might change some things during that build process.
Even if it’s what I like to say, I’m not trying to woe anybody or do a one-call close or whatever. It’s like, let’s do a discovery call, and 9 out of 10 times, the client’s not going to be ready sometimes 30, 60 days, sometimes 3 to 6 months down the road, depending on where they’re at in the process. Some clients obviously ready right away, but yeah, we can meet now, and put a plan in place. Even if you’re not ready for 3 to 6 months, that’s okay.
I would actually recommend that you guys do that because I know that many of you guys get into this and you have no idea what it’s going to take to build a platform budgetary-wise, build a platform, publish, and then market the book. It’s good that you have your numbers in advance so you can budget and figure out what you can do and what you cannot. Jason, thank you so much for being on today.
I appreciate you having me. I’m really glad we connected on LinkedIn there.
Important Links
- PlatformPlanning
- Jason Renno – LinkedIn
- Data Accelerator
About Jason Renno
At Definitive Edge Marketing/Data Accelerator, we believe that every business deserves a chance to own and control their marketing data instead of relying on the ad platforms.
With over 20 years of experience in marketing and sales, I am passionate about helping businesses grow. My focus is on finding innovative ways to leverage high-intent data, ensuring companies can capture, own, and utilize this valuable resource to enhance their marketing efforts and achieve remarkable growth.
Leave A Comment