How To Generate Leads on Social Media with Mat Wilson (Ep 46)

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Dawn McGruer:
This is our next episode of Digital Marketing Made Easy with myself, Dawn McGruer. And we are joined today with special guest, Mat Wilson. And Matt is digital marketing guru, loves online marketing like myself, and is the founder of Einstein Marketer. Now, we’re going to be talking about today all about how to scale and grow your business using paid ads, specifically Facebook and YouTube. And we’re going to hear a little to bit about Mat’s story in terms of how he founded his business. So over to you Matt. How long ago did you start your first business and was Einstein actually the first business you started?

Mat’s Business

Mat Wilson:
Yeah. I mean, really it was. Yeah. I mean, I had a couple of little things when I was younger that I was just winging it basically. Nothing like in marketing or anything before I got interested in marketing. But yeah, it was my first business. Before this, I ran a company. So I was a marketing manager in a company. And then worked, I was actually director of that company by the time I left and I ran that for five years. So I had a lot of experience hands on actually running somebody else’s company, which that was my education. That was really cool. And then five years ago I founded Einstein Marketer, the agency. So we’re a paid media agency, so we help small businesses generate more leads, more sales using online strategies like Facebook ads, YouTube ads. TikTok now is obviously becoming a much bigger player. And yeah, it’s playing sailing really since then.

Dawn McGruer:
I’ve seen a lot of people actually moving on to TikTok. So if somebody is looking at, obviously using ads right now, most people have got Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook. TikTok’s not probably as central into a lot of businesses. Which focus would you think right now in terms of scaling a business? What’s the quick win? Is there one or is there an easier routing for people looking to get leads?

Leads

Mat Wilson:
Yeah, it really depends on the industry really and the business. But we always advise the trainings and things like that, that we do here that start on Facebook. It’s easier and more importantly, less risky for businesses to start on Facebook because it’s still a very underpriced platform, believe it or not. Especially for things like lead gen. Lead generation, you can do very low risk, meaning small budgets and you’ll get your results. We generate leads for under a pound for some of our clients, right up to sort 10, 15 pounds. Again, depending on the industry. But it means that you don’t actually have to risk the bank to do a big campaign on back in the day, at least some of your options were newspaper ads, you take out like [inaudible 00:03:01].

Dawn McGruer:
Yeah, I just found a magazine and I think we paid 32,000 pounds to go in a magazine and this is back in early 2000s.

Mat Wilson:
Wow. Well, that’s when you did it.

Dawn McGruer:
A lot of money. It actually had a business card that was attached to the page and it was a plastic card. It was when plastic business cards were all the rage, but it was really successful. But can you imagine doing that now?

Facebook

Mat Wilson:
Yeah, well that’s the thing about those sort of campaigns. Back in the day that pretty much were only options. Like big expensive ones where if it doesn’t work, you would’ve been out [inaudible 00:03:37] grand. But I think nowadays it’s so much easier for businesses to get going because you don’t have to risk that sort of amount if the strategy’s good. So we always say start with Facebook. And then if you can get something to work on Facebook, if you’re getting really good returns on Facebook, then you know pretty much it’s going to scale out across other campaigns that are maybe be a bit more expensive. So for instance, Google. Google’s going to be way more targeted because people are actually searching for the thing, but at the same time it’s going to be way more expensive. So if you can get something to work-

Dawn McGruer:
Yeah, [inaudible 00:04:09] there, isn’t it? But it’s a far more costly thing to do. I don’t know, I’ve always kind felt like Facebook is a nice opportunity for people to use things like the on platform lead gen because again, you don’t have to be a huge techie to kind of set up the ads. You could probably get your campaigns set up quite quickly and start getting results. What’s your view at the moment for driving leads off platform versus the on platform lead gen?

Mat Wilson:
Yeah, really, really good question. So again, it all depends on the business and what we are trying to achieve. But our biggest client, actually our biggest client is a company called Learn Direct Careers. They’re really big e-learning platform. And pretty much everything we… I’d say 80% of the work that we do for them is all based on lead gen campaigns. So in Facebook, the actual lingo for guys listening is lead generation is the objective. And if you select that, you basically get a lead form that pops up on the ad once you click it. You’re not sending people away from Facebook, you’re actually capturing a lead within Facebook. But a good thing about these are they’re a lot cheaper traditionally because again you’re keeping it on Facebook. Facebook will always penalize you for sending or taking their visitors, taking their users away from you, you get punished by paying more money.
So if you can get it to work on Facebook that lead forms, then definitely give it a go. The things that you’ve got to look out for when you’re doing that though is the quality of leads sometimes isn’t as good, because you have to always think about marketing as intent. What’s the intent of the person? If you’ve interrupted them and they click on a button and a form pops up straight away, which is pre-populated by the way. So it’s pre-populated, the data first of all might be wrong. So it might not actually be their up to date information.

Dawn McGruer:
Yeah, because a lot of people [inaudible 00:06:02] Facebook, haven’t they? And their email addresses are back when they were at university, things like that. It’s not [inaudible 00:06:07].

Mat Wilson:
Yeah, exactly. That’s it. Yeah, so my Facebook, I’ve never… studmuffin1986@gmail.com. I haven’t used that since I was about 21.

Dawn McGruer:
[inaudible 00:06:18].

Mat Wilson:
So yeah, that’s another example. You get bad data. But so what you’ve got to do instead, if you are going to use them, because what they do do is capture a really cheap leads or what they can do. So what you’ve got to think about is what you want to do with the next because you get a really useful step when you’re using lead forms. And that’s like the thank you page. So once someone opts in and gives you their information, that’s your lead now. You’ve got their name, you’ve got their email address. But at the end of it they see a little thank you page on the form. And it’ll say thanks for downloading our guide, whatever, click to download it. And you get a button, you get call to action, you get a nice little bit of space for some copy.
And this is really powerful because everyone’s going to see this first of all. 100% of your leads are going to see it. So what you might as well do is try to get them to do something else. Now you’ve paid for that lead, try to get them into your funnel. So for example, like some of our clients, they want more calls booked. So we captured a lead by giving something away for free, but they actually want calls books. So we’ll send them, click here for a free video training on X, Y, and Z. And they can click on that. They then go to your site. Now this isn’t costing you a penny, now you’ve already paid. And now they’re indoctrinated into your business because there might be a video at the top with a call to action to book a call. So always think in detail what you want to do next.

Dawn McGruer:
We’ve had really good successes doing that because the thing is, is if you are giving somebody a part training or something like that, they go on, they watch it and then they’ll go onto the next thing within the page. And we’ve been trying multiple call to actions on the page with people’s just as you say, motivations. Like they might want to request a call back or they might want to book a call or they might want to speak to someone at that time. And I think the thing is, is like if you’re giving people choices, people will take something generally out of what’s given. What’s been your best performing campaign then so far? What’s your proudest campaign you’ve done?

Best Performing Campaign

Mat Wilson:
Our best performing campaign. For a client I would say, there was one. We worked with a company called Sureseal Windows who were a double glazing firm in Wales in the UK. And they came to us because they wanted to generate a lot more sale… They were doing really well actually. They were doing six figures a month, some months. But they wanted to really scale up. And their strategy was they would do lead forms and then they would call the leads to see if they could close them. And what we did, they had this offer running at the time. It wasn’t an offer, it was like a promotion where basically because of some funding that the government were making available or something like that, it meant that some of their customers could get a big saving off their windows because of energy, because of being green and all that sort of stuff and eco.

Eco Funding Solutions

So what we decided to do was just like change it up so that the quality leads a lot better and we actually lead with this campaign, let’s think of what we can do to get people more indoctrinated into that idea. So we actually came up with a whole new brand almost for them, and it was called Eco Funding Solutions. Ecofundingsolutions.com or something like that was the name of the site. We got a logo done for it. And now what we were doing, we weren’t promoting Sureseal Windows as the provider. What we were doing was we was promoting this scheme, I suppose it is or a way of… So basically the ad was something like, look, the government is giving away millions in funding to help you get double glazing on your house, et cetera. Click here to see if you are eligible. Something like that was the language and they clicked on that.
Now they go into a page where it’s Eco Funding Solutions where we basically get to fill in all the information that we need for a really good lead. So we are finding out how many bedrooms they have? Do they own their house? How many people live in the house? How many kids have they got? All of this good stuff and getting them to apply. And this really kicked off to the point I think when we first tested it in month one they spent seven grand on ads. They made about 124 grand in sales that month. Yes, a great return. And all we did was just change the… They were still offering the same thing. We’d just reframed it.

Dawn McGruer:
[inaudible 00:10:34] make them more congruent, right? I suppose if someone sees it there and then they go to the page, the message is very clear in terms of what it is about. And I suppose it-

Mat Wilson:
All that really happened in the sales process. It was different, was now they were getting a corner with saying, “Yeah, well, listen, based on the information you’ve given us, you’re approved for this and you’re eligible to get this discount.” So Sureseal Windows is our supplier in the area who we recommend. Go with them. And that worked really well because again, we just thought of an idea. It was just something. And in terms of the returns they got as well, there was very, very good returns as well.

Dawn McGruer:
So obviously you worked in marketing before, then you got into obviously your own business. And then you have a big event later this year happening, EMC?

Mat Wilson:
Yeah.

Dawn McGruer:
[inaudible 00:11:23] talked about this.

Mat Wilson:
Yeah, the Entrepreneurs Marketing Conference. Yeah, so the Entrepreneurs Marketing Conference is a cool one actually because we’ve run it twice now. We run it in 2021 and in 2020. Just before the pandemic, we got it in. I think our event was on the 4th to the 6th of March. And we went into lockdown mid-March, the first lockdown. So we just did it. Yeah, basically it’s something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time in the UK. Every year I go over to the states to go to an event over there called Traffic and Conversion Summit.

Dawn McGruer:
[inaudible 00:11:57].

Mat Wilson:
No, it’s actually digital marketers.

Dawn McGruer:
Oh, is it?

Mat Wilson:
That one you are thinking of is Funnel Hacking. Yeah.

Dawn McGruer:
Funnel Hackers. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speakers

Mat Wilson:
But Traffic and Conversion was just amazing. I used to go there every year and I used to spend two grand minimum for a ticket to go to that. And then you’ve got travel hotel. I’d spend like five, 10 grand a year just to go to this event because it was so good and I was learning so much stuff. It wasn’t a sales events. That wasn’t an event where you go and you get sold from stage. So you literally just learning, learning, learning. And there was nothing like it over here in the UK. So I wanted to create an event like that and build it to that sort of size.
So yeah, we started our first one in 2020, sold it out 250 people. Last year we were supposed to go 500 but we were only allowed 350 due to COVID. I was glad we could do it at all to be honest because at one point we didn’t actually know we could do that event until two months before it. So that was very scary. I was like bloody hell, but I don’t even know if we can do this and we’ve got to sell it. And in issue we’ve moved it to London. And the whole concept of the event is actionable, practical digital marketing and education that businesses can use and actually implement. And what I tried to do is I tried to get a whole range of speakers on different topics. You are joining us this year, obviously.

Dawn McGruer:
I am. I’m talking about LinkedIn.

Mat Wilson:
Yeah, you’re talking about LinkedIn. We’ve got a guy who runs the biggest YouTube agency in the world coming to talk about YouTube ads, Google ads, content marketing, SEO, sales. We got Stephen Bartlett from Dragon’s Den, one of the headliners. Karren Brady from The Apprentice. [inaudible 00:13:45] That’s mainly just to share their stories and get inspired. But the other guys, one goal from me is look, just give them something, like one golden nugget they can actually use. [inaudible 00:13:56] campaign. That campaign I just told you about. That’s something that I would share on stage for example. And I’ll tell you exactly how I did it. So they’re like, oh, quite sweet. I can do something like that, and take it away and implement it. And that’s the whole goal. No selling from stage, no closing and pitching.

Dawn McGruer:
It’s not about valuing. And I think that’s what we need. And I think the thing is is now we’re back into in person getting tickets. I’m seeing so many people craving to go to things. We’ve got our fast track digital marketing, really popular. People want to get back in person. And I think with digital marketing there is so much so fast paced that imagine being in the room then and just taking all the latest tips, strategies, tools away. I mean, it’s going to be mega. There is a link and I will make sure that everybody has this. It’s in the post, so if you are watching the podcast live, you can click on it. But it’ll be in the show notes in the podcast. Now you’ve told us that obviously you started your business and then it was plane sailing after that. I am sure along the way there’s got to be a bit of an epic fail. You can’t get away with that. I need a story from you. I need to know what is the-

Mat Wilson:
There’s no such such thing as plane sailing. I’ve said that very sarcastically. Yeah, I mean, one epic fail. I mean there’s been so many to be honest. Which epic fail? Okay, so the main one really because I run an agency, so we’re service based. We have clients pass every single month. And this is pre-COVID now. So this is sort of 2019, I think it was. So three years into business or whatever. We had one big client. And because we had one big client, it makes it easy to get comfortable because obviously every single month you’re doing really well. But a big chunk of it anyway is made up from one client.

Dawn McGruer:
A bit risky.

Mat Wilson:
It’s a bit risky. Yes. So this client in the end, and this was just leading up to COVID actually I can remember. So first of all, they massively cut back some of their marketing budget, which is weirdly what most businesses do, even though that’s the thing that drives sales. That was one. And then lots of other things led up to it. Anyway, we ended up losing this client. We had little disagreement about money and things like that, and we ended up losing this client. And suddenly for a business that was doing really, really well, we were suddenly really struggling. And it was like, shit all hands on deck sort of thing. What are we going to do to fix this?
And it took us a good sort of three or four months hard graph to get out of it, replace that income. So like now for instance, I actually get, rather than loving the fact that I’ve got a high paying client, it sort of worries me a bit now. So our biggest client now, I look at that now and I’m saying, right, what can we do and put in place to cover us in case the worst happens?

Dawn McGruer:
And mitigate that [inaudible 00:16:58].

Mat Wilson:
And yeah, for whatever reason that money now doesn’t start coming in rather than getting comfortable and taking it for granted. What can we do to replace that income now so that if they do go, we’re covered. Because I don’t ever want that happening again. That was a bit of a pain. So that was one, that’s just one that I thought of. But again, there’s so many along the way as you know. It comes and goes. Everyone-

Dawn McGruer:
[inaudible 00:17:22] 21:43 now. Gosh.

Mat Wilson:
Yeah. Well, everyone always thinks it’s so easy to look at any businesses and thinks that they’re doing amazing. Well, they’re not struggling in any way, but that’s just not the case. Actually, one of the questions I asked Stephen Bartlett, Stephen Bartlett actually spoke at our event last year as well and he’s so good. We’re getting back. Plus now he’s on Dragon’s Den and all that. He’s a lot bigger than what… Publicly he’s bigger than-

Dawn McGruer:
[inaudible 00:17:51] an audience.

Mat Wilson:
Yeah, he’s much bigger than what he was before. So we’ve got him back. But one of the questions I asked him, because I interviewed him on stage last year. And one of the things that I actually asked him was something similar, but I was a bit more specific. I asked him, what’s the…. Or how have you ever come close to having to shut the doors because you’ve run out of cash for example, or something’s happened legally that’s made you… And he looked at me and laugh and just said, “Wow, there’s been so many times.” But he told us a story about one of them, which basically what happened was three or four days before payroll, he got a call from his team. And his payroll at the time was 160 grand a month or something. Ridiculous, crazy payroll.
And he got a call from his team and said, “Look, we haven’t got money to pay the staff. We can’t afford to pay them unless we get in a…” I think you need a hundred grand. Unless we get a hundred grand cash in, we can’t pay the staff this month. And I’m sitting there thinking, bloody hell. Bearing in mind this is a guy that sold this company for 200 million. I think he sold it for about a year before I spoke to him. And he said, “Yeah, this was about a year before I sold the business.” And I just remember sitting there thinking, Jesus. I remember looking at his business the year before, he looked from the outside, everything’s fine and dandy. He’s massive. He’s got offices all around the world at this point, but he hasn’t got enough money in the bank to pay his staff. And again, that just woke me up for the fact that these are things that businesses go for all of the time.

Dawn McGruer:
It’s reality.

Mat Wilson:
And all he did, he’d come up with a plan. He said, “Right, get me these people that we are talking to about being clients. Get them all in a room with me.” And he just turned up, made a joke of it. He said, “I was looking out this room and I knew that one of these guys had to pay me a hundred grand or I weren’t paying my staff, and they weren’t going to feed their families. And they weren’t going to pay their rent,” and all this sort of stuff. And he looked out and he said there was only one thing to do. He said shots. And he literally, after he spoke to them all, he went to the bar and he started getting them all shots. And he said as he was getting them more drunk, he was talking to them, and he was getting drunk as well. And they were getting to know each other on a personal level.
And he actually signed a contract for an agency deal with the terms to pay a hundred grand up front. And he actually closed it two days before payroll. And the money was in his bank the day before payroll. And it was just little stories like that. And it makes you realize that even guys like that, a year later he sold that for 200 million euros or whatever it was, or pounds and a year before he couldn’t even pay his stuff.

Dawn McGruer:
It gives us the reality of the kind of knife edge of business isn’t there, that you could be on the edge of success or the edge of failure at any point depending on other circumstances that sometimes you can’t control. And it’s like COVID and all those sorts of things that happened. So if you were going to give one tip for the future, something that’s happening right now, is there anything that people need to go and have a look at in terms of their lead gen?

Lead Magnets

Mat Wilson:
I mean, really lead generation is all about what you’re giving in exchange for that lead, giving you their information. People call them lead magnets, which I’m sure you do as well. It’s coming up with a really good lead magnet to give away, something that you’re offering in exchange for their contact information. But what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to be very, very careful with it because lots of people teach this. And they say, “Yeah, yeah, give stuff away free, lead magnet, whatever.” But there’s like an art form to what you give away because what you give away and what that person gives you their information for is the reason they are joining your database, joining your list or whatever. So you’ve got to make sure without shadow of a doubt that this person is at least interested in what you’ve got to offer for money, whether it’s your service or whatever.
You’ve got to ask yourself that question. So I’ll give you a really good example. If I’m an accountant, I don’t want anyone on my list that’s employed. There’s no way I can help those people. There’s no way that they will ever buy from me. That employed person will never use my services. So whatever I give away, that lead magnet, that thing that I’m giving away, yes, I want it to make my target audience hold their hands up and say, “I’m interested in what you’ve got.” But more importantly as well, I want to disqualify everybody else that’s not. So if I’m an accountant, a really good name for that lead magnet, that thing that I’m giving away would be five ways to save money on your tax return. A business owner’s guide, something like that. Because when you then ask yourself the question, why would somebody download that if they wasn’t potentially interested in what I’ve got?
There’s not many reasons why they would. Like for instance, an employed person, unless they were crazy, probably wouldn’t download a lead magnet called Five Ways to Save Money on your Tax Return. They’ve got no use for a tax return. So it’s a really good qualifier. And that’s the number one reason why you use Lead Magnets is to qualify your audience. Not necessarily grow your database, but actually qualify them as well. Make sure they’re the right person. And then just find a really good way of doing that. Because if you’ve got something to give away to generate leads, that’s great. But you don’t just want people on your email list. You’ve then got to try to get them into your sales process. You’ve got to move them into what I call a sales environment that best sells what it is you’re selling.
So for instance, we work with a lot of businesses that need people on the phone. And they need people to book appointments and things like that. So once we’ve captured that lead, our focus now has to change, right? Okay, you’ve got their email address, great. How do we move them from there and move them into that phone environment? How do we get them to book a call? What do we offer them now to move them from there to there? And it’s sort of coming up with that strategy.

Dawn McGruer:
Well, this is it because I think a lot of people fall into the trap, don’t they? That they think that they’ve got a lead when someone’s signed up for an email list or a free guide or whatever. That person’s just expressing at that point that they’re interested in it. And it’s your job then to put the sequence in after, to move them from that person of interest to someone potentially who’s going to buy and shorten that sales cycle. I think the thing is, is it’s inspiring, isn’t it? To hear, not that just people are going through hardship, we don’t want to hear that. But that people that we perceive obviously to be doing amazingly well that they’ve been through turbulent times and things as well.
So in terms of tickets, if anyone wants tickets, I’m going to make sure that the link is in the show notes. The link is in all of the places that we’re streaming to. If you buy through my link, you get 20% off. So definitely do that. And then obviously you can come and see us because it’s going to be three amazing days. Can you just give us a breakdown of the dates for the event, Mat?

Mat Wilson:
Yeah, it’s the 30th of November to the 2nd of December. It’s at the Intercontinental Convention Center, which is literally next door to the O2 Arena. It’s connected to it. I mean, it’s a complete mixture. So each day there’s going to be speakers, about eight speakers each day talking about all different types of strategies. Now, one of the things that I just want to get across is that this isn’t one of those events that I want you to sit in for every single session. It’s really important that you don’t get information overload and you don’t get overwhelmed because then what will happen is you won’t actually implement anything. You’ll take on too much. But for instance, TNC, I learned that the hard way. I’d go there and try and sit in every event. If I’m paying 10 grand to go to this bloody event, I’m going to make the most of it.

Dawn McGruer:
Yeah, try to absorb all.

Mat Wilson:
Absorb it all. So I’d come back and I’d be so brain fried. I wouldn’t know where to start. I wouldn’t know what to implement. So now when I go, I literally will sit in maybe five sessions the whole three days. And that’s what I want people to do at ours. I want them to take a look at what they actually think can help their business. Maybe TikTok ads have no relevance to your business whatsoever. So why sit in on the subject? Instead, go to the bar, chill out with me and other entrepreneurs that are also not interested in TikTok ads and talk and network and just have a good time. Go over some notes, catch up on some emails. We have a party on day two, on the evening of day two, which is going to be wild. That’s going to be brilliant.
We’ll have a bar in the venue. We’ve got big stage, we’ve got a band coming down to play some awesome tunes. And all of us entrepreneurs basically just get together and network and get to know each other on a much more social level because I wanted the social aspect of EMC to be just as important as what you’ll learn.

Dawn McGruer:
Yeah, that’s important in events, isn’t it? And [inaudible 00:26:44] for so long. Learning is one thing, but I think some of the biggest downloads and transformations are when you’re kind of out of session chatting and you get some breakthroughs about-

Mat Wilson:
100%. Oh yeah, for sure.

Dawn McGruer:
[inaudible 00:26:55] Yeah. Perfect.

Mat Wilson:
Yeah, definitely.

Dawn McGruer:
All right, well everyone’s going to see us at EMC the end of November. Make sure everyone’s got the links. And any mantra that you live by, any statement that you would share as your final word on the podcast?

Mat Wilson:
Not really. I mean, not really. I always say on some of our videos and things like that I’ll do just get up, get out and get it done. And that’s the hardest thing. In the morning sometimes the hardest thing is just getting up. And it’s getting out and actually doing something. So yeah, just be consistent and keep pushing forward.

Dawn McGruer:
Cool. Well, thank you for joining us. And where can we find you, Mat, if anyone wants find your socials?

Mat Wilson:
Yeah, just Mat, M-A-T-Y, Wilson, it is. Maty Wilson is my social. Just cause Mat Wilson was taken. So Maty Wilson. Yeah, einsteinmarketer.com as well is just a great blog. It’s all it is that site, is a blog if you want to learn stuff. What we try to do is teach people what we’re doing in our agency. So we’ll take a strategy that’s working. We’ll write in a blog format and share it on the blog bit.

Dawn McGruer:
All right, well thanks everyone, and don’t forget to subscribe to Digital Marketing Made Easy. And you can find it on digitalandsocialmediaacademy.com. So we’ll see you on the next episode. Thanks so much, Mat.

Mat Wilson:
Cheers for having me, Dawn.

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