Eric Stockton Decodes Advertising and Targeting Best Practices

Welcome to the Marketing Growth Podcast. I’m your host, Shane Barker. Today, I continue my conversation with Eric Stockton, the general manager of Perfect Audience. For those joining us today, be sure to check out my previous conversation with Eric, where he shared how to succeed in digital advertising in 2021. Today, however, I want to do a deeper dive into the best practices for advertising that can help you get better at targeting. Let’s get the conversation started.

So what I want to talk about is advertising and targeting best practices. As I was thinking about it—and the fact that we retarget some people but aren’t testing the way we need to—what is your definition of retargeting, and how does it work? Give us a little breakdown.

When you think about it, the retargeting side of things is low-hanging fruit. You put a lot of effort into getting people to your website, whether through content or SEO, and 98% of visitors leave without taking action. Yet, these visitors came for a reason. You have the chance to market to them again, and you’re not doing it. I say this as you shake your head, and I’m literally going to listen to this podcast again to catch every word. It’s such low-hanging fruit—you’ve spent money to get them there, so you should have a higher conversion rate because they already know your brand.

When you think about it, it’s always easier to retain current clients than to acquire new ones. If you’ve put all that effort into getting them to your website, you need to figure out how to stay in front of them. I’m saying this out loud to myself and to my team who will be listening to and editing this podcast. I do have a question about consumer interests and behaviors—it becomes challenging to predict them, especially now. Do you have any tips on running hyper-profitable ad campaigns? Since you can see how people react to various ads behind the scenes, can you share some tips on how to run a hyper-profitable campaign?

It all comes down to testing—trying different things is the only way to know what works. Different approaches, different creative, and different messaging; that’s the key.

Thanks, Eric. Great insights that our listeners can implement for better ad results. However, I need to pause our conversation for a minute to talk to the listeners. If you need help running your digital marketing campaigns, talk to us. We offer services like SEO, online PR, content marketing, influencer marketing, and much more. For more details, check out shanebarker.com.

Back to the conversation with Eric—what about the current world of ad skipping? With people trying to skip ads, what recommendations do you have to ensure that your target audiences don’t skip them? You mentioned using different ads earlier; do you have any other tips?

Yeah, which I think is awesome. I mean, it’s so funny—in these podcast interviews, everyone I talk to always comes back to the basics, what people really know. But it’s surprising how many don’t even follow the basics, whether it’s content marketing, SEO, or retargeting. It comes down to this: there’s no magic. Plenty of people have written about what you need to do. It’s just about implementing that, testing, and making it happen. It’s not easy, but it can happen if you stick to the core values and maintain that framework.

Now we’ve talked about retargeting and the fun stuff, but here come the hard questions—those that throw a lot of people off. I’d like to throw a hypothetical question out to you. If you could sit down with your 25-year-old self—let’s call him Eric 1.0, maybe a bit tipsy—and give him advice for the future, what would you say? What’s the one thing you think you’ll need to know down the line?

It’s like learning to play better with the other kids on the playground. When I was younger, I was pretty stubborn, thinking I could figure it all out on my own. But I eventually realized that there are people smarter than me who can help. The key is to bring them on board and build a cohesive team that works together to move things forward.

Now, for a fun question—if you could have dinner with any three people, dead or alive, who would they be? It could be family or friends. I’ve had people say Obama, and one guy even mentioned Jesus, which I thought was awesome. So, Eric, who’s at the top of your list?

Pennies! Pennies!

Are you saying that because she’s in the room, or do you truly mean this? Be honest.

Okay. That was from the heart, folks. Purely from the heart.

She definitely needs a dinner out, for sure.

Well, what I try to do is pass that gift on to my son. I say, “Listen, let me explain some of the stuff I did.” Of course, sometimes they listen—depending on their age—but I just want you to be better than I was. We may not always get the chance to talk to our younger selves, but we do have the opportunity to guide our kids. I don’t claim to be all-knowing, but if you can take away four or five of the ten things I share, or even remember two or three, that would be awesome. I’m not setting the bar that high—I wasn’t even that awesome. I mean, your mom got confused and got together with me, but here we are today. We made it through COVID and everything. Boy, sneaking into 2021.

So it’s awesome. Eric, if anybody wants to get in contact with you over at Perfect Audience—which, by the way, I’m always very jealous of the domain name, because Perfect Audience doesn’t get any better than that—how can they reach you?

There we go. I’ll tell you guys too—we’re putting this in the show notes. Right now, if you trial Perfect Audience, they’re offering a $1,000 ad credit for free (normally a $3,000 value) during a time when you can really get control of your retargeting. I’m probably going to read my review again and click on it, because my team and I are slacking in that area. So anyone listening, just know that we’re adding that to our to-do list for next week. Eric, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I was really excited to pull you in today. I know you have a webinar right after this, so good luck with the rest of your day, my friend. We’ll be talking again soon.

Not a problem. The pleasure is ours.

Thank you for joining us on this week’s episode of The Marketing Growth Podcast. Next week, another interesting guest will join us for an engaging conversation. Stay tuned.