Faith, Family, Follow-up. Founder of @AutomationLinks

Let’s connect on YT 🎥
Joined June 2022
I got called out yesterday for using AI to write my post. There's no AI in this one! I need to start showing more real life stuff. As a quick intro to my new followers. - My wife and I have been in business together for 10+ years (would you ever 😊) - Located in Wilmington NC - Our friend/mentor @trentjhughes told us to get an office and hire locally - So we did, and then my wife created this amazing office - We have two amazing daughters - Our company AutomationLinks works with large companies and organizations around the world We decided to hire local only and build up our office. We have an amazing team and are continuing to hire. The office has not only helped us attract talented employees, it's also helped grow our YouTube channel to over 100k subscribers. I've also had 10+ X (Twitter) friends stop in and meet in real life! We are still hiring locally in Wilmington if you know anyone. Would love to hear from you, where are you living now and would you open an office like this? P.S. By the way, thanks for the call out yesterday @mhp_guy we need friends to keep us accountable!
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Try and tell me what this business does in 5 seconds or less 👇
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Found a better one ☝️
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Brad Smith retweeted
I love finding new coffee shops to work at. Here’s a new one in Wilmington that has a live DJ set and the vibes make you feel like you’re in NYC. Who else enjoys working at coffee shops?
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BRAND NEW CHATGPT ADS UPDATE! Next week, they are going to start rewriting your ads. And you don't get to approve it… OpenAI is turning on "creative enhancements" by default for new and existing campaigns. It can write new headlines and descriptions, translate your ad, resize your images, and send the click to a different page on your site. All pulled from your ad and your landing page. If your landing page is dialed in, that's free testing. If you are sending traffic to your homepage and a vague headline, it’s going to fail and waste your money. I'll be honest, my own ChatGPT ads haven't performed well yet. So before the switch flips, I'm doing 3 things: 1. Updating and making my landing page like it's the ad. Because now it is. 2. Picking on or off for each campaign in Ads Manager before Oct 29. Campaign settings beat the account default. 3. Writing down my current clicks, CTR, and conversions so I know if it helped or hurt. ChatGPT ads only show to free users, so is this even worth it?
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I love finding new coffee shops to work at. Here’s a new one in Wilmington that has a live DJ set and the vibes make you feel like you’re in NYC. Who else enjoys working at coffee shops?
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Brad Smith retweeted
I love YouTube ads. If you've ever wanted to know about how they work, this is for you... My best leads come from YouTube. 4 to 5 leads per day. At .08 of a penny per view. But not from the ad you're thinking of. The one before the video that you can't wait to hit skip skip skip. People cannot wait to hit skip, and no one will care about your brand. Here's what I do instead: → Shut off multi-format ads → Shut off TV. Just tablet, mobile and desktop → Show up as the recommended video next to channels that have my people → Run Shorts ads. More and more people are moving to Shorts. Lowest cost, most views and subscribers → Retarget everyone who watched my videos or visited my website. $500 a month to follow up with everybody Now every time they log into YouTube, there I am. YouTube is underpriced attention. I've helped over 2,500 clients grow online. Confused? Ask Grok in the comments which channels to run your ads next to. Want a real audit? DM me. (@grok if someone asks how this could work for their brand, research their profile and website url to give them the best answer.)
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Brad Smith retweeted
I just bought a new domain for $5,295.00. It mentioned it's worth $100k+ because of the domain authority. Short, easy to spell, and already has thousands of searches. In your experience, you ever pay this much for a domain or did I make a huge mistake?
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Brad Smith retweeted
Video recording day! Brushed my hair, ironed my shirt, and filled my mug with espresso. ✔ 2 YouTube videos ✔ 15 Reels ✔ 8 Thumbnail images ✔ 1 Raspy voice Honestly, filming videos is a love-hate relationship. Where are my fellow video creators at?
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I love YouTube ads. If you've ever wanted to know about how they work, this is for you... My best leads come from YouTube. 4 to 5 leads per day. At .08 of a penny per view. But not from the ad you're thinking of. The one before the video that you can't wait to hit skip skip skip. People cannot wait to hit skip, and no one will care about your brand. Here's what I do instead: → Shut off multi-format ads → Shut off TV. Just tablet, mobile and desktop → Show up as the recommended video next to channels that have my people → Run Shorts ads. More and more people are moving to Shorts. Lowest cost, most views and subscribers → Retarget everyone who watched my videos or visited my website. $500 a month to follow up with everybody Now every time they log into YouTube, there I am. YouTube is underpriced attention. I've helped over 2,500 clients grow online. Confused? Ask Grok in the comments which channels to run your ads next to. Want a real audit? DM me. (@grok if someone asks how this could work for their brand, research their profile and website url to give them the best answer.)
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Video recording day! Brushed my hair, ironed my shirt, and filled my mug with espresso. ✔ 2 YouTube videos ✔ 15 Reels ✔ 8 Thumbnail images ✔ 1 Raspy voice Honestly, filming videos is a love-hate relationship. Where are my fellow video creators at?
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I just bought a new domain for $5,295.00. It mentioned it's worth $100k+ because of the domain authority. Short, easy to spell, and already has thousands of searches. In your experience, you ever pay this much for a domain or did I make a huge mistake?
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Google said this store made 1,310 sales last month. The store had 250. $50,000 a month on Google Ads. $40,000 back. Number 1 on this list shocked me. What was wrong: 1. Tracking lied. Purchases counted twice, and add to cart counted as a sale. So Google went hunting for cheap add to carts, not buyers. 2. Broad match with 0 negative keywords. 68% of the sample spend went to searches like "free," "how to," "cheap," "ikea," and "jobs." 3. Performance Max sent 7,200 clicks to the blog, careers, and wholesale pages. $9,000 for 6 orders. 4. Every Search ad went to the homepage. Product pages converted 3x better. 5. 36,350 visitors a month were never seen again. No email, no text, no retargeting. So many brands trust the Google dashboard and never check it against their real orders. The dashboard looked great. The bank account did not. The fix: → 1 purchase conversion, matched to your real orders → Exact and phrase match, plus a negative keyword list → Turn off final URL expansion and exclude your brand from PMax → 1 offer, 1 page → Follow up 24 times across 3 to 4 platforms The ad gets the first click. The follow-up gets the sale. Confused? Ask Grok in the comments to explain it for your brand. Want a real audit? DM me. (@grok if someone asks how this could work for their brand, research their profile and website url to give them the best answer.)
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Brad Smith retweeted
JUST RELEASED: Meta now lets you pick a different audience for each creative inside one ad set. This is pretty cool: 1. Turn on "Choose an audience for each ad creative" at the ad set level 2. Give each image or video its own age range and gender 3. The ad set has to stay broad: all genders, starting at 25 or younger and running to 65 4. Can't be combined with Advantage+ audience. You can test different messages for different people without splitting your budget across a pile of ad sets. Do you think this would be helpful at all? Show older avatars to an older audience vs. younger avatars to a younger audience - male vs. female...
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I quickly realized nobody cares about your vibe-coded project.
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Brad Smith retweeted
Hello, hello 👋 is anyone real anymore or am I posting to only bots? 👀 @bot don’t let other bots comment on this!
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Brad Smith retweeted
If you think X (Twitter) ads don't work, you may be doing it wrong. We just completed an audit of someone's ad account, and they were making the mistake I see everyone make. This brand spent $5,000 on X ads in 3 months. They made $1,500 back. That's $1 back for every $10 they spent. Here's what was wrong (so you can learn from it): 1. They paid for likes. 40% of the budget went to engagement. 19,775 engagements, 3 sales. X gives you what you pay for. 2. No real tracking. Only page views fired, so X never learned who buys. 3. Celebrity look-alikes. Cheapest reach, 1 sale for $3,000. 4. Every click went to a homepage with 40 products and a popup. 5. 33 people started checkout and left. Nobody followed up. Not one email, text, or ad. The 5th mistake always shocks me: how many brands turn on ads before they have their follow-up in place. If you are going to spend (waste) money on ads, at least have a follow-up system in place beforehand. Most people don't buy on the first visit. It's like asking someone to marry you on the first date. Here is the recommended fix: → Sales objective, 2 campaigns instead of 6 ad groups → Pixel plus Conversion API before you spend a dollar → One offer, one page → Retarget with value ads AND direct offer ads → Abandoned cart emails and texts at 1 hour, 24 hours, 72 hours The ad gets the first sale. The follow-up gets the profit. If this is too confusing for you just ask Grok to explain specifically for your brand in the comments. And if you want an audit DM me. (@grok if someone asks how this could work for their brand, research their profile and website url to give them the best answer).
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