Q&A Series: Johnathan Dane of Klient Boost

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Wishpond is fired up to bring you an interview with PPC all-star Johnathan Dane. Johnathan owns and operates KlientBoost a successful PPC & CRO agency in Costa Mesa, California. Johnathan and his team bring a fresh perspective to the typical PPC agency game by incorporating a strong focus on beautiful user experiences.

Johnathan agreed to chat with Wishpond and give us the lowdown on his agency, PPC tactics, and insights on where he thinks the industry is headed.

We wanted to get to know a little bit more about Johnathan for our readers who work in PPC & CRO and those looking to start out on their own.


Q: How did you get involved in the PPC – CRO space?

I was actually randomly thrown into it as I was a customer support rep about 4-5 years ago for an eCommerce company.

At first, I obviously had no idea what the heck I was doing, but then got my boss to pay for a 2 day seminar to go see Brad Geddes (one of the leading PPC experts), and from that moment I realized I should do this myself and run my own thing.

I still sucked at PPC when I ventured out on my own, but my confidence was on fire. I started posting my ads on Craigslist and couldn’t believe that I got people to call me, and the rest is history 🙂


Q: Tell us a bit about KlientBoost and where it’s headed.

KlientBoost is a PPC and landing page agency with a personality reflection of myself. This means that my immature humor shines through and my obsession with building brand equity will make me do many things I can’t track, but I think through my gut, are the right things to do.

As a team, we’re obsessed with design compared to many of our competitors (who suck at design) and I think we’re really good at auditing ourselves to make sure we’re going in the right direction.

We’ve recently hit a stride and we’re at 15 people within around a year’s time and we’re looking to double that by the end of year.


Q: Are all businesses well suited for PPC?

No. B2C and B2B works, but it’s hard to get it to work for B2G (Business To Government) as an example.

The vast majority of businesses would do well with PPC if they know how to execute on it. Most companies unfortunately don’t, which is fortunate for us.


Q: How do you present the value of PPC these days when there are so many alternative marketing options?

As a consistent ROI equation that can make you money much faster than other marketing options.

It has to eventually come down to a dollar invested equals five dollars returned, and it should be treated as one marketing channel among many others.

There are tons of companies that rely solely on AdWords and some that rely solely on content marketing. I think the strongest companies are the ones that can win with many marketing options, which is an obvious answer.


Q: What has you excited about the digital marketing environment today?

The new web 2.0 and web 3.0 opportunities that are constantly being built by Facebook, Google, and other players.

Today, I’m mostly excited about the social PPC platforms, tomorrow, I’ll be excited about the VR opportunities.


Q: What’s your number one suggestion for marketers to increase the ROI of their ad campaigns?

Optimize off of sales, not off conversions.

So many conversions you’re getting from certain keywords or display placements have a strong or weak intent to turn into sales.

So what you see inside AdWords or Facebook might say things are going well, but you could potentially cut away 50% of your ad spend and get the same amount of sales from that because the 50% you removed, never turned into sales anyways.

This is something you can do for lead generation and SaaS, eCommerce doesn’t have that luxury since things are more black and white there where sales are happening immediately, not later.


Q: What’s the most surprising A/B test that you’ve seen this year?

Adding more fields and more steps to landing pages to increase conversion rates. Not removing fields.


Q: What is the biggest trend you see emerging in PPC in the future?

The long term direct response game that doesn’t include the obsession of last click attribution where branding is actually part of the goal (very old-school, I know). That’s the trend I want to see, not sure it will happen.

The actual biggest trend I see right now is that PPC can’t be a silo style focus. Too many experts and companies geek out about numbers, but suck at the creative. They’re tunnel visioned.

I think more and more agencies will need to focus more holistically on PPC outside of quality scores and CTRs. They need to care about making money for the client above all else.


Key Takeaways


  • PPC should be treated as one channel amongst many marketing channels and can deliver the most consistent ROI if used properly.
  • Optimize off of sales not conversions as your bottom line. See where you’re wasting most of your money and optimize for efficiency.
  • Adding more form fields may work for you so don’t be afraid to go against the grain in your split tests.

I agree with Johnathan, in that we’d love to see more data where branding is concerned. A marketer can only dream…

There you have it guys, some awesome takeaways from Johnathan Dane, owner of PPC agency KlientBoost. Reach out to Johnathan on Twitter to continue the conversation or just to say hi.

Let us know what you think about Johnathan’s thoughts and if there’s something else you’d like him to answer.

Stay tuned for our next Q&A Series!

jordan-lore

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