Google Ads with Kasim Aslam, Episode #88

Kasim Aslam

Kasim Aslam is the founder and CEO of Solutions 8, one of the world’s top-ranked Google ad agencies. He is also the traffic coach for Digital Marketer’s Elite Coaching Program and was hand-selected to help create their new paid traffic certification. He’s also the co-host of “Perpetual Traffic,” one of the top marketing podcasts in the world.

He’s the go-to person in Google ads, recognized by the Arizona Interactive Marketing Association as Person of the Year. His book, “The 7 Critical Principles of Effective Digital Marketing,” was featured as one of the Top 100 Digital Marketing Books of All Time by Book Authority.

Kasim speaks regularly at marketing conferences around the globe. Listen in for some great takeaways about Kasim’s entrepreneurial journey and how to drive traffic and opportunities for your business using Google ads.

You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in…

  • How Kasim got where he is today [2:54]
  • How Kasim found success with Google Ads [5:14]
  • Kasim’s advice for a digital marketing strategy [7:05]
  • What you need to know about customer acquisition cost [11:25]
  • Why Kasim’s customer life cycles are so short [13:33]
  • How you can counteract “privacy-first” initiatives [17:23]
  • Should you spend your money on Google or YouTube? [22:42]
  • How Solutions 8 stayed relevant during the pandemic [24:20]
  • What does the future of paid traffic look like? [25:42]
  • Don’t let privacy-first initiatives scare you [28:23]
  • What’s up next for Kasim Asham, the next big thing? [30:29]
  • What brought Kasim joy and put him in the mindset for success [31:36]

How to create a digital marketing strategy

Kasim quickly points out that not all businesses will find success with Google ads. Your first step must be a viability study: Can your business compete in the ads ecosystem? 

Kasim was running ads for someone who sold life insurance. The cost per click on an ad was more than he would make if he sold a single policy. Why? Big insurance carriers use life insurance as a loss leader. They know if they become the carrier of someone’s life insurance, they’ll get their business for any other insurance need.

That’s why Kasim advises you to take a long hard look at what you’re doing, who else is doing it, and whether or not you can compete. You have to make sure that you have a unique value proposition and the ability to compete.

If you can’t compete with Google ads, the #1 thing you can do to create a space for yourself is to build a community. A podcast is a great place to do that. It doesn’t force you to compete against 50 other people in a microsecond. Secondly, he emphasizes that you need to be where your customer is. That’s why Kasim cultivated a YouTube following. The next step is to give, give, give. Then you don’t have to worry about paid traffic.

What do you need to know about customer acquisition costs? Listen to hear how to determine what costs work for your business.

How you can counteract “privacy-first” initiatives in your digital marketing

The European Union rolled out GDPR, which halted what many people were allowed to track. Then, Apple rolled out the ios 14 update, which single-handedly annihilated Facebook ads. Soon after, Apple rolled out an update that wouldn’t allow marketers to track or see without someone’s explicit permission.

The world is moving toward far less visibility. To adjust to this, a business must collect first-party data. 95% of all businesses won’t do this because it’s tedious. If you can commit to doing this, it will set your business apart by two standard deviations. You can take the first-party data and use it in Facebook ads to get back to 80% capacity.

But Kasim cautions you to remember that Google doesn’t have your best interests at heart. Everyone thinks that Google is just a search engine but they also run analytics. They’re on 99.9% of all front-facing websites.

Google now has 72 million demographic and psychographic profiling factors compared to Facebook’s 55,000. Facebook showed its hand and everyone freaked out. They took the privacy bullets. Yet Google—the biggest publicly accessible privacy threat—is still flying below the radar.

Should you spend your money on Google or YouTube? Kasim shares why differentiating the two no longer matters—keep listening.

What does the future of paid traffic look like?

Kasim shares that running paid traffic used to be like driving a racecar driving 250 mph down the road. You have to make decisions in a microsecond. The smarter you were, the better you did.

Now, paid traffic is interstellar space travel at the speed of light. You don’t get to drive or steer the spaceship. If you try, you will die. You let the computer drive the spaceship and you serve the computers. You give the computer what it needs to be effective and the computer gets you what you need. You have to take your hands off the wheel and let autonomous driving take control. Then you focus on what you can control.

So should you run paid ads yourself? Listen to hear why Kasim thinks that you certainly can—but you won’t want to.

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Kasim Aslam

Bio

Recipient of the Arizona Interactive Marketing Association’s 2017 TIM Award for Person of the Year, Kasim was also named one of the Top 50 Digital Marketing Thought Leaders in the United States by The University of Missouri in 2020. His book, The 7 Critical Principles of Effective Digital Marketing, was featured as one of the Top 100 Digital Marketing Books of All Time by Book Authority.

As a professional speaker, Kasim has been a main-stage emcee for the Traffic & Conversion Summit (the largest marketing conference in North America) and speaks regularly at marketing conferences around the globe. He and his wife have two sons; they split their time between Scottsdale, Arizona and Seattle, Washington.

Guests on the Mitlin Money Mindset Show are not affiliated with CWM, LLC, and opinions expressed herein may not be representative of CWM, LLC. CWM, LLC is not responsible for the guest’s content linked on this site.

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