John Horn Of StubGroup On How to Effectively Leverage The Power of Digital Marketing, PPC, & Email to Dramatically Increase Sales

An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Learn tech basics. You don’t need to become a Python expert, or even master HTML. But if you grasp how websites work, what a cookie is, the difference between a domain and a subdomain, etc., you will know more than many of your clients.

Marketing a product or service today is easier than ever before in history. Using platforms like Facebook ads or Google ads, a company can market their product directly to people who perfectly fit the ideal client demographic, at a very low cost. Digital Marketing tools, Pay per Click ads, and email marketing can help a company dramatically increase sales. At the same time, many companies that just start exploring with digital marketing tools often see disappointing results.

In this interview series called “How to Effectively Leverage The Power of Digital Marketing, PPC, & Email to Dramatically Increase Sales”, we are talking to marketers, advertisers, brand consultants, & digital marketing gurus who can share practical ideas from their experience about how to effectively leverage the power of digital marketing, PPC, & email.

As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing John Horn.

John Horn, CEO of StubGroup, has spent his professional career focused on creating and delivering a unique, successful product to each client, every time. He and his agency have worked with brands including Cash America, Amerant Bank, and many others, and have generated over $350 million on behalf of their clients. He has also created educational marketing content consumed by over 90,000 students online and is a frequent podcast guest.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

Thanks for having me!

I come from a line of entrepreneurs. My dad ran his own law office, and his father owned a grocery store in the small town where I grew up. So it was a great fit when I was given the opportunity to come to StubGroup in its early days, close to a decade ago, and help bootstrap the agency to where we are today.

We focus at StubGroup on digital advertising and helping businesses scale profitably via Google, Facebook, and other platforms. When we started the company, there were already many agencies that were helping businesses make the transition from offline to online advertising, but frankly we saw way more demand than supply for expert marketing help, and so we decided to step into the gaps.

Can you share a story about the funniest marketing mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?

Only one? :) In the early days, I remember it being hard to know how much time I should invest into various channels. I remember spending hours researching tiny little ecommerce directories and feed platforms, thinking “the more places we’re at, the better.” I quickly learned that the 80/20 rule applies to marketing as much as the rest of life, and that my time was best spent focused on the areas that actually moved the needle for our clients.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

The two founders of StubGroup, who brought me on as their first full-time employee, have both been instrumental in my growth in business and marketing. When I hear business owners share about the loneliness they have experienced, I realize how blessed I am to have had the mentorship of two veteran entrepreneurs who to this day still provide a sounding board and hold me accountable for the decisions I am making for our company.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

There is a perception of advertising agencies that their sole goal is to get their clients to spend more money. I think one thing that makes StubGroup stand out is that we measure our team members not in terms of the amount of ad spend they manage, but in terms of their client retention, client satisfaction, and how closely we are achieving the client’s KPIs.

We encourage our clients to think not just in terms of ROAS and ad budget but most importantly in terms of profitability, and by emphasizing comprehensive conversion tracking and analysis, we are often able to cut our client’s budgets.

One of my favorite examples comes from what we did for one of our clients in the sporting goods industry. We took a profit-driven approach to their marketing and scored a YoY increase of greater than 1,300%, while cutting their ad spend by 30%.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

I’m in the service business, so the product that I sell to clients is really the time and skills of my team members.

I genuinely care about each person who works with me, and I strive to equip them with the resources they need to do a great job and to enjoy doing it.

I also recognize how easy it is to let “caring” for a team member translate into excusing poor performance or poor attitudes. As CEO, it’s my duty to shepherd the company as a whole and to protect the livelihoods that the company is affording to our team members. If I tolerate poor behavior or team members who don’t carry their load, then I am compromising the entire company culture and doing wrong by all of the other team members who depend on each paycheck.

Lastly, I started at the “bottom” of the pole and climbed my way upwards, learning marketing tactics and strategy along the way and then in turn relaying that knowledge to our team. Personally understanding the technical challenges that my team faces equips me to set realistic expectations for them and more accurately measure their performance.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Every day is exciting! We’re exploring new marketing platforms, like TikTok, and adapting to the constant changes that Google, Facebook, and the other advertising platforms throw our way.

Ok super. Now let’s jump to the main questions of our interview. As we mentioned in the beginning, sometimes companies that just start exploring with digital marketing tools like PPC campaigns often see disappointing results. In your opinion, what are a few of the biggest mistakes companies make when they first start out with digital marketing? If you can, please share an example for each.

1. Trusting the wrong people to manage their advertising. For small businesses, this often means the business owner, who is used to wearing all the hats and assumes they can figure out a platform like Google Ads or Facebook Ads themselves. Queue tons of wasted time and ad spend.
2. Unrealistic expectations. Advertising is not a magic bullet that can fix a bad offer. Advertising provides fuel for the offer you have and helps you figure out what offers are most compelling.
3. Not tracking performance. You can’t accurately determine the success of your ad dollars or know where you can profitably scale unless you are tracking the results those dollars are driving for you.

If you could break down a very successful digital marketing campaign into a “blueprint”, what would that blueprint look like? Please share some stories or examples of your ideas.

1. Identify your target audience. What is unique about them? Demographics? Psychographics? Geographic location?
2. Find out if your target audience is already looking for the solution you offer. If you are an auto mechanic and people use Google to find auto mechanics, you should be on Google. If you are a lifestyle brand launching a new product, you should be on the social channels where your audience spends their time.
3. Set goals for your advertising. How are you going to measure success, how much data will you view as statistically significant, etc.?
4. Test, test, and test again.

Let’s talk about Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC) for a bit. In your opinion which PPC platform produces the best results to increase sales?

There are too many variables at play to make a definitive statement like “Google is better than Facebook.”

For some businesses, Google is a better choice than Facebook. For other businesses, vice versa. Yet, for others, maybe neither platform is a good fit.

That’s why I recommend partnering with an agency or other expert who understands the nuances of the various advertising channels that are available, and can marry that knowledge with your unique understanding of your business and customer base.

Can you please share 3 things that you need to know to run a highly successful PPC campaign?

1. You have to use conversion tracking to measure the success (or lack thereof) of your campaigns.
2. You need to be patient enough to collect data and make decisions based off that data, not your gut.
3. You need to spend time improving not just your campaigns, but also your website, so that you maximize your conversion rate and make the most of every ad dollar

Let’s now talk about email marketing for a bit. In your opinion, what are the 3 things that you need to know to run a highly successful email marketing campaign that increases sales?

I will be completely honest and let you know that email marketing is not my specialty, but I’m happy to share things I’ve seen work well for our clients, and for me as a consumer.

1. Customize your emails. Someone who abandoned an item in their cart is in a very different place than someone who signed up for your newsletter two years ago.
2. Split-test your subject lines. You have a fleeting moment in time to capture attention before your message is lost in the deluge that is your recipient’s inbox.
3. Don’t email for the sake of email. Make each email valuable to your list. Tim Ferriss’s “5-Bullet Friday” is a great example of content that subscribers (myself included) genuinely look forward to.

What are the other digital marketing tools that you are passionate about? If you can, can you share with our readers what they are and how to best leverage them?

Google Analytics — Understand how people reach your website and what they do after they arrive

CallTrackingMetrics — Comprehensively track where your phone calls are coming from

Lucky Orange/Hotjar — Watch how real people navigate your website to find conversion obstacles

Google Tag Manager — Easily install tracking coles on websites without waiting on dev teams for weeks.

Here is the main question of our series. Can you please tell us the 5 things you need to create a highly successful career as a digital marketer? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Do it. Find people who need help with digital marketing and get your hands dirty. If you must, look for internships or small business owners you can assist as a freelancer. The only way to really learn digital marketing is by doing.

Learn tech basics. You don’t need to become a Python expert, or even master HTML. But if you grasp how websites work, what a cookie is, the difference between a domain and a subdomain, etc., you will know more than many of your clients.

Be adaptable. Our industry changes constantly and is dominated by big players who can completely shift the playing field with one tweak to their algorithm. Marketers who get set in their ways are still trying to figure out why the Yellow Pages no longer works.

Study people. Communication is a critical aspect of marketing, not just in crafting compelling campaigns, but also in explaining to your stakeholders (clients, boss, etc.) why a certain strategy is smart and why you should be entrusted with their budget.

Keep up with the latest news. Not surprisingly, the digital world has a wealth of information about the digital world. Watch closely the changes that the big platforms are announcing, read deeply into the case studies and articles that experts are releasing, and pay attention to the strategies into which sophisticated marketers are sinking their money.

What books, podcasts, videos or other resources do you use to sharpen your marketing skills?

• SearchEngineLand.com
• #ppcchat on Twitter
• Jon Loomer’s Pubcast
• Constant testing with our own clients :)

Thank you for all of that. We are nearly done. Here is our final ‘meaty’ question. You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I think about honesty a lot because most people think “advertising” is an antonym to “integrity.”

I believe that if people were honest with each other and kept true to their word, this world would be a much better place in which to live.

How can our readers further follow your work?

Visit StubGroup’s blog, connect via LinkedIn, follow on Twitter.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this!

Thank you!