How Eric Siu Paid $7 Per Lead for Phone Calls

Tim: [Music] Imagine if you’d been one of the very early users of Google AdWords or got in on Facebook ads when very few people had actually discovered them.

Today, our guest, Eric Siu from Single Grain is going to discuss part of an ad platform that prior to our discussion, I’d never even heard of. Using this platform, Eric has been able to generate a $7 cost per lead for phone calls when his max budget was $150 per call. It’s really incredible and extremely hard to get on any other platform. It’s still early enough to get results like this. So, listen on to the episode and give it a shot for yourself.

I’m Tim Paige, the Conversion Educator here at LeadPages and this is ConversionCast.

Hey, what’s up, Eric? Welcome to ConversionCast. Thanks for coming on the show.

Eric: Yeah, thanks for having me, Tim.

Tim: Absolutely. So, tell me, you know, you got some interesting results from something that not a lot of people are talking about. Can you tell me the results you were able to get from this tactic?

Eric: Yeah. So, we’re able to get results of click-through rates of up to 75% cost per acquisition number down to $7 and our target is $150.

Tim: [Laughter] I love it. Good. Okay. So, we’re going to talk about- obviously we’re talking about paid ads but we’re going to talk about that in a minute. First, tell everybody who you are and what you do.

Eric: Yeah. So, my name is Eric Siu. I’m the CEO of digital marketing agency called Single Grain. So, we’re primarily known for doing YouTube ads, Facebook ads, things like that and also, search engine optimization. So, work for the companies like Salesforce, Yahoo, Intuit. And I also have a podcast which you are actually the intro guy to –

Tim: Wohoo.

Eric: …called Growth Everywhere. And you know, we interviewed cool people like Clay Collins from LeadPages, a lot of interesting people, guy that’s invented the magnetic credit card stripe. So, a lot of cool things there.

Tim: Nice. I love it. Good. Okay. So, that being said, you know, you were able to get a really ridiculously low cost per customer or cost per lead rather. Tell us a little bit about, you know, what you did to make that happen. And I know we’re talking about kind of a different medium than a lot of people are used to. So, I’d love to hear a bit about that as well.

Eric: Yeah. So, the medium we’re talking about right now is in Google AdWords. And it’s a new format that they released called Gmail Ads. So, these are the ads that actually show up when people are reading emails inside of Gmail. And that’s, you know, we decided to test it out because Google has been, you know, taking it away, bringing it back, taking it away. And I think this time, it’s really back to stay.

And not a lot of people are talking about it right now which is why we’re able to get our cost per acquisition so low. And in this case, yeah, it is a cost per lead. And it’s actually, you know, phone calls in this scenario which are, you know, a lot of people are talking about phone calls being a higher quality. So, we’re actually really amazed by that.

Tim: So, this is $7 per lead that you’re using to actually call these folks?

Eric: Yeah, so, 7 – so, we’re paying $7 to actually get an actual phone call. And in a lot of scenarios, you know, I said our targets cost per acquisition was at $150. And in some cases, some companies are willing to pay 3 or $500 for a phone call. So, we’re able to get over $7.

Tim: [Laughter] That’s amazing. Alright. So, what did you do to make this work because, you know, a lot of people are using AdWords with mix results. But this is so specific. I’d love to hear, you know, what you’ve done that’s made this worked so well.

Eric: Yeah. So, let me give you an example. I mean when you – all you need to do to really make it wok because this is like display advertising. So, if you know how to make Google AdWords work, if you mess around with this, you can probably make it work.

But to give you a good example of how you can make it effective, let’s say you are Pepsi and you’re trying to advertise from people reading Coca Cola emails. All you need to do is to bid on the domain of your competitors. And your display ad is going to show up whenever they’re reading something from Coca Cola.

So, I’ll give you another example. When – you know, for us, we’re actually using Gmail Ads to promote content, internet marketing content because it’s really hard to stand out when you’re an agency because there are so many agencies out there, right? So, we drive people to content instead. And for us, you know, I recently wrote a post on content expansion which is basically how to promote your content.

So, I’m thinking, okay, you know, where is this relevant, right? I can target competitors. You know, I can just put their domains in there or I can target, you know, large sites like hubspot.com, moz.com, socialmediaexaminer.com.

So, you know, you have to figure out what types of, you know, different buckets your audience might be hanging out in. You can target competitors. You can target similar websites. You know, for another client, we were targeting, you know, they’re in the senior living space. So, we’re targeting, you know, large health sites, right, AARP. We’re targeting Social Security, government websites and things like that.

And, you know, the results were really astounding across the board.

Tim: Interesting. Okay. So, you targeted competitors and you used that as the foundation for, you know, who you were going to be marketing to. But what got those people to actually click on your ads?

Eric: Yeah. So, the ad is – it’s super simple. It basically says, you know – let’s say I’m going to, you know, target a large – I’m going to target a large, you know, retirement site like AARP, okay. And all I need to put, you know, in this scenario I’m just going to say the senior living example, I’m going to say find senior living for free.

[0:05:05]

Okay? That’s where we’re able to get the phone calls for super cheap. And you know, the ad copy doesn’t need to be amazing or anything like that because, you know, not a lot of people are doing this right now. But, you know, if you are going to probably have to brush up on your copy writing chops but – yeah. I mean nothing special to it.

Tim: Awesome. And then when they do that, you know, in the case of the senior living, you’re taking them to maybe a page where they’ve entered their information or you’re taking them to a blog post or something like that?

Eric: Great question, yeah. In this scenario, for our – let’s say we’re trying to drive a phone call. We’re driving them directly to a landing page. And then the landing page, you know, they can fill in their information and then they’ll get a phone call immediately right after.

Tim: Okay. And so, how would you apply this in a different industry? And it could be anything, somebody who’s a health coach, somebody who has a SAS business. How do you apply this differently based on what industry or niche somebody is in?

Eric: Right. So, I would go back to content promotion. You know, nowadays, a lot of people are they understand that you can’t just drive people unless you’re in an older industry like senior living. You know, you can drive them directly to a landing page. But let’s say we’re in a little forward thinking industry like internet marketing, for example, where you’d have to be innovating because a lot – there’s a lot of noise in the space.

So, you should just drive them to a piece of content. And then on that piece of – on that page, you should have, you know, a Facebook pixel or you should have a Google pixel as well where you’re able to retarget, you know, people from that page. And then you can start to make, you know, similar audiences, look-alike audiences. You can start to collect emails as well.

And then really kind of build off of that. I think, you know, trying to indoctrinate people first and then perhaps getting an email out of that. If not, you know, being able to retarget them later down the road. It’s going to lead to better returns than just trying to drive them to an offer cold.

Tim: Got it. I love it. So, we’re using instead of AdWords, we’re using Gmail Ads. We’re targeting kind of our big competitors, sometimes driving them to content. Other times if it makes sense, driving them directly to a landing page. But is there – you know, is it just that it – using this platform, this Gmail Ads, is that just right now because it’s not being used by a lot of marketers? Is that what makes it so inexpensive or is there some special sauce that’s a combination that’s making it work?

Eric: Yeah. So, I would say – I mean, you know, whenever you make – manage to make AdWords or Facebook work, I certainly don’t think it’s any type of special sauce. I think it’s just overtime, you know, you continue to optimize and then you have the machine working. And then, you know, you’re checking back in every couple of days or every day at least to, you know, make sure the numbers aren’t going out of whack.

So, I will just say, you know, just you need to go out there and try it because I’m looking at the numbers right now. We were able to get our click-through rates, again, as high as 75%. You know, most of them average around 30%. But even though I told you that, you know, we’re able to get the $7 CPA, I’m looking at other, you know, different ad groups that we have created, you know. You know, we’re getting CPA for $30, $40, $50 which is well below the $150 target. And the clicks, we’re getting, you know, anywhere from 5 to 8 cents per click.

So, it’s just because it is – I would say it is because it’s new, you know, like any other ad channel. You know, when the AdWords first came out, it was, you know, super simple to do. I think this will become, you know, saturated eventually. So, I do think the timing to jump in on it is right now.

Tim: I love it. This is great. So, thank you so much for sharing this, Eric. I appreciate you bringing some insight in to really a new ad channel that’s honestly before you and I talked, I haven’t even heard of it. I didn’t know that it was kind of a thing. Obviously, we know about AdWords but I haven’t heard about Gmail Ads.

So, I think this is exciting, something worth diving in to. So, thanks again for coming on the show.

Eric: Yeah, thanks for having me, Tim. [Music]