Tim Kelsey is the Managing Director of Pronto Marketing, a web development and marketing agency specializing in building, supporting, and promoting WordPress websites for small businesses. Over his 14-year tenure at Pronto, he has grown from an entry-level role in SEO to now overseeing a diverse team of over 90 members spanning Central and South America and Southeast Asia. With experience in customer service, strategic planning, and executive leadership, Tim leads with a strong focus on company culture and a commitment to empowering team success.

Marcel Petitpas is the CEO and Co-founder of Parakeeto, a consultancy dedicated to optimizing agency profitability. With roles such as Head Strategic Coach at Dan Martell and former COO at Gold Front, he leverages his experience as a strategic coach and consultant to aid agencies and SaaS in operational and profitability optimization. As a sought-after thought leader and host of the Agency Profit Podcast, Marcel shares actionable insights on service business mastery.

Jon Morris is the Founder and CEO of Ramsay Innovations, which helps businesses quickly scale through financial education and strategic funds allocations. In September, Jon founded Fiscal Advocate, which specializes in helping marketing communication firms manage their finances, gain business insights, and grow revenue. Before joining Ramsay Innovations, Jon founded Rise Interactive, a full-service internet marketing agency — growing it from a $10,000 bootstrap business to one of the largest independent digital agencies. Jon is also an Advisor for Fiscal Advocate and was previously an Advisory Board Member at Pixability.

Justin Ramb is President and Sandra Marshal, VP of Client Services, at Bigeye, a full-service B2B and B2C agency that focuses on audiences, creative work, media and analytics, and data. 

1. Understand audience: 

1. Use primary and secondary research to discover who they are, where they consume media, what they look like, and what triggers them to convert
2. Develop marketing personas that match two or three target audience personas
3. Test strategies against those personas to ensure activities align with objectives

B2B: 

• Use current customer data to develop lookalike audience and personas based on existing data
• Develop personas based on where company wants to head. Is it looking to capture new clients or new types of clients? Supplement data with key stakeholder interviews, additional research, online research, and quantitative/qualitative research.

B2C: Bigeye utilizes specialized tools to learn about a client’s audience and customers

1. Creative:

1. As part of persona development, the agency tests messaging, colors, headlines, and photography for optimal audience response.
2. Rather than resent the parameters of defined personas, the creative team appreciates understanding the target audience.

1. Media and Analytics 

1. As part of persona development, the agency explores media usage.
2. Media develops a persona-based media plan and begins placement in that media
3. Utilizing Google Analytics and custom dashboards, the Analytics team tracks establishes targets and KPIs

1. Data 

1. 24/7 analytics data provides information about how things are performing. 
2. Data answered the questions: Where can things be optimized? How are conversions going? Do the real audiences align with those targeted? 

Bigeye started in 2002. In this interview, Justin describes the chaos of those early years and the ultimate discovery that the agency’s greatest success was driven by hiring team members who were committed, skilled, and aligned with the agency’s direction. Sandra added that the agency also has to “arm” new employees with “the appropriate support,” foster a sense of collaboration, and avoid over-siloization. 

Justin outlines the updated review and review cycle program (structured through a program called Lattice) the agency uses to keep everything running smoothly. Every two weeks team members submit a four-question online survey that covers how they’re doing, what roadblocks they have, and anything they want their manager to know. Every quarter, team members submit three or four agency- and personal-growth goals. These are used to project the agency’s direction in the subsequent quarter.

Finding a mentor, someone a step or two ahead, can help a startup avoid pitfalls. Justin comments that if you find an outside counsel and can afford that person, it’s probably not too early. He also mentions ways to find such help for free. He says strategic, balanced growth is healthy growth and believes that a company that is not growing is dying.

Justin and Sandra can be found on their agency’s website at Bigeyeagency.com, where visitors will find an “incredibly updated” blog. 

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m joined today by Justin Ramb, President of Bigeye, and Sandra Marshall, VP of Client Services at Bigeye, and they are based in Orlando, Florida. Welcome to the podcast, Justin and Sandra.

JUSTIN: Thanks for having us.

SANDRA: Thank you, Rob.

ROB: Absolutely. Excellent to have you here. Why don’t you start off by telling us about Bigeye, and what is your superpower?

JUSTIN: Bigeye is a full-service ad agency in Orlando. We do a lot of different services. Full service, but we definitely focus on four key areas of audience, creative, media and analytics, and then data. We’re very focused on that and serve a variety of clients all over the country and several around the world.

ROB: Very cool. Is there any particular vertical or size of client that tends to be in your sweet spot?

JUSTIN: We serve a lot of different clients. Whether it’s a startup, a D2C, somebody just getting off the ground that’s looking for a really comprehensive strategy moving forward to launch their product or service, or all the way up to very large CPG brands that support lots of different brands under them. So, we’ve got a wide variety.

We have engagements that mostly focus on multiple pieces and customer journey, brand development, execution, media, and then the analytics and optimization. That full spectrum is what we focus on with our clients.

ROB: Right on. Knowing your pillars does provide part of the story, so maybe it’s interesting if we step through those a little bit piece by piece. When you talk about audience, what does Bigeye talk about when they’re talking about audience?

JUSTIN: We’re really focused on audience. We believe that’s the start of almost all of our engagements, all of our initiatives – really looking at, who is the audience we’re going after for that product or service? It’s really important to understand that audience, who they are, where they consume media, what they look like, and what are their triggers to convert. We spend a lot of resources upfront to understand that audience.

We’ve got a whole insights team, led here by our Vice President of Insights, Adrian Tennant, and he leads the team to really dive into that, both in a primary research way, or we’ll grab secondary research as well. That will then also get us into audience personas and developing those personas to have a target of two or three personas we’re going after, and we’ll always match what we’re doing back up to those personas to make sure we’re always leading with that strategy.

SANDRA: And Rob, it’s really been incredible to see how well that’s resonated with our clients. To see them be able to relate to an actual person and some of the persona development that we’ve done has really set a phenomenal foundation for many of our projects. Keeping that person in mind for the duration and the lifecycle of the work together has been really, really compelling.

ROB: It’s truly critical. You mentioned the startup side of the world; a lot of times when startups are asked to articulate their audience, it almost feels like an exercise in creative writing rather than in fact. Helping them dial that in seems like it would vary quite widely by customer. You mentioned that primary and secondary research. I’d imagine on the consumer side, you may have datasets at your disposal that the client might not even have, or maybe something within their data that they don’t know.

But then on the B2B side, are you diving in sometimes and interviewing their existing customers, their potential customers, and going deep on that personal level there?

JUSTIN: Absolutely. On the B2C side, we spend a lot of time looking at that audience and customer with some really great tools that we have at our disposal to get to who they are.

On the B2B side, it is important to grab the current customer data. We can develop a lookalike audience and really develop that persona based on existing data, and/or there may be businesses that are looking to capture new clients, new types of clients, and that’s where we’ll go through quite a few exercises with the client to understand those and develop personas based on where they want to head. We’ll supplement that with key stakeholder interviews, additional research, online research, quantitative/qualitative research. We always want to make sure that we’re matching it back up to solid data.

ROB: You put creative second in that list, and I’m sure that’s no coincidence. It sounds to me like given that focus on audience, the creative has a deep, deep link to the audience that’s being targeted. Number one, how do you think about creative? And number two, how do you help the creative types to view that audience information as a useful constraint rather than maybe a limitation on their creative juices?

JUSTIN: We find that a lot of the work that we do actually arms creative to produce better creative. They love to understand exactly the customer, the audience that they’re designing for. After we define those personas, we will often then go to another step before we get into creative of researching and serving audiences to make sure that we’re creating creative for them. We’ll test messaging, we’ll test colors, we’ll test headlines, we’ll test photography, and we’ll find out what those audiences most resonate with.

We have all that data; we will then turn that over to our creative team, and then they’ll match that up to what they’re envisioning to create for them. They absolutely love it. It probably initially was like, “Wait, what’s going on here? We’ll design what we want to design,” but now they’ve come to really appreciate having some solid information before diving deep into what they do.

ROB: That definitely makes sense. Stepping through, you talk about media and analytics. Those are both words I think that have known meanings, but they mean perhaps different things to different people. What do media and analytics mean within the world of Bigeye?

JUSTIN: We will continue the journey with our customers and clients. We’ve now created the creative; it’s all matched back up to the personas, and in that persona development, we’re also understanding where they consume media. Where most can we get in front of them? Obviously, in today’s world, it’s a lot of different places. Yes, it’s Facebook, it’s Instagram, but it’s also driving down the road. People still commute. Out of home is still important. It may be a lot of other platforms.

So, we will develop a media plan, again based on the personas, and then begin to place that media and watch it through the analytics team.

ROB: Got it. Then analytics in that case is useful as part of the planning process, whereas data is probably completing that loop and tying the results back to the business objectives?

JUSTIN: We watch that data, those analytics, nonstop. It is so important in the 24/7 world to watch how things are performing. Where can we perform optimizations? How are conversions going? Are we matching up to the audiences that we’ve outlined? It’s really important that we’re looking at those analytics. We create custom dashboards. We go beyond just relying on Google Analytics and we create those custom dashboards specifically for the targets and the KPIs that have been outlined early on in the process.

ROB: That entire story makes sense. Tell us a little bit about the origin of Bigeye. How did you end up starting this thing in the beginning?

JUSTIN: We started back in 2002, pre-internet, pre a lot of things nowadays. Frankly, it took quite a few years to figure out what the hell we were doing. It was a lot of trial and error. Figured out what we did best, what we did worst, and ultimately what we ended up finding was what caused the most success was to hire properly. Bring on team members that were not only committed, not only skilled, but really were part of where we were headed as an agency.

We brought on Sandra in the client services and account department and we brought on Seth Segura, our creative director. Still here today, and really defined, where do we want to go? That’s what has led us to the focus of audience, creative, and media.

ROB: Was one of those practices more prominent in the earliest of days?

JUSTIN: Hiring was just so important. Again, it took us a number of years to realize it was all about who was going to be on the bus with us. We knew that we had to get the seats filled, and frankly a lot of what we do can be taught. There is some skill to it, but a lot of it can be taught. So, understanding the aptitude and attitude of people that we were hiring, and was it part of the culture that we wanted to build at Bigeye?

SANDRA: I think to add to that, too, one thing that we identified early on was not only did we have to look for those good cultural fits and those amazing skillsets, but we also had to make sure that we were arming the people we were bringing in with the appropriate support and other members of the team to make sure all the wheels were continuing to run smoothly and there was an incredible sense of collaboration with everybody. We did not want everybody to be working in silos. We wanted to really make sure that there was the appropriate amount of department building that was also occurring while we were looking for this incredible talent.

JUSTIN: One of the big “ahas” for us was doing better reviews and review cycles. It was really interesting to me. To the fault of our own, we were doing a really bad job at performance reviews. We’ve done it multiple different ways through the years. We’ve done annual reviews, we’ve done anniversary reviews, we’ve done 360 reviews. Oftentimes we’d forget about it until somebody said, “Hey, can I get my annual review?”

I do think that’s pretty common in agencies. We’re running hard, clients are demanding things, things are changing, so the review cycle and performance reviews was something we realized if we were going to grow, we needed to make sure we put something in place that could help that. So we did.

Now we’re on a great schedule. We do two-week sprints where we do updates every two weeks. Team members will submit a four-question online survey – how they’re doing, what roadblocks they have, anything they want their manager to know. So, we’ve got these pulse checks with our team members. Two weeks in agency life can feel like a year, so we wanted to make sure that we were touching base.

Then we do quarterly reviews. We ask our team members to develop three or four goals for the quarter, all aligned with the growth of the agency, but also personal growth. We meet with them on a quarter basis, we review the quarters, and then we project where we want to head for the next quarter.

And then we’ll do the annual review, which obviously is the bigger one and more extensive, but critically important to continue to check in on the growth and the development of our team members, but also of the agency.

ROB: Right. I think people coming from some agencies would perhaps be a little bit shocked by that level of regularity, if you’re able to actually keep it in sync. How did you come to that degree of structure? Do you have a disposition towards structure and you just had to form the idea, or were there some tools that came into play to help you arrive at some of those conclusions?

JUSTIN: The “aha” was when a team member came to Sandra and I and said, “Hey, can I get my annual review?” and we said, “That’s not right. We need to put something in place and we need to stick by it.” We did a lot of searching and we ended up with a tool called Lattice. Lattice is an online tool that allows such great structure, but a lot of flexibility. You can customize what works best for your agency. We have found it to be incredibly successful.

SANDRA: It’s helpful to not find ourselves in an annual review where surprises are being uncovered about not only employee progress, but as a manager, how we could’ve helped them better through the past year. So, these reoccurring checkpoints really help us as leaders to be able to know where we can step in and either coach better or help to refocus energy. I think it’s definitely a two-way street in all of these reviews.

ROB: That definitely makes sense. You said the agency started in 2002, and that was certainly one “aha” moment. What are some other things, when you look back at the journey, that you see that you might have done differently if you were starting from scratch that you learned along the way? Maybe some lessons learned?

JUSTIN: I’d say two things. One, looking back, I would’ve been quicker to bring in outside counsel, somebody that can give us wisdom, that can consult with us, can look at our business, can look at our processes. Bring them in and really allow them to take a look at everything.

We did that about two years ago. We brought a gentleman in from Boston and allowed him to look at every single thing of the agency and to give us his feedback and his thoughts and his perspective about what we were doing – what we were doing well and what needed to be tweaked. I wish we would’ve done that much earlier. There was so much wisdom that came out of that. It was critical.

Secondly, I would say really defining our focus. What are the services that we really want to focus on moving forward over the next couple years? What are the industries we want to focus on? I do think agencies are prone to take anything and everything as long as it pays the bills, and yes, that’s important – but to really internally know as a team, “this is where we’re headed, both in an industry focus and in the services that we want to offer,” and then align everything with that.

ROB: When you mention that outside counsel, I imagine this sort of person can go by many different titles – some sort of a consultant, perhaps a coach, that sort of thing. I think there are some people you’re not sure if you can trust, so how did you identify someone that you could trust to speak into the business in that way?

JUSTIN: We wanted somebody that knew our business, was not in our business, but that can consult with us on the business. We found a gentleman who does search consulting, works with procurement departments for agencies, and allowed him to come in and really pick everything apart. He was a part consultant, he was a part coach, mentor to me and to Sandra and the leadership team. He was just really critical as we moved forward with the incredible growth that we’ve had over the last couple years.

ROB: That part is exciting. It sounds like you’ve more than gotten your money’s worth for whatever the arrangement was. I think sometimes when I talk to folks who are earlier in their agency journey, there comes a point where they’re not sure when they should start spending what could be a significant amount of money on this type of help. How would you think about when is too early to start squeezing that outside counsel to help you get outside your business and grow?

JUSTIN: Great question. I don’t think it’s ever too early if you can afford it, but I also think there are some ways to get some counsel that may not be so expensive or structured.

I know, early on in the agency, we sought out people, other agency owners, to connect with. We didn’t feel like there was some sort of competition there. We could have lunch with them and really talk shop and get some wisdom from each other. It wasn’t a formal thing, but we got together to at least have some counsel because we were young, we were small, they were larger, they had already been through the ups and downs. I think that was really important to have as well, which a lot of people can do if they search, especially nowadays where you can jump on a Zoom call or something like that.

ROB: That’s a good way to frame the current environment in terms of the opportunity as well as the constraints. I think it’s really helpful what you said there. It’s twofold – one is finding the people a step or two ahead of you and looking to them for some ways to move forward, and also, I think what you said about if you can afford the person, it’s probably not too early – I think that creates something a lot of businesses may want to find earlier than they do, which is a lens of profitability, a lens of healthy margins. How have you thought about healthy growth, especially as your team has grown?

JUSTIN: Healthy growth to me and to the leadership team at Bigeye is strategic and it’s balanced. We want to grow. If you’re not growing, you’re dying, so we want to make sure we continue to grow. We’ve been blessed and fortunate over the last couple years to grow rapidly, but we will continue to do that strategically, and we’ll do it in a balanced way. We’re not here to drive our team to burnout. We’re going to have a work-life balance. We’re going to make sure folks get out of here on time to go to their families and other things.

Now, everybody’s going to be available and be able to communicate, and afterhours, because clients will need something, but we’re going to do this growth in the right way. We’re not here to drive everyone to burnout to then go sell the agency. That is not the focus for us. We’re going to continue to grow and develop a really great agency in the U.S.

ROB: Then you also mentioned the importance of focus as one of the lessons that you’ve learned. Have there been lines of service or particular types of work that you have shut down? If so, what did you shut down and how did you realize that you needed to?

JUSTIN: Sandra, correct me if I’m wrong – I don’t know that we’ve shut down any services. We have fine-tuned our services in the sense that we know the ones that will be a win-win for both us and the client. There are services or engagements where if it’s maybe a one-off engagement, that’s probably not the right fit for us. We’re looking for multiple initiatives, a longer-term engagement than just doing a website or something like that.

SANDRA: In addition to that, too, I think we’ve identified through that when we need to acknowledge that it’s not necessarily our expertise per se, or if we know of someone who may be doing it better than us, we’re not shy to admit, “We want to make sure this is achieving the ultimate goal that you have, so let’s bring in either a partner or some outside help and counsel to be a part of this project together.”

ROB: That makes sense. A lot of times when it comes to partnering, you see a spectrum. Some agencies have a strong preference towards white-labeling their partnerships; some of them have a strong preference towards always surfacing and strictly saying “this is a partner,” and some of them tend to go somewhere in between. How have you thought about that decisioning process about if it’s explicitly always a partnership, almost always a white-label, or in between?

JUSTIN: Most of the time nowadays we’re comfortable in our own skin, and we’ll do a partnership. I think most clients nowadays have multiple agencies that they’re working with. They understand that not every agency can offer everything. They’re okay with having those partnerships as long as the agency is managing it; they don’t want another thing to manage. And they appreciate the fact that we say, “That’s probably not our most expertise, and we’d like to bring in this partner to walk alongside this journey with us.” They definitely resonate with that and appreciate that.

SANDRA: And actually, I’d say a good majority of our current clients were working with other partners and all playing in the sandbox together. So, it’s been interesting the shift that’s happened over the last couple years where that’s almost become commonplace. I think really making sure that we are not only developing that relationship with the client, but really being appreciative of others involved, has also helped to create seamless, great projects.

JUSTIN: That was probably a big “aha” of several years ago that the days of Agencies of Record are pretty much gone, from what I can tell. Clients have multiple agencies that they’re using or vetting or working with, so they understand the partnership aspect and definitely appreciate it.

ROB: That’s a great point in serving the client well. Sometimes it may seem that what a client wants is a one-stop shop, but it’s really worth clarifying. It’s not that they want you to be superhuman. They may want you to be a trusted guide to help them find someone to do everything. They may not want multiple points of contact. They may not want multiple billing relationships. Or they may want all of that. It sounds like you can serve them well by figuring out how they want to be served and what it is that they’re asking for, which is probably not for you to be Superman.

JUSTIN: Absolutely. Almost everything we do, we do in-house. We’re pretty control freak, so we like having folks here under one roof. We like to offer those services. Most of the clients that we work with understand that. They like that and really resonate with the fact that we can offer all those services to them, but also to work with other agencies as well.

A lot of the clients come to us because they’re just overwhelmed. There’s so many things on their plate, there’s so many platforms they want to be on. They want to stay ahead of the curve, but they’re just trying to keep up with what’s on their plate currently. So, they’re coming to us to really help backfill a lot of the work that they know they need to be doing.

ROB: That clearly makes sense. When you’re looking ahead, what is coming up in either the marketing world in general or particularly for Bigeye that you’re excited about?

JUSTIN: I’m going to continue to say and double down on the idea of audience. Everything we do is going to tie back to audience. I believe for us, it is resonating. We will continue to do the persona development and tie it to creative and media. There’s so much opportunity to understand and segment audiences. We can drill down to very, very micro levels of who we’re trying to reach. I think we’re just beginning that, and we’ll continue to dive deeper into it.

SANDRA: And because of that, too, I’ll just add onto that, we’ve been able to engage with some really incredible brands. My hope and my outlook towards the future is that we build on those relationships with those incredible brands and we start to work with even bigger and larger brands as well, doing innovative projects and really working on incredible marketing strategies and initiatives for some really cool people.

ROB: When you say audience, I can’t help but think one of the audience platforms that is a little bit more in the news lately is Facebook, and some brands opting out of advertising on Facebook, and probably some other brands stepping in and maybe claiming some cheaper inventory there. How are you seeing clients think about Facebook in terms of what marketing they put there?

JUSTIN: From our team and from clients, they’re cautiously watching it. We’ve not had any clients or any recommendations to make major shifts in their media budgets because of what’s going on there, but we are watching it. There are several things like that that we need to be mindful of and we need to be watching for our clients and making appropriate recommendations as we move forward with that media.

We have not seen a dramatic downtick in the cost of that. It’s still an expensive platform because of the targeting that Facebook has, but we’ll continue to watch it.

ROB: Got it. One thing I’ve seen, at least on the brand side, is some brands have maybe not shifted their overall budget, but they’ve shifted how they spend it. Some of them are scaling back on the brand advertising and drilling more into let’s say driving ecommerce or some sort of online conversion, or more outcome-based and less of the potentially risky brand marketing.

JUSTIN: Yes. Conversion is key, and everything we’re doing leads to conversion in some way. Now, that doesn’t mean that brand awareness is not important; it is, and placements like on YouTube, which tend to be more of a brand awareness play than a direct conversion – most people don’t click the ad on YouTube – but you need to be there. That’s where the audience is. It’s the #2 search engine in the world.

We know our brands that we work with need to be there, but we’re focused on conversions along with making sure the brand stays relevant, stays top of mind, and all matching back to, where is that consumer going to consume that media?

ROB: Super solid. Justin, Sandra, when people want to find you and Bigeye, where should they find you?

JUSTIN: Bigeyeagency.com is where you can find us. There’s a lot of information there. We keep our blog incredibly updated. A lot of great information there.

ROB: Sounds great. Any last words you want to leave with our audience before we get on with your day?

JUSTIN: Appreciate your time, and look forward to hearing feedback from folks.

ROB: Sounds great. Thank you, both of you, for joining today. It’s great to get to know you, and we’ll all look forward to being down in Orlando for some fun things at some point, once we get through this whole pandemic thing.

SANDRA: I hope so. Hope to see you, Rob.

ROB: Sounds great. Be well.

JUSTIN: Thanks, Rob.

SANDRA: Thank you.

JUSTIN: Bye.

ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Justin Gray is CEO and Founder of LeadMD, a performance marketing consultancy. The agency concentrates on achieving tangible, holistic business goals – defining a buyer, launching a product, increasing revenue – to produce bottom-line impacts, rather than focusing on middle-process goals such as website or cost-per lead-optimization. Most of LeadMD’s over 3,500 clients are B2B and B2C considered-purchase organizations – big market enterprises of $100 million and up. 

A “considered purchase” is a complex buying decision, fraught with emotional and financial risks and potential rewards – one that requires extensive pre-purchase research and evaluation. In B2B, this space might include software purchases, but it is more than that. LeadMD’s clients include technology providers (50% of clients are software providers), healthcare, manufacturing, financial services, and “anyone with a channel sale type of go-to-market.”

LeadMD bridges the space between being a global strategy consultant and providing regional implementation. The agency has data science, strategy, and go-to-market teams – who set strategies, plug those strategies into a broad range of systems and marketing platforms, build processes that work for clients, measure results, and optimize performance over time. Justin says that broad scope of function is rare in the B2B space. LeadMD’s consultants find the diversity in clients, the variety and unpredictability of problems and solutions, and the challenge of cobbling together customized solutions . . . exciting, and average 5 to 10 active, and widely-different campaigns a month. Close client relationships are critical. 

New clients may come to LeadMD with a particular goal. The agency uses its “Catalyst Marketing Framework” that clearly states the client’s objective and then provides a “laundry list” of what the client will need to have solidly in place in order to achieve the stated objective. This helps them align their activities to the objectives, and, in the end, produce significant, relevant outcomes. 

Justin has discovered over the years is that many clients believe they already have a full understanding of their buyer profile. Often that “full understanding” is only superficial. Do they really know who their buyers are? All of them? Then, do they know the platforms where their buyers “hang out”? Probably not. Yet that information is critical to know because those platforms are where LeadMd’s clients need to focus their marketing efforts. 

LeadMD’s 3-person data science team digs in at a deeper level that its clients have – researching the market, defining buyers, assembling ideal customer profiles – and then translates that information into engagement and messaging frameworks.

LeadMD utilizes role-based psychological/personality profiling to select candidates who will strengthen the organization—either by reinforcing role-desirable traits . . . or by bringing a new direction to the role. The hiring process can take as long as 2 months. Fifty percent of the organization is employee owned.

Justin can be reached on LinkedIn, on Twitter @jgraymatter or on his agency’s website at: https://www.leadmd.com/.

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m joined by Justin Gray, CEO and Founder at LeadMD based in Scottsdale, Arizona. Welcome to the podcast, Justin.

JUSTIN: Thanks, Rob. Appreciate you guys having me on.

ROB: Fantastic. Why don’t you tell us about LeadMD and where LeadMD excels?

JUSTIN: LeadMD is what we describe as a performance marketing consultancy. It basically just means that our outcomes are aligned to tangible business goals, whether that be revenue increase, product launches, defining a buyer – something that’s going to have a real tangible impact, not on the tactical side.

We don’t get into any engagements where we’re trying to optimize a website or a cost per lead. It’s going to be more holistic than that. Although we might conduct those tactics, we really desire to impact the bottom line of our clients – which are predominantly B2B and B2C considered-purchase organizations, big market enterprise.

Our secret sauce, or where we made our bones, is by operating bridging two different spaces. Normally you either work with a really high dollar, white shoe global consultancy like Accenture or Deloitte and they will help you set your go-to-market strategy or your marketing strategy, and then you’ll work with a much more regional partner that’s going to help you, maybe even an independent consultant that would pop in and help you operationalize that stuff. We do both, and we beat out the Deloittes and Accentures of the world every day.

Our real claim to fame is that we do stuff. Marketing operations is really the backbone of our organization. We’ve got the data science team, we’ve got a strategy team, we’ve got a go-to-market team, and these are all really smart people. But the thing that makes them truly unique is they know how to go plug that strategy into systems and make it work and measure it and optimize it over time, which is just a real rarity, unfortunately, within the B2B space.

ROB: For sure. You cast an interestingly wide net with your description that is still narrow in an interesting way. You said B2B and B2C considered purchases. A lot of times I think when you look at performance marketing groups, that B2B considered purchase dials in pretty tightly on let’s say software. There’s not a lot of white space around that. But it sounds like when you talk about considered purchase in consumer and non-software – where does the rest of the range go beyond that preconception about software, software, software?

JUSTIN: We’ve got probably five – because we’ve been in business for over 10 years, we’ve followed the marketing automation maturity curve, and we’re a primary partner of many of those providers. I’ve got over 3,500 customers, literally from vape pens to traditional software providers and everything in between.

But the primary concentrations we see are obviously technology providers, as you mentioned, software. Then healthcare, and that bifurcates itself into the payer/provider side and then the med device side. Both those industries, we’ve had a really strong footprint in. Then manufacturing. I describe it as when your grandma gets an iPhone happening in manufacturing right now. A lot of these organizations have really archaic marketing practices, but they’re springing forward into the latest and greatest because it’s become standard at this point. So manufacturing is a big one for us. Financial services, everything from traditional banking to online banking to credit unions.

And then really, anyone with a channel sale type of go-to-market. That can be insurance brokers, that can be real estate – commercial real estate, predominantly. Anyone that’s selling through the channel is also where we’ve seen a big concentration. But definitely, of that 3,500+, you’re probably dealing with about 50% that falls into the software provider space. Still a big industry for us.

ROB: Sure. But a fascinating range beyond that. If somebody looks you all up on LinkedIn, at least, if LinkedIn is to be believed, you have dozens and dozens and dozens of employees, but it sounds like you’re talking about quite a variety of products and perhaps even thousands of customers. It seems like there’s a story of tremendous leverage in there that I’d like to dig into a little bit, that you can be effective across such a range and across so many customers.

JUSTIN: Yeah. I think that’s just a function of necessity. With the rise of marketing automation and therefore marketing ops, there was this big talent vacuum that occurred. As we were building this agency and bringing people on and training them – and even advertising to them why they should come work for us versus go to the client side – the fact that they’re going to get exposure to – our average consultant is running between 7 and 10 active projects every month. That’s an incredible amount of exposure that they’re getting.

As I mentioned earlier, both from the strategy side of the house – fundamentally, how are they going to market? What does their buyer look like? How are they engaging this individual? – all the way down into how we make a platform like a Marketo work for that business. We’re talking to a retail burger chain right now. Loyalty programs are their predominant reason for up-leveling their marketing ops tech stack and therefore the surrounding strategies.

That’s so much different than talking to a traditional B2B software provider. I think that’s what frankly is the interesting part about what we do, and that’s also what we hear from our employees over and over again, like, “I don’t know what my day is going to look like, and that’s the exciting part about it.”

ROB: Sure, you have 7 to 10 different customers, each of which could ask you an interesting question that day or have something in their tech stack that might not be working quite as they hope. Do your teams specialize in particular marketing automation suites? Also, something I think is different – many agencies we’ve talked to will specialize in one. They’ll have HubSpot and just be trying to increase the quality of metal that is associated with their agency with relation to HubSpot. Platinum, or I guess you can go to gems, too, with Diamonds. How do you think about the right tool for the client?

JUSTIN: We were born as a Marketo consultancy, but right around the 2013-14 mark, we decided – Marketo was a predominant provider, and obviously still is, although owned by Adobe. What approach do we really want to be known for? Do we want to be known that all roads eventually end up at Marketo, or do we want to be a customer-driven solution provider?

At that point, although we still have partnerships with all of these different providers, we really do take an agnostic approach where we’re trying to understand, fundamentally, what is this business trying to accomplish? What is the best tech stack to reinforce that? And oftentimes that does go against hype. We may be recommending Pardot. We may be recommending an ESP, something that’s much more in tune with the business goals rather than our traditional partnership.

We do have specializations internally, certainly. We’ve got folks that have a big Pardot footprint, HubSpot footprint, Marketo footprint. If you think about the 6,000+ martechs on the market today, that gets pretty complicated pretty quickly. But really, we structure ourselves down into practices, and all of that will fall within our revenue ops practice. So those folks are constantly thinking about what skillsets we have, how we up-level those, how we maintain our certifications, and ensure that whatever comes long, we’ve got enough context to give the best performance for the customer.

ROB: I think something that’s implied – and tell me if I’m reading this correctly – by the tool stacks you’re mentioning, your Pardots and your Marketos and whatnot are a little bit upmarket from the entry level marketing automation platforms. Is that a selection filter for the type of customer, or is that an outworking of the type of customer that you tend to pursue?

JUSTIN: Yeah. When I say big market, I really mean $100 million and up. Everyone’s got a different definition of their market levers, but for us, our best client starts around $100 million and goes up from there. I’ve got a Fortune 3 company right now that has an active engagement with us. So it is that mid enterprise level footprint.

ROB: That sort of client often has a very high expectation of touch and relationship with their marketing providers. With that 7 to 10 customer per staffer ratio, the accounts they’re serving, how do you retain that sense of touch? Or is it really, because you’re delivering results, the touch is a little bit easier to manage and you’re not just trying to say sweet things to them?

JUSTIN: I would say regardless of how we’ve grown or scaled, the customer relationship has always been the centerpiece there. You’re never going to get away from the fact that when something goes wrong or a customer has a question or a customer just wants a piece of information as they’re going into a board meeting and they need that final piece that’s going to make them look awesome, they’re going to want to reach out and have someone answer the phone, answer their email, be on Slack, whatever it happens to be.

Relationship is absolutely critical. Again, I think that’s a unique element when you see an agency of our size that’s still able to maintain not only great client relationships, but personal relationships within that. We’ve got folks that have called us on weekends where it’s not our problem, it’s not even in our space – maybe something happened in IT – but marketing knows that they’ve got this great partner that is great at problem-solving, and “Hey, let’s reach out to them and see if they can help us.” I’ve been on those calls on Saturdays before.

It’s a tricky line. You want to make sure that you’re setting boundaries and you’re letting the client know, ultimately, we want a relationship and a partnership here, not something that’s going to feel like a whipping boy. But I do think you can’t get away from that within an agency. Any time you try to automate and people insert these separated ticketing systems and portals and things like that that their clients have to go through, I think that’s always a bastardization of the client relationship.

When I say 7 to 10, also, I should clarify that they may be hopping in and doing a piece of that project. Fundamentally, we’ve got principals aligned to those accounts that do all the account management and the relationship management. Because of your specialization, you might need to hop in and troubleshoot something on a Pardot platform or help with an integration for Marketo. But it’s really critical that we maintain a one to few relationship with the folks that are charged with managing that relationship.

ROB: That’s aligned with what you mentioned earlier, with those different practice teams. But you probably didn’t start off with a variety of practice teams, so how did this whole LeadMD thing get started?

JUSTIN: The short answer is accidentally. Yes, you’re absolutely right. Most agencies always start in the same manner, which is one person aligned to an account, like “Just don’t piss them off. Just don’t have these guys call me and say, ‘You’re providing terrible service.’” Everyone focuses on that one to one. I think agencies go through a number of maturity inflection points, but certainly when you realize that’s not going to work for your business long-term is probably one of the most difficult.

But back to your question in terms of how this got started. I was a very young VP of Sales and Marketing at a payment startup. It was actually my first venture into startup world. I graduated in marketing. I had three marketing jobs after college; I hated all of them. Suddenly I stumbled upon this new world, which was startup. I completely fell in love with it from every dimension that you possibly could.

In that business, we were selling through channel partners. We had 30+ different partners where our solution was integrated. It was a payment technology system. When we went to market and we marketed, we had to look like we were either marketing on behalf of that partner or co-marketing with that partner. We had that built into our standard agreements with them.

I was managing an ESP with that requirement and pulling lists and sending out these blasts and trying to make it seem like it was a lead nurture thing, although we didn’t even know what to call it back in 2006. Went out to Dreamforce and was talking to one of my buddies out there who owned a Salesforce agency. He said, “Hey, you should really talk to these guys over here.” We stumbled upon Eloqua, and I was like, “Wow, what is this?”

So, we did this whole evaluation of marketing automation platforms back then, like V Trends. There were so many that are not around any longer. In fact, the only two that were in that cycle were Eloqua and Marketo. Marketo I stumbled upon eleventh hour. They had a little 10 x 10 kiosk out at Dreamforce, if that tells you anything about the year.

ROB: [laughs] Which would still set them back a pretty penny.

JUSTIN: Right, totally. Jon Miller, who’s one of the founders, was working the booth. Bill Binch, who went on to become their CRO, was working the booth. I talked to those guys and described what I was looking for, and they showed me their platform. I was just blown away by the drag-and-drop nature, the intuitiveness of it and so on. I signed the contract right at that show.

We came back, we implemented it, loved it, rolled it out to my team. Eventually I sold my piece of that business and figured I was going to do the typical, “Hey, let’s go live in Italy for a year and take a year off” and so on and so forth. I flew over there. I took two weeks off. While I was over in Italy, a couple of my relationships called me and said, “Hey, can you do what you did over at this company,” which was called Billingtree. I said, “On a consulting basis? Sure, let me figure out what that would look like.”

Those three clients who reached out became our first three retainer relationships. It was just me, operating in a spare bedroom, supporting these guys. Fortunately, because of the advent of marketing automation and the rise of these technologies, the phone just kept ringing. I had to bring on employees at that point, and before you knew it, we had 12 employees and I had to take an office space.

Truly an accidental business for me. Not something I ever intended to get involved in. Never had run an agency before, never had run any sort of people-based business before. Always technology or payments. Just a really interesting experience that has really become the heart and soul of my businesses.

I’ve sold four businesses since I’ve had LeadMD as an agency, and it’s definitely the one that I am the most emotionally attached to.

ROB: With the timing of you starting that business, you were a little bit before businesses probably cared about social in any way. Is that accurate?

JUSTIN: That was the big conversation at the time, like, is social going to catch on? Who should be on social? Just like marketing automation, there were like 100 different social media platforms, like Big and – God, I can’t even remember all the names of them. Just these random little – so everyone was playing around.

I was thinking about it the other day. I can think of days where all I did was set up profiles on different social media platforms because we had no idea what was going to take off. Obviously, for business, LinkedIn has become the home for everyone, and that’s where we spend the majority of our day from a sales engagement standpoint, from a content publication standpoint.

But yeah, early days, that conversation was taking place across social, it was taking place across CRM, it was taking place across marketing technology and marketing automation. No one really knew what any of this stuff was going to become and if it was going to catch on. My early content creation was centered on that, like “What is this marketing automation thing and why should you care?”

Every once in a while, I’ll feel one of those little waves come around. Manufacturing went through that 2-3 years ago, where they’re asking, “What is marketing automation and why should we care?” You get these little flashback moments as laggard industries fall into more desire for digital transformation and so on. It’s interesting to feel that nostalgia when those circles come back around.

ROB: I imagine when manufacturing comes around to it, you probably have some playbooks in place and some understanding of how to measure success. How do you help filter when clients are asking – you have some industrial software company who comes to you and says, “Tell us about TikTok.” Who’s to say that TikTok doesn’t become – at one point in your business, I imagine LinkedIn was not a place where people should be spending time. How do you start to filter and maybe experiment when something is potentially relevant, kind of relevant, or strategically critical?

JUSTIN: Fortunately, questions like that all root back to the same answer, and that’s the buyer. It’s a great emphasis for us to start the conversation on “How well do you know the buyer that you’re trying to engage? Are they spending their time on these platforms?” and really have that be the guiding light around a recommendation.

Oftentimes when we first engage with a client, we’ve got what we call our Catalyst Marketing Framework. Essentially, it’s just a big menu of dependency, like, “Hey, I want to launch this product in EMEA via a demand-generation go-to-market.” “Great, here’s the 15 things that you need to have in place and shored up at a decent maturity level in order to succeed within that.”

The box that always gets checked on there, i.e. the customer feels like they’ve done a great job around it, is, “I do customer profile research and buyer personas.” Then as we proceed down an engagement, that’s also the box that tends to get rewound and revisited. We say, “Well, you felt pretty confident in that, but as we dug into the research that you have and the information you have around your buyer, there’s some gaps there. Let’s dive in and help you better define that process.”

We have stood up a data science team. It’s small but mighty. It’s literally three people, but they’re producing some awesome, awesome results in terms of market research, buyer definition, ideal customer profile assembly, and then the translation of that into engagement and messaging frameworks.

Long story short, we answer those questions through the lens of the buyer, and it’s a great opportunity for us to dive in where often a superficial look at who the buyer is has been conducted in the past.

ROB: Right. I think a lot of businesses are pushed into inventing a fairytale about who their ideal customer profile is, and you having three data science people who know what to do with the data is many steps ahead from the forced hypothesis I think a lot of businesses get into.

JUSTIN: That’s the danger of data science, actually. The one thing we’ve learned about these services is you really have to set a strong foundation for the fact that data is going to be the determinant of what we do. Even when you think about the narratives that happen within an organization – like I’m extremely opinionated about who our ICP is. I get challenged all the time from our marketing team, like, “Is that truly correct still? That’s something that was true 5 years ago. Let’s go out and go into the market and do some research and validate that.”

If you’re going to open that door, you have to open the door to being really uncomfortable, because what you often find from a data perspective is incomplete data. It’s the fact that you can’t draw those lines without going out and doing customer interviews or prospect interviews and employee interviews. Therefore, organizations really have to be prepared to say, “A lot of these maxims that we’ve held up are not supported by data and may be untrue.”

We’ve had to do a lot of expectation setting around the engagements that involve data science because the results are often quite different from what the internal narrative actually is.

ROB: For sure. I appreciate your willingness to be questioned and not just to say, “I’m right and I know because I’m in charge and I’ve been doing this for a while.” I think that willingness to be wrong probably helps model what your own team does in engaging with clients and how to guide them through that process gently, where they may be wrong, but you’re really just interested in helping everything be right.

JUSTIN: I’ve had some meetings in the past where maybe we’ve involving a vendor or someone from the outside is sitting in – we had a leadership coach in, in Q4, and they were in one of these meetings and afterwards said, “Wow, the way your staff questions the things that you say, are you ever bothered by that?” My mantra is ruthless pragmatism. If you see something that doesn’t make sense or isn’t supported by something or you think it’s assumed or you think there’s a better way to do something, everyone here has the license to dive into that and really question that.

I think sometimes that can be a bit uncomfortable for people from the outside. They have these strong lines of strata that are drawn where it’s like someone breezes into a meeting, says something, leaves, and everyone just has to go run and do it. I think that’s the value if you’ve got a really strong team and you embrace becoming a people-based business.

ROB: That ruthless pragmatism sounds like a cousin of radical candor and that whole line of thinking. Have you had people where it turns out that it may not be a fit for the organization with that level of candor? Is there a way you filter for that on the way in?

JUSTIN: We’ve done probably more work than I even want to admit around trying to profile for hiring and really getting into role-based profiling. We have a 200+ question survey. You don’t have to answer all the 200 questions; it just says, “Answer these for an hour. Do at least 100 of the questions.” It is a psychological survey – I forget who publishes it; some university – but our data science team got a hold of it and scrubbed out a few questions that are inappropriate for an employer to ask, and now we give that up front.

We don’t provide the results of that survey to our team until someone’s ready to make an offer. What we’ve done is essentially taken all of our employees, had them complete that survey – it is a personality survey, akin to a DISC or a Briggs-Meyer, and it really gives great insight into the traits and the skillsets someone’s going to have. But we’ve also scatter-plotted those around role. So, we know that in our project management role, here’s the big skillsets that stand out. We take the lens of, do we want to change that? Do we want to bring in someone that’s more extroverted to push the team into a certain direction, or do we want someone that fits the existing mold?

I will caveat all of this that we are by no means where we want to be in this process. It’s always a maturity curve and a learning process. But I think for an agency, every single person I bring in is going to develop personal relationships with the client – I don’t care if it’s an associate, which is our lowest level of consultant, least amount of time in the chair; if we lose that individual, someone’s going to say, “Hey, are you guys okay over there? I was really enjoying working with so-and-so. They’re the key to my account.”

Any loss of employee, whether it’s voluntary or involuntary, is a natural stick in the eye of an agency, so we have to be really careful about who we bring in. We have to be really intentional about the types of people we’re looking for. It all boils down to the desire to employ owners, like people that are going to own whatever they’re working on. 50% of this organization is owned by our employees, literally, through an equity program. We want that to foster the type of environment that we’re trying to create and be a representation of that.

But that’s so difficult to uncover, even when you take 2 or 3 months through an interview process. There’s so much that comes out in the day to day that you just can’t get exposure to. Every day we’re trying to get better.

ROB: Fascinating, Justin. Based on what you’ve learned so far in building LeadMD, what are some things you might do differently if you were starting over right now?

JUSTIN: God, there’s probably a host of them. I would say certainly one of the first things I would do is go to specializations earlier. We spent a lot of time trying to hire for these unicorn generalists that could do strategy and be really adept at tactics. We spent a lot of time pulling our hair out, wondering, “Why can’t we find more of these people?” The short answer is because they’re incredibly rare and rarely exist. I would certainly go more into a segmented and a specialty type of approach earlier.

I’d also say – you have to remember the year that this was formed, 2009. People rarely knew what marketing automation was. They didn’t know what it did. Certainly no one was implementing it around any sort of consistent methodology. We productized our offerings very early, but when we did so, we also really painted ourselves into a corner. For a number of years, we became a Marketo implementation shop because all of our products were focused on that implementation or optimization motion.

Then we had to spend a lot of time unwinding that and getting back to our roots and fundamentals of starting with strategy, starting with the real reasons why, and building from there. The brand ramifications that that has in terms of the runway and the necessary rebranding and the time it takes to get that optic to change is something that added a lot of lead time to our business that I wish it hadn’t.

Productizations is really critical in terms of trying to define the quality of outputs, but I would not take such a laser-focused productization approach.

ROB: I want to pull on something there a little bit, because I think what may often happen is that you’re starting, and you’re the superhero, and then you hire some people who are pretty good superheroes too and do all of those things, but as you said, they’re sort of unicorns. I think sometimes there’s a tension in the billing model that can make pulling that apart a little bit difficult. You feel like, “I’m charging X amount for a superhero; how do I switch to charging for a team?” Was that something you learned, or did you have a different path through that transition and that challenge?

JUSTIN: Yeah, absolutely. Fortunately, there was a degree of immaturity and inexperience that set our original pricing. I’ll say something that’s quite embarrassing and I rarely admit: when we first launched this business, our rate per hour was $75 bucks an hour because I had no idea what the hell I was doing. Right now it’s $300, and $500 for end version work. So, we had a lot of room to grow there because I was charging $75 bucks an hour for my own time.

As we adjusted along the lines of what you’re describing, which is you have this rock star, “I’ve been charging X for them; now I need to scale, I need to charge potentially the same X for that individual,” we were able to scale our pricing up on the upper bound rather than having to have it come down. Early days, I had a lot of competitors that were very upset with me because of the pricing that we were introducing to the market, and it was just my own inexperience, quite frankly, that made that happen.

ROB: Now I think you have some pricing that is probably aspirational for a lot of people who are listening, who would like to figure out how to charge $300 or $500 just for their own time, much less for somebody who they’ve brought onto their team. I think there’s probably a lot to learn in the middle there that makes it easier to learn – 

JUSTIN: Sorry to interrupt, but we still run into downward pricing pressure, of course. We’ll run into a $25 million hypergrowth organization with another $50 million bucks in funding, and they have no problem paying for anything. Like, “Okay, great, send me over the MSA.” Then we’ll run into a global, highly visible, highly well known brand – and I won’t say the name, but the biggest rideshare organization out there – and they’ll throw something out like, “Hey, we don’t pay more than $165 an hour for consulting.” We went through an incredible procurement cycle there. We don’t dip down that low.

The only thing that really adjusts that mentality for the client, I think, is being able to call in references and referrals from folks that look like them that say, “Yeah, an hour with them is expensive, but only because it’s worth three employees. Only because it’s knowledge that you’re never going to get internally, you can’t hire for it, and it’s really uncommon what they’re combining over there.” You’ve got to build up – and certainly discounting and things like that are critical to building up those referral sources and getting people to take a chance on you.

But once you’ve got both a good stockade of references and folks willing to go to bat for you, I think that’s the most powerful lever that you can pull there. Like, “Let me put you in touch with someone that you respect that we’ve worked with, and let me have them give you the story.”

ROB: There’s so much wisdom there to unpack. You’re talking about the referrals; earlier, woven into the conversation, you also talked about LeadMD in a consulting role, and you talked particularly about benchmarking. You’ve positioned yourself alongside Deloitte and some other folks that I think really helps elevate that brand profile instead of saying, “Hey, we are Scottsdale Agency #25 and we are here to help you get some leads.”

JUSTIN: Yeah, totally. People think in terms of stories. How many people have put “We want to be the Facebook of X or the Uber of Y” in their pitch deck? People need frames of reference, and I think that really helps them do so. We are the combination between the best strategic Deloitte out there and the best independent consultant you can think of, because they both have really great aspects to them, but they also both have downfalls. The reason we exist is to eliminate those downfalls.

So I agree. I think you need to speak their language. There needs to be a shared vocabulary established there.

ROB: Really solid. Justin, when people want to find you and LeadMD, where should they go?

JUSTIN: They can of course go to the Google machine, but the best channel to get me at is certainly Twitter or LinkedIn. I’m @jgraymatter on Twitter. On LinkedIn, you can just search for me, Justin Gray. LeadMD is just leadmd.com.

We use Drip, so there’s a little chat feature on there. You can mention that you want to chat with me or anyone within the organization, and we can hop on and have a bit of a discussion there. I love to talk to anyone that’s curious about business, marketing, sales, life, any of those topics. I’m happy to lend my time. I find those conversations very interesting. So if you have a question, please reach out.

ROB: Perfect. Thanks so much, Justin, for coming on and sharing so much about that LeadMD journey. It sounds like a really excellent ride.

JUSTIN: Thanks, Rob. Appreciate it.

ROB: Thank you. Take care.

Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Alana Sandel, Chief Experience Officer of the agency, Marketing for Wellness, has a deep passion for helping people “to be well.” Her personal health struggles inspired her to create her agency, which focuses on quality of life, healthy foods, and fitness. “better-for-you products” – “to build brands for a better tomorrow” – especially brands with solutions for people with chronic health problems. 

Alana notes that 60% of our population suffers from chronic health issues. COVID-19 is dangerous, but even more of a threat to people with diabetes, asthma, cardiovascular diseases, and other ongoing health issues. 

Marketing for Wellness works to link “best fit” social media influencers with client brands. Media events have been crippled by the pandemic, so the agency is exploring virtual and augmented reality options (for education and entertainment) to replicate the experiences audiences used to have with high-touch media events, where such events balanced digital-touch social. Alana anticipates an unprecedented expansion of companies’ use of augmented reality and virtual reality technologies to create meaningful experiences for their prospective clients. 

Alana believes that the companies that survive will be led by people whose work “resonates to the core,” drives them, and feeds their passion. With the strain of the times, a lot of talent will become more affordable. People will develop common goals to help each other through this crisis. Companies not prepared to go digital will need to act quickly if they are going to survive. And right now, Alana notes, there are some great deals in both digital and traditional format channels.

Today, people’s immune systems are the only protection they have against COVID. When will we get a vaccine? When will we have a treatment? How is this virus going to change? What other viruses are going to plague us? When? Alana emphasizes, “The only thing that we can rely on is our immune system.” Many niche brands, Alana says, are developed in people’s garages or kitchens, out of inspiration or desperation. Because these small-time innovators understand their customers’ “pain points,” their brands come across as being “authentic.” She expects to see a lot of innovative product development, both in foods and beverages, with a strong shift toward healthier ingredients.

For the future, Alana expects brands already in foods, beverages, and wellness will expand their offerings in support of our immune systems. Companies not in those industries may support their communities by investing in health and wellness initiatives. Smaller brands will increase their corporate citizenship contributions and make a tangible difference to society through the products they create. 

A lot of people will continue to support their wellness experience digitally, but Alana does not put her trust in health gadgets. Devices may measure some vitals, but the most accurate and complete picture of an individual’s health is in the bloodwork. Simplicity – eating better, thinking of food as medicine, eliminating toxins and artificial ingredients from our diets, and “moving more” are the way to win health, even without the gadgets.

Alana can be found on LinkedIn at Alana Sandel, and on her agency’s website at: marketingforwellness.com.

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m joined today by Alana Sandel, Chief Experience Officer at Marketing for Wellness based in Chicago, Illinois. Welcome to the podcast, Alana.

ALANA: Thank you, Rob. Happy to be here.

ROB: Fantastic to have you here. Alana, why don’t you start off by telling us about Marketing for Wellness and what makes Marketing for Wellness amazing?

ALANA: Marketing for Wellness is designed to help better-for-you brands to succeed in the marketplace. What makes us amazing is really our deep passion to help people to be well. Whatever we do now is really built around health and wellness and how we can help build brands that have the next amazing, great-tasting product that’s gluten-free and dairy-free, or a fitness company that can get people moving and get them excited about living their life to the fullest. How can we make them successful?

It’s really about our passion, our values, and about an outstanding team of professionals who put their best to help many brands out there who need a voice, who need their stories to be told.

ROB: There’s certainly been an explosion of these better-for-you products. What do you think has created that opening and that opportunity? And how do you think about some of the challenges, because there’s almost so many that it’s hard to break through the noise?

ALANA: What created this huge demand is a new generation of more mindful people who appreciate the fact that wellness is the new currency. People are much more conscious about the choices they make, about where their attention goes. I think we’re dealing with a new generation that looks at our Baby Boomers and ask themselves the question, “How can I have a better quality of life?” I think this is one of the areas where we see a lot of demand.

In terms of challenges, how you break through the clutter, I believe if your product is truly great and you have a wonderful story to tell – and especially if it comes from your experience, because a lot of those niche brands were created in a garage, in a kitchen. They came from either a point of inspiration or being desperate. [laughs] They really understand pain points. Usually these smaller, authentic brands really get their audience and they’re able to get noticed. I think it all boils down to what you’re really good at.

ROB: At the onset, you alluded to, in your introduction, the food category and I think fitness as well as some categories. Are those maybe some of the hotter areas for this better-for-you movement?

ALANA: Absolutely. These are our basic needs. Food is medicine, and I think a lot of people are starting to appreciate that fact. We’re looking at food differently, and we’re reading the ingredients. We’re getting ourselves educated. Because of social media, things are going quite all right now. If you have a great product, people will endorse you, they will embrace you. If your product sucks and you’re not being true to your claims, it will also become pretty transparent relatively quickly.

When it comes to fitness, movement is life. If you are not out there, if you’re not taking the time to invest into your wellness and not giving yourself time to take a class or go for a walk or just do breathing exercises, your body is not going to be happy. So, food and fitness are definitely two big pillars that people are paying attention to and taking better steps than we used to in the past.

ROB: What marketing channels are you most often involved in? What are the key avenues to get the word out on a brand that probably can’t do everything?

ALANA: I think it’s obvious now that social media is one of the most important channels, especially working with social media influencers. Our agency has spent a lot of time to create valuable partnerships, working with social media influencers directly or through talent agencies. It’s really an art to find the best fit between the influencer and the brand to make sure there is really an authentic relationship where it doesn’t feel forced or staged.

Many influencers actually don’t want that. They’re looking for brands that they can represent with passion and brands that align with their values. Social media is basically a space that we embrace, that we enjoy working with, and this is where a lot of our work is done now.

But obviously there are other avenues with digital marketing, and most recently I have to say, because we can’t do media events like we used to – we really appreciated the balance it could create between high touch during the events and digital touch social. We’re exploring options with augmented reality right now, AR and VR, and how we can replicate experiences for people to connect with brands around entertainment and education.

ROB: That’s a very salient trend. Some places are opening up, but to a large extent a lot of people still aren’t going out. They’re certainly not getting together for events in the wake of this global pandemic around COVID-19.

Are you also finding perhaps some amplification opportunities that were less appealing before? You’ve got these influencers, and at least what we’re hearing sometimes is that some channels are opening up for paid media in ways where you used to have to spend a little bit more money to get the same message out.

ALANA: Rob, clarify your question for me.

ROB: Have you seen any opportunities open up because maybe the cost for certain ad channels is lower because some retailers aren’t advertising, some movies aren’t advertising, so you can get let’s say an impression rate or a click rate or something that’s lower than it used to be?

ALANA: Oh, absolutely. In the last I want to say 5 to 6 weeks, we’ve seen a lot of great deals on different channels. Both I would say in digital and traditional formats. Yeah, I agree with you on that.

ROB: That makes sense. Alana, tell us a little bit about how you got into this Marketing for Wellness. The business is a little bit newer, but your industry experience is quite extensive. What shifted your attention in this direction?

ALANA: When I started with my own journey back in 2001, I always had a commitment to myself that I’m not going to compromise on what I believe in. Early on, pretty much as a team, we primarily went after brands that we knew improved quality of life, but it was really a mix of organizations, from food companies to financial services companies and not-for-profits.

Last year, I realized that I really want to polish my focus on working with brands that can make a special difference for people with chronic health conditions, because I think with 60% of our population having chronic health issues and with COVID-19 putting a lot of these people in a very vulnerable spot, I think those people that have diabetes, asthma, cardiovascular diseases, and others need a lot more support today perhaps than before, especially when it comes to food and beverage companies.

So, Marketing for Wellness is designed to build brands for a better tomorrow, and we’re focused on quality of life, but our special attention now goes to those brands that have a solution for people with chronic health issues.

ROB: It almost seems like this was a little bit of a reboot, that you had built this career and you had built a firm that could do more things, and you felt the desire and saw the need to go focus in a little bit more. Is that part of the journey?

ALANA: That’s right. This is under my skin. This is something that I’m vested in personally because it’s part of my personal wellness journey and the struggles that I faced. I know there are a lot of people out there with pain points that have not been addressed.

Obviously, there are medications and there are a lot of health options, but at the end of the day what’s important is what you do every day and how you invest in yourself. What type of food you eat, how you exercise, how you develop yourself from within, how you make your life meaningful, how you look for purpose – this is all interconnected. It’s all one big holistic picture that creates wellbeing for people. But for those with chronic health conditions, it’s a lot more challenging. It’s a lot more painful. It’s a lot more expensive. I’m really embracing those brands that have great products to help those people manage life much better.

ROB: You can definitely hear the resonance between this business and your own personal journey. I couldn’t help but think as you were talking earlier about influencers, and now about some of these different conditions, it almost seems like a very good intersection where there could even be brands that would pay some influencer more to advocate on their behalf – but someone who self-identifies with a particular health concern, a particular need, may just be so grateful to find a product that helps them, whether they’re dealing with celiac or lactose intolerance or whatever, that they might choose your clients over a lot of other options. Is that part of the dynamic? You get to resonate also with your influencers?

ALANA: Absolutely. I’ll give you one example. I have the privilege to support Lively Foods. They are a manufacturer of a kefir beverage. It’s a probiotic drink that is rich with good bacteria that loves your gut. It’s especially important now because most of the health of our immune system sits in our gut. About 70% is there. So, taking care of our digestive health is critical.

Lively Foods is so loved by those people who appreciate how good this product is for their lives, both for adults and kids, that they’re extremely popular with influencers, going beyond food. You can see it on Lively Foods’ Instagram channel, classes that range from fitness to mental and emotional health. Influencers are drawn to this brand, knowing that this is one of the best choices you can make on a daily basis to keep yourself strong and resilient by taking care of your gut. So yeah, this is exactly right, Rob.

ROB: That definitely makes sense. I can’t help but notice when you talk about originally launching a business in 2001 – many would say that was not the best timing. Many would say that this year is not the best timing. Of course, 2001, we had 9/11 and the dot-com bust. Along the way, you also kept in business through the Great Recession as well.

What are you seeing, knowing that we’re probably heading into recession now – or maybe we will have an amazing recovery, as the stock market seems to believe – but knowing that we may be into a leaner time, what have you learned, at least the past couple of rounds of downturn that you have been in business through, that you’re thinking about as we look forward?

ALANA: Great question. Here’s my big idea. I believe if you are doing something that resonates with your core, something that drives you, something that you’re passionate about, you’re going to make it. You’re going to be resilient, and you’re going to find ways to sustain your business and yourself and your family. It’s not going to be easy in the next couple of years, but there’s going to be a lot of talent available that perhaps before were a little bit pricy for small to mid-size brands to tap into. There’s going to be a lot of I would say common goals to help us through this crisis and find better solutions, so people are going to be drawn to ideas, and those people who have tools and solutions that can actually help us.

So, I think we’re going to see a positive transformation where people are really working together on projects that inspire them and connect them to their better selves, and this will give us strength and resilience. We’re going to see a lot of great ideas. We already do. I believe it’s not going to be easy, but at the same time, we’re going to tap into some areas within ourselves that are going to give us that superpower.

ROB: Right. This is the time where the tourists in the industry might go away, the folks who could stick around when you could just throw a stick and find someone who needed some help with digital advertising. Those types might be on break for a little bit. People need thoughtful performance, and they need someone who’s going to adapt and find those opportunities. It sounds like you are on that journey.

ALANA: I believe I am, yes.

ROB: If we widen the aperture a little bit, Alana, having been in the industry for quite a while and having been a business leader, a business owner, what are some things you would do differently if you were – I mean, you are starting over from scratch, so maybe it’s more interesting to say what are you doing differently this time that you left behind when you left your previous business?

ALANA: Happy to share. One of the things that I wish I did from Day 1 is finding a mentor or mentors. For me, when I found my mentor, Ted Pincus, he was a financial PR pioneer. Unfortunately, he passed away. He made a world of difference within my life. Within the short time that I knew him, he led me to some really important decisions that I’d make. Because of his guidance, I joined an executive management course at Kellogg Business School. I revisited how I managed the business and how I looked at priorities.

I would encourage everyone, no matter where you are in your professional development, whether you work for a small business or a Fortune 5000 organization, I think having the right mentor by your side, who can listen, who can reflect, who can give you guidance, is the most important step you can take towards your success.

ROB: That process of finding and then also recruiting a mentor can be a little bit intimidating. In other words, some people would say that going up to ask someone to be your mentor is a lot like walking up to a stranger and asking them to marry you. How do you think about that process of, number one, finding someone who’s resonant and isn’t just somebody who seems important, and number two, building that relationship to the point where it’s not such a weird question, perhaps, to ask for a mentor?

ALANA: I think there are a number of options. My path to finding Ted Pincus, my mentor, was through another private organization where I reached out to some of the people I knew and I said, “I’m looking for help. I need guidance.” Once people got to know me, they said, “You should talk with Ted and see if he could help you.” Then Ted led me to another person who I greatly respect, Lloyd Shefsky, who was also a part of the Kellogg School, who led me to other ideas and opportunities.

So, it’s kind of a chain reaction. You talk to people, you connect with people, and you find the right person. I see many universities now, their alumni programs, offering that as an option, or there are now online portals where you can go in and look for a mentor or make yourself available to mentor someone.

I think it takes a conversation. It takes creativity, how you reach out to people. If you set an intention and you’re clear on who you need in your life now, I think you’ll find the right solution as long as you’re creative and resourceful.

ROB: Which is all part of success anyhow. I did want to poke in on one thing you said there. You initially said you didn’t say, “I need a mentor”; you said, “I need help.” First of all, asking for help is a tremendously powerful thing, and it’s also a much lower commitment. How soon into that relationship did you feel like it was going to be a long-term one?

ALANA: I knew right away. Ted understood me. He immediately responded to some of the issues that I had, and he really lent constructive support on many levels. This relationship was meant to be, so I was really fortunate to find Ted.

ROB: That’s great. You also mentioned there was a geographic resonance with Northwestern – around Chicago. People do have that affinity around their school that makes them more likely to help, I think. So that all makes plenty of sense there.

For those of us who are not as deep in the wellness industry – I think a lot of us know the lactose, gluten – what are some surprising categories of product that you see coming up? Maybe some new client categories or just the digital marketing world making the universe smaller for people to find exactly what they need?

ALANA: One of the things that I see coming, which makes me really excited – again, I’m going to use the example of food and beverage because I think this is going to be one of the biggest areas where we’re going to see change – is innovation around ingredients, what companies are putting in our food now. There are a lot of breakthroughs around alternatives to sugar.

In fact, my team a few years back was working with an organization, Tate & Lyle, as they were branded a sugar alternative, which was monk fruit. We were engaged in this process, which I was really passionate about. I think we’re going to see a lot of innovation from a product development standpoint, both in food and beverage.

Also, I see a lot of digital innovation of how people experience wellness. With COVID, there are a lot of restrictions. Before, you could go into a yoga studio and take a class with 30 people in a really tight setup; now, that capacity is probably going to be cut in half and classes are going to become more expensive. So, we’re going to see a lot of people continuing their experience digitally in terms of how they’re going to support their wellness.

Another thing that I see, and actually I’m a part of, is I believe we’re going to see a lot of smaller brands creating contribution to the society at large, not just bigger brands. For example, my firm recently launched a project for wellbeing, which is a not-for-profit initiative. We are developing a platform where we make it much easier for people to practice wellbeing. It’s not only about employees; it’s also about the wellbeing of employees’ families and loved ones. So, we’re actually investing resources to build a platform that can create more wellbeing and wellness.

I think we’re going to see more projects like that coming from smaller organizations. Fortune 5000 companies have practiced corporate citizenship for a while, but smaller companies don’t have as many resources. But now, with the transformation we’re seeing, I believe a lot of people will be driven to make an impact and make a contribution and to make it tangible so people can really feel the difference of their efforts.

ROB: A lot of that can line up with these brands also owning their own platforms. I know I’ve seen some things. What have you seen in terms of shifts around smaller brands and ecommerce, perhaps, in this season?

ALANA: Oh, my goodness. I think those companies that were not prepared for digital transformation had to wake up and get their act together really quickly. If you are not prepared to sell your product online –whether on Amazon, on Etsy, or maintaining your independent platform, or a combination of all – you’re going to have a really difficult time sustaining business.

I saw a lot of companies, overnight, getting an online makeover in terms of getting their ecommerce act together, which was very impressive. And I’m not surprised, because we have a lot of tools and technologies. You can build a website overnight. If you know what you stand for and what you want to say, you can do that. We built the For Wellbeing platform in 5 weeks, and it has thousands of resources. Technology creates opportunities right now for people who get it done quickly.

ROB: The toolsets are certainly remarkable, between some of your lightweight website things, your Wixes, your Webflows, your Squarespaces, but even into – a friend of mine runs a company that has been in the grocery space. They’re in technology for grocery gig economy work, and a lot of that went away, and they very quickly stood up not just an online store, but a multi-vendor online store. They’re a mini Amazon that lets all their different clients sell food products online, and they did it so quickly. It would’ve taken months and months, if not over a year, to do this in different areas, and now a Shopify store – I think there’s a reason their stock went up. It’s just so fast, and there are so many tools that integrate, that you can be shipping just shockingly quickly.

ALANA: Absolutely.

ROB: Alana, we’ve pulled forward several years of digital transformation already, so where do you see the next horizon now? People who have been pulled into the future now, what is their next future that they’re being pulled towards that they’re going to have to figure out, as maybe a challenger food brand having a wellness dimension to it?

ALANA: I think brands that can will market around wellness, and this is how Marketing For Wellness is set up, to help organizations to figure out how they can market around wellness. With COVID, you realize that our immune system is the only shield we currently have to protect us against COVID. We don’t know when we’re going to have a vaccine. We don’t know when we’re going to have a treatment or how this virus is going to behave, and are we going to have other viruses that might intrude on our lives? The only thing that we can rely on is our immune system.

So we’re going to see those brands that are already in the space, in food and beverages and wellness, stepping up their game and helping people to support their immune systems. But then we’re going to see companies who might not be in that play – they might be in a different industry, but they want to support their communities. They’re going to start investing into wellbeing and wellness initiatives. That’s one area that I see.

Another one, I definitely forecast huge growth for AR and VR technologies to take off, and for many brands, figuring out how to use it wisely, in a way that people can have meaningful experiences – and there are already some interesting innovations coming, like from Lego, where they employed an AR tool working with a company called 8th Wall to create retail experiences to get people to stay in the store longer and get engaged with the product and buy more. We’re going to see a lot of the area of AR and VR, I believe.

ROB: Around wellness in the past few years, with things like the Apple Watch, and as it’s actually become better, we see people trying to quantify some parts of their health. Same thing with Fitbit. But a lot of the sorts of health that you’re talking about seem like they are harder to quantify – for instance, the quality of the sugar in a particular product or the quality of your gut biome. Is there anything emerging that you see that may quantify a new area of health that has been a little bit unobserved that may help a category pop?

ALANA: Let me first share with you my perspective on all the gadgets. I think they’re awesome. I think we need them. I do want to know how many steps I took. But at the end of the day, if you look at the number of insurance claims, they’re the same. We still see doctors at the same rate as we did a few years ago, regardless of how much investment has been made into gadgets and into platforms. This is just my overall position.

The most accurate measurement of how well your body functions and the most precise measurement is your blood work because gadgets measure some vitals, but it doesn’t give you a complete picture. I saw some really interesting technology coming out of Germany where they actually measure your wellbeing and your wellness using your frequency. It looks promising.

But what I believe in today is simplicity. As long as we can get people to eat better and to perceive food as medicine, if we eliminate toxic ingredients, artificial ingredients from our diet, if we move more, it’s a win. Simple steps. Even if we don’t have any gadgets. [laughs]

ROB: Yeah, simplicity more than technology.

ALANA: Simplicity, yes.

ROB: I dig it. Alana, when people want to find you and find your company, where should they go to find you?

ALANA: They can find me in two places. They can find me on LinkedIn, Alana Sandel, and they can go to our website, marketingforwellness.com.

ROB: That’s a good domain for it. I like it. Alana, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It’s been great chatting with you.

ALANA: My pleasure, Rob. Thank you for inviting me.

ROB: Now more than ever, I can say: Be well.

ALANA: Thank you.

ROB: Bye.

ALANA: Bye.

ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Tara Murphy owns 360 Media, an entertainment, lifestyle, and hospitality agency that focuses on public relations, event planning, and digital marketing. In the last couple of years, the agency has expanded into hotel work and commercial real estate. 360 Media will have been in business 25 years as of next January.

In this interview, Tara describes how her agency utilizes a variety of complementary narratives, images, and quotes layered on different platforms (social, email, print TV) to build a “big picture” storyline and cadence a client’s message. Tara explains that a lot of companies have ineffective PR because they fail to link their messages across the various platforms. 360-Media often educates clients on how to figure out message cadencing and how to make everything work together.

360 Media’s expansion into the commercial real estate market segment came about when the agency was tasked to promote Atlanta’s Krog Street Market, one of the first “food halls” to gain global recognition. Tara explains that Krog Street Market could have been a glorified food court, but it became much more than that . . . and was pivotal in rejuvenating the neighborhood around it. 

Understanding a client’s goals and objectives, mapping out a strategy, and then building a PR program with integrated story-telling, place-making, and branding components can change commercial real estate from a B2B proposition into a personal “what’s coming to my neighborhood” lifestyle play. 

Tara provides tips on how to write and submit press releases in today’s environment, what makes something newsworthy, and how to help a client find the unique “angle” that makes a “me too” announcement stand out. (This understanding is the light-bulb moment.) Less is more, Tara says. You have to target your audience, then customize the pieces for each of those targeted audiences.

Tara notes a couple of things she might have done differently when she started:

• She feels she should have been more ready to follow her intuition, 
• She made the mistake of extending too much credit to financially-strapped clients

The things that have helped 360 Media succeed for almost a quarter decade:

• Being open to morph and willing to take on new challenges
• Keeping a diverse client base

For the past 2 years, 360 Media has published the Atlanta 100, an end-of-the workweek e-newsletter and website (theatlanta100.com), which each week features twelve 100-word stories and 100-second videos on topics of intrigue in the Atlanta area. Lots of information . . . quick and easy access.

Tara can be reached on her agency’s website at 360media.net or on Instagram at 360 Media, Inc (@360mediainc).

Transcript Follows:

Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Tara Murphy, Owner at 360 Media, based in my own hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Welcome to the podcast, Tara.

TARA: Thank you so much for having me.

ROB: Thank you for coming on. I wish that we were not sheltering in place and we could then actually meet up in Atlanta and do a live interview. Those are always fun. But we will call that for another time. Why don’t you start off by diving into 360 Media and where 360 Media excels?

TARA: Sure. 360 Media is an entertainment, lifestyle, and hospitality agency. We focus on PR and a little bit of event planning and then digital marketing. Our sweet spot is traditional PR, and we are about to celebrate our 25th anniversary in January of 2021, which is very weird to say. We’ve morphed over the years but always have stayed under that umbrella of entertainment, lifestyle, and hospitality. That’s our focus and the sectors that we work with.

It’s been really interesting the last couple of years. We’ve expanded a little bit into hotel work, commercial real estate. We have a lot of those clients who say that we make corporate cool. We take commercial real estate and turn it more into a lifestyle play, which is really fascinating and interesting. It’s been a wild ride over the years, and we’ve continued to morph. But PR has been the area we’ve always continued to excel and focus on.

ROB: Congratulations, by the way, on that 25 years. Hopefully you’ll be in a good position to actually plan an event for that, because that would be an excellent thing to be able to do from where we are right now.

TARA: Thank you. Yeah, I’ve had a couple of people say the same thing, and I’m like, “We still have 6 months!” But that’s going to fly by.

ROB: For sure, it will. It’s interesting you mention that shift in commercial real estate. What do you think it is that has made it shift so that normal people are interested in development of cities and new things that are happening? Nobody really gets excited about an office building usually, but something indeed I think has changed with the emergence of let’s say Curbed and some of the blogs in the space and that sort of thing.

TARA: Yeah, good point on Curbed. I think they’ve really helped make it accessible. For years, everyone just thought of real estate – there would be a sign in front of a building or in a window, and it was like, “Okay, what tenant’s going to go in there?”

But I would say probably in the last 5 to 7 years, it’s really turned a lot more into the storytelling, the place-making, the brand awareness, because you’re creating these pockets in cities that are little neighborhoods. Obviously, you live in Atlanta; a lot of people these days, because of the traffic and the growth, are staying in their 3-5 mile radius around their home. They want to know, “Do I have those everyday needs accessible?” and “What’s coming into my neighborhood?”, whether that’s a great little restaurant or a boutique or some sort of service that you want to be able to use.

I think people get more excited about “this is what’s coming to my neighborhood.” People are really thinking about the needs of the neighborhood. Also, what’s really popular in Atlanta is not just taking buildings and revving them – actually renovating, going in and repurposing. I think people have gotten really excited, so that’s opened the door to a little bit more interest and knowledge from the general public.

It’s funny; with a lot of the real estate clients that we’ve had, it all started because we got brought on for Krog Street Market, when that got announced here. For those that don’t know, that’s a big food hall in town. It was one of the first food halls that made a mark globally, and it was interesting being part of that because people look at that and say, “It could’ve been a glorified food court” – but it wasn’t that, and it isn’t that to this day. That really helped change that neighborhood.

When we finished working on that project, when the developer sold a couple years ago, it opened the door to a lot of other real estate clients coming in and saying, “Hey, how do you take something like that and make it accessible for the general consumer or get them excited, or how do we get press like that?” It really was an area that I never thought we would get business in, but it’s been challenging and fascinating and fun. I think we bring a different viewpoint, coming at it from the lifestyle perspective rather than the B2B perspective. Clients like that. We’ve been able to get press, so that’s been good.

ROB: I think we do want to hear those stories, these origin stories, these entrepreneurial stories, of something that we hope becomes something bigger. I think it’s something that we lost. Food courts at one point actually were a place of innovation and entrepreneurship and of good stories. Chick-fil-A heavily grew in food courts, and I believe the Great American Cookie Company started in Atlanta, Georgia in a food court.

We went through a season where those things didn’t happen and there wasn’t that entry point for an entrepreneurial restauranteur. And it’s back. It’s cool that you get to be a part of that story.

Now, PR means a lot of things to a lot of people. Some people think about trying to get a software company an article in Forbes or Fortune, and some people think about this very encompassing suite of services, often on a local level. When you break down PR into the pieces and parts, what are the actual details and activities and day-to-day things you’re doing for clients?

TARA: It varies per client. A lot of them will come knowing that they need PR, but not exactly sure what we can do for them or what we bring to the table. A lot of times it’s definitely, especially in our pitching, a little bit of an education as to what we do a little differently than most.

But our day to day varies depending on if we’ve got an event that we’re working on, or if it’s a product or a restaurant opening. From press releases to pitching media outlets – and that’s print, radio, TV, online, influencers now, which is a big taboo topic – pitching all of that, crisis management if there’s an issue, management of the day-to-day messaging and storytelling for a client. We also do a lot with social media and digital marketing, whether that’s us doing it for a client or working with another vendor that they have.

We help create the storyline for the PR side, and where a lot of companies fail is that they’re not weaving these things together. When that message is weaved together, whether that’s through their email blasts or their social media platforms, it all works together. They may see something on social, then they see something in an email, then they see something in print or on TV, and you get that bigger picture storytelling.

So, we do a lot of education with clients on how to figure out their cadence of messaging, but then also, how does that all work together? Are you telling the same story on every platform on the same day? No, let’s not do that. Let’s build it out. Let’s weave in PR. Let’s weave in quotes. Let’s weave in whatever the reaction is from the general public, or high points.

There’s a lot of strategic work that we do now, which for me personally is my favorite thing. Starting an agency 25 years ago, I didn’t know a lot when I started. You don’t know what you don’t know. As it’s grown and PR has changed and morphed over the years, strategy has always stood out to me as the key need. Understanding a client’s goals and what they need to get out of it and then mapping out a strategy – that’s where we’ve had, knock on wood, our most successful campaigns and client work.

I remember years ago, prior to starting 360, I worked at an independent record label, and we used to have to monitor how many calls we made, and we had to send out so much product. It was like you send out hundreds and hundreds of pieces of music and you just see what sticks. You can’t possibly call thousands of journalists.

I learned during that time that it worked for a short period of time, but then what really changed was, let’s target. Maybe we send all this stuff out and whatever sticks, sticks, but let’s target 10-15 outlets that we really want to tell the story to, and let’s figure out that story for each outlet depending on what they cover.

As we started to do that, we had big, successful pieces, and they were larger features. That was the turning point for me, going and working with a lot of clients and figuring out, “What’s our strategy and how do we make more impact?” They always say less is more, and that definitely resonates a lot these days with PR.

So, every day is different, but those are the base things that we work on. Some days there are some new things brought to the table, especially during a pandemic. [laughs] We’ve done a lot of new stuff that I was like, “Huh, never thought we’d work on that or do this kind of thing.” But for the most part, the overarching PR is a lot of writing, pitching, press releases, and storytelling.

ROB: You can definitely see where that 360 degrees comes in for 360 Media. I think PR is often misunderstood to be shouting really loud, and you’re talking about it so much more like a surround sound, where you get those different touchpoints that really reinforce the story and create that picture in your mind.

You mentioned press releases, and I think press releases are perhaps one of the most misunderstood, maligned, and also misused tools that are out there. How do you think about and redeem the press release and help it to be the noble thing that it is, and also maybe how people may misuse them?

TARA: That has become a very hot topic in our office. You go from one extreme to the other, where, as you said, people get confused by it. Not everything is worthy of a press release, but then again, there are plenty of times that a press release done well can cut through the clutter and gets picked up exactly how it’s written, and that is a win for a client, and obviously a win for us.

In this day and age, there’s an amazing 24-hour news cycle and there’s a lot of opportunity to get coverage, but there’s also fewer journalists and people working at publications, so you’ve got to find that middle ground that you’re not inundating them with useless information, but you’re also providing enough that if they are short-staffed or they are one person covering five or six feeds, you have enough information there that they can pull content, don’t necessarily have to deal with you or do an interview, and get a story up.

Part of what we do is not only look at things and say, “Yes, that’s worthy of a press release,” but we also look at what information we have. Do we have video? Do we have photography? Do we have quotes? Is there another way that this may be delivered to a journalist that would resonate more than just a press release?

We really are now weighing out how that information goes out on our email list. Some days it is just a traditional press release, and other days it’s a video that then links to a blog post that has more information, or it’s an e-blast that is an invite to experience something online, especially now, since everybody’s working remotely. There’s a lot of different ways that we’re doing it, and we continue to change it up and think, “How is this going to land and what’s going to interest someone?”

That’s been really good. We get a lot of feedback from journalists who are like, “We’re not getting the same old, same old from you, and that’s really what stands out to us,” which I love.

On the press release side, though, I will say if you write a great press release – and sometimes I get dinged from people and they’re like “it’s not AP style” and all of those things that are traditional. It’s like, no, this stands out a little bit differently because we write in a little bit more of an editorial fashion. Some of our clients can be dinged as a little fluffy, so people are like, “This isn’t really newsworthy. It’s a little too fluff.”

But we try to find that middle ground where it’s like, here’s an editorial piece for you that not only covers what’s newsworthy on this end, but it can be cut and pasted and either put on a blog, or if an influencer is putting something up on their Instagram, they’ve got quotes they can use from the client, or a link to a Dropbox that’s got photography or graphic assets that are done for Instagram, Facebook. We really try to make it very easy because everybody is so crazy busy, and that also stands out.

Press releases are interesting. We just had a conversation this past week about a client. They wanted something in a press release, and I was like, “No, it’s not going to land right. Let’s do XYZ.” It stood out and it was different. There’s a lot of stuff going on, obviously, with the pandemic and restaurants reopening. Because restaurants are reopening, everyone thinks, “My dining room is open. This is newsworthy.” Well, we’re in a huge influx of dining rooms reopening, so what are you doing that’s different compared to everybody else and you’re not just opening? So we had to dig a little deeper, and we created the story, which then was like, “Okay, this is press release worthy because they’re doing some stuff differently.”

ROB: This is where maybe someone will say they’re doing this different menu, they’re doing this different format of service, they’re doing this very unique thing in terms of how they’re protecting people, or even some restaurants have been able to get the story out about how they are doing a mini-grocery. Is that the story?

TARA: Yes.

ROB: Instead of saying, “Hey, we’re still open and doing takeout.” It’s like, yes, so is everyone else who wants to save their restaurant. What are you doing that’s different from just “yes, you can place an order on Uber Eats”?

TARA: Yep. It’s interesting because at the time when everybody was pivoting, that was newsworthy because some of these places weren’t on Uber Eats or Grubhub or any of those services. But then it was like, okay, that’s newsworthy for all of 5 minutes, but what are you doing differently for your team or onsite or the meals you’re delivering?

A prime example, Mission + Market in Buckhead is one of our clients, and for the first couple of weeks as they were pivoting, they were doing themed nights where it was like family meal and just different things. That was working very well for them, but what they ended up doing also was realizing that so many restaurants were closing at the time, they stepped up and on Thursdays were doing meals for people that had lost their jobs because of COVID.

So, they not only covered the hospitality industry, but they were like, “Anyone that’s lost their job, if you can show that you’re no longer employed, you can order a meal through us.” They did it I want to say for 2 months and served over 1,500 people every Thursday. It was really incredible, and they got a lot of attention. Now, they didn’t do this to get attention, but we had to put it out to say this is what they’re doing so that people knew, and it ended up getting a lot of positive attention and other companies that wanted to support and give sponsorship to help cover the meals they were covering themselves. It turned into a much bigger thing. We got a lot of press out of it, even though that wasn’t the game plan for it. It really made them stand out.

ROB: For sure. There are a few folks I know in the service industry who just seem to have a natural knack for storytelling and baiting the hook and getting the right stories out there and getting coverage. How much of this thinking and getting these stories to land right is instinct, and how much of that do you think can be developed? And if it can be developed, how do you think about developing that proper mindset?

TARA: I think some of it is instinct. I think also some of it is development. I think you’re on the money there, because a lot of people – any client; it’s not just in the hospitality industry – they’re in there day to day, and they can’t really see everything that is exciting or interesting, or maybe they’re not up on the day to day of what’s newsworthy or what might be resonating in pop culture. Meanwhile, they’re doing something and it’s like, oh my gosh, here’s a local story that resonates with a national story or something that’s trending nationally.

When you start working with a client and start putting those ideas out there or talking to them or digging in a little deeper, all of a sudden you see their eyes light up and it’s like a light bulb moment. They’re like, “Wait a second, we’re also doing XYZ.” It’s like, “Yes, that is interesting and that’s newsworthy.” That’s been a really cool thing to watch as we continue to work with clients. Over time, you get in that groove, and they start seeing what you’re seeing.

They also start understanding how media works. Sometimes we’ll have clients call and say, “I read this piece. We are doing this. Can you reach out to this writer and perhaps they would do something on us?” That’s always cool, when we see clients grow into understanding what editorial options they have. Or “Hey, we’re looking to do something for our anniversary. We don’t want to do it exactly like everyone else. Here are the ideas we’ve come up with.” We come in and fine-tune that stuff.

We also sometimes – I think this is one of the things that we’re really known for amongst the clients we work with – just coming in and seeing things differently, and giving them a picture. They may come to the table and say, “Here’s what we have. This is what we’d like to do,” and then we say, “Okay, this is great. Let’s take this up a notch. How about this?” That’s been really cool, to have clients that are open to collaboration and getting it to a place where it’s like, “This will get you small press, but this will get you big press.” They’re like, “Oh, okay!”

That part is a lot of fun, especially when you tell them something is going to happen and then it does. [laughs] Which you can’t guarantee, but when you’re like, “This is big,” and then we take it out and either pitch it to someone exclusively or put it out en masse and they see the response they get, it’s like, “Oh, okay, you guys were right.” That’s a lot of fun.

It’s interesting, too – I had a new business pitch last week over Zoom, which obviously is new. A lot of calls and a lot of Zoom pitches. But in the midst of the pitch with this potential client, they were talking about some of the things they were doing, and immediately I was like, “Why don’t you take this and you could do this and this and this?” The look on all of their faces – we were on Zoom and I love seeing it – they were like, “Oh my God, that was right in front of us.” I was like, “Yes, but you’re in it. You can’t see it.” That part was great.

We had a follow-up call yesterday and they were like, “We took what you said. How about this, this, and this?” And we’re not even on board yet. We’re just now going through the proposal. It was funny. I was like, “Yes, that could all work.” That’s an interesting – either you have to feed people or they get into it and get excited.

ROB: And maybe the people I think have good instincts just have really good help, so who knows?

TARA: [laughs] Both.

ROB: [laughs] Tara, almost 25 years ago, when you started up 360, did you have any inkling that you were in it for the long haul? What was the formative driving force there?

TARA: No, I really didn’t. It’s funny; a lot of times people ask, “Did you have a business plan? Did you map things out?” For the longest time, I was a little embarrassed. I was like, maybe I did something wrong? I didn’t have a business plan, and I never mapped out, “Here’s my 3- or 5-year, 10-year goal.”

When I started 360, I had just left a record label, and the owners were married and they got a divorce. It was like you had to take sides, and the label crumbled. I jumped ship with the female side of the business because she was my day-to-day, and she started another company and I worked there for a little bit. In the midst of that, she ended up taking another job. There were four of us that had gone with her. I started to reach out and do résumés and call people and all these things, and it just never went anywhere.

I had interned with a company called Concert Southern that is now the Live Nation Atlanta office back in the day, and I was there when they started Music Midtown. I was an intern on Music Midtown the first year, and then they called and were like, “Why don’t you put in a proposal? We need a PR person, and you know this event.” I was like, “What?” [laughs] I put like a 27-page proposal together. I’d never done one before. I put it in. This was Year 3 of the festival. I’d been an intern on the first one, volunteered on the second one on the PR communications side, and then put in a proposal for Year 3.

It ended up becoming my first client, but I didn’t know it at the time. It was more, “Sure, I’ll do this. This is a 6-month gig. This will pay me some money.” I had to move back in with my parents right after college for a little while during this time because I didn’t have a job. It was kind of like, “Okay, let’s do this.” Then I started to get other business. Then it was time for Music Midtown again.

So, 3 years into it, I was like, maybe I really need to get a business license and do some things rather than this freelance stuff. I ended up getting my first employee and built it from there.

Sitting here now and thinking about it being 25 years later, there’s so many things that happened over time – the recession and things that we got hit with – and to still be here is mind-blowing to me on a lot of levels. I didn’t have a business degree, and I got a ‘D’ in PR in college. It was not what I wanted to do. [laughs] It’s like, you put your mind to something and you can do anything.

Sometimes when people ask me about a business plan, I say, had I done that, I probably would have failed because I would have been one of those that had to stick to the business plan. Over the 25 years, we’ve morphed and we’ve opened the door to other types of clients. Like I mentioned earlier with commercial real estate, I would have never, ever opened the door to that. But it rolled in in a very interesting way, and it was like, “Okay, let’s go down this road.” That’s I think kept us going.

Honestly, even in this pandemic, probably 80% of our clients have put us on hold because a lot were restaurants and entertainment and events. Our hotel, real estate, design clients are all still booming, so that’s been interesting. Had we not had that, we would probably be in a little bit of a different spot right now. But our restaurants are coming back and things are changing.

I’ve learned a lot over the last 25 years. But no, I would’ve never guessed that we’d be here. Ever.

ROB: You mentioned learning some things over the course of the business. What are some things you’ve learned along the way that you might do differently if you were starting anew?

TARA: It’s interesting. I was asked that question one other time, a couple years ago, and I had a very different answer. I think for me, there’s not a lot that I would do differently. I probably would learn to go with my gut, my intuition. I wish I had learned to do that sooner. I’ve always had a strong gut reaction and intuition, but sometimes it’s like, “That doesn’t make sense right now. Why are you thinking that?” I didn’t fully always embrace it. So I would probably do that sooner.

I also would not let people – you bend for clients that might be struggling or things that are happening, and I have bent probably one too many times for people who owed me money. I let it get a little too far down the road, and then it becomes harder to collect. I’ve learned that a lot more in the last 4 years of business. You get to a place where you’re doing well, and it’s like, “Oh, we can let someone slide for a little bit while they’re struggling,” and then it just ends up catching up. We got dinged a little too much the last couple of years. So, I probably wouldn’t let the debt get too big. I’ve learned a lesson there.

I also probably – there were two times in my entire career that I took clients for money, because it was big, but my gut said “these aren’t right for you or the firm.” Again, just listening to my gut. I would do that much sooner.

But I think also, in what would you not do/what would you do, as entrepreneurs, when you have no fear in the beginning because you don’t know what you don’t know and then you go through an experience and you’re like, “Ugh, been there, done that. I’m not doing that again” – I think it’s important as an entrepreneur to really be open and let things flow in and assess them, and not be closed off to things.

It really, truly is how I’ve grown 360. Putting out there, “Hey, I’m interested in more events or festivals” or whatever it is, always, doors open. Being afraid is fine, but you can take a pivot, you can take a next step, and it does work out. I think you just have to control your fear and be excited about it. I think that’s important.

ROB: That’s all very practical, and I appreciate that. I also had some wounds on the not collecting money quick enough train. It’s never, ever fun, because you realize quickly that when someone is going out of business, there’s just really not going to be money for you, for the most part.

TARA: [laughs] That is a lesson to learn.

ROB: You think about “Oh, bankruptcy, you split it up” – no, no. There’s just no money. Good luck. [laughs]

TARA: Yeah. Also, being diligent. I will say this: I have a former client that has owed me money since 2017, and I got a check last week. In a pandemic, I’m getting paid. I’m like, okay, this is the universe looking out for me. But it was being diligent and not just letting it go. I wouldn’t have done that before. I just would’ve been like, “It’s just a write-off. Let’s move on.” But sometimes good things happen.

ROB: Yeah, don’t write it off until you’ve asked a few times, at least, right?

TARA: Right. [laughs] Totally.

ROB: Excellent. Tara, when people want to find you and find 360, where should they look for you?

TARA: We have a website, 360media.net. We are also on Instagram under the same thing, 360 Media, Inc (@360mediainc).

We also are the publishers – I didn’t even mention this – of the Atlanta 100. The Atlanta 100 is a weekly newsletter that we do, and there’s a website, theatlanta100.com. It’s a weekly newsletter that goes out every Thursday or Friday with 12 stories about Atlanta in 100 words. We’ve been the publishers of that for the last 2 years. There’s a lot of not only stuff about Atlanta, but also our clients as well.

ROB: Excellent. Sounds solidly played. We’ll get all of that in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on, Tara. It’s been a pleasure. Again, maybe someday we can do an event in person.

TARA: I know, I would love that. It was good to hear that you’re here. Thank you so much for having me. This has been a lot of fun.

ROB: Thank you. Bye bye.

TARA: Bye.

ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

In 2007, after nearly a decade of experience in numbers-focused direct-response marketing, Matt Weber used a business broker to buy a small jack-of-all trades agency that provided sales training, traditional media marketing, and a small bit of web development. Over time, that agency became ROAR! Internet Marketing, where Matt is now President. The agency’s forte today? Measurable actions.

In this interview, Matt explains what a buyer can expect from a business broker, how to select one, broker limitations, and a broker’s role in facilitating business acquisitions. He warns that it will be challenging to evaluate transactional opportunities in the next few months. But, he also expects to see a lot of merger and acquisition activity as companies adjust to the COVID-impacted business environment. Matt’s general tips? Agencies will need to be more aware of costs now, “throttle back” on anticipatory hiring, , and eliminate “tool bloat” (buying multiple tools with the same functionality). 

Matt is no stranger to change. In 2007, websites were little more than glorified brochures. Matt shed virtually everything of the original business, rebranded it, and focused heavily on digital marketing conversions and direct response. Early on, 85-90% of the agency’s revenues came from web development.

Today, 80% of his agency’s revenues come from recurring digital marketing services, primarily for three verticals: elective medical (almost recession-proof), recurring-business home services (need-based), and manufacturing (which has a completely different cycle than consumer-based marketing). Matt says, when you focus your efforts on a limited number of verticals, you “leverage your success more effectively,” and follows that with the comment: “Diluted focus yields diluted results.” 

Matt has created a free tool, Smylelytics.com, which he compares to a car’s “check engine” light. (It won’t tell you what is wrong, but it will tell you when to take a look.) Twice a month, Smylelytics evaluates a company’s Google Analytics, translates the information into memorable, themed photographs, and emails the company with the (good/neutral/bad) “news.”

Matt serves as a national trainer for the Grow with Google program, where he presents small- to medium-sized businesses with a one-day class that covers Google My Business, Google Analytics, and Google Data Studio tools. He also speaks at conferences, frequently on the topic of, “5 Things Your Website Is Trying to Tell You but You’re Afraid to Ask.” Here, he provides a brief overview of those 5 things:

1. Does your website, as a salesperson, feel confident in selling your business? Is it effective in turning leads into sales?
2. Where should you focus your limited time and budget?What do the analytics show you about which efforts are paying off and which are not? 
3. Is your landing page making a good first impression? What does your landing report say about what your first-time visitors do on their first visit?
4. Who likes you best? Focus your efforts on communicating with those who like you the most.
5. Are certain pages repelling your customers? Stop serving the bad pages.

Mayt is available on his agency’s website at: RoarontheWeb.com or on Twitter @BestWebDesignFL.

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m joined today by Matt Weber, President at ROAR! Internet Marketing based in Altamonte Springs, Florida just outside of Orlando. Welcome to the podcast, Matt.

MATT: Thank you. Great to be here. Been looking forward to this for some time.

ROB: Excellent to have you here. I’ve been looking forward to this as well, especially with some of the interesting nuances of your own history and background. Why don’t you kick us off, though, by telling us about ROAR! Internet Marketing and what the company specializes in? 

MATT: Our real specialty is conversions. We’ve been around since 2007, and back then we started lead tracking, lead recording, and a focus on measurable results. That came from my background in direct marketing. I did direct mail. I did nearly a decade of direct response marketing where if you couldn’t measure it, you didn’t do it. Back in 2007, that’s not what websites were. In 2007, websites were kind of glorified brochures, and nobody was really talking about conversions and goals and tracking things.

That was our entrée into the marketplace, and we were really one of the pioneers in that area. We’ve continued to evolve that – to the point, though, where we’ve gotten a little bit less into web design and more into digital marketing. When we started the agency, 85-90% of our revenue was web development, and now 80% of our revenue is recurring digital marketing services. So our forte is measurable actions.

ROB: Who were some of the first sorts of clients that were really open to thinking about their website as less of a brochure and more of a destination and opportunity to actually get action? I think some people were willing to spend more money on expensive brochures for a while, but who started turning that corner to thinking more progressively about their websites?

MATT: Elective medical. Cosmetic surgeons, LASIK, cosmetic dermatologists. They came into 2007 with a fairly refined understanding of how much a new patient is worth, and they had some sensitivity to cost per lead. So that’s where we get our start, and that was the segment that was most receptive to our messaging, followed by home services. They were also receptive to that because they were prolific direct mailers. So, they did receive that message well, and we’re still in those two verticals today.

ROB: That makes sense. Certainly, a lot of elective medical can potentially be fairly large tickets, fairly decent margins, and probably also so on the home services side. Was it larger project stuff, or were you also finding things even down to emergency plumbers?

MATT: More things that had a recurring value – your pest control company where it was an average lifetime value rather than a transaction value. They got it pretty quickly. Let’s say you engage with a pest control company; you’re going to typically stay with them for 2+ years at $70 a month or $80 a month. Those companies understand lifetime value as opposed to transaction value, so this worked well for them.

ROB: That’s a great line of thinking, especially to find your way into some of those good long-term customer lifetime value – not so much restaurants and that sort of thing.

You started in 2007. You started at perhaps an inopportune time, much as anyone who started a business last year may feel right now amidst this coronavirus crisis/shift/recession, whatever we wish to call it. How did those next couple of years going through that financial crisis with the business change your thinking, and how is it shaping how you think about the virus era and post-virus era that we are in and heading into?

MATT: I want to answer the second part of that question first because we have always run our business imagining that we were always in the worst of times – because we were, in 2007-2008 and early 2009. We were in times where we were watching this deposit so that we could make this payment. We were running checks to the bank and then saying, “Okay, now we can make this payment.” Everything was almost on a minute by minute basis.

We never forgot that. I think it’s a lot like people listening who might have grandparents or great-grandparents from the Depression era and how that affected their spending all the way up until their late life. That happened to us and a lot of businesses, so we always managed the company as if times weren’t great. That’s helped now. We’re in a stronger financial position, we’re a financially strong company, and a lot of that is the attitudes that 2007 and 2008 brought with us.

ROB: How much of that comes naturally for you? I think any entrepreneur, and especially in the marketing and agency world, one of the first questions you’re asked when you meet anybody is “How many people do you have?” It’s this tempting ego number to hire a little bit ahead of need. Probably throttling back on that along the way, was that a natural thing for you? Or was it an acquired discipline?

MATT: It’s an acquired discipline. You brought up a great one: labor. I think a lot of agencies do hire before the need.

Another one is tools. I run into a lot of agency owners that have six or seven or eight different tools that duplicate functionality. These tools reshape themselves, they come out with something new, so the agency buys a subscription to this one without canceling the subscription to that one, and all of a sudden they’ve got what I call “tool bloat.” They’ve got subscriptions to a bunch of different things they didn’t even know they were subscribing to.

That happens as well. Being mindful of that I think is a result of the 2007, 2008, and 2009 experience, where we track everything we spend on a recurring basis, what we’ve committed to, and we’re very cautious about our labor expenses.

ROB: How do you manage those labor expenses when you do start to get close to the margin? I think we’ve all had that experience where we have a little bit more work than we can do or maybe a lot more work than we have capacity to do. How do you think through some of those inflection points?

MATT: We’ve got quite a few spreadsheets and calculations that we do behind the scenes, and there’s a premise behind it, and that is: we don’t want to be that agency that hires up, loses an account, and lays off. We mathematically figure out not only what the point is when we need to hire somebody, but what’s above that so that if we lost anything, we don’t want to lay off.

I’m happy to say that since 2007, we have never laid off a single employee because we’ve lost an account. We’ve eliminated a position because the scope of work changed, but we’ve never eliminated a position because we’ve lost a client.

Now, when we go to hire people, yes, people are looking for money, absolutely. But at some level, they’re looking for stability. A little bit lesser so today than maybe 6 years ago, but we get to tell those people, “This is our philosophy. We don’t want to hire up and lay down. That’s not who we are. We want to build a team, a coherent team, and we want to build for retention.”

We’ve been very fortunate in that. We’ve got folks that have been with us for 10 years, 8 years, 7 years, and it’s because of that philosophy. They know underneath it all, we’re trying to build something progressively stable.

ROB: That’s insightful. One thing that goes along with that dynamic you discuss of losing an account and laying people off is also revenue concentration. Some agencies can be anywhere between let’s say 30% and 70% all-in with one client. How do you think about revenue concentration? Is it something you try and manage, or is it something you just deal with and manage around?

MATT: We definitely try to manage to it. In fact, we not only manage revenue concentration within a client, but we try to manage revenue concentration within a vertical. Our three verticals are elective medical, home services, and manufacturing. Those were chosen because elective medical is almost recession-proof. In fact, a couple of our cosmetic surgeon clients had some of their best years in 2007 and 2008, surprisingly. Home services are need-based, so it’s hard for a consumer to give up let’s say their pest control company, as an example. Then manufacturing has a completely different cycle than some of the consumer-based marketing that we do.

So, we not only look at revenue concentration per client, we look at it per vertical. We don’t want to be heavily invested into any one of those three verticals.

ROB: Really interesting, and makes a ton of sense. Matt, how did you get into this business in the first place? What led you to move from whatever you were doing before to starting ROAR?

MATT: I was working for the broadcast industry. That’s where I grew up. I spent 15+ years in the broadcast industry. Then I worked for an exciting and fast-paced direct response marketing company, and I was in a job that was very challenging. A lot of travel, a lot of 65+-hour weeks. My wife at the time also was in a very challenging position, and our daughter was about two years from graduating high school.

We looked around and said, “What does life look like after our daughter leaves the house?” We came to the conclusion that if you are going to kill yourself for somebody, why not kill yourself for yourself? So, we went on this process of buying a business.

Interestingly enough, we ran into a business that at the time – and this is early 2007 – was a high-end luxury home theater business. I was going through the financials and going through the business, and it was owned by a gentleman who was an extremely smart engineer, and he had a great business from a technology standpoint, from an execution standpoint – but he was a horrible marketer. I thought, “Ah, this is for me because that’s my strength. I’m a great marketer.”

I was just about to put pen on a contract to buy that business, and our business broker called and said, “Hey, there’s another thing out there. Why don’t you take a look at it? It’s an advertising business.” Of course, business brokers call everything an advertising business. So we went and looked at it, and it was a guy who had started this small shop that did a little bit of everything – it did sales training, did traditional media, and it did, back in 2007, a little bit of web development.

We looked at 2007 and we said the future is digital, the future is web, the future is not traditional, and the future certainly wasn’t sales training to us. So, we bought that company in early 2007 and began to morph it. We got rid of its traditional market offerings, got rid of the sales training, rebranded it, and got heavily invested into conversions and the direct response portion of digital marketing. And that’s how we got into it.

ROB: I think a lot of people may not be familiar with working with a business broker. Is that something you had done before? Is that something you would do again? Maybe in this season there’s other businesses that would be worth acquiring?

MATT: I think so. You’re right, I think we’re about to enter an interesting time for merger activity and acquisition activity.

I do think a business broker is a time saver. It doesn’t give you a pass on doing your own homework because business brokers can never be an expert in your line of work. In the acquisition opportunities that we’ve evaluated since then, that is very apparent. They don’t know the metrics to ask and they don’t know how to peel back the onions of the financials to look for what really is a healthy agency.

But they do save time. In fact, a lot of agencies that might be for sale – how do you find out about them? It’s not like you can drive by and they’re going to put a “for sale” sign on the outside of the building. The only way you might be able to find out about them is if they’re represented by a business broker. So, I do think if you’re looking to acquire something in the coming months and years, definitely find a business broker that you can trust and build a rapport with.

I think it’s a little bit like buying and selling a home. You have to have a rapport with your real estate agent, and that real estate agent needs to have some level of expertise. You wouldn’t engage with a real estate agent who doesn’t really know the neighborhood that you’re buying in, and you might not do the same thing with the business broker. Don’t engage somebody who doesn’t have at least some high level awareness of the type of business that you’re looking at.

But they are not going to be the expert, and you’re going to need to bring a fair amount of analytical power to the evaluation of any potential transaction.

ROB: That’s a very timely insight, I think. For someone who hasn’t worked with a business broker before, I think a lot of times when you generally talk about acquiring or selling an agency, quite often they’re revenue and retention financed.

How does that dynamic work with a business broker? Is it similar, where there’s an earn-out and payback period? Or is it a little bit more of a buyout and transaction since there is a middleman in there who isn’t involved at all in retaining clients the way you might be doing if you were acquiring an agency more directly?

MATT: Yeah, brokers aren’t really keen on the whole earn-out scenario. [laughs] But they’re going to attach a value to the transaction regardless of how that transaction is funded, ultimately. So, the broker is going to seek its commission based on what that topline value is, and it’s going to be paid at the beginning portion of that transaction. If the transaction takes years to complete, the broker will get his money upfront.

ROB: So, the rest of the transaction, are you then able to still revenue finance it and set those terms directly with the owner?

MATT: Yeah, and that’s part of the negotiation. I think we’re going to see changes in that upcoming. I think that we’re going to see some vulnerabilities for shops that are heavily invested in these segments that we just talked about. If you’re running a digital agency and 80% of your revenue is coming from restaurants right now, I sympathize with you. You’re in a tough spot. If 80% of your revenue is coming from travel and tourism, I empathize with you. You’re in a tough spot.

So, what is that owner going to do? Maybe that’s an agency where that owner says, “You know what? Maybe it’s time for me to look at other things.” You have to then bring in the power of where that revenue came from, what it could be, and could you potentially help diversify that revenue? It’s going to be a challenging time in the next few months to evaluate transactional opportunities.

ROB: Going back to the start of the business for you – you talked about how you’ve navigated a previous financial crisis, but I think another thing you’ve navigated is in 2007, as you mentioned, websites were essentially glorified brochures, and social media was in an infancy if at all. LinkedIn I think was around, and Facebook I think was around for college kids.

As additional marketing channels have come online and become viable, how have you navigated the process of when this is relevant to someone in manufacturing, when it’s relevant to someone in elective medical, or when it’s time to sit on it and tell them to take a back burner and maybe it’s not time to put their business on TikTok?

MATT: Great question, and this is where analytics comes in. This is why it’s such an exciting time to be a small or medium sized business owner. If you think about where it was to be a business owner in the early 2000s – and way before that – the data was in the hands of agencies, and the data was in the hands of media outlets. You really couldn’t answer that question that you just asked with clarity.

But now the data is in the business owner’s hands. The paradigm has changed. It’s not a matter of speculating whether TikTok is of value or whether Facebook is of value. It’s a matter of making sure you have the measurements setup in place and answering that question objectively.

We have this conversation a lot. You’ve got a lot of companies that are way too heavily invested into social media because they thought it was cool, because it was the thing to do and everybody was writing a blog article on how you have to use Facebook 5 years ago. But then when you got into the numbers and you broke down the facts, a lot of folks weren’t getting the ROI off of that investment they made into social media, and they were overly prioritizing it.

So, the answer to your question is you’ve got to have the analytics and you’ve got to get the data set up, which has grown so much since 2007. Now everybody has the key to unlock the answer to that question with clarity.

ROB: Very, very interesting. It makes sense, too. Data-driven decisions help here, especially when you have these transaction/conversion focused clients who know what a lead is. It’s always easier to have an objective discussion around that.

Now, if you rewind and if you were going to do this whole ROAR! Internet Marketing thing over again from scratch, what are some of the things you would consider doing differently if you were starting over?

MATT: The biggest thing I would do differently is we were way too late to get into the game of specializing in the three verticals that we’ve chosen now. We at one time were proud of the fact that our portfolio contained everything from A to Z, and we would look at the world and go, “The world’s our oyster! Everybody’s a great prospect!” Ultimately that turned out to frustrate our salespeople. It sounded good, but it really wasn’t a smart thing to do.

When you focus your efforts on a limited number of verticals, all of a sudden you prospect better, and the biggest thing that you do differently is leverage your success more effectively. When you look at any particular business that knocks on your door as a prospect, you typically may not have a great story to tell them of what you’ve done in the past. When you narrow your focus and somebody knocks on your door in one of those verticals, you’re very confident that you have a success story to share with them, and that becomes compelling.

So that’s absolutely the one thing that I would do differently faster. I would focus faster.

ROB: There’s so many interesting levels of discipline in here, because I think some people get into the entrepreneurial world and they think about the excitement, they think about the risk-taking, and I think they think about that correlating highly with running a successful business.

It sounds to me, if we peel back the DNA here a little bit, it sounds like you have built in habits that lead to running a healthy and successful business that is good for your team, that gives margin to invest in them, and candidly – at least, a lot of people I know who have this sort of habit – it’s actually better for their personal bottom line than having a bunch of employees and an infinite number of lines of business. How have you thought about the difference between a healthy business and the ego around it?

MATT: I think running a business sometimes is kind of like the Olympics. For most folks, you have to specialize in a particular event and do well in it, but there are those rare individuals that can participate in the decathlon and be good at 10 events.

I found out that I’m not one of those people. I need to focus on a particular specialty. So that’s what we’ve tried to do. We’ve tried to focus on being a fantastic digital agency that produces results and tried to attract employees that share that singular vision. We’re not thinking about this exciting app that we could do next week, and then we’ve got this idea for this other app that we could build the month after that. Not that we haven’t tried to expand beyond our range; we have. But it’s been cautious and it’s been measured.

I had a former boss tell me one time, and it sticks with me for a long time, that diluted focus yields diluted results, and that is something that I continue to live by. I’m very conscious of where our mental time and attention goes. If our mental time and attention gets diluted, we see it. We see it show up in the numbers that we track. Sometimes it’s my role as the president to bring us back and make sure that we’re focusing.

ROB: Matt, outside of ROAR, you have a couple of other interesting things that you shared, and probably some other interesting new hobbies amidst this pandemic. Among some of the professional things that you do, interestingly, when people are traveling, you go on the road and speak with Google, actually. What do you share about, and how did that come to pass in the first place?

MATT: Yes, I’m a national trainer for the Grow with Google program. About 10 years ago, a call came into the office and our office manager answered it and she said, “Hey Matt, Google is on the phone for you.” I said, “Sure they are.” There’s all these people masquerading as Google. But I pick up the phone, and indeed, it’s Google.

On our website at the time, we had some videos that were called “60 Seconds to a Better Business Website.” We did this series about helping small and medium sized business owners get better results from their website, and they somehow found it. They saw I’m in the video, and they said, “Hey, we’d like you to come to Atlanta and audition for this program to be a trainer.”

At the time, the program was called Get Your Business Online (GYBO). So I went to Atlanta, I auditioned, and I got the job. For the next 3 years, I traveled all over the country for them, teaching Google content.

They disbanded the program, and then about 2 years ago they brought it back under a different name, GWG (Grow with Google). A little bit different content. So, they host these events all throughout the country. They’re typically a day long, and in that day of presentation where they invite small and medium sized businesses, they’ll do a class on Google My Business, they’ll do a class on Google Analytics, they’ll do a class on the Google Data Studio tools.

I’m one of the people – there’s 13 of us – that teaches those classes. All totaled, I’ve gone to 37 different states teaching for Google and teaching those classes, and it’s been a blast. It’s been a real blast.

ROB: That’s a really good credential. It’s a good tip of the hat to what you know and the business you’ve built. Specifically, you’ve presented on “5 Things Your Website Is Trying to Tell You,” I believe you said that you’re afraid to ask. What is our website trying to tell us that we’re scared of?

MATT: this is a program that I do outside the Google confines for a lot of conferences and trade events. It’s called “5 Things Your Website Is Trying to Tell You but You’re Afraid to Ask.” Real quickly, the five things:

Number one, it’s trying to tell you whether it feels confident selling your business. Ultimately, your website is just a salesperson. That’s all it is. Just like you would measure the effectiveness of a salesperson – how many leads did they turn into sales? – you really need to be doing the same thing for your website. It’s going to tell you whether it feels like it’s doing a good job at that.

The second thing it’s going to do is it’ll tell you how to prioritize your time if you let it. We’re all investing in these different marketing activities, and if you look at your analytics, they’re going to tell you which ones are paying off and which ones are not. We really need to focus. Unless you’ve got an unlimited budget and unlimited time, you’ve got to stop doing maybe your organic efforts because your paid is so much more profitable, or vice versa, stop doing your social because your organic is – but if you’ve got limited time and budget, you’ve got to focus. Your website will tell you how.

The third thing that your website will tell you if you let it is, are you making a good first impression? One thing that’s never changed is that you never get a second chance to make a good first impression, and that’s true everywhere, and it’s true with websites. If you look at your landing page report, it’ll tell you what first-time visitors due when they come to your website for the first time. It may not be making a great first impression, and that could be costing you money.

The fourth thing your website is trying to tell you is who likes you best. It’s 2020. We don’t market to everybody anymore. That’s ridiculous. Let’s shave that down and we’ll find that women are more receptive to our message than men, or 35 to 54s are more receptive to our message than 18 to 24s, or we’ll find out that people in the city are more receptive to our message than outside of the city. Whatever that pattern is – there’s always a pattern – somebody likes you best. Let’s spend our time and energy talking to them rather than trying to convince the whole world that they should buy our product or service.

The last thing that your website is trying to tell you is some of your food is not very good. It’s trying to tell you that some of your pages are just flat-out repelling people. If you imagine being a restaurant owner for a second, and every single time you put down a particular dish on a table – every time – people looked at the dish and they got up from the table and walked out of the restaurant – imagine that happened to you. Ultimately, what would you do pretty quickly? Stop serving the dish, right?

If you think about websites, you know what we’re all doing? We’re still serving the dish. Because we do have a page that you can look at the statistics and go, oh, people look at that page and go, “Ugh!” and they get up and leave. If you look at your exit page report, you’ll see what pages that’s happening, and you’ve got to cure that because if you don’t, then you’re just like that restaurant owner who’s continually serving that dish that’s forcing people to walk out the door.

So those are five things that your website is trying to tell you, but you’re afraid to ask.

ROB: I can definitely see why a lot of us would stick our head in the sand on that and try to do the thing we do every day rather than looking in the mirror and actually thinking about the data on our website and the page that everybody bounces from. It’s straightforward, but I think we all certainly need that reminder.

One other thing in your background I can’t pass up and I have to ask about is Smylelytics. That’s just a fun, catchy name, but what is Smylelytics that you have created?

MATT: I’ve met a lot of small and medium sized business owners, and I talk to them about data like you and I are talking about right now, and they nod their head politely – and yet even my own clients, who I try to make data a little bit more accessible and enticing to them, they’ve got busier things to do, frankly. A lot of my clients are owner/operators. They’re running the business, they own the business.

So, I thought, how do I get this treasure trove of data that can be fundamentally business-changing to them in a way that they want to look at it? What Smylelytics does is takes your Google Analytics data and translates it into memorable photographs. So you can go to Smylelytics and you can pick a photo set – maybe you like sailing; there’s a sailing set. Maybe you like dogs; there’s a dog set. Maybe you’re into cute babies; there’s a cute baby set.

You pick that, and then Smylelytics is going to send you an email twice a month, and it’s basically going to turn your analytics data into red, yellow, green. Super simple. If things are going well for your amount of visitors, then you’re going to get a happy baby face if you selected the baby. If things aren’t going well, then you’re going to get a sad baby.

You don’t have to think about it, you’re not worried about charts, you’re not worried about graphs, you’re not worried about formulas, you don’t have to dig your way through the weeds of Google Analytics. In a nanosecond, you can get the Smylelytics email, which comes out twice a month, and you can instantly know, “Hey, things are going well / things are going not so well.”

It’s kind of designed to be like the check engine light on the car. The check engine light doesn’t tell you anything. It just tells you that you should go talk to somebody. That’s what Smylelytics is designed to do: give you the confidence that everything’s going okay, fantastic. If it’s not, you know it, and whoever that trusted resource is in your life, then you ought to tell them, “Hey, we should look into this.” Maybe it’s nothing. Just like that check engine light, sometimes it’s something significant, sometimes it’s not. But you should pay attention to the check engine light, and that’s what Smylelytics does. 

ROB: The way you describe it – we can’t tell because we’re on a podcast, but it does make me simple. Is that a paid tool? Is that a free tool?

MATT: It’s absolutely free.

ROB: Great. We’ll get that in the show notes as well. It’s Smylelytics.com, is that right?

MATT: Right.

ROB: Excellent. Matt, when people want to track you down and want to find out more about you and ROAR! Internet Marketing, where should they go to find you?

MATT: We are RoarontheWeb.com. That’s where you can find ROAR! Internet Marketing. And on Twitter, I am @BestWebDesignFL.

ROB: Legit. You can tell you started up in an SEO environment. That’s so important to this day, amongst all the other things you’ve learned along the way. Thank you so much for joining us, Matt. I think you’ve had a lot to share that’s really helpful, and we can all bring a smile to our faces and websites in this time.

MATT: Great. Enjoyed talking to you.

ROB: Thanks so much, Matt.

MATT: Bye bye.

ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

As a bestselling author and keynote speaker, Deb Gabor, CEO and Founder of Sol Marketing, has, herself, become a “brand.” She defines Sol Marketing as a brand-driven, strategy-led marketing firm in the business of creating irrational loyalty. Irrational loyalty means people are indelibly bonded to a brand. 

When Deb talks about her agency, she does not list the provided services: she feels marketing services have become commoditized. Instead, she presents a passionate vision of what the future could be. She tells people she is on a million-brand mission – to impact a million brands in her career. She believes that the best brands in the world are truly unique – in why they do what they do. Her goal is to strengthen brands: making businesses more sustainable will up-level communities, and, ultimately, help people. 

When the Corona virus hit, Deb’s speaking engagements for the next 6 months were cancelled. She is sheltering at home . . . but not sheltering in her mind. The question was: how was she going to generate income when she could no longer speak at face-to-face events? What could she do? How could she help her company? She mobilized her team and made her personal brand a “client” of the agency. “Figure out how this has impacted us,” she told her team, “and then what we need to do.” 

Deb referenced an interview with James Stockdale in Jim Collins’ book Good to Great. Stockdale was held for 6 years in a Vietnamese POW camp. When asked how he managed to survive, Stockdale explained that he faced the brutal facts of his situation, but also kept up his hope and optimism. Prisoners who were over-optimistic, but refused to face the “brutal facts,” did not do as well.

Deb’s team identified around eight “brutal facts” about how Deb’s brand was impacted by Covid-19. Some issues were solvable, some were not. 

The company pivoted and, got Deb back on track in a new direction – creating information products, building online courses, building sales funnels, and building webinar funnels. Deb identified the assets she needed her team to build, established a schedule, and set targeted monthly income goals for the information products, her speaking, and her book sales. Then, taking things a step further, the company prioritized a something new: authority marketing services for professionals, who, like her, were facing the same challenges. The assets her team built for Deb became a product that could help other speakers, authors, experts, coaches, and consultants. 

Deb says she has never seen a better opportunity than now for “smart people with expertise that can elevate other people in their own businesses, in their lives – I’ve never seen a better opportunity for them to share generously that expertise with other people.” She challenges people to think about: “How can I be indispensable to people at this time? How can I share something that I know or that I can do in a way that helps another person?” In reaching out, Deb says “be helpful, be authentic, be true to your brand.” She now spends around 6 hours a day, every day, presenting public or private webinars, and consulting one-on-one with business leaders, marketers, creators, or people with personal brands who are interested in setting up their brands to thrive during these unusual times.

Deb can be reached through social media and on her website at: debgabor.com, where Deb is posting thought-provoking webinars that explore a post-Covid world. Deb’s books, Branding Is Sex: Get Your Customer Laid and Sell the Hell Out of Anything and Irrational Loyalty: Building a Brand That Thrives in Turbulent Times are available on Amazon.

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Deb Gabor, CEO and Founder of Sol Marketing based in Austin, Texas. Deb is also a bestselling author and keynote speaker, and I think you’re going to enjoy this conversation. Welcome to the podcast, Deb.

DEB: Thank you. I’m really glad to be here.

ROB: It’s fantastic to have you here. Why don’t you tell us about Sol Marketing and about your own journey as well into authorship and speaking? 

DEB: Right on. I tell people that I’m in the business of creating the condition of irrational loyalty, and when I say irrational loyalty, that’s that feeling that you’re so indelibly bonded to a brand that you’d feel like you were cheating on it if you were to choose an alternative. It’s kind of how I feel about my iPhone, and the weird feeling I get when my friends who have Android phones send me text messages and they show up in green bubbles. I’m so irrationally loyal to i-thingies that even if I would hold a competitor’s phone in my hand, I’d feel dirty.

So that’s the business that I’m in, and how I do that is by running a brand-driven, strategy-led marketing firm. We do all the marketing things, and the reason why people hire us is because they need a good kick in the ass. They’re growing rapidly, they have a lot at stake to get it right, they have no time to waste, and they need someone to lead them through the hard work of branding. Is that a good explanation?

ROB: That’s perfect. How did you come to this positioning? A lot of people talk about what they do, they talk about the nuts and bolts, the details of what they do, and I hear you coming at the conversation from the complete opposite direction. You’re coming from a vision of the possible future, a vision of where things are going. How did you arrive at that view that this is how it needs to be?

DEB: This is the work that I actually do with my clients, so a little bit of this is the process of eating my own dog food. I firmly believe that the best brands in the world are not just different; they’re truly singular and they’re unique, and that uniqueness comes from truly why they do what they do.

When people talk to me personally and say, “Hey, Deb, what are you obsessed with? What are you working on right now?”, I tell people, I’m on a million-brand mission. Through my career, I want to have impact on a million brands. The reason why that’s important is if I can help a brand be a better brand, it helps them create a more sustainable business. More sustainable businesses are great for up-leveling communities and truly helping people.

So, I’m really internally motivated, and I’m very, very driven. It’s an obsession and a compulsion for me, so I can’t really talk about it any other way.

The other thing is I work in Austin, Texas. There are 150 other people who do exactly what I do, including a direct competitor whose office is directly across the street from me, and when I’m at my office, at my desk, I look out this gigantic picture window and across the road I see the tombstone with her sign on it, and it drives me absolutely mad. Her services, her functional benefits, the stuff that she does as a company is exactly the same as the stuff that we do as a company, yet we don’t compete. We really don’t compete for the same clients because the reason that people hire us is vastly different than the reason that people hire her company.

So that’s one of the reasons why I don’t default to the comfortable way of talking about agency business in terms of “here’s what we do” because those services have become relatively commoditized. I want people to remember me for what I’m about, and I want people to really understand the specific singular thing they get from us that they can’t get from anyone else. That’s why I talk about it in terms of “here’s the mission I’m on and why I do what I do” and being in the business of irrational loyalty.

Also, if I told you “We’re a branding and strategy and marketing services firm,” you would be like, “Meh, everybody else is that too.”

ROB: Yeah, you definitely hear that a lot, and it’s a tremendous visual metaphor to have that nemesis across the street. I find it motivating for a lot of teams to know who the enemy is – not in a jealous way or a competitive way, but in helping you refine and define the mission.

You mentioned you’re based in Austin, Texas. We were originally supposed to meet up in person at South by Southwest. It’s April; South by Southwest is cancelled. It didn’t happen. We are sheltering at home. But you, as we were talking about before we started recording, are not sheltering, in your mind. How has your strategy shifted amidst this coronavirus outbreak, amidst this pandemic, amidst some companies pulling back and some accelerating forwards?

DEB: I think I shared with you before we got on the interview here that I’m in touch with a lot of business leaders through my personal and business networks, and they fall into two camps right now. There’s one – these are the folks that are shuttering everything, they have their thumbs in their mouths, they’re rocking back and forth, they’re lying on the doormat in front of the front door – they’ve given up. They’re throwing in the towel.

Then there are others who are really looking at this through a new lens and practicing the art of the pivot or figuring out, “How this is an opportunity for me to emerge with maybe new offerings, new products, new services and things like that that are going to position me for the long term?”

One of the things that I did that I think is going to be really helpful for your listeners is I went back and reread my copy of this great book by Jim Collins called Good to Great. The day that I decided to pick up Good to Great again, I opened up the book and it opened directly to a chapter where there was an interview with James Stockdale. Jim Stockdale was previously a vice presidential candidate, but he was also an admiral and a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. For 6 years, he was in a POW camp.

Collins interviewed him for his book and asked him, “How were you able to actually get through that experience relatively unscathed? How did you endure 6 years in a POW camp?” What Stockdale explained was that he was able to maintain hope and optimism in the face of the brutal facts of his reality. He also explained that the people who were in the POW camps who were overly optimistic and refused to face the brutal facts were the ones that didn’t fare very well.

That’s called the Stockdale paradox. I was reading about the Stockdale paradox probably right about the same time that South by Southwest was getting cancelled, and it was really empowering for me because I actually did an exercise with our leadership team where we went back and revisited our core values and our core purpose as an organization, and then we documented all the brutal facts.

The brutal facts of the current situation are, personally, I make most of my money as a speaker and an author and a workshop leader, and every single speaking engagement I had scheduled between South by Southwest and the end of July was cancelled, all over the course of about two days. That’s a brutal fact. Another brutal fact was I do mostly B2B work in our company, and we had already been seeing some supply chain issues with our clients, making it really difficult to do things like shoot videos of their products. That had started happening back in January, so that was a brutal fact.

Another brutal fact was everybody’s going to have to work from home, people are going to be less productive, we’re going to have connectivity issues. Another brutal fact was I looked at how much per day does it cost to operate my agency, and how much cash runway do I have? How many days of cash runway do I actually have in the bank?

And for each of these brutal facts – and there were about eight of them – there were some that I could do something about, and then there were some that I couldn’t do something about. But for each of those brutal facts, my leadership team and I acknowledged every one of them, and then we flipped immediately to “What is our response to this brutal fact?”

What I’m doing during this time, which gets back to your original question of like “you’re not sheltering in your mind,” one of the opportunities that surfaced from really examining these brutal facts was the notion that I’m at home in Austin, Texas for 6 months without anywhere to go. What can I do? How can I help the company?

Two things came of that. One of them is that we made a very strong pivot to offering authority marketing services to other speakers and authors and experts and coaches and consultants – people like me – to help them share their expertise without the need for face-to-face events. We had already created a business for me out of this – I’m a client of my own company – and we were offering it to other people. We turned this into a service.

I’ve had a number of conversations with other people who are in my same situation where we’re offering these kinds of services, which are like creating information products, building online courses, building sales funnels, building webinar funnels. That was one thing.

And then another opportunity that came from that, which is really where I’m not sheltering in my mind – I have never seen a better opportunity for smart people with expertise that can elevate other people in their own businesses in their lives, I’ve never seen a better opportunity for them to share generously that expertise with other people. I literally have been spending I would say probably 6 hours a day, every day, if I’m not doing a public webinar, I’m doing a private webinar. Or I’m having one-on-one consultations with business leaders or marketers or creators or people with personal brands who are interested in understanding how they can set their brands up to thrive during this time.

ROB: I love what you say about uplifting, because even though you could have a disposition towards making the most and really transforming business to thrive in this environment, we all I think still need a little bit of encouragement and uplift from other people for those days when maybe we’re not feeling quite as strong about it. We’re all going to have a down day here or there.

I’m very interested by what you said about authority marketing and focusing there. I think that’s a word that has been used and misused. I’ve seen it misused in such a reductive way as essentially buying a book for yourself.

DEB: Yep, exactly. Which actually, I think the people who wrote the book Authority Marketing, the purpose is they wrote a book called Authority Marketing to teach you how to buy a book to do authority marketing. I look at authority marketing in a much more comprehensive way.

ROB: And you’re providing that service to people who know the difference, too. The people that you’re going to work with are people who know how to get a book published, probably. They might change what they’re writing right now, but it’s not “Help me be famous.” They probably have a brand. They probably have some opportunity. They probably have some skills. But a lot of these folks probably don’t have the tools around them the way you do.

DEB: Right. I invested significantly over the past couple of years to actually build these things. I’ll tell you a quick story about where this all came from.

I wrote my first book, called Branding Is Sex: Get Your Customer Laid and Sell the Hell Out of Anything. Yes, I am the person who used both the words “sex” and “laid” in the title of a book. When I wrote that book, it really was part of this compulsion to share that information with as many people as I could. I give away our methodology, my expertise, 30 years of experience and track record in brand strategy – I give that away for the cost of a book.

But what I didn’t do was connect that back to how I wanted to grow in my own career, how I wanted that to serve my agency business, and how that was going to be the pathway to what my vision is for myself. I wasn’t very intentional about it.

After that book came out, fortunately for me, because of brand disasters at the hand of such great brands like United Airlines and Pepsi and Uber and Papa John’s, lots of other branding dumpster fires that happened, I became the world’s resident authority on brand disasters and botched corporate apologies. I became the person who was able to answer all the media’s questions about who’s handling it well, who’s not handling it, what brands should do, what brands can learn.

It was really during that time that the second book, Irrational Loyalty, was written, because that book basically wrote itself. I thought, I need to be smarter and more intentional and definitely more thoughtful and strategic about how I want these pieces of content that I’ve created to serve me in the long term.

That’s when it became apparent to me that I needed something other than just a book to express my authority, because a book is just one method. I do a lot of public speaking, but I also wanted to share my expertise in other ways so that people could consume it in more actionable methods for them. So I went out and attended a Mastermind of some of the best digital marketers in the world. This is one of those Masterminds you pay $30,000 a year to be a member and then $10,000 an event. Definitely the upper echelon.

I happened to be there because I was a speaker, but I got to spend an entire 3 days with people who had 9-figure sales funnels. I thought, all right, these people are selling information products and they’re selling a buttload of them. They’ve created a way to scale their personal brands or their business brands or whatever. I could do that too.

I went out and asked all those people, “Can I hire you to build this for me?” They were all like, “No, you can find other people. Go see this person, go see that person.” I started talking to people, and I was interviewing people, and there was no shortage of people who were willing to put me into a sales funnel to sell me a course on how to build a sales funnel. I was like, what the hell? This is ridiculous.

So, I mobilized my team, and my personal brand became a client of the agency. I was like, “You guys are going to figure this out. We’re going to build all of these assets. We are going to build all of the automated marketing platforms. We’re going to tie all of this stuff together, and we’re going to build a business for me. Here’s a metric, and by this time, in this many months, we’re going to be making this much per month revenue off of these information products. I’m also going to do this much in speaking, I’m going to do this much in book sales.” We built a business around it.

Over the last year, I had a number of clients coming to me saying, “I want to be you. How do I build that footprint?” I said, “Well, interestingly, we built it internally.” When the current coronavirus situation hit and all the other authors and speakers and experts and coaches and consultants, like me, were like, “Oh my gosh, I’m stuck in front of a computer in my dining room, working over Zoom; how do I impact many, many people?”, I was like, I’m good. I’ve got stuff.

But I also was able to work with the company, and we made a pivot. We made this quick pivot. I said, “We need to really prioritize these authority marketing services.” So that’s the story of a pivot. I hope that’s helpful to your audience.

ROB: I think it’s absolutely impressive and resilient, and something to learn from. I think a lot of people strike out to write a book as a hunt for where their expertise is. It seems to me that in particular, the services you’re providing require that somebody have an expertise that goes beyond just a book.

But if someone’s feeling like they really need to have this expertise and this array of services around it, but they’re not quite sure where to go, where to focus on their expertise, how do you think about zoning in something that a person can offer that nobody else can offer, but they can’t put their finger on it quite yet?

DEB: That’s an interesting question. That’s a question that I’ve been answering for a lot of people over the past couple of weeks – people like me who are sitting around with a little bit of time to really navel-gaze and pontificate for themselves about where they’re going.

My recommendation for that is to just ask the question of “How can I be indispensable to someone at this present time?” That’s the first question, honestly. I always start everything from a reexamination of my own personal core values and my own core purpose and my mission and my big hairy audacious goal and where I’m going in life. I’m lucky that I have that as a compass.

If people are thinking about this and they’re like, “What expertise can I share?”, the first place to start is really with, why do you do what you do? Or why are you? It’s a very existential question. Simon Sinek’s stuff helps with that a lot, too. I recommend that people do some examination of that.

But then ask the question, “How can I be indispensable to people at this time? How can I share something that I know or that I can do in a way that helps another person?” If you’re looking at creating content and putting content out to the world to share your expertise with only the goal of making money, you will never be able to make money. If you are putting content out in the world because you truly have a message that you need to share with other people because it’s going to elevate them in a particular way, it is your job to figure out specifically what you do.

I always tell people, just ask the basic – I have these three brand questions. The questions are, “What does it say about a person that they use my brand? What does it say about them?” The second question is, “What is the one thing they get from me that they can’t get from anyone else?” And “How can I make my customer or my reader, my listener, my viewer, how can I make my person a hero in his or her own story?”

I think that people will find a lot of answers there. In my own experience with not being super intentional about how I’m going to use a book – I’m very intentional now because I have a book and I have another book and I have a speaking business and I have classes, and we’re starting up some online courses, I now have a webinar series, all that kind of stuff – the whole purpose of that is to create a community, and create a community that I can engage with and share my expertise with.

My goal in my approach of sharing expertise first and not asking for anything in return, my hope is that it’s going to elevate a lot of people and make them irrationally loyal to me. Then, when people are in a situation where they’re back to buying stuff, they’re going to want to buy that stuff from me, or they’re going to want to buy that stuff from my company.

ROB: Right. I think what you’re saying there – it’s subtle, but this is not a time, for the most part – unless you’re selling surgical masks, this is not a time to be selling for a lot of people, but it is a time to be investing deeply and helping, and sometimes helping – I think you’ve done some work with startups; a common thing in startup land is a lot of times you’ll ask for help, but you get money. If you ask for money, you’ll get help.

DEB: [laughs] That’s true. I have a business where I work with early stage companies, helping them tell their story effectively through their investor pitch. That’s something that we always say. You have to treat fundraising like a branding exercise, but the ideal customer that you’re going after is an investor, and you have to figure out how you’re going to elevate that investor’s life. How are you going to give them bragging rights from offering you that kind of help that you’re looking for?

But you’re 100% right. Now is a time to be looking at everything through this lens of helping versus selling. I’ve been telling everybody this. You really, really have to ask that question of “How can I be indispensable at this time?” There’s lots of businesses that we can’t use right now. There are lots of things that feel to us that they are maybe luxuries that we shouldn’t indulge in right now.

As a brand, any kind of brand, you can still help during this time. It’s not just like the parent company of Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior retooling their factories to go from manufacturing perfumes to making hand sanitizer, or Tito’s Vodka here in Austin doing the same. It’s also, how can you help people deal with the current situation at hand in a helpful way?

Really good example – I’m a skier, and I was super bummed that my season got cut short this year. One of the places that I buy gear from sent me the most delightful email. It acknowledged the current situation, showed real regard for humanity, and it said, “Hey, we’re also bummed out that the season got cut short. If you’re feeling bad, here’s a link to a playlist of your favorite ski porn” – which is a playlist of really fun ski movies on YouTube. And further down in the email, there was a nice feature that you could link to on their website about ski touring – which, for people who are not skiers, that’s the process of climbing uphill and skiing down. You don’t ride a chairlift; you climb uphill and you ski down.

The ski areas are closed, but there’s plenty of places to go into the back country. A lot of people need tips and tricks for doing that and doing it in a way that’s appropriate for the current pandemic conditions, so how do you still stay safe and ski with a buddy without getting too close? Also, safety – it’s avalanche season, all that kind of stuff. Further down in the email, they merchandised, “Here’s the best of the 2021 gear that’s coming out. Ski season 2020 is over; however, it’s never too early to dream.” So it was a light message, and it was not sales-y at all.

Then what I loved, at the very bottom of this email, I truly was delighted to see there were the signatures of everybody who works in the store. It was very personal. It was very authentic. It was really sincere. It was totally on brand. It was helpful. They’re not selling ski gear right now. People are not going online and buying a $1900 pair of skis and a $700 pair of boots right now. They’re just not. However, this brand is going to stay connected not just in my mind, but in my heart. The next time I do need something, I’m going to go to them.

Looking at everything from this lens of helping versus selling is what’s going to help brands connect in the long term and remain relevant and thrive when this is over – which this will be over. Come hell or high water, it will be over, and people will be back, but nothing will be the same as it was before.

ROB: It ties back nicely – it sounds like they even may have asked some of those questions that you asked, of what are the things they can’t change. The thing they accepted that they can’t change is that people cannot go skiing, and asking people to buy a pair of skis to sit in their closet for next year is not maybe a very good message.

I’ve seen, I’m sure you’ve seen, I’m sure everybody has seen an unbelievable number of emails from companies about their response to COVID-19, and half of them say, “We’re just going to keep being the business that we already are.” That’s maybe an innocuous brand fail. But you, being someone who keeps track of some bigger mistakes, what are some bigger mistakes people have made in messaging around this crisis that we can learn from? Not to trash them just to trash them, but to trash them by way of example.

DEB: I have something that would be really fun right now, which is this morning, I wrote something that is the perfect COVID-19 email that comes from that brand – I call it the perfect “we’re all in this together” email. How many “we’re all in this together” emails have you received from brands that you didn’t even know you were on their email list?

ROB: Oh, uncountable.

DEB: Yeah. Let me read you the message. It’s entitled, “An important message from our CEO”:

“Dear Deb,

“You don’t ever remember giving us your email, nor do you know how we got a hold of it. You once briefly thought about us 7 years ago; however, we’re here for you during these (unprecedented, uncertain, challenging, unsettling, unusual, rapidly evolving) times (pick one). We’re keeping everybody safe and monitoring the situation. If you need a new wine rack/sofa table/machete/floor lamp/outdoor fireplace/Aston Martin, we’re in this together.

“Also, here’s a reminder that we’re also here for our employees, whom you didn’t even realize existed until just now. Our thoughts and prayers go out to everybody affected by the current health crisis. Just know that (brand that you didn’t even know had your email address) is by your side during these tough times.

“We’re in this together, and I’m on Richard Branson’s yacht –

“A Brand You Don’t Really Know.”

That’s the big crime right now. During the first week – this was just post-March 11th – everybody was rushing to send out their COVID-19 email. All of them were “a letter from our CEO,” and they were all entitled “We’re in this together.” That’s my parody of that. Worst is automated marketing. Turn off your freaking automations, people.

The day that the WHO announced that we had a global pandemic – and it was also the same day, I believe, that we closed off our borders to people arriving by airplane from most countries in Europe – I got an email from Air Canada asking me, “Hey, don’t forget to opt in to get insider information and savings on your next flight!”

I also received an email from another brand, like a big box retailer, from whom I recently purchased a box of legal pads – you know, those yellow lined pads that we write on at work – and they wanted me to give them a review. I was like, “Oh hey, let me stop everything and give you a review.”

Then probably the worst offender that I saw during that time period was the email that I received from a clothing retailer. The headline on the email was “Staycay is better than vacay,” and they were advertising a 40% off friends and family sale. This is anything but a staycation, people. We are sheltering in place. This is for the safety of all humanity at this point. Don’t make light of the situation.

On the flipside, like the example that I gave you of the ski gear retailer that sent me that great message, I’ve also seen incredible efforts from brands, big and small, to be helpful.

I have a really good friend who owns a chain of ecofriendly dry cleaners, and if you think about it, dry cleaners are not doing really well during this time, are they? It’s considered an essential service, but since we’re working from home – I don’t know about you, I don’t know what you’re wearing, but I’m doing what I call the “business mullet,” where I’m wearing business gear on top and I’ve got workout pants on the bottom. It’s business on top, party on the bottom. We’re just not wearing dry clean-only clothes.

He called me in a little bit of a panic and he was like, “I think my business is going to completely tank.” I said, “Let’s think about this for a minute.” He’s an ecofriendly dry cleaner. He also has a network of vans and drivers – it’s a pickup and delivery service. They come to your house, they get your stuff. I said, “Everybody’s working from home in their day pajamas, and they make the transition to the night pajamas later, so they’re not doing dry cleaning of their clothes.”

However, I work in my dining room and I have a set of really hideous, very dirty drapes. I said, “Do you guys dry clean drapes?” He was like, “Yes, I do.” I said, “You know what? It sounds like a time for you to educate people on the household items in your home that, while you’re working from home and looking at them for 24 hours a day, you might think about getting cleaned, to have a cleaner, healthier home.”

I said, “How can you be the arbiter of helpful content? You’re an ecofriendly dry cleaner. How can you be the arbiter of content that is cool, that’s helpful content about how you can keep your home clean during this time that you’re sheltering in place with products that you have around the house that are also ecofriendly? How can you also provide helpful, useful content to people while they’re working from home? Nobody sees more business casual clothing than the dry cleaner. How can you, in a fun and uplifting and elevating way, create some content for your immediate community showing them the best and worst of Zoom fashion?” Just to bridge the gap with content.

This time is bringing out the best and the worst in people. Don’t send the email that’s the “We are in this together,” and God forbid, please don’t use any of those words that I used in my parody email. Make sure that you’re being authentic and sincere to your brand. What you do as a brand during this time is going to define you, more so than what you say. This is a time for people to take action. Thank you for listening to my TED talk.

ROB: Oh, it’s fantastic. To take action, to give, and to rethink. If a dry cleaner can rethink their business for this time, then so can any of us. I know, Deb, you’re certainly not the only one with the “business mullet.” You might’ve seen this – I saw Walmart said that their sales of shirts are up and their sales of pants are down.

DEB: Yes. [laughs] I love it. It’s amazing.

ROB: It’s pretty universal. Deb, when people want to get more from you, when they want to see what you’re doing – you mentioned all of this content you’re putting around your brand, all these different tools that you’re putting out into the world – where should people go to find those things?

DEB: People should go to debgabor.com. All the things are there, including the webinar series, which we’re adding new webinars every day. These are open and available to the public. Like I said, I’m bringing on a bunch of really, really interesting experts. Our focus really is just to help people. Nobody gets paid for this. I have experts in my network, and I’m helping them connect with people and share their expertise to help other people.

There’s ways to get in touch with me. You can send emails to me via the site. I’m on all the social media stuff as Deb Gabor. You can find me. I love to hear from people. If you hear this and you’re like, “Wow, what you said, I really like it” or “What you said, it’s complete B.S.,” I want to hear from you. I love to talk to people. I’m an extrovert, so this time of sheltering in place is really hard for me. So please, connect with me. Please, please love me.

ROB: [laughs] Fantastic. Yes, I am in that boat with you of severe cabin fever.

DEB: [laughs] Yep.

ROB: Thank you for coming on the podcast, Deb. You’ve given a lot today. It sounds like you have an absolute ton more to give. I hope people will seek you out, and hopefully next year we can actually connect in person in Austin, Texas for South by Southwest.

DEB: Yeah, I hope so. Thank you.

ROB: All right, thanks, Deb.

DEB: Take care. Bye bye.

ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Jeff Jordan is President and Executive Creative Director of Rescue: The Behavior Change Agency. Rescue offers a broad range of marketing services for government agencies (public health departments, state and federal agencies) and non-profits seeking to promote positive changes in public health related behaviors. 

Jeff started his agency when, as a high school student, he volunteered for his local health department’s youth-targeted anti-tobacco program. He transitioned from volunteer to contractor, tweaked the anti-tobacco program to approach teens in an innovative way, and grew the agency through “a lot of referrals.” He opened his first office while he was in college and continued his focus on behavioral change for social good. 

In this interview, Jeff tells us that marketing tactics that are used to sell products don’t necessarily work in changing “fundamental behavior.” His team has to be expert, not just in marketing, but also in behavior change theory, psychology, and sociology . . . and know how to appeal to different subsets within targeted cohort groups. Jeff says that it can take years for a consistent message to bring measurable change, and although there is nothing equivalent to “sales data” to gauge message impact in “real time,” he has found there are some measurable interim “markers” on the path to behavior change. Tracking and measuring specific behavior-related attitudes or beliefs or pieces of knowledge over time can predict subsequent behavior changes.

About 7 years ago, Rescue won a $150 million FDA youth tobacco prevention contract. These funds allowed the agency to increase in size from 50 to 150 employees in 3 years. Today, Rescue’s 175 employees work out of 6 offices around the country. They serve government agencies and nonprofits in 30 states. Rescue creates programs for these organizations, but also has a library of campaigns that can be licensed.

Over the years, Jeff has learned to say “no” to opportunities that are not right for his agency. Budgets that are too small can limit a campaign’s success . . . . and blame for poor results will invariably fall on the agency . . . not on the tight budget. The smaller a client is, the more they tend to demand. Jeff has observed that agencies end up over-servicing smaller accounts to keep them, tie up senior personnel in servicing these smaller clients, and underservice their larger accounts. Jeff warns that really small accounts can hold an agency down.

Jeff applauds the move away from condemning people who choose unhealthy behaviors and the increasingly broad awareness of underlying lifestyle situations that contribute to these behaviors. Jeff’s agency attracts employees who want to do something good in their careers. He describes the agency as “responsibly rebellious,” and explains that is manifested in the way the agency encourages clients to take risks in a responsible way.

Jeff can be reached on his company’s website at: Rescueagency.com. The agency runs what Jeff describes as a “pretty robust YouTube Channel” at: youtube.com/rescueagency.

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m joined today by Jeff Jordan. He’s the President and Executive Creative Director at Rescue: The Behavior Change Agency. Welcome to the podcast, Jeff.

JEFF: Thanks so much, Rob.

ROB: It’s excellent to have you here. Why don’t you kick us off by telling us – it’s right there in the title, a little bit – Rescue: The Behavior Change Agency. But tell us a little bit about Rescue and where you excel.

JEFF: We are a public health behavior change-focused agency. What that means is that we exclusively work for campaigns that strive to change health behaviors for social good. Almost all of our clients are public health departments, state and federal agencies.

When we say behavior change, we refer to actually changing a fundamental behavior that a person is performing. So rather than changing what we would describe as a brand preference of someone who drives one car, changing them to drive a different brand of car, we’re looking to change that fundamental behavior of actually driving the car and converting them to ride a bicycle instead. Or in other health arenas, things like quitting smoking or eating healthier, etc.

ROB: Perfect. Is that something you’ve actually engaged in? Encouraging people to ride a bike instead of driving a car?

JEFF: Not that one. [laughs] But it’s an example people tend to understand.

ROB: What are some examples, digging a little deeper, of campaigns? You mentioned smoking cessation. There’s probably some other interesting things you’ve worked on. What are some examples?

JEFF: We work from simple behaviors like quitting smoking or not using drugs or not vaping and things like that to more complex behaviors like healthy eating, where we’re actually promoting specific types of foods, specific changes to what they eat, as well as mental health behaviors that are even more complicated – trying to get people to reduce stigma and recognize when to seek help, when to do something about the feelings they’re having, and whatnot.

ROB: Very interesting. You mentioned brand preference; in some cases, I think people think of brand preference as being kind of pliable. Maybe it is just as difficult to change as some health behaviors. How do you think about, or how do your clients even think about, measuring these behaviors over the long term? I imagine the feedback loop on one of your campaigns might be rather long in some cases, given the research required to gather those results. Or maybe there’s something unexpected I’m not thinking of.

JEFF: You’re absolutely right. Behavior change, we usually say you need a couple years at least of consistent campaigning to really see a measurable change. Unfortunately, we don’t have sales data to look at to see what’s happening in real time, so we rely on self-reported surveys and things like that that either our clients perform or that we help them perform to see what people are saying about the behavior.

You do have some interim steps that you can measure on the path to behavior change. Whatever your underlying theory is of what you think is changing in order to change the behavior, such as specific attitudes or beliefs or pieces of knowledge about a behavior, you can measure those, and then those can be pretty predictive of a behavior change later down the line.

ROB: One benefit it seems like you might have in your industry – is the behavior change industry perhaps a little bit more open about what works and what doesn’t than maybe some particular vertical market, like marketing soda or something?

JEFF: I think it’s a double-edged sword there. It’s more open in the sense that you can survive on theory for a longer period of time. In the commercial world, you can have a great theory, but if it doesn’t turn around sales in a quarter, you’re kind of out of luck there. In public health, you can survive on theory for a few years. So that does allow you to explore more options.

But that also allows bad work to remain for a long time. We see that there’s a lot of mistakes and common pitfalls that clients fall into, usually when they work with traditional agencies, that just happen over and over again because it works to sell a product, but it doesn’t work to change a fundamental behavior.

ROB: What about openness in terms of tactics? In some cases you have organizations like the UK’s famous – I may be misattributing it, but their Nudge Unit there. You have probably published research in some cases around behavioral change. How much of your work is synthesizing and adapting those things to a community and to availability of resources versus cooking up something completely out-of-the-box and new?

JEFF: There’s a lot of theory and approaches already within public health behavior change. I think the UK is interesting in that they tend to have movements that occur there within behavior change. 10-15 years ago, they were really social marketing, and then it switched to Nudge, and they seem to all move a little bit more cohesively, maybe because it’s a smaller country.

Here in the U.S., we don’t see as much cohesiveness in the approaches. The latest and greatest CDC strategy or FDA strategy, those do have a big influence on the work, but a lot of states are making decisions for themselves and applying the theories and approaches that they’re comfortable with – everything from states that might still be using hardcore scare tactics like the ’90s in their drug prevention work, all the way to other states that are more open-minded in realizing things like adverse childhood experiences influence how people make decisions about risk behaviors later in life. That’s something that the state of California is really looking at.

You have a really wide range of approaches and comfort level with those approaches. One of the things that we have to do that is kind of unique to our industry is we often have to share some of that education and some of those case studies from other states with potential clients so that they can understand, these are your options. You don’t have to just do the scare tactics. That’s not the only thing out there, and actually it often doesn’t really work.

So, we have to be the experts not just in marketing itself, but in behavior change theory, psychology, sociology, all these things that go into it.

ROB: It sounds like there’s a difference of tactics, a difference of outcomes. Are you seeking cessation? Are you seeking some sort of treatment? Are you just seeking a reduction of use in something that is now legal in certain places? It sounds like you are able to pool that expertise and help – in the ways that many agencies are, but you don’t think about it so much in public health – bring those best practices and learnings from other clients.

That makes me want to pull back and dig in. You’re in a very unique area of focus. I think we’ve done probably 120 or so episodes right now, and we have not been in a conversation with an agency owner who is in public health and behavioral change. You mentioned you’ve been in the agency, at least, for 20 years. Did you start off with that area of focus? How did Rescue come to be?

JEFF: We are definitely a unique agency. I actually started the agency when I was in high school. I was a volunteer for my local health department’s anti-tobacco program. That was a youth program.

They worked with a local agency, and after volunteering for about a year, I noticed that the kids we were reaching, the teenagers we were appealing to, were not current smokers, and they were never going to be smokers, whether we existed or not. These were good kids. They were leaders. They wanted to put this on their college application. There was really no change I could see that we were causing, even though we were successful from the sense that there was a lot of youth involvement and we were doing a lot of things.

Fortunately, we had an advisor at the health department that was also pretty savvy in terms of youth culture. I like to joke that she was a break dancer when she was in high school, and she was maybe 7 years older than me. So, she was still pretty connected with what high risk youth culture might look like versus low risk youth culture. I said, “Why are we spending all our money on these youth?” She was open to allowing me to move from being a volunteer to being a contractor to start to provide some of these services that would change who the program appealed to.

That continued for the next year or so in high school, and very quickly we started to innovate in a way that just wasn’t happening in public health, particularly with teens. That turned into a lot of referrals. While I was in college, we grew a lot through referrals and got our first office when I was in college and things like that. So, we really grew organically, and from Day 1 have been exclusively focused on public health.

ROB: What does the team look like today? What are some of the scale points and key hires to where the team of the agency is now?

JEFF: Today we have about 175 employees, six offices around the country. We are the largest marketing agency in San Diego, but most San Diego businesses can’t hire us. [laughs] Our work, though, is spread around the country. We don’t have a specific geographic footprint. There’s not one place where our clients are clustered. We work with about 30 different states and with the federal government, with the FDA, as well as Veterans Affairs and others.

Some of the big scale points that have occurred – there’s been a few. The biggest one was about 7 years ago, when we were about 40 or 50 people at the time and we won a contract with the FDA to do youth tobacco prevention. That contract was a $150 million contract for an agency of 50 people. We very quickly grew thanks to that contract. We brought on our CEO, Kristin Carroll (who’s still with us today), at that time, who helped us grow quickly. Within a matter of 3 years, we went from about 50 people to 150 people.

But in that time, we’ve continued to grow with other clients as well. Some other notable wins are the California Department of Health’s nutrition campaign as well as some other states that have brought on larger contracts.

ROB: You mentioned that many San Diego businesses probably can’t work with you. Does that reflect a change in the overall deal size that you’ve pursued?

JEFF: No, no, that’s just mainly because we don’t do commercial marketing. You have to be a public health oriented campaign. We work with the local county health department, we work with the local school district, and we also work with the district attorney’s office. So, we work with a lot of local government agencies, but we don’t have any commercial customers here or anywhere else.

ROB: I see. Once many agencies scale, and especially north of 100 people, I think a lot of times they become very focused on just the FDA size deals. How do you manage that different granularity of client size within one organization and not become really fixated on hitting those homeruns?

JEFF: That has definitely been a problem of scaling up. There aren’t that many FDA size deals in our space, so we’re forced to continue our more modest deal size – which we’re very happy with.

But I think the biggest challenge that has occurred is being careful not to try and apply universal lessons to the entire agency. Some things that we do for our largest client don’t necessarily apply to our smallest clients. We’ve gotten in trouble sometimes in starting to do things for our smaller clients the way we do it for our larger clients and then going over budget and overcomplicating things when they don’t need to be. And vice versa, also making sure we don’t get too simple with our biggest accounts. We have to operate in this limited budget standpoint for some of our accounts and then a more open budget to explore different things with our largest accounts.

That’s probably the biggest thing we have to remind ourselves of and be cautious with. Really, we’re operating like two different agencies within one.

ROB: We are chatting here right in the middle of the spring 2020 COVID-19 epidemic. How has that changed your mix of business? Do you have clients that are working within – do you have some stay home campaigns running and that sort of thing as well? I imagine any work you’ve done, you’ve had to learn very quickly.

JEFF: Surprisingly, we haven’t gotten into any stay at home work, mainly because we tend to focus on long-term campaigns so that we can measure these long-term changes. It does affect COVID because a lot of the reasons that people are passing away because of COVID is because of preexisting conditions that we’re trying to prevent with some of our other behaviors. So in a way, they’re all connected.

But when there’s an emergency like this, communications get out pretty quickly and go viral pretty quickly. You don’t really need the traditional long-term campaign to figure it out.

The one thing that has changed the most for us is the production of new creative and new messages. Right now we’re focused almost exclusively on creating animated work and infographics and things like that. Our clients still want to produce the work, still want to put new messages out there. Right now, people are consuming media more than ever before, so we’re still cranking away new stuff.

ROB: That’s excellent. Jeff, you’ve been at this for a little bit; you’ve built the largest agency in San Diego, which is quite a thing. What are some things that you’ve learned along this journey that you might do a little bit differently if you were starting Rescue all over again?

JEFF: There’s so many lessons you learn, but you almost need to learn them in order to grow from them. I think that one of the things that we learned was not to be afraid to say no to an opportunity if that’s not the right opportunity.

I have to teach this lesson to every new business development person we bring on or client service person we bring on. It might feel weird to say no to a small client, but keep in mind that if they don’t have enough funds for us to do a good job, they won’t blame the budget; they will blame us for not doing a good job. And without fail, the smaller the client, the more they ask for.

Oftentimes I’ve seen a lot of agencies get stuck in this world where they are over-servicing smaller accounts to keep them and underservicing their larger accounts, and it’s usually top-heavy. It’s usually more senior people that are servicing these smaller accounts, who are now not able to go out there and pursue bigger work. So, you really have to be careful of the really small accounts holding you down.

ROB: How do you think about positioning and communicating the scope with the small accounts so that their expectations are aligned? Or have you found it’s hard to manage them and you just have to pick the right ones and let someone else have the ones that are going to ask for the full buffet for 5 bucks?

JEFF: We definitely let someone else have those. [laughs] It’s about being transparent upfront and saying, “Look, this is what it takes to do good work, and this is why. These are all the components that need to go into something.”

We have found ways of being able to accept smaller accounts with different strategies. For example, something that’s completely unique to our space is we actually license campaigns. We have about four different preexisting campaigns that governments can license from us and that are reused over and over again across the country.

That has allowed us to open the door to some smaller – not the smallest, but some of the smaller accounts that don’t have the funds to create new campaigns, but do have enough funds to implement a licensed campaigns. That’s something that could never happen in the commercial world; no one would ever want to share anything. But in our space, the government loves to share, and they actually love the reduced risk that comes with knowing this has already run somewhere else.

ROB: Right. I can see you coming with some results, and they can see what the campaign looks like out in the world. They can probably even go and visit and see in some other place how this campaign looks in the wild, which you can’t do, to your point, for most businesses. Maybe you could get away with it in – I don’t know, if you were just serving one lawyer per market, or one plumber, or something crazy like that. But even then, they probably wouldn’t want to share.

JEFF: Right, exactly. There’s so many things that we do here because we are focused on this space that would just not be possible if we were a generalist agency. And that’s part of our argument for potential new clients: look, you can hire your local ad agency that everyone has heard of that has done all the car dealerships and local banks and things like that, or you can hire a specialist in public health. What’s going to happen if you hire a specialist in public health is you’re going to get all this institutional knowledge about how public health marketing is different from commercial marketing and be able to be more effective, more efficient, and have all this research and tools at your disposal.

ROB: Jeff, at 175 people, you’re up above that 150-person Dunbar number that many people talk about as that maximum number of people you can be in relationship with, or people might phrase it differently. How have you thought about structuring, organizing, and persisting culture as you break through dozens and then triple digits and then over 150?

JEFF: We had a pretty strong culture before I knew that company culture was a thing. It comes from the culture being embedded in the work. A lot of times, folks try to put this layer of culture on their organization that doesn’t really have anything to do with anything. That’s where culture tends to fail or feel shallow.

Where culture is really strong and real is where it manifests through the work. For example, one piece of our culture is that we describe ourselves as “responsibly rebellious.” What that means is that we want to push our clients to take risks within a responsible way. That is manifest through a lot of decisions that we make for our clients, things that we present to our clients, ways that we approach how we work with our clients.

Then, when we say that’s a part of our culture, it’s true. It is a part of our work. It’s part of what we do. When we talk about being science-based, we have a giant in-house research team that does presentations for us that is then infused in the creative and in the strategy. So, I think the best way to maintain culture is to just have an identity that is real and that you truly apply every single time you do the work.

ROB: It almost seems like some of the culture would be self-selecting. Not to say that people might not view Rescue as a very attractive place to work, but it seems like an odd company to sign up for unless you have a real interest in messages of public health and in helping people and helping communities. Do you find that in the interview process?

JEFF: Yeah. This millennial generation that’s now dominating our workforce, we are the ideal kind of company to work for. They want to cause social change. They want to have an impact, and we can allow them to have that impact. So, definitely the people that come in are people who have an interest in doing something good with their career.

And that helps. Everybody in the agency wants to have a good outcome from that campaign on a deeper level than just simply delivering for a client.

ROB: That makes sense. Jeff, what’s coming up for Rescue that you are excited about? Or maybe it’s even something in terms of either broad messages that you’re seeing trends in, or even tactically?

JEFF: One thing that’s pretty exciting is that we’re seeing a broad awakening of the underlying lifestyle situations that lead people to choose unhealthy behaviors.

The best example of this is what’s happening in California with the new – California has a Surgeon General for the first time, and she is focused on infusing adverse childhood experience understanding, which is this area of health research that talks about if you had these really, really big things happen to you when you were a kid – things like divorce or a parent dying or domestic violence or mental health in the family, these heavy things – those things set you on a trajectory to take on much higher risks later in life. And if you can embed an understanding of who people are and where they come from in your work, you can be more effective with these populations.

So, an understanding of that, an understanding of mental health, an understanding that people don’t do risky things in isolation. They do them from a complicated equation of everything that’s happened in their life. That was just not existent for the past 20 years, particularly in things like drug and alcohol prevention, where it’s like “people who use drugs are just making a bad choice, they’re just stupid, they’re just bad and they need to be told to stop doing bad things.” [laughs] That’s just not how it works.

It’s really nice that a lot of public health is moving away from that perspective and instead moving towards a deeper understanding of the complexity of human identity.

ROB: Absolutely. It brings to mind for me – you have a responsibility; the messages you’re putting out there are not messages for any particular – you probably work with governments of every political party possible.

JEFF: That’s right.

ROB: But we live in a world where – what you’re saying even hearkens back to partisan politics. How do you think about putting messages out into the world that have to transcend politics and party?

JEFF: I think we all suffer, across industries, across topics, from talking to ourselves and not understanding someone who’s different.

One of the things I like to say that I feel makes this so different is applied empathy. It’s not just that we have more empathy than someone else, but that we actually apply that empathy to how we create our messages and can articulate, when we’re going to create a campaign for rural men, why that campaign has to be so different from a campaign, for example, for African American women. What is different about their life experience, their attitudes, their worldview, their values that will change the way we communicate to them – but also change what we’re saying.

A great example of this is that we do a ton of tobacco prevention work, still, with teenagers, and you can talk to an alternative teen in an urban area who listens to rock and things like that – you can talk to them about the evilness of the tobacco industry and all the horrible things they’ve done, and they will get fired up. They’ll say, “I don’t want to support an industry that’s destroying the world and manipulating people.” So, you can motivate them not to smoke just by talking about the tobacco industry to them.

But then you take a rural teen, a country teen who maybe is a younger version of the right side of our political spectrum, and you talk to them about the tobacco industry and it just doesn’t even faze them. They’re like, “Well, that’s their right as a company and you have the right to choose what you’re going to do, whether you do that behavior or not. It’s all about personal responsibility.”

If you don’t know that difference and if you don’t know that they are processing information differently and caring about different things, then you’re just speaking to yourself. You’re just speaking about what you care about. And that can apply to so, so many different things. Within politics, its’ so interesting to see people just yell within their bubbles about things that they care about and are baffled by why no one else cares about them or why the other side doesn’t care. All you have to do is just spend a little bit of time on the other side and you’ll understand why they don’t care about what you’re talking about.

ROB: It’s a great thought for all of us on meeting people where they are instead of where we think they are. Jeff, when the audience wants to get in touch with you and with Rescue, where should they look for you? Where should they find you?

JEFF: Yeah, definitely. Rescueagency.com is our website. There’s contact information there for different folks. But also, if you’re just interested in what I was talking about and learning more about public health marketing and behavior change and things like that, we have a pretty robust YouTube channel, youtube.com/rescueagency. Lots of actual workshops and videos that we’ve done explaining our approach and research and some examples of the work.

ROB: Perfect. Jeff, thank you for joining us. Thank you for the thoughtful work that you do. We’re grateful for it, and look forward to a lot more of it in the future. Congrats on all the success.

JEFF: Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Keith Perhac is the Founder of SegMetrics, a once-upon-a-time marketing agency that pivoted from marketing services to a suite of analytical and reporting products. Today SegMetrics builds and refines digital testing and tracking tools that provide marketers with critical information on where “leads come from, how they act, and how much a marketing program is really worth.”

In this interview, Keith explains that KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) tell a company if it is doing something better or worse than at some time in the past. However, KPIs are about averages – they do not explain what is wrong or right – or what action to take next. Keith says it is important to look at the outliers, follow your leads through their entire customer journey, and dig beyond top-level KPIs to get a deeper understanding of the contribution different components make to a KPI.

Before SegMetrics, Keith worked as a developer at a marketing/development agency in the middle of nowhere Japan. Fed up with long hours, Keith decided to quit to do “something on his own.” He started freelancing, “building awesome software” for great marketers, including Ramit Sethi, author of I Will Teach You to Be Rich. Keith claims Ramit taught him most of what he knows about marketing. Back then, agencies built their own metrics and testing tools.

Ramit’s focus on data, customer experience, and the customer journey brought a new dimension to Keith’s understanding of marketing: He had to go back to his college psychology lessons on “how people think.” How could a company measure every touchpoint, every experience? How could it split-test design or copy position? What could it do to test whether people were converting?

Keith’s agency focused on expediting client launches and optimizing their marketing funnels. Keith says that, often, the biggest value the agency provided was in pointing out customer journey disconnects, fragmentation, and “holes” in funnels. The launches were exciting . . . the retainers not so much. Still, the agency expanded to twelve employees in four countries. 

During a two-week period of client-free downtime, Keith’s team built the software that is the foundation of SegMetrics today. A month-and-a-half later, the product launched. Keith intended to transform the agency to a product-oriented company over time and as the product increased in popularity. Didn’t happen. The product did not “take off” until three years later, when they started a SegMetrics marketing campaign . . . and shut down the agency. Skillsets, tools, the business model, and staffing needs changed overnight.

Today, SegMetrics provides done-for-you services, facilitates client agency onboarding, and offers a lot of customer support for its software. The biggest challenge is educating agencies that “think they already know what they know.” Keith is believes that setting up solid tracking and UTM implementation is critical for understanding where to best spend marketing dollars. An Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) is simple URL-linked code that generates Google Analytics.)

Keith discusses the impact of Covid-19 on various business segments . . . and highlights the surprising number and kinds of businesses that are seeing tremendous business growth. While brick-and-mortar companies have suffered, Keith has seen increased traffic for companies providing entertainment, digital media, telecommunications, online information products, and Masterclasses.

SegMetrics is releasing its first printed book this May: The 90-Minute Guide to Building Marketing Funnels That Convert. The book will be available on Amazon. Keith can be contacted throughs his company’s website at: segmetrics.io and on Twitter (Keith Perhac).

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I am your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Keith Perhac. He is the Founder of Segmetrics, based in Portland, Oregon. Welcome to the podcast, Keith.

KEITH: Thanks so much for having me.

ROB: It’s excellent to have you here. Keith, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your own journey and how that landed you into Segmetrics?

KEITH: It was a long journey, as I think many listeners’ journeys were. I started out working as a salaryman in middle-of-nowhere, Japan as a marketer. Or not as a marketer, as kind of a developer and working at a standard marketing/development agency. That continued on for a while. The company got acquired; I decided I don’t like working until 2 a.m. every night, and I’d prefer to do something on my own.

I ended up leaving that and started out freelancing and doing work for a couple of marketers that were not very well-known at the time. Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You to Be Rich and a couple of other people. It grew and ballooned from there.

It was interesting, because my journey was not, “Oh, I’m going to go start an agency.” It was more falling into that agency. I started out as a freelancer and then I got too busy, and it’s like, I’ve got to bring on a subcontractor, and then I’ve got to bring on another one, and then there’s more clients who want to work with me, and okay, now I have five people working with me. Oh, now I need to start doing events, and now I have 12 people working for me in multiple countries.

So, it just grew organically from “I just like building awesome software and working with great marketers” to “Now we have a team of 12 people over four countries and we’re working with clients all over the globe.” That was a shift. [laughs]

ROB: [laughs] That’s quite a shift. Across the world, across industries. So many different shifts there.

KEITH: Yeah.

ROB: I would imagine going through that I Will Teach You to Be Rich phase – people may have heard of Ramit now. From a marketing perspective, were they numbers-driven? Is that part of your story?

KEITH: Yeah, he’s always been super numbers-driven. Honestly, working with him was probably the highlight of my career and probably where I learned the most stuff about marketing because it really was trial by fire.

This was back in the day when there really wasn’t a lot of marketing technology out there. We look at things like automated webinars now, or we look at things like proof, to have a little pop-up to say, “So-and-so just bought . . .” None of this existed back then. There were no metrics except what you could calculate yourself. Google Analytics was around, but it wasn’t very good. Split testing tools – all of the stuff that we take for granted now, we had to build ourselves.

Ramit’s always been a marketer who has been very into the data and very into the experience that customers are having and that people are going through. So the whole idea of how we can measure every touchpoint, every experience that people have and then take that and do something with that, whether that’s a split test on design, whether that’s positioning for copy, whether that’s a little pop-up that says “So-and-so just bought . . .,” what are the things that we can do to test and see if people are converting or not?

This all sounds like standard hat now; it wasn’t back then. And we were also in a compressed timeline where it’s like, “Hey, we want to have this up by Wednesday and it’s Tuesday evening.” [laughs] It really was a trial by fire. I had had some marketing background, mainly dev and design, and then suddenly I got thrown into this world of, “You have to understand the marketing, how people think.” I used a lot of my psychology background and stuff that I learned in college that I thought, “I’m never going to use this again,” and now that’s front and center with how people react to pages, how people interact with sites and copy and design, and then being able to test and improve that.

It’s really crazy. It was just constant. I think we worked with him for 5 years. That sounds about right. But it was a small team. He had just launched the second version of his first product, and I think there were five of us. It was pretty amazing.

ROB: That sounds like quite an adventure, and quite a journey for him, his brand, and probably you along the way. I think you have talked a lot about numbers, about KPIs, and things that people get right and people get wrong about KPIs. What are some of the goods and bads of KPIs?

KEITH: There’s a lot of cargo culting in marketing, for good and bad. I think that KPIs are something that have been pushed for so long that people, rightly so, are like, “KPIs are important. They’re our key performance indicator. If we don’t know these, then we’re not going to be able to improve our marketing.” That’s what I hear over and over, especially when we were doing the consulting with the agency, and especially now that we’re a KPI-driven company. People are always like, “What KPIs do I need to look at to improve my marketing?”

The answer is you don’t, because KPIs are key performance indicators. They indicate whether the company is doing well or not, or whether a marketing funnel is doing well or not. It’s a measure like your speedometer, or I guess the engine heat gauge on your car. If the number is going down or up, you know you’re doing something wrong or right. But just looking at that number is not going to let you know what to do next.

That’s why we’re really big into looking at outliers. When you look at a KPI, you’re looking at an average. Let’s say you have 200 people coming into a funnel. You have 100 people coming in from Google, you have 100 people coming in from Facebook. The 100 people from Google convert at 100%. Every single person purchases. No one purchases from Facebook. What’s your KPI for your conversion rate? It’s 50%. That’s great. But that didn’t tell you that you have one audience that’s making all the money and one audience that’s making none of it. So, you know what to do at that point. You either get rid of the Facebook ads or you figure out why they’re not converting.

Looking at that top level KPI – and this is what most people think of when they think of the KPIs – it doesn’t let you know anything other than, is the business continuing to do better or worse than it was yesterday or last month? It doesn’t tell you those outliers, which is what you actually need to look at if you’re going to improve.

ROB: That’s interesting what you mentioned on outliers. Especially when you’re talking about looking at traffic from Google, some traffic from Google you can do more quickly in terms of ads. Some traffic you can do more slowly, maybe, in search. And sometimes you don’t know – without a proper indicator of search traffic, there may not be any more traffic for you to get.

KEITH: Right.

ROB: All of that is context, I think, for what makes a good number and what makes a good KPI. What are you seeing in terms of maybe some unexpected outliers? We are in this moment where many of us are sheltering at home. We are in the middle of this coronavirus outbreak and trying to take care of each other and other people in our world by staying home. What are some of the shifting outliers you’ve seen in this mode?

KEITH: This has been super interesting because some of the things that I predicted would go down and fail have not, and some of the things that I thought would do great have not. Obviously, anything with a physical aspect to it has done poorly. Anything where you have to go do sales in person or you’re running a brick-and-mortar shop, those places are really struggling right now. It’s very difficult.

We’ve had a number of clients in those spaces – we had some dog trainers that are not able to do their work anymore. We had some construction places that aren’t able to do their work anymore. There’s a lot of places like that. That was I think an assumption that everyone had.

Entertainment, digital media has gone way up, which has been really interesting. I think everyone kind of assumed that as well. Netflix is killing it. Telecommunications, of course – Zoom, we’ve all heard what’s going on there, but that’s been crazy. There’s all these new telecommunications companies coming out of the woodwork because working from home is the new normal. I think both of those, people knew that that was coming.

The one that’s been really interesting to me, though, is online info products, especially higher tier ones, because I expected that people have less money, they have less disposable income; they’re not going to be dropping $300, $500, $1,000 on info products and learning products. And I was wrong. Across the board, we’ve seen most niches of info products actually increasing in sales.

Masterminds are increasing. A lot of events that have gone virtual, those are all improving. Specific niches – like I have a friend who is in the jobs space, and that of course has gone down because no one’s going to work. But most places for general online learning have been increasing, and it’s been very interesting to see that.

ROB: Very interesting. I’m getting bombarded with ads for ClassPass – not ClassPass, rather, but Masterclass. ClassPass is probably having a hard time with their gym passes.

KEITH: Right. [laughs]

ROB: Masterclass for sure. So, it’s interesting to hear those trends. When we look a little bit at your journey, Keith, talk about the transition from agency world to product world a little bit more. Was that a gradual transition, and one day you just realized where you wanted to be? Or was there a very decisive moment where you threw a switch?

KEITH: It’s a little bit of both, to be honest. I’m kind of risk-averse, I guess I would say. We were probably 6 years into the agency at this point, and our whole thing was we help people with launches, we help people optimize their marketing funnels. So, we’re dealing with clients who, when they do a launch, they do $5-12 million launches. We bust our butts, and it’s really rough, and then we see the same retainer, the same pay rate for that client that we do for any other client. So, we help make a $10 million launch and then we’re just sitting there at the same point.

After doing a number of these, we got to the point where we were like, “We know all the parts of this; why can’t we do this for ourselves?”, as I think many people do. We’re a bunch of developers. We really like developing, and we had done the marketing, so we said, “Why don’t we try to build our own software?” We had about two weeks of downtime where we knew we weren’t going to have any client work, and we said, “We’re going to sit down for two weeks and build this thing.”

And we did. We launched it I think a month and a half later, because building it and launching it are two completely different things, and it was always something that we were going to continuously work on in order to improve, and eventually that was going to take over the revenue for the agency. We were going to slowly transition from agency work to working on Segmetrics as it became more popular.

We jumped up, we had really good MRR [Monthly Recurring Revenue] in the first month, and then it just plateaued for the next 3 years. [laughs] We didn’t really lose any MRR; we didn’t really gain any MRR. It just kind of sat there, and occasionally we’d fix things, but there was no focus on it. This was the main problem that we had for many years, which was “We have this great piece of software that we’re using internally for all our customers, but how do we focus on it?”

Focusing on the software is easy because we’re all developers. Focusing on the marketing is harder because marketing is not something that you can sit down for an hour or two hours and bang out. Marketing is an overall idea and understanding of your customers. There’s customer research. There’s a lot of that goes into it. What we were finding was we couldn’t make the time to do it.

ROB: I think many services firms have that challenge. It’s sort of the “cobbler’s children have no shoes” scenario. How do you look at turning that corner? What started to unlock for you? Because that’s a problem even for any given agency, I think.

KEITH: Yeah, definitely. Just look at most agency websites. They don’t usually build them internally because they don’t have the time or the energy, or it makes more sense to go work on client work. Back when I was a salaryman, we actually had a group of five agencies and we were all friends with each other, and we would build each other’s websites. We’d hire each other to build the other one’s website because we weren’t going to do it ourselves. [laughs]

So, we tried a number of things. If you know 37signals, who did Basecamp, they were an agency originally. They’re probably the unicorn of that agency turning into a SaaS company. They did the Fridays. They said, “We don’t do any client work on Fridays, and we’re only going to work on our own stuff.” We tried that; that didn’t really work. We tried “After 3:00, we’re not going to work on client stuff.” That didn’t work.

We tried a lot of different things, and we never really were able to get any traction on any of them. I think that a lot of it was just mental, because it’s things like – let’s take the Friday for example. We worked really hard on clients Monday through Thursday; now we’re going to work on our own stuff, and we’re just exhausted from 4 days of working on client stuff. And then we also need to reset and say, “Where were we last Friday when we left off?” So, there’s this huge gap of what we did then, what the priorities are, if the priorities have shifted. Half the day is then essentially wasted getting back up to speed on what we were doing last week.

We had the same problem with doing afternoons. After 3:00, we would work on our own stuff, or after 2:00 or whenever we decided to make that break, and the issue was for the entire morning, we’re focused on a very input-output type of work style. Client says, “I need these six things,” we produce those six things, we know the agency has made six things’ worth of money. It’s a very transactional idea.

Being able to translate from that into “Okay, now we need a marketing campaign. When are we doing this marketing campaign?” “I don’t know, we need to figure it out” – going from this transactional to this creative side of things was very difficult for everyone.

Those were really the two main challenges we had. How do you shift from a transactional mindset with the agency and with client work to an almost blue-sky, “We don’t know what the answer is here”? usually when we’re working with clients, they have a strong readership, they have a strong brand. They’ve gotten to a certain point where we are iterating on a foundation that they’ve made. But we’re now having to build that foundation from scratch.

Starting over from that and not knowing where to go, and to have to spend that time to do it, was very difficult, making that mental shift every day or every week.

ROB: You knew yourself as a customer. You knew what you needed. You built technology to do what you needed. But it seems like there was probably a stage of getting to know your own customer better, which we all need to do. How did you take the steps to get to know that customer well enough to speak their language and really market well to them?

KEITH: Lots of customer calls is honestly the only way. We talked with our agency friends, got on calls with them. Made it very obvious that they weren’t sales calls, but essentially saying, “Hey, I want to show you this. What is the value for you?” We knew what the value for us was. We knew what the values for our customers was as an agency. But one thing we’ve learned is that every single marketer is different, and every single marketer wants different things, and they all have it set up differently. Honestly, that’s the most painful thing out of all of it.

We take something simple like recurring payments – there’s 101 ways to set up recurring payments for a product. Maybe it’s an invoice that gets an extra payment on it. Maybe it’s multiple invoices. Maybe it’s not even called an invoice, but a recurring – there’s just so many things that come in, and everyone has set them up differently, even within similar systems. This was the first time where we realized, oh crap, everyone’s doing something different; we need to figure out how to support everyone in a single bucket.

So yeah, it was just talking with a lot of agencies. A lot of the things we ran into with the agencies were not actually technical at all. They were more like, “This is great. I really want to start using this. We don’t have the time to set this up. We just signed up for someone else who does something similar, and it’s been sitting there for 3 months because no one has the time to do anything with it.”

ROB: Even with one of the simple things that you were involved in with Segmetrics, when I see lead tracking – we actually had an experiment we did with some agencies that we know involving simple things: how do you get very regimented about your UTM tracking, and how do you do this right? Can you get involved in publishing content and ads and whatnot so that it’s easier to close the loop on a transaction? Everybody does it differently. Some people say “That’s not important to me”; some people say “That’s confusing.” And yet I know myself, coming from an engineering background, there’s a part of me that screams out and says, “Don’t you see? This is a really good way to do things.” [laughs]

One thing I notice when I look at your product platform and some of the things that it does – and we don’t talk a lot about products on this podcast, but I think it’s worth reflecting on, especially from your background. I see this different DNA of how to efficiently run an agency well. You want to know when someone’s not paying you. You know that talking to a client every week, giving them feedback on what you’ve done for them every week, can be a good practice to do that a lot of people don’t get around to.

How do you strike that balance of the stuff you feel like you strongly know somebody should do and whether or not they’re ready to do it? I think we all have those things we feel like we ought to do. We ought to eat our vegetables, but we’re not ready to, business-wise or at dinner.

KEITH: It’s rough. You know the old saying: you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. There’s a number of things that we want people to do. There’s a number of things that we want people to think of when they’re doing analytics. The only thing we can do is really educate them.

We produce a lot of content about teaching people how to market. We have onboarding calls and we have hand-holding, done-for-you services and stuff. But the education side, especially when you’re targeting agencies, is tough because they think they already know what they know. That’s one of the biggest issues I think we have, which is we want to teach people that you should really use UTM values, and they’re like, “We haven’t used them up until now and we’ve been doing fine.” I’m like, “Well…”

It’s funny because I think the biggest hurdle we have is getting people’s tracking set up correctly – installing the snippet, making sure those ad IDs and those UTMs are installed. We have a number of customers who are more technical, and they have literally perfect analytics. 100% attribution of every single click, and it is beautiful. I love it. And then I work with some people and I’m like, “None of your ads are set up correctly.” They’re like, “Oh, we threw it over to the ad guy and he never set it up.” It’s just so frustrating; it’s been like 3 weeks, and why have they not added this ad snippet in?

It’s just very frustrating that because I’m technical and I understand the technology of how the web and marketing on the web works, I consider it a foregone conclusion that these are the things you need to do to set up. What I’m realizing is that a lot of marketers do not understand how the internet works and how marketing on the internet works.

I think this is a difference of marketing now versus marketing 10 years ago, when you had to build everything yourself. Most people just see, “I have this landing page builder, I slap in this iframe, and then I’m good to go,” because from their perspective, it works. But that’s not actually how anything is working, and there’s a lot of magic going on in the background that they can’t see and they don’t understand as to how it’s actually working. As long as it’s working for them, they’re like, “Everything’s good.” But then something breaks and they have no idea why.

We had one customer we were looking at and they weren’t getting – and this is amazing, I think, with the software. This is also what we found when we did the agency stuff. The biggest value we provided to new customers was telling them where the holes were in their funnel. And sometimes these holes were not like, “Not many people are clicking on this.” It was “This campaign is not hooked up to anything” or “Your webinar is not sending in any leads to your marketing, so you have 5,000 leads that have never gotten an email from you.” We find this all the time, and it’s so frustrating. It’s so frustrating, both for them and for us.

ROB: You’ve dialed in with being able to lead a horse to water. The follow-on from that we don’t think about as much is really that you learn this often in relationships. You can’t change people for the most part, but you can be there and help them and be helpful to them when they make a decision to change. It seems like that’s a lot of times what marketing around this kind of product can be.

I think there’s an interesting thread I want to pull on here. You mentioned your own agency making a transition into a product and 37signals making a transition into a product. What do you think it is, perhaps – and maybe you’ve seen some other examples – that is in the DNA of an agency that makes it possible for them to make a jump into product? I think a lot of agency owners want to, and even spend a little bit of their engineering bench time to build something, but there is a wide chasm to cross past that. What do you think makes it work?

KEITH: I don’t know exactly, and that’s because I don’t think that we were able to make it work while we were an agency. But I think that you can’t look at the product as a side hustle. It has to be part – we did not really start growing Segmetrics until we decided, “Hey, we’re shutting down the agency. We’re going to start moving everyone off and we’re going to focus on this full-time.”

It wasn’t like we fired all the clients that day, but we made a very distinct decision that “We are not focusing on getting new clients. As client contracts are over, we’re not going to renew them and we’re just going to keep going down this path of software because that’s where we want to go as the agency.”

It has to be buy-in from everyone. We had some people who either did not or could not make that transition mentally, or didn’t want to, and that’s fine. But if we were to keep those people on and we were to keep going half-kilter at it, we were never going to succeed, because we had done the half-kilter thing for 3 years and it just doesn’t grow like that. You have to be all-in. Or at least have that all-in as the final goal.

ROB: Were there some roles that were more or less receptive to the transition than others?

KEITH: Yes. I think there were some roles, but also just some people because of the way that – we were talking about that transactional idea where a client says “Do this,” you work for an hour, you complete that, the client is happy, and you know that you made the agency 1 hour’s worth of money. With software, it’s completely different. You could work for 8 hours and not produce anything because it was the wrong thing, or even if you did something awesome and everyone’s happy, it doesn’t actually result in any money. That was a very hard mental thing that was not role-specific, but a mental thing that needed to be addressed.

One of the harder ones was account managers, because as an agency, you have to have an account manager, and only now are we starting to go back into account managers in Segmetrics because we just didn’t need them. We needed support people, but that’s very different than an account manager. We couldn’t afford to have an account manager for every single customer that we had, especially when a customer is paying you $100-200 instead of $5,000 a month. It doesn’t make sense at that scale.

It was interesting, because I thought support was going to be very similar to account management, and it is not. It’s a very different skillset. You need very different tools, and getting a new support person, getting support to work with Segmetrics was very difficult just because it was so different than anything we had done before.

ROB: As you were talking about the account size required to support an account manager, it made me think of another example of what we’re talking about here of an agency transitioning into a tech company, which was MailChimp. MailChimp started off as a web design shop and now is this huge, massive email marketing platform with hundreds and hundreds of people onboard.

When you’re charging $20 bucks a month for email marketing, you can’t put an account manager on that. You can hardly spend an hour on them. But you can scale support. Support is a process of scale, I would argue, largely of consistency, of knowing when something needs to be escalated and when it doesn’t, where the answers are, and how to help people find the answers. That may be overly simple. You probably have a better pulse on it than I do here. How would you distinguish it?

KEITH: I think that’s exactly right. It’s very different than an account manager, where it’s not about necessarily solving the issue directly, where support is, but more of that overall keeping in touch and relationship with them. It’s more of an emotional thing than support is.

ROB: Keith, what is coming up for Segmetrics and perhaps for broader marketing that you’re excited about? We all need some things to be excited about in these moments, and I think many of us are finding them. What’s exciting you?

KEITH: Going outside at some point. [laughs] Being over quarantine would be great. Man, that’s a hard question because there’s so many things that I want to do and that we’re working on that excite me.

One personal thing that I’m excited about with Segmetrics is that we’re actually releasing our first paper book in May, and I just got the proof for it yesterday, so I’m pretty excited about that. It’s something that we’ve been working on for – even from the agency days, I had originally done a video course that never got produced, and we decided, “Hey, this is some great content. We really need to put this together into a book.” So, I’ve been writing that for a while. Really happy about that.

Overall, with Segmetrics, I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m excited about next. The long, slow SaaS ramp of death I think is what they call it, and I think we’re right in the middle of that right now. I have a list of features and new things and new ideas that we’re super excited about, but it’s just doing them. It’s out of that exciting, blue sky phase and more into the “Okay, time to put our pedal to the metal and actually get this stuff done.”

One thing that we did that I’m happy about is – I think I mentioned that we’re bringing some account managers back, and what we decided to do is start working with agencies and companies that are signing up and providing them an account manager and getting them set up and having someone come in and configure all their campaigns and do all that. That’s something I’m excited about that’s hopefully going to be kicking off at the end of this month.

ROB: Excellent. And where do we find your book when your book is available?

KEITH: The book will be on Amazon. We’re probably also going to have it on the site, but it’s going to be on Amazon. It’s called The 90-Minute Guide to Building Marketing Funnels That Convert.

ROB: Excellent. That sounds very practical and like something we all need to think about.

KEITH: I read a lot of marketing books. I read a lot of business books, and I always hate that they’re really fluffy. They’re also only half the size they need to be. I was talking to a friend about this who’s a writer, an author in the industry, and I said I was reading Ryan Holiday’s book – I’m trying to remember what the name of it was – and I’m like, “It was great up until the halfway point and then he started repeating the same stories. It was like he was rehashing the first half of the book.”

He’s like, “Well yeah, a book has to be 175 pages. It cannot be shorter than that. If you only have enough content for half, the publisher will say, ‘Write a second half that’s just rehashing it.’” I hate that.

ROB: Was this The Obstacle Is the Way or one of those?

KEITH: No, I think it was his first main one that he did. I can’t for the life of me remember which one it is. But I’ve always hated that, and I’ve always hated the extra – I like the stories because you have to get emotionally involved and you have to have a connection with the reader, but at the same time, at some point I just want to know “these are the six things you need to do, these are why they work, and here’s my experience with them.”

So that’s what I’ve really tried to do with this book, is really put it down into “here’s the theory, here’s the reasons, here’s what you need to do.” Hopefully it’ll do that.

ROB: Keith, when people want to find you and Segmetrics, where should they go to track you down?

KEITH: Segmetrics is segmetrics.io. We’re also on Twitter. I am Keith Perhac, also on Twitter. I am literally the only Keith Perhac in the world that I know of, so it’s very easy to find me. And if you search far enough on Google, you will find things that I am still trying to bury 20 years later. [laughs]

ROB: [laughs] We won’t put those in the show notes.

KEITH: Good, good. That’s the problem with having a very unique name. You can never escape Google.

ROB: Understood. Keith, thank you for coming on the podcast.

KEITH: Thank you so much for having me.

ROB: All the best for you and your team. Be well.

KEITH: Definitely.

ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Brian Lawson and his brother left their jobs in engineering, IT, and software development to found WebMO (Web Marketing Optimizer), a digital marketing agency. From the beginning, they focused on optimizing organic visibility/SEO and doing Google search ads, not just studying digital marketing tactics, strategies, and analysis, but digging into the “behind the scenes” mechanics. Today, WebMO is heavily data-driven, does everything digital marketing, and serves a large number of diverse and predominantly small-businesses nationwide.

WebMO’s “super-detailed” understanding of Google Analytics, conversion tracking, visitor engagement metrics, and the conversion heuristic enables the agency to fully understand clients’ market spaces. Over the years, the agency built their own analytical tools. The combination of three major Google data points – Google Analytics, a company’s Google Search Console data, and the data compiled in a company’s Google my Business listing – provides a clear understanding of a company’s “true space in the market.”

Education is the beginning of WebMO’s relationship with its clients. Brian loves to break down complicated technical concepts. He is used to speaking to groups of people, and loves running free workshops to help business owners understand complex concepts. As a result of this proactive training, WebMO became a Google Partner. When Google introduced the Grow with Google program, which encourages small business organizations, chambers of commerce, public libraries, agencies, and other organizations to participate in live feed educational workshops, WebMO was on board. Because of the huge number of people who have gone through WebMO’s workshops, Google recognizes the agency as a “high impact partner.” 

Education on how Google works, Brian says, “is absolutely critical.” After defining a client’s market space, the agency evaluates the client’s unique situation, and then makes recommendations.

Because Brian’s agency works with smaller companies with smaller budgets, “testing” the market and quantifying the response works well. Instead of spending thousands of dollars for a huge campaign, the clients may spend a few hundred. WebMO is then able to quickly show them the ROI on that investment. Brian says, “If it’s going to fail, fail fast and fail cheap.”

Covid-19 changed the agency’s operations. Although WebMO has been unable to meet with clients in person, it continues its educational outreach through weekly updates. Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Yelp are constantly tweaking their policies . . . WebMO is working to keep clients aware of these changes. One of Brian’s more recent presentations covered “how to look at Google Trends to truly understand the impact that this [Covid-19] situation is having on your business.”

Brian explains that Covid-19 has affected businesses in several different ways. Companies that provide such things as bartending services for parties are devastated. For other companies, like air conditioning repair companies and plumbers, it’s business as usual. For the last category, exemplified by companies that sell cleaning supplies, provide in-home nanny services, and medical professionals who are still working, traffic has gone “off the charts.”

In addition to having its own clients, WebMO partners with agencies that need an invisible number cruncher. When asked what he would have done differently when he started his agency, Brian said, he should have been “a little quicker to respond to where our clients were probably needing us most.” He seems to be doing that now.

Brian can be reached on his agency’s website at: www.web-mo.com

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Brian Lawson, Owner and Co-founder of WebMO, based in Tucson, Arizona. Welcome to the podcast.

BRIAN: Hey, thanks, Rob. I appreciate you having me on.

ROB: Brian, it’s great to have you. Why don’t you start off by telling us about WebMO and what makes WebMO great?

BRIAN: Awesome. We are, as you mentioned, a Tucson, Arizona based digital marketing agency. I’ve always introduced our company as being a little different than quite a few others in our space because of our backgrounds. The co-founders, myself and my brother, come from a much different background than the typical marketing agency background. A lot of times people that provide the types of services that we provide, like websites and digital marketing and SEO and Google and YouTube and Facebook and all that, tend to come from either the design world or sometimes a traditional marketing background.

Our backgrounds were in engineering, IT, software development, all those things. So, from the very beginning, we started approaching all of these digital marketing tactics and strategies and analysis with a much greater emphasis on the machinery, the real techy stuff that’s lingering behind the scenes. You think about Google as one example; Google’s a company that has 20,000 engineers and 300 designers.

So, taking that real math-based, almost “super nerd” approach, if you want to think about it that way, is a good way to approach it given the kind of issues we’re dealing with. We tend to be – again, compared to most – a little more data-driven, a little more analytical. We definitely tend to be sometimes a little skeptical of other things that some others in our industry are saying. That gave us the foundation for a very unique and somewhat successful agency.

ROB: It sounds like that would also shape the sort of client who comes to you and resonates with you. What sort of clients are drawn to and resonate with this approach?

BRIAN: We have a pretty large variety of clients, which thankfully serves us well when things in the market go up or down. We don’t really specialize in any one kind. We have some larger end clients that pretty much just engage our services purely for the data analysis part of what we do. We’re one of the few agencies who have a complete understanding of all the things going on with Google Analytics and conversion tracking and embracing some of the math that’s in our industry, like visitor engagement metrics or the conversion heuristic. We really get super detailed on that.

But interestingly, that overall idea is also very appealing to a small business. If you’re a house painter and you’ve been through multiple agencies so far and no one’s really been able to figure it out, when they hear that story, it’s like, “Whoa, these guys are super into this stuff and they’re really technical and analytical.” In a way, it gives that client a reason to believe that maybe this time will be different.

Our industry, digital marketing, is old enough now to where most businesses out there have had at least one or two or more experiences with other efforts, and most of them haven’t been exactly what they were hoping for. So as an agency – and I would say this to any agency – one of the things you have to really get out there for a client is a reason to believe that this time, things will be different.

For us, it’s that. It’s our unique value proposition, that idea that we’re going to take a closer look at the data, but because we have this deep level of understanding of how this stuff works, we’re going to find a way to get things happening that maybe weren’t happening before.

Now, on top of that, I also happen to be a business owner, and I have been a business owner for 30 years, so when I’m talking to another business owner, it’s like, “Oh yeah, you get it. You understand.” So a lot of our clients – I’d say the majority of them – definitely fall into the small business category, with a few exceptions being some of those higher end companies that want to bring us in for the analytics side of things.

ROB: Very interesting. What sort of toolkit do you bring to bear on that analytics problem? I think people look at tools all the time, and often having right thinking is much more important than the tools, but having good execution is also helpful along those lines. What’s your go-to?

BRIAN: We’ve actually done a lot of in-house compilation things, if you want to think about it that way. We’re very heavy on the technical side. We have a team of 23 people total, very heavy on the techy side. A lot of developers and programmers. Because of our background being software developers/app developers, we really didn’t have to rely on finding third party solutions to do most of what we do. We were able to grow them from the ground up.

One example is, for instance, if you’re trying to analyze a company’s visibility. Let’s say you’ve got a local PC repair guy, whatever, and they want to really understand how they’re doing online. We rejected this idea of rank reports way before everyone else did. Even when we entered into this business probably close to 10 years ago, we immediately looked at that model and said, “This doesn’t make any sense.” Clients were getting these reports that said “Hey, you’re #3 on this term and #6 on that term,” and it all seemed so useless, honestly.

Clients were already saying it was useless because they were looking at these reports and saying, “Whatever. Yeah, you found that I’m #3 if I type this exact phrase or whatever; what good does that do me? What do I get? Am I going to get a prize for this? What’s the reward?” So we almost right out of the gate rejected that model and said rank reports are about useless, especially when it comes to local visibility.

We started creating our own analysis tools that combined, at the time – and now more than ever, in today’s market – the three major data points in Google, which is the data that’s being accumulated, of course, in Google Analytics, your Google Search Console data, and all the data that’s being compiled in your Google My Business listing. The only way to get a really accurate understanding of your true space in the market is with all three of those data points being combined.

And then taking it a step further – and again, just putting your mind in a small business owner’s frame of mind, they say, “Yeah, I get that I have traffic and I understand that all these people are finding me on these different words and phrases, but again, what does it really mean?” So we’ll look at a market and say, “You are in Phoenix, Arizona; there are 50,000 searches per month, roughly, for people looking for plumbing repair. As a business, you, Mr. Plumber, are visible about 33,000 of those times.” Like I said, compiling all this data. That’s the starting point: understanding your percentage of market share as opposed to just saying, “Hey, you’re showing up in the third spot on this particular search term.”

Then it just goes from there. If you’re going to have any chance of getting a client or winning a new customer, they have to be able to at least see. As a business owner – and of course, we teach them this – the very first question you should be asking is, “How ubiquitous am I? If there’s 50,000 people searching per month, how often am I one of those people that at least appears in front of somebody’s eyeballs?” That’s just one example.

ROB: Absolutely, that makes sense. You talked a little bit about your technical background and your co-founder, your brother’s background, coming into starting this business. But in particular, what was it that made you decide to start this business when you did? How did you go from the technical background to “I am going to start a digital marketing agency”?

BRIAN: It’s interesting. A couple things. We’re serial entrepreneurs, as most business owners tend to be. From early on, from about the early ’90s, about 1991, we had started an IT services company that was pretty much helping businesses with, at the time, the very confusing world of internal LANs and inter-office communication and computer networking and all that, and then branching into internet configuration and everything else.

So, I had a very deep, good long list of local businesses that trusted us for pretty much everything technical. This buildup started happening probably around 2009-2010 with clients saying to us, “Hey, you guys are awesome in helping with all this other stuff, but I can’t find anybody that can explain this to me or help me with this.” Almost getting dragged into it from that standpoint. We were thinking, “That’s interesting, but let’s put a pin in it.”

Meanwhile, again as serial entrepreneurs, we did a tech startup. It was a home-based internet security product. I won’t get into a lot of detail, but we had the old venture capital funding and all that, and we had developed a marketing strategy for that online. And it was good, using a combination of SEO and Google search ads and all the other things. We had it really cooking.

After some investors came in, they basically said, “Hey, you guys are engineers. You guys are probably really good at communicating what you know about your product, but you’re not marketers. You don’t know what you’re doing there. Let’s hand that over to this agency” – it was in New York City, one of the bigger agencies out there. “Let’s let them take care of that part.” We’re like, eh, okay, let’s see what happens.

Sure enough, we watched what they did and we were doing it better. Our results, everything about it was far exceeding what one of the top agencies in the country was doing. So of course, the little lightbulbs go off in our heads, thinking, as soon as this current tech startup is behind us, between the demand that we’re seeing from the boots on the ground, all the people out there that were literally begging us to help them, and combining that with the affirmation that we were truly, truly good at this stuff, our course was set. That was about 10 years ago.

ROB: It’s interesting how oftentimes through that experience in another business, you find out – sometimes it can be wanderlust and you just try to do something different, but in this case you were able to find something that you could do differently and successfully. If I rewind the conversation a little bit, you were talking about some of these rather complex things. I think if you ask a client sometimes to pick an attribution strategy in Google Analytics, their eyes glaze over. It sounds like you have the strength and knowledge to be able to prescribe that for them pretty well.

But marketing also requires going one step further when you’re working for a client and helping them understand. How do you think about helping these owners understand something like attribution when you get to something like beyond first click, last click, even attribution, and you’re trying to tell somebody that an ad gave them 20% of a lead? I think it’d be pretty confusing. How do you think about getting those concepts through to clients?

BRIAN: That’s a great question. Early on, we really embraced this idea of the client relationship model, starting with education. I’ll come back to that in a second, but really making sure that our client is truly educated. We weren’t oblivious to the fact that, for the most part, in our industry, the number one reason why clients drift away is because they make a comment that says something like, “I didn’t know what they were doing.” They honestly didn’t understand what was happening.

So first is education. Then it’s evaluation of their specific situation. Only after that we make specific recommendations as to what they should be doing.

The education side – as it turns out, I love talking about this stuff. I’m a passionate advocate for the entire model of digital marketing. I love getting in front of groups of people and explaining these things. Because of my background working with businesses on the IT side, I spent many, many times in boardrooms and in front of employees from companies, really breaking down very complicated technical things into little anecdotes and analogies and fun ways to think about stuff. So I was always very capable of doing that, and I really truly enjoyed it.

We got way ahead of the curve on that and early on started doing workshops, just free education workshops that would be designed to get business owners understanding this stuff. Because they’re dying for information. Even today, even though our industry is a little bit more mature, still so many business owners are quite oblivious. They really don’t understand even the basics, let alone some of the more complex concepts like you mentioned.

So we hopped on that train big time, and interestingly, it led us – because we’re also what’s considered a Google Partner; we have a Google Partnership status, and about 3 or 4 years ago, Google introduced this program called Grow with Google, where they were encouraging small business organizations, chamber of commerce, public libraries, or whatever to allow Google to do these live feed education workshops. At the time, since we were a partner, they were opening it up to agencies as well, so we started becoming involved in that.

We did that so much that we became the only agency, at least in the state of Arizona, that Google recognized as one of its high impact partners. That was strictly because of the sheer number of people that have gone through our workshops. I know that’s sort of a long roundabout way to answer your question, but yeah, education on that stuff is absolutely critical.

There’s also another element as well. There’s getting a client to the point to know enough to know that they’ll never truly understand it, and then they basically have faith in you at that point. They say, “Okay, I get that it’s really complicated. I don’t think I fully understand it, but I’m fully convinced that you understand it, and as long as at the end of the day I’m seeing results and I see that you’re attentive, that’s really the key.”

ROB: As we were chatting before we started recording, that background you have in doing this education has really helped in the moment that we’re in. We are in the middle of this coronavirus national shutdown, everybody work from home situation. How are you adapting your agency to operate in this new, fully remote environment? What parts of that do you think you might stick with even once we’re all back together in person more often?

BRIAN: That’s a great question. Like we were talking about, I love the live workshop. I thrive in that environment where I can be interactive with people and gauge – if I’m saying something that’s flying right over their heads, I can usually pick that up. So the challenge, for all of us really – and this doesn’t just go for workshops; it goes for meetings, it goes for everything that we’re doing right now – is to try to find a way to offset that disconnect. Like we talked about before, there’s no substitute for that live connection.

That being said, I think there are also some opportunities right now. I think that as of today – I feel like we’re still, sadly, in the early stages of this; we’re hopefully maybe a third of the way through, who knows – but I think after we settle into the new normal and people realize that, “Okay, I’m going to be here a while. I can’t, even if I wanted to in some cases, be as productive as I was before because I can’t do meetings, I can’t do this, whatever. I’m stuck at home, not even driving” – I mean, for some people, an hour or two of their day just opened up because they don’t have to drive cars.

Again, for business owners and for those that are truly entrepreneurial, I think they are going to shift over to this mindset of saying, “You know what? With all this free time, I’m going to use it to make things better. I’m going to finally understand this thing I never really understood before. I’m going to figure out how to program my TV.” Whatever is on their list of things. From a business standpoint, they might actually be more interested in circling back to saying, “When I come out of this, I’ve always wanted to try Facebook ads, but I don’t know how to do it.”

So I think there will be an increase in the number of people that are at least interested in listening to or participating in some form of webinar or podcast. I don’t think we’re there yet; I think people are still in the “I’ve just got to figure out how to work remotely.” But once that settles in, I think there might actually be some opportunity.

Back to your question. We were doing a pretty steady series of live events. We’ve obviously switched those over to all webinars. Even in the month of April that we’re in right now, we’ve allocated every Thursday morning from 9 to 10 a.m. – we’re just doing updates. There’s so much information coming out in waves from Google and Facebook and LinkedIn and Instagram and Yelp, and they’re all offering money this and credits for that and changing their policies. So, we’re allocating that time just to get everyone up to date.

But then we’re also layering in really interesting topics. Like I think the one we’re doing tomorrow is how to look at Google Trends to truly understand the impact that this situation is having on your business. This is something anybody can do. You don’t have to have this high level of analytical skills to go to Google Search Trends and see whether or not people are searching more often for this, less often for that, or about the same. Once you’re looking at that data and saying, “Interesting. People are no longer searching for this; however, they really are searching for that now,” that actually might help you course correct and maybe adapt your strategies a little bit.

So yeah, we’re still 100% all-in on the education side. Obviously switching over to webinar, for better or for worse, and then hopefully getting back to the normal mode once all of this is behind us.

ROB: Are there any interesting examples of the Google Trends shifts you’ve seen on behalf of clients that you might be able to share?

BRIAN: Absolutely. People ask me, “How are you guys doing?” We have such a diverse number of clients that we’re really seeing all three scenarios. We’re seeing some that are just devastated, sadly. We have clients that specialize in providing bartender services for parties and events, and of course, they’re wiped out. Their entire book of business from now through May no longer exists. Our guidance to them is saying all the people that had these events are going to have to reschedule, so even though you’re not finding people that are looking to do it right now, you might find them later.

We have some that are seeing no impact whatsoever. If you’re looking at AC repair or plumbing repair – pipes and air conditioning systems have absolutely no respect for the stay at home orders. If they’re going to break, they’re going to break. They’re not going to wait until everything’s normal, so there’s no reason why there’d be less search on that, and there isn’t. If anything, we’re probably going to start to see a sudden uptick of that. People are home more often, and if you’re in a state like Arizona where it’s going to get into the upper 80s this week, they’re going to be putting stresses on systems that they didn’t really have to before with their kids at home and working from home. So I would expect they may grow a little bit.

The third category of businesses that we work with are actually seeing increases. We have businesses that sell office cleaning supplies. We have businesses that offer nanny services for people that come to their homes and watch their kids. Again, there’s a lot of people that have to go to work. All the people in the medical industry. So there’s an example of a huge uptick. Their website traffic and the amount of leads they’re getting is off the charts.

So we really are in an interesting situation where we get to see all three of those scenarios playing out.

ROB: That’s an interesting mix, and probably encouraging to have that combination of some clients that are needing you a little bit more while some of those other clients maybe need a little bit less while they figure out this time.

BRIAN: Right. It’s almost like having a stock portfolio. [laughs] It’s good to have diversity. You’ve got your winners and you’ve got some of them that aren’t so good.

ROB: When you think about your experience in building WebMO – and it sounds like you have some experience from building prior businesses as well – what are some things you would do differently if you were starting WebMO from scratch that you’ve learned?

BRIAN: That’s a good question. I saw that previously, and it’s always hard for a business owner to do that, when you see yourself as being like “I’ve got this figured out.” But I would say in the early years, we found our lane. We found this lane and we were very committed to sticking to it. We were like, “We don’t want to build websites, we don’t want to do social media, we don’t want to get into this, we don’t want to get into that.” We were very much specializing in really optimizing organic visibility/SEO and doing Google search ads, because we had that down. We mastered those two things.

We were probably a little more reluctant than we could’ve been to just open up and be more responsive to what the market was asking for. There was probably a few years where we just said, “No, no, no, no, no.” Again, hindsight is 20/20. I don’t know, maybe it was better to do that.

But today, through growing and evolving or whatever, I think the lesson with most small business owners is you have to listen to the market. You have to provide what your client wants, ultimately. You can’t be too stubborn about saying, “No, no, this is all you need.” But on the other hand, you can’t be running around like a crazy person saying yes to everything and getting into areas that are outside your expertise.

I would’ve probably gone a little sooner into getting more into a lot of the other stuff that we do. Now currently, we do stuff across the board. Of course, we build websites, and we have campaigns running on everything from Spotify to obviously all the social media platforms and LinkedIn and direct email campaigns. You name it, we probably do it, if it’s in digital marketing.

I probably would’ve been a little more open to doing that sooner if I could roll back time for a few years. But again, you can’t really second guess it too much when you like where you’re at currently. We’re very happy with where the business is now. It’s always tough to say – but if I had done that too soon and I hadn’t really mastered it, maybe it would’ve done more harm than good.

It is a tough question, but that’s probably about the closest I can get. Just being a little quicker to respond to where our clients were probably needing us most. That would probably be it.

ROB: Are there any new directions that you think you might be getting pulled in, but you’re not quite sure yet?

BRIAN: There’s certain things that I’ve just never been a big advocate of when it comes to marketing in general. There’s certain tactics that I’m not probably ever going to be convinced to do. Things like spam. We’re never going to tell a client, “You should be blasting spam out to people’s inboxes.”

Sending advertisements to people’s text messages is to me crossing a line that I just will never feel comfortable doing. Yeah, you know you’re going to get email solicitations from people you don’t know; you accept that. You know you’ve got to see commercials when you watch TV. You know you’re going to see ads on websites. You know if you’re a Facebook user, you’re going to see advertisements. But texts to me are our one safe space where we can be sheltered from getting bombarded with ads.

We’ve had clients before say, “Hey, what about these?” and I’m just like, “I don’t think so.” I think I’d still be reluctant to do something that I know, anecdotally, people in general just really, really don’t like. Even if there’s a possible ROI on it, there’s probably some areas where I wouldn’t feel comfortable taking my clients.

ROB: I absolutely understand that, and I totally agree with you about crossing those lines. It’s interesting what you mentioned on being pulled toward social earlier and resisting it.

In a way, one of the things I end up seeing as I have these conversations is a lot of the people who got really good early at doing the core search ads and that sort of thing stayed away from social when it was fluffy and then came back into it when it wasn’t “Hey, let me make a nice organic post that goes viral and gets a lot of activity,” but “Oh my goodness, Facebook ads is becoming sophisticated, and look at these tools we can bring to bear.” I think there may be a theme there. Also the case in email. I think a lot of clients weren’t ready to use email intelligently for a while.

BRIAN: I would say that’s exactly correct, and that almost mirrors precisely how we approached it. I didn’t like social media management because of that very reason. It was fluffy, like you said. There wasn’t a lot of ways to calculate an ROI. There wasn’t as much engineering and math and science behind it. It was way too obvious what you were doing and not doing from a client’s perspective. There wasn’t anything you could bring to the table other than really clever writing skills. It just didn’t go to our core value. It’s like, we’re math guys, we’re science guys; how in the world does that apply to making a clever, quippy little Facebook post?

But then, like you mentioned, things got a lot more interesting when some of these more sophisticated targeting tools – that’s about the same time we started hopping into it, because then there was a value add. That’s the thing. As an agency, as a business owner, or whatever, if you’re not doing something that’s adding value that’s obvious, your lifespan with them is going to be limited.

I always explain that with any transaction. You have this perception of value that the client or the customer sees, and if they see the cost being at about the same level – there’s a value, there’s what you’re getting, and then there’s the cost that they’re paying for it – if that is out of balance, if they feel like “I’m paying too much because they’re not doing this,” then it’s going to be trouble.

The problem that we ran into, and a lot of people ran into with social media management, is that it’s so obvious what you’re doing. There’s no secret. They’re looking at your posts, and for better or for worse, they’re saying, “That’s it? My 16-year-old could do that. I’m paying $1,000 a month. I could just hire a part-time person and have them do it all the time.” So it’s really hard to explain or to get across to somebody that what you’re doing is something that you’re uniquely qualified to do, that somebody else couldn’t do as well.

About that time when ads became a little more sophisticated or whatever, it fit into – one of our core, principal beliefs is this idea that there are no expert marketers, only experienced marketers and expert testers. So, we started embracing this idea that every single strategy out there is probably worthy of testing. If you’re looking at Facebook, if you’re looking at Instagram, if you’re looking at Spotify, whatever, you don’t have to buy into this idea that you spend thousands of dollars and do it whether it’s working or not. You just have to take a testing mentality and say, “I’ll try it. I’ll throw a few hundred bucks at this.”

And if you’re working with somebody like ourselves, who’s very good at analyzing data, with a relatively small budget we can drill right down and say, “There you go. That little budget that you ran for 2 months, here’s precisely what it got you. We may have run across the tactic that will work.” On the other hand, some things don’t work. It’s marketing, right? You’re going through your ideas; some things are going to work, some things are going to fail. If it’s going to fail, fail fast and fail cheap. That is the beauty of digital marketing. You don’t have to necessarily do an ad buy that you’re committed to for 6 months. You can actually try a small budget test.

I know that was a long circle around, but that mindset of adopting this idea that our job is just to test things for our clients – we just need to execute tests – that then opened up everything. Everything from Yelp to LinkedIn to Bing and YouTube and whatever. That’s what got us into that, after that first wave of pure social media management abated a little bit.

ROB: That seems like a great principle to carry forward, this idea that you might not say no to something you don’t believe is effective; you can test it, and you can even probably keep testing it as long as you are changing something and you’re not just in a rut of experimental nothingness.

BRIAN: Exactly. That idea of A/B split testing everything from your landing pages or conversion pages to your ad copy – again, the beauty of digital marketing comes back to data. If you have data, you can literally look at it and say, “That ad got a 3% click-through rate and led to this sort of visitor engagement when they got to my website. This ad had a 4% conversion rate, but had lower visitor engagement.” Okay, that’s some great information.

It’s very unique that way. It’s extremely hard, if not impossible, to get that level of detail on traditional marketing methods. Radio, TV, billboards, magazines – there’s basic things you can do, maybe track phone calls, but the unique thing is you can’t get into the mind of somebody watching a TV ad and see how they’re reacting to it. When they come to your website or a landing page, based on all the math that we are able to apply to this, you can really understand the people that are there that appear to be engaged, the visitor engagement metric. It’s pretty common in our industry.

It’s exciting to me. I’m super passionate about it. This is the kind of thing where I teach people this in a workshop and a lightbulb goes off. They’re like, “That makes sense!” You can actually get a better understanding of if your marketing is even moving generally in the right direction.

ROB: You definitely know your numbers, Brian. When people want to find you and WebMO, where should they look you up?

BRIAN: You can just go to www.web-mo.com. That’s our website. Or you can just type “WebMO Tucson” or “WebMO” Arizona, “WebMO.” You’re going to find a few references to us out there. We do work with clients all over the country. We’re based in Arizona, but we are definitely nationwide in terms of the clients we work with.

We love to partner with other types of agencies. We have a lot of partnerships with website designers, traditional marketing agencies, where we provide these services behind the scenes and basically make you look awesome because we’re back there crunching all these numbers and generating all this great data and reports. Meanwhile, you’re talking to your client and saying, “Hey, look what we did!” Sot hats a good way to initiate the conversation.

Sign up for a workshop. Ask for a free report where we can obviously analyze your market. There’s lots of actionable steps once you get to the website.

ROB: Excellent. Thank you so much, Brian. Best wishes to you and WebMO going forward. We’ll look for you online. Enjoy.

BRIAN: Thanks, Rob. I appreciate the time. Stay healthy and safe and all that good stuff.

ROB: Indeed. Take care, Brian. Thanks.

BRIAN: Thanks.

ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Ty Largo is Owner and Creative Director at Awe Collective, a full-service agency providing branding, advertising, public relations, digital strategy, content marketing, social media, video and photography services to diverse industries across the US.

Sometimes the agency does (awe) inspiring work. Currently, in the face of Covid-19, the whole agency has shifted to “show up for clients in a different way.” Ty has been on phone calls, comforting clients crying about having to cut shifts. He has written emotionally difficult letters communicating a client’s “hard messages” to their staff, vendors, and/or guests. He feels this kind of PR service is a privilege, an honor . . . and a burden. Even in these “weird and uncertain times,” the agency’s role is much the same as in better times . . . to provide guidance.

Ty recognizes that no agency can excel at “everything,” and wants every tool used for its clients to be “best in class.” He uses the analogy of a Swiss army knife: a tool made of many tools . . . none of which work particularly well for what it’s purported purpose. Ty believes it is a strength to know where parts of his agency work like a Swiss Army knife and to be willing to reach out to a partner agency whose tool is “best in class.” If the client wins, then so does Awe.

Ty explains further explains: The ideal situation for Awe is that they always have a good network of great partners to partner with in order to provide optimal client results. Awe can pass over clients to these same partner agencies when it is already working at capacity or when the client needs services Awe cannot provide.

What has Ty learned over the years? In the past, when he was more “ego-driven,” he would tell a prospective client that his agency could do everything, and then “white label” work contracted through other agencies. Today, he just tells clients what his agency can and cannot do, recommends when a partner is best added to the mix, or admits, kindly, “Hey, this is not a fit for us,” and then refers the client to another agency. He says it’s a relief “to be honest . . . transparent . . . not to try to pretend.”

Business owners often feel they should say “yes” to everything. Ty reminds us there are other options:  you can compromise and you can say no.

Ty went to college to study music, dropped out in his third year, and never returned. He hopscotched around industries and quit his job as creative director at a poorly-managed software firm on February 14, 2008 – the same day he bought his first house. 

Ty started freelance marketing consulting, growing his business client by client. (He had no training in marketing, and this was during the recession of 2008) He never planned to have a business. (He had no training in business and he thought he was going to be a nerdy band teacher.) In 2018, Awe Collective was named the #1 “Best Place to Work in Arizona” by the Phoenix Business Journal. Ty attributes that award, and his agency’s success, to his obsession with team wellness. “Are they happy? Do they feel like they’re in an environment where they’re being challenged and they have opportunity?”

Ty can be reached on his company website at: https://awecollective.com/

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Ty James Largo, Owner and Creative Director at Awe Collective, based in Tempe, Arizona. Welcome to the podcast.

TY: Hello. Hi, listeners. Thanks for having me.

ROB: Fantastic to have you here. Ty, why don’t you start off by telling us a little bit about Awe Collective and what makes Awe Collective great?

TY: We are a full-service agency based in Tempe, Arizona, but our work spans across the country. When I say full service, everything from branding, marketing, advertising, public relations, digital – everything across the board.

Our clients are a diverse portfolio, which is great, especially in these very interesting, ever-changing times. Clients include everything from luxury, a Venetian resort and spa, to the California Democratic Party. So, we are definitely a very diverse and very interesting agency. We do a little bit of everything, which is great.

But I say it on our website: we are not a Swiss army knife, and I hate when people say that because a Swiss army knife is the worst thing on planet Earth. Could there ever have been a worse pair of scissors invented, or a nail file, or a knife? A Swiss army knife can do so many things, but it does it so poorly in every facet that it’s actually engineered to do.

But we are not a Swiss army knife. We are experts at everything. We are that full tray of tools that is expertly crafted to be its best max effort in every different medium where possible. That’s us. Awe Collective.

ROB: Fantastic. We are right in the thick of the coronavirus lockdown, so maybe doing a little bit more Democratic Party and a little bit less travel and spa right now? Or how are clients reacting? Are some doubling down and planning for the time of abundance after? How does that look?

TY: Candidly, in my past 6 days, I’ve been getting on the phone with clients that just need someone to virtually hug them as they cry about having to do tough layoffs, having to cut shifts, having to deal with the actual true person-to-person tough calls that have to be made – I think that’s our privilege and our honor and our burden, too, as a PR agency.

We don’t always get to promote great stuff. Sometimes we have to do real tough messaging and level up for our clients. That’s been the past 5-6 days, where I’ve had to write really strongly, emotionally generous, hard messages for clients to their staff or to their vendors or to their guests. So, it’s not a great time.

But per this podcast and per the arc of everything that you’ve done work on, we typically get to say really great stuff all the time. We get to have fun and promote really cool things and all the stuff. But in this case right now, I’m switching gears and my whole agency is switching gears to be able to show up for clients in a different way, where they need help delivering very tough messages. Yeah, it’s a weird time.

ROB: For sure. But what a privilege to be called upon in this time, what a privilege to be needed to help people get outside the things that they don’t quite know how to say, but they know they need to say, they know they have to communicate. I like what you said about the Swiss army knife. You’ve even probably seen the 1,000 tool Swiss army knife that they were briefly selling and had become a little bit of an internet meme. But it’s not that useful. It’s a tool in origin, I think, more of bare utility and survival and not one of thriving.

As you think of being the best of each tool that you provide, how do you think about keeping excellence in each area while also – you’re not probably a couple thousand person company with whole pods of teams on each specialty. So how do you keep that excellence on each tool?

TY: Great question. When I do talks, when I do public speaking, I’m pretty real. I try as much as possible to not do pitching and spin. I think one of my strongest top tier superpowers is knowing what I suck at. I think that’s part of – if we’re using the Swiss army knife analogy, you can’t be great at everything. No one can be. No agency out there can do all of the things on planet Earth.

So, you have to have a real chat internally and reflect on, “Hey, are we the Swiss army knife on this part? Are we that crappy pair of scissors that’s in the Swiss army knife in this area?” And if so, let it go. Or pull in a partner to fill that gap. Pull in a partner agency that it’s like, these guys are amazing, we love them. We can provide strategy and leadership from a client perspective; however, we just don’t have the capabilities that this other agency has to that degree.

It’s more about letting ego go, I think, and being, in the best way, self-deprecating to be able to be high performance. You can still perform and show up for a client without having to try to do it all. There’s power in saying “Hey, I suck at this; however, my friend over here at XYZ agency is rad, and we can give him good direction on it, we can keep it aligned to our strategy overall, but let’s partner with this person.”

It’s not a moment of failure. I think a lot of agencies feel like they have to always be the best at everything. It’s a moment of power, where you acknowledge power elsewhere and you acknowledge the fact that your superpowers are very different and very diverse. Pulling in a partner is not a threat to the work that you’re doing with a client. It’s a moment of strength, I think.

ROB: I think it depends on what your goal is. The hard part and the ego part is to try and be the solution for everything, but that’s not what your clients are asking for. If it’s possible, what they’d love for you to do is to help them find a solution for any problem. That’s a trust building exercise, when they come to you with a new problem and they say, “What about this? Could you help me?” You say, “Oh, I know this person over here, I know this partner” – because they don’t. If they knew the partner, they wouldn’t be asking you.

TY: Right. In general, clients are calling us because they need guidance, period. It’s not effective or healthy as an agency, or for the client, to mislead them on capabilities that you know you don’t have expertise in or a specialty focus in. They’re calling us because they want guidance. If you have a trusted partner that can do that for them, great. Do it. That’s our purpose.

Even in these times right now, too – again, not to make it a dramatic response, but more than ever, businesses are needing guidance and expertise. They’re like, “What do I do?”

So yeah, I think part of our model is to always have a good set of great partners that we can either partner with on clients or do a pass through where it’s like, “We have a conflict of interest; however, we love this other agency, this other marketing provider that we love to death. We wish we could work with you right now, but we can’t” – for whatever reason, whether it’s a conflict or we’re just at max capacity.

I think that’s an important thing for agencies in general, to get over yourself and just really, truly have a good network of people that you respect that you can refer work to or partner with on. It makes you that much stronger. It doesn’t make you weaker. It makes you stronger.

ROB: It’s all in a good toolkit. I think there’s an interesting question, and I don’t know if there’s a right or wrong answer to it: how do you think about when to white label, when to present the solution as part of your overall solution as an agency, versus when to partner where the partnership is more visible, and when to wholesale refer and not take any part of the business, but just pass it along? How do you think about that decision – if you have any sort of rubric for it?

TY: I used to do the very ego-driven, “We can do it all,” and if I private label a select part of the service, I’ll do it. I think these days, though, I’m very transparent. I’m very like, okay, cool, we’ll do our consultation on the sales call, and if I really, truly feel like this is not something that we 100% can do, or if we have to partner or if we have to refer, I just tell them.

And I have to tell everyone in this audience here, there’s such relief in that, not trying to pretend. Again, I don’t want to be the Swiss army knife moment ever, and as much as we have a wide-ranging capability suite for sure, there’s so much power and relief in being able to be transparent and honest right from the get-go. Before we even send a contract or a proposal or whatever. Just being able to say, “This is a project that needs a very specific toolset, and although we can do that work internally, my recommendation is we pull in a partner.”

Or “Hey, this is not a fit for us.” We always say that with kindness. We’re really big on chemistry with our clients. We’re very fortunate in the way that we can pick and choose who we do and do not want to work with, and if there’s not a chemistry, if there’s not a cultural connection, we still love on those potential clients. We’ll be upfront and say, “This is not a fit for the kind of work that we do. However, we’re very grateful for the opportunity to chat with you. We are inspired by where you’re going with the brand. However, we’d love for you to talk with XYZ partner.” We’ve done that a million times.

I think that’s a big thing. You feel the need as a business owner to say yes to everything, but you can compromise, and you can say no. And there’s power in saying it upfront versus going through the motions of a whole parade of fake, weird flirting when you’re not interested, when you’re having the worst date of your life. [laughs] It’s a terrible date but you’re still flirting; however, you know this person is not the one. There’s power in real talk. There’s power in being able to say, “No, it’s not a vibe. Not a fit. I’m out.”

ROB: For sure. Not that it’s quite this extreme, but if you go to a really nice hotel and you go to the concierge, they do absolutely nothing, but they have a huge degree of trust because they can tell you anything with a high degree of authority.

If we rewind a little bit, Ty, tell me about the origin story of Awe Collective. How did it come into being? What made you start this thing?

TY: Oh, interesting. I wish I could tell you some very charismatic leadership message about the origin story of my company, but I can’t. I went to school for music. I took a break from college 3 years in, and I’m still on that break 20 years later. [laughs] So I don’t have a degree in anything, period. I’ve never studied marketing or PR or branding or anything in that sense.

I kind of hopscotched from industry to industry. I’ve done everything from public education to IT to marketing to fill-in-the-blank moment. My last job that I had was I was a creative director for a software firm based in Arlington. It was not a great situation. I had really bad bosses and leaders, period. So, I decided to quit my job. This was 2008.

I quit my job on Valentine’s Day in 2008 – also the same date that I bought my first house. Great timing. [laughs] Believe me when I say I did not have a plan to have a great business. But yeah, I made a leap of faith and I made it at a wrong time to dive into a deep end of a pool that I didn’t know was so deep.

I started doing freelance consulting for marketing, client after client. It made sense at some point to call it something different than just having clients cut checks to me directly. I never had a plan to have a business, ever. If you had asked me as a kid, “Would you ever think you would own a business?”, I’d be like, “No, I want to be a band teacher. That’s my purpose in life, to be a nerdy band teacher.” But fate has a different plan for everybody than what we think we’re supposed to be.

Flash forward to now, I started off not planning to own a business and now I own a business, and I’m very proud of it. My company has been named the #1 Best Place to Work in Arizona – not just in my industry, but period, across the board. I didn’t plan to own a business, but I’m pretty good at it.

It’s because I love on my team so much, honestly. Even as we’re going through these crazy times and I don’t get to see them every day – that’s probably the hardest part of my job right now. I don’t get to see my family every day. I love on them so much. I’m obsessed about their happiness. I think when you do that, you don’t have to worry about the performance. You don’t have to worry about how good the work is going to be.

The only thing I think as a leader you have to worry about and obsess about – and I’ll say it again, obsess about – is how happy your team is. You should be waking up at night in fear of like, “Is everyone happy?” That’s where the focus should be.

Again, I’m not a trained business owner; I did not plan to do this or to work in marketing. I’m not qualified, technically, to work in marketing. But I love my team so much, and I’m so grateful that they are on this journey with me.

It seems very basic to me, but I think it’s so revolutionary to some people, and maybe perhaps to the listeners here too – you will thrive if you just take care of your team. You will thrive, period. There’s not a big pitch behind it. Just obsess about the happiness of your team, and the work will be good. I promise, the clients will be happy. The clients will be plentiful. The clients will continue to grow, and you’ll get more clients, all the things, whatever.

That’s the endgame, for sure, but if you really focus on loving on your team and making that your prime priority, especially in this time right now – I didn’t go to school for business, whatever, but I just know what has worked for us, and I’ll just tell you, that’s what the focus should be.

ROB: Beyond the instinctual, are there any habits or rhythms or routines in the business that you have, whether it’s daily/weekly/monthly, that help you reinforce love to your team? I know that sounds a little bit mechanistic, but for folks who it doesn’t come naturally for, that may be helpful to them, or even helpful in showing love to people who may have different ways of feeling love. How do you think about rhythm and routine?

TY: Great question. We have our weekly team meetings, and we do it over lunch. Not catered in because that’s still in our office space and it feels very technical and it feels very clinical.

We have a gross, awesome, amazing, wonderful local dive bar that is approximately 1.5 minutes away from our office. We’ll go there and sit on the patio and just be exposed to fresh air. It’s a limited venue, so either you get chicken tenders or you get a burger – and this is funny because we have James Beard caliber clients that we could go to if we wanted to, but this is not about that moment. It’s about how we can really, truly feed ourselves in a very comfortable context.

So we go there, and there’s a level of love in that situation where we get to have work talk, talk through the clients, whatever, walk through the next week that’s coming up, forecast it, go through the forensics of the last couple weeks. It’s a weird, twisty dynamic, and I think that’s part of our routine. We want to mix it up as much as possible, because the stresses at work are challenging. Why not just sit at a gross dive bar where every table that you sit at is sticky? [laughs] Just mix it up.

And the staff knows fully that we are ready, able, and capable of doing a very bougie team meeting, but there’s something about the self-deprecation, collectively, of chilling at a gross dive bar, like, “Hey, get over yourself. Let’s chill and let’s have an 11:00 vodka drink and chicken tenders and just be friends because we love each other.” This is a space where we can be at ease. It’s not at a conference table. It’s not in a boardroom. We do that weekly.

ROB: There’s definitely something intangible about breaking bread together, about getting outside of the confines and the familiarity of the office, for sure. That’s all really good stuff.

What are some things that you’ve learned from building Awe Collective that you might do differently? Maybe some lessons learned if you were starting over, and things maybe you’re already doing different going forward now?

TY: Good question. If I could go back and do it again. Actually, I’ll be honest – I don’t know that I have any regrets. But I have advice. I think my path is very different than most business owners, period, let alone agency owners. I have no regrets because of the fact that all I did was always, endlessly obsess about my team’s wellness. Are they happy? Do they feel like they’re in an environment where they’re being challenged and they have opportunity?

The way I describe my company is this is not the place that you retire at. This is the place where you learn how to be a badass. I say that because I don’t have high turnover; I have an incredible list of alumni who I’ve been very privileged to work with and to raise. That is my ultimate honor and purpose, to raise badasses.

So, I don’t have regrets in any way, shape, or form. I have pride in the sense that all I’ve ever done is obsess about the wellness and development of my team. As they move on, my alumni are not like a marketing specialist at XYZ Agency. Cody on my alumni list is a director at a global PR firm based in LA now. Another former alumni is a director internally at a global grocery chain.

I think as a business owner, the tendency is to obsess about sales and very clinical things. That’s responsible to do. Yes, do that stuff, or bring somebody on your team that does that for you. But – I sound like a broken record, but if I had to look back and think about it, I would have regretted not loving on my team. But thankfully I don’t have those regrets because that’s always been my obsession.

It’s been the critical key to my success, making sure that my team is growing, thriving. In their time with me, how much can I make sure that they make the most out of this for themselves? Everything else will just fall into place. Client success will fall into place. Agency success will fall into place. If you just focus on your talent, your team, who can say that’s the wrong thing to do?

It seems basic to me, but I think a lot of agency owners don’t understand that. That should be your obsession. Obsess about every single person. If you have waking nightmares at night – which sometimes I do – it should be about that, not about “Is XYZ client happy?” or “Is XYZ client going to renew?” or whatever. Your eyes are not on the prize where they need to be. It has to be on the people that you should be loving.

ROB: That’s great. I hear a tremendous amount of positivity, a tremendous amount of even appreciation for the people that you have worked with. It’s probably less scary – I think people worry when they go to work for a closely held business that their boss is going to be crazy and controlling. And I think a lot of people are, out of fear. I don’t hear a lot of fear coming through. Certainly, fear of not treating people well, but not fear of the outworking of treating people well.

TY: Part of having the privilege of being able to work with talented people is to know that they’re not going to be with you forever, so just – I think that’s part of the pressure to just absolutely endlessly love on somebody. You know they’re going to be gone.

Cody, who is one of my stars, forever amazing alumni, I’ve always known that he’s going to move on – not away from us, but move on to something different. He needs more challenges. As a boss and as an employer and as a leader, you have to lean into that. You can’t be sad about that stuff. You have to be very excited.

I do feel like it is a family, and obviously my kids are not going to live at home for the rest of their lives. I’ll be so happy when they go to their next steps. That’s what it feels like to me. Again, it’s an honor and a privilege, and a little bit of sadness, to see their next steps and to be a part of raising them where they are ready to go and be a badass somewhere else, and not take that as a loss, but take that as a win.

I get to look at Cody and be so proud. Not to get too emotional but be so proud. It’s cool. It’s a cool thing.

ROB: Fantastic. When people want to find you and Awe Collective, where should they go to find you?

TY: I would say hit us up on our website, www.awecollective.com. Obviously on social too, as well. I feel like we’ve been very dark on social the past couple weeks, for obvious reasons, because we’re dealing with this whole situation on behalf of our clients. We’re there to support them. So, if our social channels seem a little quiet, that’s why.

But yeah, hit us up on the website. You can see a little bit more about our wide and weird breadth of the work that we do. There’s a lot of our DNA in there, too, a lot of our voice. It’s not just a big portfolio site. It’s more like “Here’s who we are; here’s who we’re not.” So, you can really, truly see the DNA of our company. We try our best to express that on our website. It’s not a pitch. It’s not a flashy, razzle-dazzle website. It’s just like “Here’s who we are.”

It almost acts as a filter, if anything, for clients. If they want a very traditional path for marketing in general, you as a viewer on the website know that’s not us. I think our website does a really good job of telling our story, and again, who we are and who we are not.

ROB: Perfect. Ty James Largo of Awe Collective, thank you for joining the podcast and sharing with us today.

TY: Thank you so much for having me and thank you to the audience for listening. This has been really fun, and hopefully informative for the audience here. I’m happy to do any follow-ups if needed. Go team.

ROB: Perfect. We can all stay positive. Thank you, Ty.

TY: Thanks.

ROB:  Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Jon Tsourakis is the Co-owner, President, and Chief Revenue Officer at Oyova, an agency offering integrated digital solutions such as app development, web design, and marketing to create efficient processes for company growth. Jon is a serial entrepreneur and marketing strategist whose continual study of brand identity, business communications, buyer behavior, sales conversion, and various digital marketing techniques keeps him astute to industry standards. His resumé includes executive positions with digital agencies including Innersight dZine Studio, REVOLT, and the Digital Mastermind Group, and his sales and leadership expertise led him to roles as Marketing Director and President for Astrum and CentralComp, respectively.

Dave Nobs is the Managing Director and Chief Growth Officer at Lavidge, a highly awarded, employee-owned, full-service advertising agency with ever broadening horizons. Lavidge started in traditional advertising in 1982, then added public relations in the 90s, digital marketing in the 2000s, and multicultural marketing about 5 years ago. A couple years later, the agency broke down the walls between what had been its divisional siloes. Subject matter experts now look at the totality of a client’s issues holistically.

Dave notes that the agency’s work focuses on projects that meet client-specific and industry-specific benchmarks, most commonly tracked through brand awareness and sales. He explains that his agency strives to make a difference for clients, employees, and the community.

Lavidge added multicultural marketing to address cross-cultural messaging needs in a state with a strong Hispanic presence . . . but multicultural marketing is not just about language differences. Dave says marketers serving a specific cultural market need to be aware of the different, and almost intangible. “tones,” strategies, and tactics needed for a client to gain credibility within that community.

“Truth, inspiration, and action” drive the agency’s projects: 

• Truth “happens” when the agency and a client collaborate to research issues, develop strategy, evaluate data and analytics, and go through the give-and-take-process of participating in focus groups, interviews, consumer intercepts, and experiential observation – and synthesize all that market and client information to understand what the client is “about,” and what the client “needs.”
• In the inspiration phase, the agency and the client work “hand-in-hand” on the marketing story, the design and art direction, and the feel of the narrative. 
• The action part includes media and channel placement and assessing responses and brand impression dynamics – getting the message to the masses and hearing their reply. 

As Chief Growth Officer, Dave generates new business, grows existing client business, attends to agency marketing issues, and develops strategic client innovations. In this interview, he lists assets that he attributes to Lavidge’s success: 

• An attitude of positivity 
• Daily communication with clients large and small
• The agency’s focus on the client . . . and on using “every experience, tool, trend, skill and insight at our disposal to create immediate and lasting connections between brands and human beings.”

Over the years, Lavidge has evolved to concentrate on a number of core verticals: healthcare, education, retail services, homebuilders, and sports.

Dave discussed re-reading a Harvard Business Review article on how to market in a recession. The article’s author asserted that tough economic times were “not the time to cut advertising.” Historically, brands increasing advertising during a downturn, while their competitors cut back, “can significantly improve market share and return on investment.” Dave reminds us that “It’s also important to be aware of tonality . . . to be authentic . . . to be helpful” and highlighted several companies that are taking action to do just that.

Dave is available on his company’s website at: https://www.lavidge.com/.

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m joined today by Dave Nobs, the Managing Director at Lavidge based in Phoenix, Arizona. Welcome to the podcast, Dave.

DAVE: Thank you, Rob. It’s a pleasure to be here.

ROB: Fantastic to have you here, Dave. Why don’t you explain to us where Lavidge really excels and what you’re known for?

DAVE: Sure. We are a full-service advertising, digital, public relations, and multicultural agency here in Phoenix. We’ve been in business since ’82. We were founded in the ’80s as an advertising agency, added PR in the ’90s, digital in the 2000s, and then multicultural marketing about 5 years ago.

We are one of the largest agencies in Arizona, and certainly one of a handful of full-service agencies, meaning all of our services are in-house under one roof.

ROB: Perfect. You’ve been around for the addition of that multicultural line of business; what were some of the things you saw in the market that pulled you in that direction and caused you to commit to that line of business?

DAVE: We’re always looking at innovative client solutions, and multicultural marketing, particularly Hispanic marketing here in the Southwest, is particularly important to our clients. We started with McDonald’s, which was a big client of ours, and then we added multicultural marketing to a number of our other clients, particularly in healthcare, like Banner Health, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and others just because it was a need that they have.

Multicultural marketing is very different than general market in tone and some strategies and tactics specifically geared to accomplish results in that area.

ROB: How in particular? What are some of the ways you would say in detail that things need to be different when you’re speaking to that sort of audience?

DAVE: I think different strategies and tactics resonate with the Hispanic market better than others. Obviously, digital is very important. Events, immersive/experiential marketing sometimes is more important than others. But really, for us, it’s more a client solution than it is anything else, particularly for our clients that has that audience, and that’s important for them.

ROB: I would imagine a part of that is really almost subjective in the eyes of the person being marketed to. It’s this overall sense I think we all have when someone knows and understands us versus where someone’s intruding into our world but doesn’t really belong at the party. Is there an intangible dimension to it, do you think?

DAVE: I think that’s accurate.

ROB: Perfect. Tell us a little bit about how the agency started, if you can get into some of that, and then how you came into the picture as well.

DAVE: Sure. As I mentioned, we were founded in ’82. We have a staff of just over 70 people. We have $70 million in capitalized billings, and we’re employee-owned. I believe we’re the only agency in Arizona that’s employee-owned. We’re proud of the fact that we’ve been voted Best Place to Work eight times and the Top Agency in Arizona six times, Best Place to Work for Women, and just recently – this month, as a matter of fact – we were named AZ Big Media’s No. 1 Advertising Agency for the ninth year in a row. We’re very proud of that.

For us, it’s really about solving client problems with strategic thinking and sharp creative views that go well beyond producing ads. Our agency mantra is “be creative, work smart, and have fun.” We live and breathe that every day.

ROB: With an agency that’s been there for a while, and you said it’s also employee-owned, how do you think about leadership transitions within that environment? Because 33 years, you didn’t start the thing but you’re running a lot of the show there now, and someone will supersede you. How does that work in that sort of environment?

DAVE: Good question. My role is that of a Chief Growth Officer, so my focus is generating new business, growing existing client business, agency marketing, strategic client innovations. I’ve been here 10 years, and I’m part of a management team of eight people. If you can believe it, I’m the newbie. The rest of the management team members have been with Lavidge for more than 10 years.

The industry has changed so much. It certainly has become more project focused. What we need to do, and what we’re focused on, is really – our purpose is to make a difference for our clients, our employees, and in the community. Our beliefs are really around truth, inspiration, action.

What I mean by that is for our clients – and we’re very collaborative; we like to involve the client at every step of the process, from the outset of the campaign to the strategies and tactics to the implementation and to measuring the results. So when I mention our purpose, making a difference, we’re looking for truth. You hear a lot in our industry about finding insights, but the truth for us is really strategy, research, the conversation with our clients, including the hard conversations, looking at the data, analytics, focus groups, interviews, consumer intercepts, the experience. All that we put into place to gather these insights.

The next step for us is really the inspiration, which is the motivation, the motion, the design, the art direction, the experience, the usability, the feel – to tell those stories, because for us, like most agencies, it’s all about storytelling.

Then it’s the action, getting the results that our clients need. That’s looking at media, looking at the channels, looking at loyalty, all of the brand impressions, clicks, visits, awareness, decision, movement, all generating the results our clients are looking for.

ROB: It sounds like quite a range of things to think about. I appreciate what you’re saying about the insights and having some of those hard conversations around the insights. In some ways, coming into digital, even coming into PR before that, in some ways the numbers that you can present to a client have changed, but the bottom line of business in terms of doing well for your clients, doing well for the business, doing well for your employees – those haven’t changed.

What are some of the key numbers you see that are really relevant to clients today, that help them understand and help them come to grips with maybe a hard conversation?

DAVE: That’s a good question. Most of our clients – and this is historically true for the industry as well – are looking at two things at the end of the day, usually: brand awareness and sales. The trick is to develop programs that are specifically geared toward our clients’ benchmarks. They’re different by industry and they’re different for each client.

I think it’s particularly important these days to develop tailor-made solutions because each client is different, each challenge is different. Oftentimes, there are different projects for some of our bigger clients, and they all have different metrics.

ROB: Yeah, especially when the clients are significantly larger. It can make a difference. When it comes to Lavidge, is there any particular sweet spot for you in terms of industries and client size that you maybe see a cluster of clients around that helps develop some particular excellence in that area?

DAVE: Some of our core vertical experience – healthcare, certainly we have a number of healthcare clients such as Blue Cross Blue Shield, Delta Dental, SimonMed, Sonora Quest, Banner. So healthcare is certainly a specialty of ours.

Another one is education. Arizona State University is one of our larger clients. It’s interesting – I say Arizona State University; it’s really 12 or 14 different clients because we work with their enterprise marketing hub and all the different schools and divisions, such as Barrett Honors College, Thunderbird, Cronkite, the Alumni Council, the athletics department. It’s a number of different clients under that one banner.

So healthcare, education. Retail services is another core area of expertise for us. We do a lot of franchise marketing in the retail space. We worked with Massage Envy for years and years and years in virtually every year of marketing and communications. Re-Bath is another significant retail service client of ours.

If I had to mention three, those would be it. Healthcare, education, retail services. We also do a lot with homebuilders. We’ve done a lot in the sports area as well. We’re a full-service general market agency, but those are some of our core areas of expertise.

ROB: Very interesting. It makes sense. Some of those are very familiar, although even with the educational focus, in some ways it maybe looks more like enterprise than ever before, because what you’re describing to me sounds almost – you mentioned their marketing hub – it sounds like a center of excellence that any enterprise brand might have. Do you think they have had some inspiration from that world, or some learnings from the center of excellence approach? Or maybe even the enterprises learned from them.

DAVE: Yeah, I believe so. For ASU, it’s really all about innovation. They’re proud to be named the most innovative university. Obviously Michael Crow, their president, deserves a great deal of the credit for that. But ASU, for us, that’s a great example of our collaborative approach. We really do work hand-in-hand with them.

It can get messy at times, and we like that because we think involving them, again, early in the process and working with them – daily communications, weekly status calls, monthly reporting – that helps generate best results as possible on their behalf.

ROB: It’s really interesting because you jammed through that cadence of the daily, weekly, monthly. A lot of times when we talk to even very successful agencies, especially because I think maybe people come from a creative place, they don’t mention that sort of process. How do you, with I think you said around 70 some employees, think about establishing that as a standard? How do you communicate those standards of cadence and make sure they’re listened to and followed throughout the organization? Because they come from a place of wisdom.

DAVE: Right, and that’s really our commitment to our clients because things change so often. Daily communication is vital – not only for our big accounts, but also for some of our smaller accounts. We have, like a lot of agencies, larger agency of record relationships, and then we also have standalone public relations clients or website clients or creative services clients. It’s important, no matter how big or small they are, to communicate daily. Again, that’s part of our commitment.

Then the weekly calls keep everybody on track – not only us, but also our clients. Particularly helpful for the larger clients. One of the things that we like to do is have one point of contact for our clients so they’re not making four different calls. They’re calling one person who can marshal the internal resources that are needed.

One of the things we did that I think is interesting, a couple years ago – we used to have a standalone advertising division, a standalone interactive division, a public relations division, a multicultural division. We broke down those walls and those silos a couple years ago and implemented a more unified approach.

It’s not about whether they’re an advertising client or a PR client; it’s much more about what that client needs. Does it need strategy? Does it need creative? Is it a user experience website/responsive design approach that’s needed? Is it content? Is it social? Is it search? It could be a number of things, and it’s really about answering clients’ needs and offering one-stop client solutions on their behalf.

ROB: When you made that transition, did they have an account manager in each of those divisions before and you were able to streamline that to one trusted point of contact? How did that realign when you made that switch?

DAVE: It was actually fairly seamless. We had, obviously, experts in each one of those areas, and we had a head of advertising and a chief creative officer and the head of our interactive division. Breaking down those silos – we still have subject matter experts, but it’s about bringing them to bear on our clients’ behalf rather than looking at it division by division, if that makes sense.

ROB: For sure.

DAVE: The reason for that is we found that it’s like – what’s the old saying? Trying to force a square peg into a round hole. We were slotting different clients into different divisions, and that’s not always the case. They could be primarily a public relations client, but they’re going to need a website or they’re going to need a special event or they’re going to need print or digital magazine execution, video. It’s really about being more client-service-focused than anything else.

ROB: Dave, what are some things you’ve learned as a marketing agency leader that you might do differently if you were starting again 10 years ago, or even further back in your career?

DAVE: That’s a very good question, Rob. I think the one thing that I would’ve done differently is I would have taken one of the client side opportunities that came my way over the years, because I’ve been in the agency business – all my career has been spent on the agency side of the business. Talk about a glutton for punishment. [laughs]

But I probably would have taken one of the client side opportunities that came my way. I think I would’ve liked to have that experience, sitting in the client’s chair and having the final say and making decisions on which campaigns run and why. In fact, one of those opportunities was in your neighborhood, with Turner Broadcasting System, interestingly enough.

ROB: Oh, interesting. It’s very common, I think, for people to bounce from brand side to agency side, sometimes drifting over to the vendor side. I think there is value in that empathy. I’m sure you have had plenty of people on your team that have had that experience, right?

DAVE: Yeah. I think it’s useful. I also teach a sports marketing class at ASU at the Cronkite School, and that question comes up a lot with students, because of course, they’re thinking primarily, in sports marketing, “I want to work for a league or a team,” and they don’t really understand all the other avenues of career development, whether it be in an agency like ours or a corporate sponsor or some of the other suppliers that are involved in sports marketing.

But I do always recommend having both experiences, and again, I would have probably done that differently, to answer your question.

ROB: You can also see quite often how many agencies, some of their longest running clients come from the relationship you’re talking about. You have a relationship with the university, and the university is also a client. It’s not a quid pro quo, but it’s a relationship business. Someone who spends 5 years inside Coca-Cola, 5 years inside Home Depot, 5 years inside Blue Cross is going to have some very longstanding relationships to pull on.

Not to say that you don’t have those from being a trusted agency partner for people; it’s just in some cases, it’s different because you may have a former agency you can’t pull that client from the same way you can if you left the brand and you’re on the agency side.

DAVE: That’s a good point. I remember when I was general manager of Rogers & Cowan in Los Angeles, which is the big entertainment publicity firm, we had a number of different divisions, like television, film, music, product placement, consumer, etc. It was interesting; I always talked to the CEO about how there were really, really expert people, but they were what we call an inch wide and a mile deep, meaning they knew everything in the world about music, but it was hard to transfer those skills to say consumer marketing or corporate communications. I think this is true of clients as well. They get so deep into their area of expertise.

I think it’s the role of the agency to really bring best practices and other solutions, perhaps from other industries, to the table to get them to thinking beyond just what works in a specific market.

ROB: One thing I imagine that’s probably relatively new for Lavidge, and you’re learning a little bit, but maybe you also have some lessons to learn, is this thing that many of us are doing perhaps not by choice right now, which is working in distributed teams, working remotely. You can’t even get in a room if you want to, or at least you probably shouldn’t amidst this coronavirus/COVID-19 crisis.

What are some things you’re learning, especially since you mentioned these cadences that you had? Are you learning some different habits that are helpful for teams that are at a distance now?

DAVE: That’s a great question, particularly given the challenging times that are upon us. I think one overriding principle is to be determined in what you do and not be fearful. Despite the current circumstance, there are opportunities.

I’m very proud of our agency, as an example, because we quickly, a couple weeks ago, switched over to working remotely. It’s been seamless. We just had an all staff meeting on Wednesday that we did remotely, and it worked remarkably well. We’re doing that for our client teams. So there are some opportunities.

I think in general, one of the things that I’m seeing is that brands can use this opportunity to step up and take action. There seems to be a common thread around brand purpose. You hear a lot of words like “authentic,” “useful,” “helpful,” “purposeful,” but I think it’s really about leveraging brand power for good.

ROB: It’s a good reminder. You mentioned “helpful,” and I think if we all take a step back as marketers and as people who are communicating into the lives of other people, we probably realize – we should always be helpful, but I think it can get a little bit hard to remember that sometimes. When people are just out there spending money, everything’s fine, people are looking to buy stuff, I think we can lose some of that helpfulness and get a little bit flashier. I think we maybe realize right now, this is not the time to ask for stuff from people, but it’s time to be helpful to them.

DAVE: Yeah, no question. Just the other day I was rereading the Harvard Business Review, an article about how to market in a recession, and maintaining marketing spending is important. It’s not the time to cut advertising. It’s well documented that brands that increase advertising during a recession or a situation like this when their competitors are cutting back can significantly improve market share and return on investment.

But your point is well taken. It’s also important to remember tonality. It’s important to be authentic. It’s important to be helpful. You think about some of the recent examples, like Ford and Tesla are using their factories to make ventilators, or Anheuser-Busch are using their distilleries to make hand sanitizer. Just a couple of examples of being authentic, being useful, being helpful.

ROB: For sure. In some cases, with Budweiser, with Anheuser-Busch, I’d imagine that’s even coming to them a little bit at the expense of their actual business. Ford may not be needing to make as many trucks, but if my social feeds are anything to be believed, Anheuser-Busch and their competitors are doing pretty well right now. A lot of people seem to be buying their product and talking about it. [laughs]

DAVE: That’s right. That’s very true. But again, I think it’s really about their brand purpose. I imagine they are doing very well, but it’s also about being helpful and being purposeful in what they’re doing to consumers at large.

ROB: Perfect. Dave, when you’re looking ahead – you mentioned in this time, you see opportunity. This is a time to seize opportunity. This is certainly not a time to be shy right now. We all feel probably some moments when we want to just chill out and check our brains out, but when we’re done with that, what are some things that are coming up for Lavidge that you’re excited about?

DAVE: I think we’re very excited about a number of areas. In this particular situation, the coronavirus/COVID-19, crisis communication is obviously important. We’re staying very busy in that area, public relations experts.

Two other areas that we’re looking at are certainly ecommerce, given the remote learning and the remote situations that both we and our clients are facing, and then cause marketing – again, really talking about what you and I were just discussing: brand purpose, connecting a brand purpose with their business goals and making sure they stand for something that their consumers care about.

So those are three areas that we’re looking at. Before this came upon us, we were also looking at a number of other areas. One was the rise of experiential marketing as a strategy to engage consumers, using branded experiences, live marketing, event marketing. The whole idea is creating a memorable impact on the consumer.

Obviously, two other areas that our digital team has really focused on is increased artificial intelligence, in-depth information about what consumers want and how that can be personalized and how that can personalize the buying experience based on someone’s preferences. And then one of the areas that I’m really interested in personally is the whole brand solving business challenges by engaging young consumers through their passion for e-sports, gaming, as an example. Those are the areas we’re looking at.

ROB: It’s really fascinating because a lot of times a 30-some-year-old agency would be very steeped in things they’ve done, but it sounds like, especially with that leadership team that you have around you, this company has been through multiple downturns and has grown and is still one of the largest in Arizona.

I can hear in your description of the things you were thinking about, the things you’re thinking about now, it’s intentional but it’s not opportunistic. It is tied to things you’ve been dong, but it’s not overly tied to the plan that you had, and you’re still trying to push really hard to find some way to do branded experiences. There may be something that emerges from that, but you’re not going to do a big brand activation in a physical place right now.

DAVE: Correct. I do think, to your point, it’s important to be flexible. I think that’s one of the reasons we’ve been extremely successful for almost 40 years.

We do have a number of client innovations that we’ve developed for our clients, whether it’s introducing new services such as account-based marketing or programmatic digital media, but it’s also about improving traditional marketing methods. Innovation is not just about coming up with new solutions, but it’s also about improving marketing and advertising, digital, public relations, social, website design and development, etc. So I think innovation comes in two areas: both coming up with new solutions as well as improving solutions that you’ve employed for clients in the past.

ROB: Excellent. Dave, when people want to find you and they want to find Lavidge, where should they look?

DAVE: We are in the Biltmore area of Phoenix, which is right on Camelback very close to the Biltmore Hotel, if you know where that’s at. Certainly centrally located.

Again, we’re a full service agency, and I think that’s important. Not that we don’t have standalone clients, but usually we like to think of ourselves as a one-stop client solution. Those services include strategy. We do a lot of branding work, a lot of corporate communications work. That includes market research and customer segmentation. And then we have our creative services, so that’s TV, radio, print, digital advertising. We have our own in-house video production capability, so it’s not just TV ads. We’re doing a number of videos, whether it’s corporate videos, product videos, training videos, only videos.

Then our digital expertise is really in two areas. One side of it is the website design/development, microsites, landing pages, mobile apps. The other side of that is all forms of digital marketing – search, both paid and organic, email marketing, lead gen, lead nurturing, ecommerce that I mentioned before. We even do custom loyalty programs for some of our clients. That’s helped by the fact that we have our own in-house analytics department as well.

Then in the public relations area, it’s both traditional corporate communications and product publicity, but also content. As a number of agencies do, we’re doing more and more content creation/content management, whether that be videos, blogs, infographics, whitepapers, etc., and mapping that out to make sure it syncs with traditional public relations.

It’s nice to have all those client solutions, if you will, under one roof and available to our clients. Now, some of our clients are using all those services; some are using the services that are most needed for them.

ROB: Got it. That’s excellent, Dave. It looks like they should also probably, if they’re looking for you online, go to lavidge.com. Is that right?

DAVE: That’s correct. Lavidge.com. You’ll see on our website a lot of the information that I just talked through. You had asked about some of our core areas of expertise, and in three of those areas – there’s more, but certainly using healthcare as an example, we did our own marketing report. We literally conducted research to determine which messages are most resonating with consumers, which marketing tactics are more successful than others. So we did a whole research study, which is available on our website.

Additionally, that’s reinforced by a number of whitepapers that were written by our subject matter experts, whether it be digital, creative, strategy, to really walk through and bring to life some of those findings. All of that is available on the website, Lavidge.com.

ROB: Perfect. Thank you so much, Dave. It’s been great to have you on the podcast, and I’m grateful for all you shared about the journey of Lavidge and how sustained that business has been in a really admirable way.

DAVE: It’s my pleasure, Rob. Thank you very much for the time. I enjoyed it.

ROB: Take care. Thank you.

DAVE: Thank you.

ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Jon Boles is the Founder and CEO of Avintiv Media Avintiv Media, an award-winning boutique digital marketing agency that focuses on branding, web design, and digital marketing content creation, syndication, and search engine optimization. Starting as a full service agency 4 years ago, running ads, Facebook ads, and working with celebrities and influencers in the influencer marketing niche. The agency withdrew from advertising and social media when they determined the uncontrollable volatility compromised the value add of those services. What that left was what they were passionate about anyway: branding, web design, and digital marketing – key pieces of every brand’s lifecycle.

Avintiv serves a wide variety of industries, but one “ideal client” is a well-funded, very-much-at-the-beginning startup with business experience. The process begins with a deep-level discovery consultation to determine the “end goal.” This usually progresses to a half-day brand workshop, which involves the brand’s/company’s stakeholders and the entire Avintiv strategy team. The product of that workshop is a 40-50+ business plan/investor pitch deck that covers SWOT analysis, and includes buyer personas, a mission statement, and a competitive analysis, what Jon refers to as a company’s  “Bible for your business over the next 10 years.” Jon explains his company’s criteria for finding startups to work with . . . relationships where the end result is win-win-win . . . the company, its customers, and Avintiv all gain.

In branding, Avintiv may provide a company name, logos, icons, SKUs, a style guide, typography, colors, and with e-commerce or product-based businesses, product development and design. The in-house development/creative team builds out a custom WordPress or Shopify website. The SEO team takes over at that point, providing keywords, creating a 6- to 12-month SEO campaign, and writing the content.

The second “ideal client” is one that has grown in the past and wants to grow today, but can’t seem to “move the needle” in today’s business climate. Avintiv takes these companies through the entire buyer’s journey to clarify who their customers really are . . . and why they buy. Working off data, Avintiv identifies the buyers and price points companies need to target, redesigns the website to fit buyer needs. Jon has found that working with investors and investor firms can be very effective, because investors appreciate that working with Avintiv increases the odds of recouping their investments.

In this interview, Jon talks about the impact of corona virus . . . that he believes it will probably change a lot of the way we do business, that brands will need to pay closer attention to detail, that a “less trusting” population will research more, judge organizations’ actions more during these hard times, and look for good people and good companies with which to do business. Jon says that he has found that, people in quarantine have become more engaged and more focused on providing good to the community. People whose work typically comes with a high price tag are jumping in and offering their services for free. In the same vein, Jon says he has no passion for building something for himself: his passion is for changing other people’s lives. He expects the coming year to be one of unprecedented growth.

Jon’s company can be reached on its website at: www.avintivmedia.com or through Instagram t @AvintivMedia. Jon is best reached on Instagram @JonBoles.

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m joined today by Jon Boles. Jon is the Founder and CEO at Avintiv Media based in Scottsdale, Arizona. Welcome to the podcast, Jon.

JON: How’s it going, my man?

ROB: It’s going great. You?

JON: No complaints this week as of yet. It’s pretty crazy what’s going on in the world, but we’re prepared for it.

ROB: Sure. We’re dead in mid-late March, right in the thick of the coronavirus, and everybody is sheltering in place. But we are sheltering on a podcast. Why don’t you start off, Jon, by telling us about Avintiv Media and where Avintiv excels?

JON: Avintiv Media is an award-winning boutique digital marketing agency in Scottsdale, Arizona, and we specialize in three solutions for our clients: branding, web design, and digital marketing. With digital marketing, what we hone in on is content creation and syndication and SEO.

Essentially, we launched Avintiv 4 years ago. We were a full service agency. We ran ads, we did Facebook ads, we did influencer marketing, we worked with a lot of celebrities and influencers. We just realized what we weren’t passionate about anymore. We realized what we were passionate about, and that is building brands, and that’s only offering services that we truly believe in. With how volatile and how up-and-down advertising is, social media channels are, we didn’t feel that we had enough control over them to have them be fully valuable for a client. So we focus on those three services.

ROB: Perfect. Those three services seem like a natural lifecycle that any brand is going to go through.

JON: Exactly.

ROB: The need for a brand refresh, the need to speak that into the world, and then the need to continue sustaining that. Do people often come to you at the branding end of things, or is it really they enter into that virtuous cycle at every point but still go through that cycle?

JON: That’s such a great question. I’m glad you asked that. The reason why we offer those three services – my background is consulting, so I’ve been building brands for close to 11 years now, probably built and scaled over 250 or 300 brands in the past 10 years so far. I found a common element on what it takes to start a brand, grow a brand, and keep growing it with trust and redoing the branding and redoing landing pages, websites, and that is why we offer those services that we do.

To answer your question, we have two really ideal customers that come to us. We have a plethora of different industries that we serve, but our ideal customers that we know are going to be grand slams, it’s going to be a win-win for both parties, is startups that haven’t gotten started yet and they have funding behind them, whether it’s an angel investor or they have family money behind them.

They are already seasoned with business. They either have a good job or they’ve started companies in the past, and they realize that the statistics are against starting a small business or starting a business. The odds are against you. People come to Avintiv or to myself and they want it done right the first way.

We start with the discovery; that goes into a small consultation to get to know them. What are their goals? What are their dreams? We dive inside their head, deeper than they’ve even gone, and figure out what they really wanting to start this company for. Is it an exit? Is it this is their lifelong dream that they’ve dreamt of since they were a child? What is their end goal?

What happens is after that consultation, 9 times out of 10 it goes into a brand workshop. A brand workshop is a half-day consultation with our entire strategy team and whatever stakeholders are in that brand or that company. Then that dives into 40-50+ pages that we create for them. It’s a new aged business plan/investor pitch deck, if you would. It goes over SWOT analysis, we create buyer personas, we create a mission statement, we go over your competition. It’s the Bible for your business over the next 10 years.

Clients really love that because it gives them, their team, their investors, or anyone involved the playbook of who they are, why they’re doing what they’re doing, and it creates validity to them starting this company. It gives them hope that this can be successful.

After that, we help brand with naming, coming up with the name – or if they already have the name that they want, it goes into logo, icons, it goes into style guide, typography, colors, the whole nine yards. If it’s an ecommerce or a product-based business, we then go into the product development and design.

We were big in 2019 in the CBD industry. We had multiple clients that did the brand workshop. We then created 20 different SKUs for them, whether it was gummies, tinctures, bottles – you name it and we created – the bottles, the SKUs. We did a CBD water company in 1,200 or 2,400 Circle Ks, so we had to do different line item SKUs for them.

Once it’s in the product design phase and the packaging design phase, then we start building out the website. Once the website is fully built out, we do custom WordPress or Shopify, depending on what the client’s needs are. We have in-house devs, in-house creative team, so it’s not outsourced to Asia or India or anything like that.

Once the website is getting ready to launch, our SEO team hops in and redoes all the on-page SEO. We build out their keyword analysis and basically create their 6- to 12-month SEO campaign, and we start writing the content. That’s how we launch a lot of the companies. And we do consult with them what they should be doing on social media, what they should be doing on the ground with their team, and vice versa.

So that’s a 20,000-foot approach of a new brand that would hire us. Then we have a lot of companies that are 2 to 20 years old that have hit plateaus. They scaled up really quickly or they bought their family’s business from them or they’ve bought a company or they just don’t know how to grow in 2020. They come to us, and it’s almost the same process. It’s just a company that’s doing a couple million in revenue and that’s not good enough for them. They want to hire more employees. They want to scale up to more cities. They go through the exact same process that I just mentioned to you.

ROB: Very interesting. One thing that’s interesting there is that I think with an established brand, you as the agency have the advantage of they have customers; they may just not fully understand them. They may not fully understand why they are customers. It seems like you would be able to come in as Avintiv and pull on that thread and understand the deeper customer road and innovations.

One thing that is hard in the startup world and the raising money world is that sometimes the ideal customer for them is a little bit more hypothetical. How do you walk through that process of helping them discover what is real versus what is an imagined fiction that they’ve been pushed towards – sometimes just in order to raise money?

JON: I’ll start with the first question and follow back with the startups. The first question you asked – yeah, I think it’s vital for an already-successful company that’s hit a plateau to come to us because they think they know their customers, but they’ve had so many employee changeovers, their team is much larger than it used to be.

The owner thinks they know who their customers are because when they started it 2 to 10 years ago and they were the sales guy, they were on the frontlines – as the business grows, the CEO or the founder is not on the frontlines anymore. As time goes on – I’ve even been at fault for this in the past with other ecommerce companies – you start to lose who your customers are and what is making them purchase from you.

We go through an entire customer buyer journey with them, and we even interview some of their customers and some of their clients and go through the whole process. “What is your buying process? Why do you buy from them? What makes you light up about working with this company?” The findings of that is it’s almost like an out-of-body experience for business owners that have been in business for so long because it’s completely different than anything they would’ve thought. The reasons why these customers shop with them or go to them are things they don’t even focus on.

That allows us to go back and figure out the three differentiators. Why do people shop with them? Why do people go to them for business? That allows us to help redesign the website and focus on why people go there, and use that as the language. That helps big time.

Now, on the second question, for startups, you have a lot of people that are trying to raise money. Yeah, they put different types of Baby Boomers or millennials or this or that because they think that’s the cool thing to talk about or they read a press release on Forbes or Entrepreneur.com and they’re adding personas in there.

What we do is go on data. We’re not just throwing crap against the wall and hoping it sticks. Our team of analysts and our team of strategists, including myself, we’ve been researching for 10 years, so we know exactly what materials and resources to use, how to dive in, dive deep. We’re able to find other business plans and other things that are already out there and basically pull together a web of different resources and show the entrepreneurs, “Hey, this is why your personas are a little bit off. Really, it’s this person who’s going to be buying from you. The price point needs to be XYZ, not what you had in your pitch deck.”

You might grow a little bit slower, you might grow a little bit faster, but we go off data. That’s why investors and investor firms – we partner with a couple investment firms – they love working with us because when you work with Avintiv, the investor has higher odds of getting their return back, and at a quicker pace. But if you’re working with an entrepreneur and this is their second or third business and there’s really no direction, it’s just going off of them, it’s a lot riskier doing that because the investor is thinking, “What if something happens? What if they get burnout? What if this happens?”

When you have an agency that knows what they’re doing, we have as many case studies as we do, we have as much experience in the industry as we do, investors feel very safe working with us because our team acts as if we’re the owners of the company as well.

The past two weeks of coronavirus, I think I worked with our whole team till 9:30 at night. I’ve never worked that late with my team. I usually work that late, but my team goes above and beyond for the brands that we work with, especially in times of emergency like this. We’re adding so many more hours to projects and not charging for them. We’re just trying to provide as much value as possible right now.

ROB: Absolutely. A lot of that value in this season is going to be probably going back to some of the diagnosis you’ve already done on customers, and some of it’s going to be figuring out almost testing new ways of doing business. What are you seeing with maybe a customer or two that is finding a new way that they have to do business and actually learning about their customers in the process?

JON: The good thing is our clients right now have been affected a little bit by what’s going on, but I think that every one of our clients is understanding that they need to pay a lot more attention to marketing, to the words that they use, to every detail of everything that they publish.

When people hire us, I’m very OCD. Our team is very OCD. We don’t agree with us doing a Rolls-Royce style brand, logo, and packaging, but your social media looks like crap or your website looks like crap. I think clients are now understanding that the world is evolving to a place that isn’t really trusting right now. The American people, or people around the world, aren’t really trusting the government. They don’t know what’s real, they don’t know what’s fake. They’re not really trusting banks.

So I think 2020, people are going to be taking a step back and they’re going to be thinking about their purchases a little bit more. They’re going to be doing a little bit more research. They’re going to be going from your website to your social media handles to see how you talk. People are wanting to invest in companies that stand for something, that are good people.

I hate to say it, but a lot of businesses right now aren’t being positive on social media and they’re not being the light at the end of a dark tunnel. Customers are judging you. They’re looking at you on what emails you’re sending about the coronavirus, how you’re acting in this type of emergency, because they’re not going to come back and shop with you – if you can’t handle yourself in an emergency, why do you deserve them when times are good?

I think the biggest thing for brands right now is they have to pay attention to the details. I think for the agency world, the marketing agency industry and world is going to skyrocket over the next couple of months. We’re looking at our sales forecasting, and it’s not even about revenue for us. It’s about the lives of our clients that we can change, and every client that we work with, they have hundreds if not thousands or millions of customers. So when we provide value to our one client, it’s almost like we just impacted 10 million people.

ROB: It’s a good point you make that we’re moving into a slightly longer buyer journey, in some cases because of trust and I think in other cases because we just can’t get things as fast as we’re used to and we don’t need them as fast as we’re used to. You order from Amazon Prime and it’s not two days anymore sometimes. Sometimes it’s four. You order from Instacart, sometimes you can’t get an appointment for over a week. We’re not as impulsive and the economy is not as booming, so people are going to think, and it’s great that they’re going to be able to think about and trust you.

If we rewind that journey a little bit, how did you come to start Avintiv Media in the first place? What led you to the beginning of this journey?

JON: Great question. I think most agency owners that would listen to this can agree – I kind of fell into it. I didn’t plan on starting an agency. At the time, my background was consulting. I was in the bar and restaurant industry for a number of years, owned different establishments, was in event planning and event marketing. I owned a consulting firm. Then I got into ecommerce for a little bit.

When I started Avintiv, I had an ecommerce clothing company that was booming at the time, and I kept hiring web developers and I kept hiring agencies to do Facebook ads and work on our marketing for us because even though I’m self-taught, being the CEO of a startup, you can’t manage all aspects of everything. So I kept outsourcing it to different agencies, different people.

Every developer I hired fell short of what I wanted, and then they wanted more money, they wanted more money. Then they took my website and threatened to not give the website back if we didn’t pay an absurd fee. I just got sick and tired of being screwed over. The agencies that we were hiring – and I’m sure anyone that ran Facebook ads a couple years ago – there’s a couple different settings on the Facebook ad ROIs you can click. One of them shows, “if this many people go to this landing page or add to cart, that’s what the total would be.” Our agencies were acting as if those were our revenue numbers, and I didn’t catch on for a couple of months because I was running at the speed of light.

My accountant told me, “Dude, you’re not doing as much revenue as this agency is making it seem, and you’re not even profitable working with these guys.” I used two agencies, and both of them were not as truthful as I would’ve liked them to be. I kept having people reach out to me about a year after that like, “Hey, who did your logo? Who did your website? Who’s running your social media?” I was doing everything. I taught myself web development. I taught myself videography. My background was social media, so I had that on lockdown.

People kept reaching out to me, and I said, wow, there must be a need in the marketplace for offering these types of services that everyone keeps contacting me for. So I started building a couple websites for a couple local brands, and it evolved into I couldn’t take on any more clients because I was at capacity.

We were profitable the first week we launched the agency, and it evolved into being what it is today with having a full team and phenomenal clients. We’re hitting our 4 years in April next month, and it’s kind of like an out-of-body experience. I realized in this journey, I don’t have a passion for building my own brands and selling my own products and launching – I owned a couple CBD brands last year. I don’t have a passion for building my own thing. I have a passion for changing other people’s lives.

I’ve been a coach and consultant; I love changing an entrepreneur’s life. I love giving them a phenomenal experience. That’s why I love Avintiv so much, because we are so passionate about building other people’s brands that change the world.

We’re working with a local health and wellness clinic in Scottsdale that’s actually a very big clinic, and he is one of the most talented doctors I’ve ever met in 31 years of my life, doing holistic type of medicine, IV drips, Botox – a variety of different things. He has a new, modern way of doing medicine, and the amount of lives this guy is going to change just by us being able to redo his branding, his website, and sending him in a different direction – that’s what gives me fuel to keep growing the agency. But if it was me just selling my own products and trying to get rich and things like that, I don’t have a passion for that.

ROB: It’s hard to come across as genuine with a passion for that because it seems like you’re serving yourself maybe more than your clients. How did you come to find this particular resonance with startups? Were you tapped into a vein locally? Is there a regional connection? Or do you think it’s just a natural resonance with who you are and that brand building connection?

JON: When I started my clothing company before I sold it, I posted my whole journey on Instagram, on social media. I’m talking about our first initial designs 6-7 years ago, and then our first warehouse, and people saw me use my living room as my warehouse, and then we got a bigger warehouse. So I’ve been sharing my journey for a number of years.

But not only that, any industry I’ve been in, I’m blessed to be I guess you could say a social butterfly. No matter what city I live in or where I’m at, I’m able to meet the who’s who that runs that city, become friends with them. I’m a likeable guy. I’m someone that doesn’t screw anyone over. I have a lot of friends.

I think that has helped me build a good amount of following and people that pay attention to me, along with press releases or certain things. I think it’s just a combination of who I am and the journey of me sharing my journey. People have seen how many startups I’ve built or have consulted, or people ask around town, “Hey, I have this new company idea. Who’s the best person in town I could ask?”, and 9 times out of 10, people send them my way.

ROB: As a social butterfly, I’m sure there’s a certain extent to which you have also engaged with other social butterflies. How are you finding to connect and scratch that itch in this season we’re in, where you’re probably not getting together with people you don’t know?

JON: To be honest, if you look on my Instagram page or any public stuff that’s out there of me, it probably looks like I’m the life of networking, going out – not partying, but being out and about and socializing. I am such an introvert. I’m standing, as I’m talking to you, at my bookshelf right now. Being locked in, reading books and working, I don’t think I could be happier right now.

Yeah, it’s a little weird not going out, but I honestly think it’s a little bit easier to connect with people right now. I have a lot of “celebrity influencer” friends that are in LA that it might take them a week or two weeks to text back or to get back. I’m talking to people I haven’t talked to in years or months. I’m talking to my family more than ever.

So I think what’s going on with us all being locked in, I think people are more accessible. I’m hopping on so many free consultation calls and discovery calls that I would usually charge a pretty high rate for just because I have extra time on my hands. I’m not traveling to the office, I’m not traveling to the gym, so why not provide more value?

I know a lot of friends or people of that nature, influencers in LA, New York, Miami, they’re doing the same thing. And these are guys who charge a couple thousand dollars an hour, and they’re hopping on tons of free webinars, they’re hopping on free Zoom calls. I think it’s a really cool thing, what’s going on right now. All of us are trying to just be there for people that are scared and don’t know where to turn.

ROB: That’s perfect. It’s such a great time to give and to build trust – not that it isn’t always time to build trust. Jon, as you look back, what are a couple things you’ve learned from building Avintiv in these 4 years that you would do differently if you were starting from scratch?

JON: A couple of different things. Before I started Avintiv, I wish I would’ve understood the accounting and financial realm a little bit better. I always thought that having the best accountants, they would fix everything. I ran into a bad experience about 5 or 6 years ago when one of my accountants was going through chemo and had cancer and actually dropped the ball with a couple of things, and I didn’t notice it because I didn’t know it as well as I should have.

So understanding the fundamentals of business – not per industry or what type of business, but just understanding accounting and business from a financial aspect. That’s one of the things.

Two, from an agency standpoint, I probably would’ve niched down immediately. Although I did, but the niche I chose was more fitness and fitness product realm, and there’s not a lot of money in the fitness industry, as much as people might portray that. So I would’ve definitely niched down in the beginning, and I might’ve only launched one service.

If I had to start over or if Avintiv sells down the road one day and I had to redo the agency realm, I would probably launch three individual brands. I would start with SEO. I would build a multiple 6-figure per month MRR SEO agency. I would then build a web design agency, and then I would build a branding agency. All three have different managers that run the businesses, all internal team members, and we outsource in between the companies. I would run each individual solely.

When you’re running your advertising and your lead gen for each of those businesses, you don’t have to talk about web design or branding. You talk about SEO. It’s simply SEO and content. So I would have three individual brands that basically live in the same ecosystem, but to the general public, they don’t.

ROB: Right, so to the general public, it wouldn’t be a white label pass through. It would be a partnership to the world?

JON: Exactly.

ROB: Got it. What’s next for Avintiv? What are you looking forward to? What do you think we should be looking to in the marketing world as we’re looking ahead?

JON: Oh man. What’s next for Avintiv is, now seeing how busy everything is going to be, I definitely think that we’re able to double in size and double in revenue this year. We might be going remote for the next couple of months just because it doesn’t make sense having expensive office space when our city isn’t even letting us operate out of our office. So we might be going remote for a couple of months. But I would like to scale the team up to about 15 in-house employees, a little bit bigger office space this year, and be the go-to for building startups and rebuilding brands that are hitting a plateau.

2020 is the first year that Avintiv has been my only company and my only focus. I had a lot of different fires out there in 2019. I owned a couple CBD brands, I was in the credit card processing space, and the opportunity cost that hit me – I was so passionate about helping these other brands grow that I got equity plays and equity pieces. It took my eye off the ball. So 2020 is honestly the first year since we’ve launched Avintiv where it is my only and sole focus.

If we’ve grown this far in 4 years and it’s only been 25% or 30% of what I do day to day, I’m pretty excited to see what 100% looks like.

ROB: Wow. A lot of times when we have our hand in too many things, it becomes very difficult to find that margin and time to reflect and really gather the confidence that you’ve got to do something else, you have to change how you’re doing things.

How did you find that margin to realize the things you needed to cut out of your own world, the things you were more passionate and less passionate about, and focus solely on Avintiv?

JON: I go through phases of cycles of what books I read and what coaches I hire. I had an out-of-body experience towards the end of 2019 and towards the beginning of 2020, and I just found out that I had too much – and I never usually have anxiety or stress. I live in a stressful environment doing what I do, but I never usually let it get to me. It started to get to me a little bit, and I said, what the heck is going on in my life that I can’t really control – all of a sudden I’m having anxiety on a Monday or a Tuesday?

I started to realize I was waking up and I was consulting for a financial client, and then I was running a CBD company, and then I was an agency owner, and then I was consulting on SEO and content. I was too many people in a given day where I’d come home – at the time I was in a relationship, and then I had to play boyfriend, or son. There was no time for me to sit back and just be Jon. I was 15 or 20 different people to so many different people, and I was filling so many other people’s cups versus my own. I was taking care of everyone’s needs but my own.

ROB: Sometimes we do need that sort of break. If I look back to your ideal customers, I think one challenge people often find themselves in is when you’re looking at startups, how do you qualify the ones who are good clients, and how do you qualify the ones that are going to have you do a bunch of work and not pay you? How do you think about discernment when it comes to the startup world?

JON: Great question. We’ve run into some payment issues with the CBD industry, but now, going through that – and it pays to have a great collections agency and a great legal team behind your back. We’re pretty protected when it comes to that. But we have a pretty good and robust discovery and consultation process where we can smell bull from a mile away. I’ve been doing this for so long where I trained my team to ask certain questions.

And it’s not that we don’t want to help startups that don’t have the funding or don’t have the money, but we will be doing a disservice to you if you don’t pay for what our services are worth because our team is going to resent working for you, we’re not going to be able to profit or be able to pay for things.

So at the end of the day, we don’t usually work with people that don’t have funding or they can’t cope with money just because, even though it’s not a business transaction, it has to be a win-win scenario. It can’t be a win-lose scenario where we feel so bad for the startup and this entrepreneur because he or she is such a good person that we’re going to discount our services 50% so they win. That is going to be a loss for us. It always has to be a win-win.

We always tell our clients we want it to be a win-win-win scenario. All of our clients that we help are B2C, the majority of them. So if we help our clients succeed and we make our customers happy, those are two wins. And if those two people are happy, that equals a win for Avintiv. So we are in the win-win-win type of business.

We just brought on a startup a month ago, and he’s a very successful pilot. We can see that if someone has already had a career for 25 years or 20 years and they make a really good living, that shows us that there’s probably capital that backs them. They went through schooling. Being a pilot is a rigorous checks and balances. They have a crazy amount of processes. So that would fit in line with how we run our agency.

Now, if someone hasn’t been employed for 10 or 15 years and they’ve had a couple startups that have failed, this is a new great idea that’s going to take over the world, but they talk about crazy things like “This is the next billion dollar idea! I want to create this and sell it in two years for $5 million!”, like half the CBD startups out there right now, we won’t work with them. The expectations that they’ve fed into their head are not real, and I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news to tell them that there’s no Santa Claus.

Everyone thinks “because this company sold for X” or “Elon Musk created this,” that it’s possible for anyone. I’m never the guy that’s going to kill someone’s dreams or say you can’t do anything; I’m actually the guy that thinks anyone can do anything if they believe in themselves. But we’re not going to go along on the ride if you’re going to be dragging us through the mud with you because we’re just not at that place anymore.

Maybe 4-5 years ago, we would’ve tested the waters. But we have a big enough clientele and portfolio and case studies now where we are very choosy with who we work with. We can pick and choose very easily, and we turn down clients left and right. If it’s not going to be a win-win-win, we’re not going to work with you because you’re going to be mad at us, we’re going to be mad at you, and it’s just going to create resentment.

ROB: It almost sounds like a hiring decision.

JON: Oh, one hundred percent. It’s funny when clients are on a discovery call or consultation call and they think that they’re interviewing us, and when the roles get reversed and we start interviewing them, they’re like, “Wait a second. What’s going on here?”

It’s like, we only take on X amount of clients per quarter, projects of this size. We want to make sure that our whole team would enjoy working on your project. It’s not about revenue or profit for us. If our creative team is going to be bored out of their mind working on this project, we’re not going to do it because that is going to stunt their growth for every other project they work on. So we are so careful with who we work with.

ROB: Perfect. Jon, when people want to find you and want to find Avintiv Media, where should they go?

JON: You can go to www.avintivmedia.com. Otherwise, our Instagram handle is @AvintivMedia. Otherwise, I am mainly on Instagram @JonBoles. It’s got a little verified checkmark next to it, so it’s pretty easy to find.

ROB: That’s a solid move there. Jon, thank you for coming on the podcast. Looking forward to that doubling growth here in 2020.

JON: Thank you so much for having me. Hopefully I was able to provide a little bit of value to you guys.

ROB: I definitely think so. Take care.

Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Anthony Sarandrea is the founder of Siteflood, a high-revenue agency offering website design, search engine optimization, paid social, paid search management, and analytics and tracking to select clients. Siteflood’s primary focus is on paid media, fast results, and a trackable ROI. 

Originally, a boutique agency with select clients paying a monthly retainer, Siteflood has added a “partnership model,” where Siteflood’s income from a client is tied directly the number of leads it generates or the client’s sales numbers. As these clients grow, the agency’s incentivization grows. This model has enabled Siteflood to scale quickly without needing to add huge numbers of staff or hundreds of clients. The agency garners a daily gross revenue in the six figures – with a staff of around 30 people. 

Does incentivization always work?

Anthony relates the story where one of two client companies, with identical, copy-pasted Google AdWords, made $3 for every $1 net margin spend and the other company claimed they had not “made a dollar of revenue” in 4 months. The difference in results had nothing to do with the generated lead flow. It came from differences in the companies’ internal sales processes, products, and how each company closed deals. Anthony emphasizes that incentivization only works when you are “aligned with the right people.” 

In this interview, Anthony recommends finding clients that work . . . and then finding more of the same kind of clients. He describes the process Siteflood uses to select “the right clients”:

1. Does the company measure up on an in-depth “vetting process” of its processes, culture, and growth-readiness? Does this relationship look like it will be successful?
2. Is the company at an inflection point where it is large enough to quickly scale to putting six figures a month into marketing and small enough that it can be coached to improve its internal, customer relationship, and sales processes?
3. Does the company have the infrastructure to support a ten-fold increase in sales? 

At the beginning, Anthony did it all. He explains how growing his company was an iterative process of replacing himself. He recommends a book, The E-Myth, Why Most Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It, available on Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Most-Businesses-Dont-About/dp/0887303625. The book discusses the growth journey in terms of learning new skill sets. Anthony feels the key to sustainable long term growth is to invest in his people – to serve as a facilitator and cheerleader, to provide the right tools and training, to continuously invest in his employees’ wellbeing, and to set them up for success. 

Growth also requires hiring . . . the right people for the right reasons:

• Hire quickly to replace yourself in jobs you don’t like to do. 
• For fast results, hire people who can do things better than you can. If you cannot afford someone full time, hire part time. Anthony recommends a site called Clarity.fm https://clarity.fm/ where experts are paid by the minute.
• Hire for jobs at which you excel, but expect that the person replacing you will only be 70% as good at it as you are. Here, Anthony explains his training process. He says a company owner absolutely has to replace him- or herself if the company is to grow.

Anthony’s interview is rich with ideas. His favorite way to be contacted is through Instagram at: @anthonysarandrea. Or google his name and reach out to him on one of his sites. He loves answering questions.

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Anthony Sarandrea, Founder of Siteflood in Scottsdale, Arizona. Welcome to the podcast, Anthony.

ANTHONY: Hey, Rob. Thanks for having me, brother.

ROB: Fantastic to have you here. Why don’t you start off by telling us about Siteflood and the specialties that you work in? 

ANTHONY: We started as a boutique agency that took on select clients. Really the paid media space is where we’ve always sharpened our teeth. A lot of that is the speed of results to be able to have a trackable ROI on a lot we’ve done. We started taking on select clients in a traditional agency format where they paid us a retainer per month, and a lot of clients still are on that format.

Over the years, we started performing well for clients and realized, why don’t we productize our service? Why don’t we sell leads or sell on a per sale or something like that where essentially, instead of getting paid a flat fee each month, we were tied to incentives that aligned with the actual company itself – or our partner, I should say.

That allowed us to very rapidly scale without having to add hundreds of people or hundreds of clients or anything like that. When our clients grew, we grew and the incentivization grew and we made more money. Today, we’ve scaled up to a little over six figures a day that the company makes in gross revenue. I think a lot of people are surprised the team is only 30-something people. Most agencies in order to scale need to hire on dozens and dozens of people to get anywhere near that level, where because of the model and incentivization ad structure, and we’ve been able to do it in a win-win format.

ROB: The productization you came up with, did you get to leads? Or was there another metric? Does it vary by client a little bit?

ANTHONY: It varies by client. Most of what we focus on today is in the lead space, so each customer we send. But a lot of times it was structured initially on profit sharing or rev sharing or a bounty per new customer we drove. I think a lot of agencies and brands – we talked a little bit before this on where I see the future of advertising agencies – I think brands are going to demand more, as they should, out of their agencies, where it’s not just a “write a check and forget it” and pay it each month.

When essentially the incentivization is in alignment, both the agency and the company grow and everybody feels good about it versus writing a 10 grand a month check about SEO and saying you might see something in the next 2 years.

ROB: Right. It seems like there’s always tension in pricing, and you want to drive to value for sure. It seems like when you talk about leads, there’s a tension because if you price towards closed business, then you are linking your business to their sales effectiveness. But if you are not pricing to their closed business, then it leaves room for conversations about lead quality. How did you figure out which side you wanted to land on, if you have?

ANTHONY: Great question. That thought process – I’ll start with this, too, to asterisk the whole thing – it forced us to realize that we bring a lot more – a lot of times companies or even vendors look at themselves as vendors and they’re like, “These are the guys that write the checks for me.”

It’s like, hold on, when we’re doing good services, we’re actually helping write the checks for them. We’re helping them pay their employees because we’re driving customers. So it put us a lot more in the driver’s seat than I think a lot of agencies or even brands look at vendors or agencies. They look at them as a commodity or it’s just another person, where now it forced us to be infinitely more selective on who we worked with.

To your point, I remember at one point we had two companies that were the exact same. We literally copy and pasted the campaigns in Google AdWords, and one company was making $3 to every $1 net dollar margin that they were spending, and the other one said in 4 months, they hadn’t made a dollar in revenue. What was the difference there? It was their sales process internally. It was their product. It was how they closed deals. It had nothing to do with the lead flow we were driving.

I think a lot of agencies and brands, it’s easy to point and say the leads suck or the traffic sucks or they’re not good at what they do. We had to really look at, who are we aligning ourselves with? That is equally if not infinitely more important, to be aligned with the right people.

I guess to answer your initial question, we focused at the beginning, and we do today, on driving the best customers, really helping our clients make the most money, because we know in order for us to get paid more and put more dollars in our pocket, we need to help them put more dollars in their pocket. Otherwise they can’t pay us. If the company is not making money, they can’t continue to justify paying us.

So by focusing on really the bottom line of our clients or for agency owners to do that, you’re able to essentially justify your fees coming back tenfold. They’d be silly to not want to pay you more if you’re making them that money and you’re able to trackably show that.

ROB: As you’ve dialed in on these right customers for you, have there been certain categories, certain types of companies for certain product lines that have emerged? And how do you get close enough to really, really vet and evaluate whether they’re a good customer?

ANTHONY: The vetting, we’ll do everything. When they come in and they’re asking to work with us, we’ll buy the product or we’ll call in and even walk through the sales process of enrolling the client and stuff like that and just see, how is their follow-up sequence? How is their upsell sequence? How do they do it? A lot of that, we don’t necessarily have enough hours in the day or resources and/or bandwidth that we want to point towards helping them tune up their sales process.

If a lot of that is not already in place, we know it’s probably going to be a failing campaign. Simple things that you forget, but most companies don’t even pick up the phone when it rings. It’s so funny. They have a $12 an hour college guy or gal answering the phone, and it’s like, you’re spending 10 grand a month on Google AdWords and then you have a $12 an hour girl or guy answering the phones? How does that make sense?

So even just little quick things like that. Just saying, “Hey, is this going to be successful? Have they invested in their sales process?” That’s number one.

Number two, we’re at a really interesting inflection point where we need a big enough company that can scale so they can put six figures a month into marketing dollars, but also small enough where we can grab their ear when we need to say, “Hey, answer the phone in a certain way” or “Hey, you should work on your upsell sequence.” We had Fortune 500 companies where it took months to move anything, and it was hindering us, especially if we’re tied to performance. If we know something is going to work, or at least we want to test it, and it takes 3 months of approvals to get through middle management to upper management to senior – that’s not a partner for us either.

So we’ve really landed on companies that probably do anywhere from $10 million to $50 million a year that are heavily focused on direct response advertising. Things like that are really our bread and butter.

ROB: Any particular categories of direct response product?

ANTHONY: On our own website, a lot of the lead focus are a lot in the financial space, but healthcare has also been very big for us. Very easily, though, you can apply the same model to ecommerce. The same challenges work there, and now the conversation is on the phone with the brand. “How is your supply chain pipeline? Are you guys able to scale up quickly? Do you guys have investments? How’s your cash flow?” Asking those types of questions where if you’re signing up 100 sales and you go to 1,000 sales a day, do they have the infrastructure to support that?

I guarantee you, if you’re an agency owner or if you’re a brand listening, that conversation sticks out infinitely further than every other agency that’s like “I charge 10% of spend. We’re going to get you impressions and clicks and SEO.” The brand owner is almost like, “I don’t understand half this stuff. It feels like brain surgery. Everyone is having the same conversations with me.” “Here’s my past work.” It’s like, how about getting on the phone and being like, “Logistically, how would it work if you tripled it? Do you guys have the infrastructure to support that?”

Have that conversation. See the response you get if you’re an agency owner to a brand. Or if you’re a brand, think about how good that would feel to have that agency partner having those conversations with you as a partner.

I keep saying partner, too. I don’t say a vendor. I don’t say a company. It really becomes a partnership in a lot of ways because the whole train falls off the tracks if both sides aren’t keeping up their end of the bargain. If the engine isn’t moving, if they’re not putting the right gasoline and oil into the engine, you’re just the wheels, really. You could be the best wheels on the planet; if that engine is not fine-tuned, which is the client, or vice versa, there’s a problem. So there really needs to be an alignment on both. 

ROB: Anthony, you said you’re around 30 people in the company now, but obviously everybody starts somewhere, and it usually starts pretty small. How did you end up starting Siteflood, and what led to that beginning?

ANTHONY: It really started with me doing a lot of essentially consultation or consulting work, it felt like, or side hustle, where you’ve got a couple clients. I was the technician. I’m the one running the AdWords accounts and things like that and having the conversations.

At least me – I’ll just tell my story – you start doing everything, really. I’m the bookkeeper, I’m the accountant. I’m wearing all the hats. Then, at least my journey, I got busy enough where I was able to hire on – at the time, the first hire was a bookkeeper part-time, and then the second hire was actually my brother, someone to run the ads where then I enjoyed and was good at the conversations with the clients. Then started building out essentially people doing the work, so the technicians. I was the manager/point of contact for the clients to liaison, I’ll say. Then eventually replacing myself as that, and then last step is and was replacing myself in sales.

That’s the progression. I find a lot of agency owners move through a similar progression. They go from the technician to manager to learning how to be an entrepreneur. There’s a great book called The E-Myth that I recommend to anybody listening. It essentially walks through that journey and how you’re really each time learning new skillsets.

I was a badass sales guy, and then I was a badass internet marketer, and then I had to learn how to be a good manager. Then I had to learn to be a good entrepreneur. You really start at ground zero, almost on each one. I think the quicker you wrap your head around this is a totally new skillset, even though it’s the same industry or type of business – I think a lot of people fall into the fallacy that it’s like “I’m really good at Google AdWords. I’ll be a really good manager or a really good entrepreneur.” It’s not always the case. It’s very difficult to start from ground zero and really humble yourself each time you move that progression from technician to manager to entrepreneur.

ROB: Those last couple of steps that you mentioned can often be the most challenging. That switching out from being the lead salesperson, in particular, because in a services firm, so often the client wants some facetime with you as the founder, as the leader. How have you navigated that transition? Is it more that people who are taking the role and leading on sales are leading in that function and you’re still brought in sometimes because that’s part of the brand of the firm? Or have you found some tactics that you’ve been able to move it even further?

ANTHONY: I think there’s one thing that really stuck with me. I think especially a lot of A type entrepreneurs are very controlling, and nobody’s going to ever have the same level of care you do for your business because your name is on it. You’re taking the risk, so you get the downfall and the upside. When the company is making good money, you’re making good money. When the company is struggling or failing, it’s really your ass.

Where was I going with that? Oh, I had a great mentor tell me one time, “If you can hire someone to do the job 70% as good as you, that’s what you should aim for.” It was tough because at first I had someone come in and would run the AdWords accounts, and I was like, I can do this better.

The reality is, you probably can. If you’re telling yourself that, it’s probably true. But you will never grow with that mindset. The company will not grow. Unless you find a way to get more hours in the day – which Bill Gates hasn’t been able to figure that out yet – unless you find a way to be able to extend the length of the day, it’s impossible for you to ever break that.

Wrapping my head around that was like, got it, cool, put your ego down, understand that yes, nobody can do this as good as you – and that’s okay. Now it’s become a function of, can I hire someone to do it 70% as good as me. I really lead with “I do, you watch, then you do, I watch, and then I manage.” Essentially, I’m doing it and showing it; they’re watching. Then I’m hands off and I’m watching and I’m saying, “Now you’re doing it.”

Then when it feels good, it’s putting checks and balances in place. It’s “Hey, let’s track the CPA you’re driving for this campaign. Let’s track how many conversations you had with a client.” I’ll poke in time to time and just listen on mute to a sales call, little things like that. But really, at least for me, it’s a function of again, I’m doing and you’re watching, you’re taking notes.

And it’s not a one-time thing. It’s consistently – it’s funny. Now I joke I’m really a cheerleader, at the end of the day, today. I work for my team more than they work for me. My job all day long is like, “What can I get you? How can I help you?” They’re like, “Go get me this.” I’m running to go get coffee for everybody. That’s my job now: to continuously invest in their wellbeing, to make sure they have the right tools, they have the right training, set them up to have consultations with people that might be better. That’s in personal and business life.

That continuous grooming of individuals is really, at least in my opinion, the key to sustainable long-term growth. But again, that was a little tactical there. I think that same progression applies to whether you’re hiring someone around an AdWords account, someone to talk to clients, or someone to sell. But short answer, yeah.

The other portion of my time is putting out fires. I’m not going to say I’m sitting on a beach all day and the machine runs itself. I am there to put our fires. I am there when there’s a difficult conversation or a new challenge that comes up for a sales guy or within the accounts. I am there to help strategize or to jump in or anything like that. Yeah, I’d say I handle the top 10% of fires as well that roll up to me.

ROB: Very good. Anthony, you mentioned that one of your early hires was your brother, and it sounded like he came in in this operational structuring role. How have you thought about, as you grow, handling this balance of needing process to scale while also needing creativity and the entrepreneurial spirit to continue growth and avoid stagnating?

ANTHONY: That’s an awesome question, dude. I think first you’ve got to understand where your strength is. Is it operationally or is that continued vision? Ultimately, I think I’d be lying if I didn’t say you have to learn and work on both. That’s where that challenge of the 24 hours comes in.

But it’s hiring people that can do things better than yourself. For instance, I remember when we were at a much, much, much smaller size, I hired an operational consultant who came in for a week. It was a ton of money at the time for him to come in, and I was like, this is a necessary investment. He put together project management systems and he put together processes.

It was all stuff that I had been probably a year too late. We really needed it a year earlier and I just kept being like, “I’ll do it” or “We should” or “We’re good, the train’s not falling off.” Making those investments back into the business is extremely key because if I hadn’t done that, we would’ve never unlocked the next level in the video game. We would’ve been stuck on that same level.

That process is extremely important and it is something that I am not blessed with. I was not born to be very checklist, A, B, C, D, E. I always joke it’s a “fire, ready, aim” mentality. Essentially, finding people, whether it’s consultants, it’s a part-time person – whoever gets that ball moving, because a lot of times it’s hard, depending on the size of an agency, to be like “Let me go hire a full-time operations guy or project management.” You might not have the cash flow to be able to justify that.

But what can you afford and what kind of steps – there’s a great site called Clarity.fm where you can pay people per minute for their time. Go find someone who ran a good-sized company operationally and have them come in and help put this together. Spend a day with someone on your team that can help do it. Because ultimately, you do need to be watching out for icebergs as an entrepreneur. If that is the role you’re going to take and you are going to be the visionary, you do need to be looking out for the future and say, “Hey, we need to productize our service” or “Hey, we need to focus here.”

Some of the most successful people in the world stare out of a window for hours throughout the day. Everyone’s like, “Are they daydreaming? What are they doing?” You get paid as an entrepreneur to think. The quicker you can free up your time from – I’ll have days where I have 200 emails, and I’ll shut it down. I’ll just sit outside and just think.

It sounds funny. It’s like, “Dude, you’ve got to knock those out.” Some of my highest ROI time is just sitting on a bench somewhere and thinking. It sounds funny and it sounds silly, but it really is true. Eventually, if you are the visionary, you’re paid to think. You make money when you’re thinking. The quicker you get out of the day-to-day rut and the more time you have free to just express yourself and think, the quicker the business is going to grow.

If you’re not the visionary, if you’re not there, can you find a business partner that is? Can you find someone, again, a consultant or a mentor, someone who has been there, done that, grown to that level? How can you get around them and incentivize them again to help you? Maybe they make a percentage of growth. Maybe you’re paying them high hourly to get that. Maybe that’s a skill you’re going to work on. “How do I study some of the best visionaries and thinkers in the world?”

So I don’t want you to get stuck if someone is really good operationally on stuff to be like “That’s not me, I’m screwed.” It’s like, no, find someone who – essentially, understand what you’re good at, double down on that, and then surround yourself with people that can pick up the slack on the other level, is really the key.

I think the reason I’m so good at what I do is because I know what I’m really bad at and I’m okay with that. So I don’t need to wear 50 hats. I don’t need my ego to be stroked. I don’t need to be right. In fact, I want to be wrong. How can you find people that will tell you you’re wrong and can help get that to the next level?

And it doesn’t have to be hiring someone full-time. You don’t need to have a $100,000 a month payroll to do that. I’m telling you, there are shortcuts. There are people that want a mentee in their life because they get a ton of value out of mentoring someone at any stage of a business. Are you reaching out to those people on LinkedIn? Are you direct messaging them on Instagram for a conversation? Again, are you hiring a consultant? Are you paying someone an hourly rate to come in? Are you finding a part-time CFO that can at least get the ball rolling so you can start seeing the value or start making somewhat of your investment back? Understand the value of a CFO or something like that at a limited facet before jumping in and hiring someone at $100,000 salary, $60,000 salary.

ROB: A lot of gold there, Anthony. We will get Clarity.fm into the show notes as well. You’ve been looking back a little bit on some really good lessons along the way. What are some things you might do in building Siteflood that you would do differently that you’ve learned? If you said, “If I were doing this all over again, I would change…”

ANTHONY: I had a few key moments for me. One was I remember I sat in this all-day learning thing, and they go, “If you can’t sit here all day without having to go – if you can’t step away from your business for a full day on a workday, there’s a problem.” I think that pain point really hit with me. I felt successful, I felt good enough, I was making good money, and I felt kind of like an idiot. I was like, damn. I got four or five calls throughout that thing. I had to literally go outside. I was like, “Holy crap, I have not created a business. I’ve created a job for myself.” The second I woke up to that, I started really understanding, again, some of my pain points.

Some of the things that I would do differently is niche down in the specific industry and focus on that. I hear it over and over again; it did not ring with me, and now I can say, thank God, it finally did. In hindsight I can look back, and like I said, healthcare and financial industries – it’s not I just focus on plumbers or something like that, so I’m not even there yet, although I’d like to be one day. Even just this focus around finance and healthcare – we don’t work with ecommerce clients. Even just cutting that off, it sounds funny and it felt funny at the beginning because you don’t want to turn away business.

There’s ways to do it. Refer someone and get a referral fee to an agency that does work on ecommerce clients. Then it doesn’t feel like you’re turning away money. Stuff like that. But niching on one industry I think allows you to not just think about – if you’re an advertising agency, not just advertising all day, but really helping you read on the financial industry or read on the healthcare industry, whatever it is. If it’s legal, law firms, read on that. You start learning the conversations. You start seeing trends in what’s working and not working, even as osmosis, even outside of running ads.

It also allows your team to focus. Now they know how to run a law firm’s account versus they’re working with a car guy and then a plumber. They’re learning new industries all day long. There’s a compounding effect to just focusing on the same industry. So that’s number one. I heard it, but I wasn’t listening for probably 2 years. I heard niche down specific on one, and I was like, “Yep, sounds good, but I’ve got this auto guy who’s about to sign up, and then I’ve got this DUI lawyer that’s about to sign. That’s money. I want money.”

I’m not necessarily telling you turn away money. Find ways to monetize that or do it at a limited facet, but start gravitating towards which client are you performing the best for? Who do you have the best results for? Then go find more of those people. Go find more of those to essentially enroll more in your program or bring on as a client. That niching is the number one change that I would make. Can’t stress that enough. I didn’t listen.

Number two, again, is find what I disliked the most, like what didn’t I like in my day-to-day the most, and hire for that immediately. There is a massive cost that people don’t see to their brainpower, to you spending time on things that you’re not good at and you don’t like doing. It drains your energy.

Looking at your energy as a currency is a really big deal. People don’t look at their energy and time as a currency. Is something energizing you and getting you excited, or is it draining you? If it’s draining you, find someone who it does excite.

I remember my bookkeeper, I kept apologizing when I needed her to do stuff because I hated it. One day she goes, “Anthony, why do you keep apologizing? I love doing this stuff.” That clicked with me. Just because I don’t like to do it, doesn’t mean other people dislike to do it. So that was a really big learning point for me too.

Really, those two go a long way, the focusing, doubling down on a specific thing, and then essentially – there’s a theme here – hiring around things you’re not good at or you don’t like doing.

ROB: That’s a great takeaway to get rid of those things. Really, it takes your mental energy to think about doing it, then to not do it, and then to do it. It’s a bad, bad thing. Anthony, as you’re looking ahead, what is coming up for Siteflood or the industry in general, marketing world, that you’re pumped about?

ANTHONY: I think marketing world in general I’ll touch on – because I think it’ll apply the best to everybody – I really do see a shift in the market where brands are not going to put up with just writing a $5,000 or $10,000 a month check and be okay with it. I think the companies and the agencies that are good at what they do are going to move to more and more performance-based. I think that’s very healthy for the space.

I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir here with both brands and agencies. They’ve gotten burnt by the people overseas that said, “I’ll get you to Google No. 1 for $500 a month” or “I’ll do this.” The overpromise, underdeliveries I think are keeping a lot of brands from working with the right agencies. That’s challenging, and I think we’re moving that friction point of tying in performance bonuses or becoming more performance/CPA driven agencies versus, again, these big agencies that come in and get big contracts and say “Look how many eyeballs you’re bringing out!”, which some people are excited by, but most brands are ROI focused, CPA driven. At some point they are focused on revenue.

I see that as a shift over the next few years. It will become more and more prevalent for marketing agencies, and I think it’s going to squeeze out the low-performing ones, and I think it’s going to put the high-performing ones on a rocket ship to the moon because brands are going to be a lot more excited to work with agencies. There’s not this dirty feeling around it.

I look at it as like buying a car. I hate going to buy a car because I feel dirty about it. Even when I need a car or even if I want one, I’m like, “Nah, I don’t really want to go deal with that process.” I think brands probably feel that way to an extent. They’re like, “I know I need a marketing agency, I know there’s good ones, I know I can use it, but man, I don’t really want to get jerked around for another 6 months and thousands of dollars and this and that.”

I’m hoping the overall viewpoint and feeling around marketing agencies increases in a positive light versus “I’ve been burnt 50 times” or “I’ve just given up.” They’re too jaded. So I’m really hoping for that.

The other thing that’s interesting is we’re in a great market right now. Everybody is a little bit more lenient with spending money and things like that, and as we head towards, eventually, the economy correcting itself – I don’t know when it’ll be, but that’s something interesting to focus on, too, for a lot of agencies. Are you working with recession-proof businesses? That’s interesting to think about on the horizon. Are you working with want-to-haves or need-to-haves? Are you working with people that sell trinkets? Are they going to be the first to get cut when it comes to a recession, or are you aligning yourself with businesses that are recession-proof?

That’s not everything, but it is an interesting thought that I think a lot of agencies may not be looking at. Because things are good, people forget the ’08s or ’06s of times. Or may not have been in business or around then. I fall into that too, being younger and not really being mature in business when the recession was low. So I’m really preaching to myself. Just look out for the horizon. I don’t know what that exactly means to you listening, but it is an important thing that I think when times are good, everybody forgets and doesn’t necessarily prep for. So apply that however you want.

ROB: That’s real solid, Anthony. When people want to find you and they want to find Siteflood, where should they go to track you down?

ANTHONY: I’m most active probably on Instagram. It’s just my first and last name, @anthonysarandrea. Just google me and reach out on one of my sites. I’m happy to answer any questions for anybody, too.

Any way I can help. If you’re an agency looking to grow, I’d be more than happy to help point you in the right direction or give any feedback. Or if you’re a brand that’s struggling to decide which agency to work with, I can help, give you some pointers as you’re going through that process on some of the best people or best things to look out for or questions to ask, things like that. It does feel a little bit like brain surgery. Really, on either respect, if you’re the agency or you’re the brand, having third party clarity, I’m happy to jump in that facet.

ROB: That’s great. Thank you, Anthony Sarandrea, Founder of Siteflood. It has been great to hear your own story and journey. Congratulations on everything that y’all are doing.

ANTHONY: Thanks, brother. Thank you guys for having me. I really appreciate it. I had a blast.

ROB: All right. Be well.

ANTHONY: Thanks, bro.

ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Espree Devora, got tagged as “the Girl Who Gets it Done.” Later, when a friend observed her enthusiasm in tackling a number of business tasks for Tony Hsieh, then head of Zappos. Her passion for content creation began when she was in the 6th grade and her father gave her a video camera. She filmed hundreds of sequences featuring “extreme” sports (skateboarding, motocross) and built the first online action sports social network. In 2012, she attempted to start “We are LA Tech,” featuring local startup founders. She shot 12-episodes, but her enterprise partner refused to edit the material. Dead end.

Two years later, in September 2014, Espree resurrected “We are LA Tech” as a podcast. By October 2014, it topped Apple’s New & Noteworthy. She had learned on YouTube everything she needed to know to run a podcast. In 2015, Espree launched “Women in Tech” in response to the dire “glass ceiling” warnings so prevalent at the time. Her purpose? To “create a positive piece of content whose sole purpose is to show us what’s possible, to expand our belief system, so listeners walk away feeling, “’If she can do it, so can I.’” Much of the theme of her work is what Espree calls “vulnerable leadership.” She wants to share “how people have built their companies and their professions in ways that are really empowering, and what can we learn from them.”

In this interview, For people interested in getting started in podcasting, Espree recommends the technical equipment and software that she has found to be most helpful, planning and motivational strategies, She provides a series of podcasting training videos. 

The first tool in Espree’s podcasting toolbag was an app to help her maintain focus on daily goals, to help her deal with her fear of “ creating this thing, and then creating a thing that didn’t work out.” Tools she uses today: An Audio Technica 2100 microphone, Sound Studio editing software. As podcasting has grown, the demand for podcasting training has likewise increased. Espree teaches everything from large groups to intensive, private, month-long master classes. She recommends continuous outreach to maintain relationships and lists a number of tools effective for doing this, and offers tips on techniques and frequency . . . in order to be “un—annoying.” 

Espree had been scheduled as a speaker at this year’s now-cancelled South by Southwest. She has given many presentations there in the past, performed live podcasts, and led meetup groups. She credits her success to being where hard work meets luck and opportunity, a variation of the Roman philosopher Seneca’s “Luck Is What Happens When Preparation Meets Opportunity."

Espree can be reached on LinkedIn and all social at (Espree Devora), and onTwitter @espreedevora. Her podcasts are on: WeAreLATech.fm http://podcast.wearelatech.com/ and WomeninTech.fm http://podcast.womenintechshow.com/. 

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Espree Devora, “the Girl Who Gets It Done.” She is the Creator and Host of the We Are LA Tech podcast and also the host of Women in Tech. Welcome to the podcast, Espree.

ESPREE: Hello, hello! Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

ROB: Very excited to have you here. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your own journey into becoming “the Girl Who Gets It Done” and hosting the things that you do? 

ESPREE: Oh my gosh. A lot of people ask me when I became an entrepreneur, like when I made that decision. I feel like I was born an entrepreneur. I remember walking into Westwood Village with my father and looking into the empty office buildings, picturing what businesses I would put in them.

As I went along my journey, I think I just became very resourceful in a lot of different areas, from junior high to high school to college, and eventually the tagline “the Girl Who Gets it Done” came from when I was hanging out with Tony Hsieh, who is the head of Zappos, and a bunch of his entourage. I was taking care of some things and people kept asking me, “Are you his assistant? Are you his publicist? Who are you?” My girlfriend who was with me at the time just said, “She’s the girl who gets it done.” [laughs] It just stuck, and it’s been that way for a really long time.

ROB: Excellent. I think if you get a nickname around Tony Hsieh, you stick to it for the most part.

ESPREE: Definitely.

ROB: What about the journey into these podcasts that you host? When did you realize that was something you wanted to do and then really caught your ongoing attention?

ESPREE: I think the first moment that I realized I was really excited by content creation was in the 6th grade, when my dad gifted me a video camera and I got to explore. I ended up building the first action sports media company online. It was the first action sports social network, and we produced hundreds and hundreds of video content across skateboarding, motocross, all these things.

Then in 2012, I had this urge to continue creating content, but at that point in my life I was more interested in the startup world. I had already been in the startup tech world, obviously, building the first social network for action sports, but I didn’t understand that. At that time I was just doing things. They weren’t a global trend like it is now. Terms like “social media,” “entrepreneur,” “founder,” “accelerators,” these things were not a thing then.

In 2012, when LA started to have more startups and have more founder stories, I wanted to capture that moment, so I partnered with someone to create a video series called We Are LA Tech. Unfortunately, that person didn’t share the same work ethic I had. We shot 12 episodes, and that person’s responsibility was to edit them and none of them were edited. My heart was broken. I waited a year, and I ended up going on a backpacking trip to escape this reality that this video series would never be completed that I felt so passionate about.

While backpacking in Europe, my friend Mark who founded a company called BetaList, started showing me podcasts on his iPhone. At the time I was an Android person. He’s like, “You’ve got to listen to these podcasts. They’re so funny. You’ll love them.” I get back to the States; I get an iPhone because I want to stay connected with my friends in Europe and it was the easiest way to do that at the time. I start listening to podcasts.

I didn’t realize that years before, I had actually been listening to two podcasts, Podcasts and Product People by Justin Jackson, who actually has now co-founded a podcast hosting company called Transistor. He was one of the early podcasters, and I just loved his show. But at that time I would move the audio files from the computer to my phone. It wasn’t the thing it is today, so I didn’t even know I was listening to podcasts.

Anyway, at the same time, I was like, wow, if I start a podcast too, I never have to rely on a video editor again. [laughs] So in 2013 I started stirring up the We Are LA Tech podcast in my head. It launched in I think September 2014, and by October 2014, it was number one on Apple’s New & Noteworthy. It was just really exciting. I’m completely a self-taught podcaster. I taught myself how to edit. I taught myself everything. I just watched a lot of YouTube videos, and I’ve been podcasting ever since.

Then in 2015, I launched the Women in Tech podcast, and the story goes on and on.

ROB: What made you realize that maybe it was worth at least experimenting with the Women in Tech podcast? Or were you all-in from Day 1 and you knew it had to be a thing?

ESPREE: The Women in Tech podcast was inspired because at the time, these women’s groups were becoming a thing. They were never a thing before. I’m like, “Oh look, that’s me. I founded companies and I am a girl too, so I want to check out what’s going on.” All these groups I would go to at the time, the whole conversation would be about how women are held back or statistics that are in the negative and this and that. I’m like, man, I’ve never felt held back. The only person I’ve ever felt held back by is me.

If I had heard all these messages about how much was not possible for me, I would have never built the first action sports social network. I wouldn’t have raised money. I wouldn’t have done all these things because I would’ve believed it wasn’t possible for someone like me.

So I wanted to create a positive piece of content whose sole purpose is to show us what’s possible, to expand our belief system, so listeners walk away feeling “If she can do it, so can I.”

ROB: There’s a common thread, it seems, between both of the podcasts. You have, with LA, an underappreciated market for startups – I think perhaps even still to this day, there’s some very good companies, but also with a chip on their shoulder. And then with Women in Tech, similarly, there’s sometimes a lack of appreciation, a lack of highlighting, a lack of encouragement in both cases, you’re putting a positive spin on it rather than saying, “Hey, pay attention because you’re not paying enough attention.”

ESPREE: Yeah. I think my brand theme – I call it vulnerable leadership, where it’s not that I want to just be positive. I don’t want to be Instagram perfect. But I do want to share a vulnerable message in a way that we could shift our belief system to turn something that could be perceived as a negative into a positive.

I think the process behind that is really important. It’s not just about being like “Everything’s great! You have it so much better than everybody else!” [laughs] It’s about, okay, today sucks or whatever a person is dealing with, but here are the steps I went to, because do I want to feel sucky right now? No. If I don’t want to feel sucky, what’s something that I can do to potentially shift myself out of that mindset? I think that’s what my shows exemplify, just vulnerable leadership: how have people built their companies and their professions in ways that are really empowering, and what can we learn from them?

ROB: For those of us who are outside of the LA tech world, certainly we’ve heard of some of the newer fliers – I think maybe Byrd or Lime scooters is from there. I apologize for not knowing what you know.

ESPREE: That’s okay.

ROB: I’ve definitely ridden plenty of scooters. But what are some of the companies that are maybe trending right now that people may not fully be aware of, but should be?

ESPREE: Oh wow, trending? I don’t know who’s trending right now because I tend to stay laser-focused on sharing people’s stories. But some companies that are iconic that you may have seen – of course, Snapchat is here. FabFitFun is here. There’s really huge companies that are popular at least across the U.S., if not globally, that were created – Myspace was in LA. Google has tons of offices here now, and they’re really a dominant force in the LA tech scene. YouTube has their Creator Hub here. It’s definitely a thriving tech city.

My primary interest is the lifestyle and culture of a tech professional, more than what is the latest gadget. However, if you tell me the latest video or microphone gadget, I will be interested, but that’s just for personal, selfish reasons. [laughs]

ROB: I was going to ask – I think a lot of people, when they hear about podcasting, they feel very intimidated in terms of the whole process, from creation of the content to editing and publishing. What was in your first podcasting tool bag?

ESPREE: That’s a great question. I’d say the first thing that was in my podcasting tool bag was actually the app. I don’t even remember what it was called. It’s like Daily Goal. It was some daily goal app. The reason that was the first one in my bag is because I was so afraid of, one, creating this thing, and then creating a thing that didn’t work out.

What I did was I created a goal every day. It could be like “create podcast artwork,” “get a microphone,” “schedule an interview.” Just one thing. And I wouldn’t allow myself to not do the thing. I remember when I got my first podcast poster designed, and I didn’t like the design and I thought it was really ugly, but my goal for that day was “post it,” like it’s done. So I just went with it. It was about the forward movement; it wasn’t about being perfect. I actually happen to really like that flyer now, but at the time I did not.

That was my first one. Then as I became more educated by watching YouTube videos, I bought a Snowball mic because I knew my episodes would be in-person and it would be more than one person, so I wanted a mic that picked up more people.

A Snowball mic is actually the lowest level mic because it’s really meant for musicians, like a guitarist or something like that. It’s not meant for multiple people. Those are for technical reasons that I can get into another time. Feel free to tweet me @espreedevora if you’d like to know more reasons why. But it was a Snowball.

What I’d recommend to everybody starting out is an Audio-Technica 2100, and that’s actually what I’m using right now. Again, I could share with you the technicalities of why in another conversation.

Then I had my computer. I have a Mac, so I found an editing program called Sound Studio. I found it on a random forum. They do a terrible marketing job because they’re very hard to find. [laughs] But they’re an incredible software program. The way I describe it, it’s like iMovie for audio. They just make it stupid simple to edit audio. It’s great. So I used that.

I remember my very first interview, I didn’t even know how to record it. I was just confused, and I plugged the Snowball into the computer and I was trying to figure it out. It’s scary, but what matters is that we take a step forward.

In my speeches, when I give speeches on how to podcast, the thing that I tell the whole audience is on their way home, I want them to take out their phone and, in their voice memo app in their phone, I want them to record their first interview on the drive home, or their first podcast episode. Then I want them to send me that via Google Drive or email or whatever it is, because that’s all that matters in the beginning, is taking a step forward and just taking action.

ROB: If you take that step forward every day, which you were doing with your app, it’s like those challenges when people talk about if you just get 1% done better every day, it really does add up. Are you still editing, or have you managed to delegate that opportunity?

ESPREE: First of all, I happen to love editing. I call it “painting audio.” But it is not who I want to be in the world. [laughs] I’m very lucky; an editor that I hired in 2014 has been with me since, and he works with me and edits everything. I have other editors that I’ve worked with as well. So I do have the editing done. Every so often, I’ll tell them that I want to contribute and I’ll do an episode here or there, but I do not rely on my own time for editing anymore.

ROB: It’s the same as my experience. We actually did a quick cycle episode that we recorded yesterday about the financial stimulus involved in the CARES Act and how marketing agencies can claim that money for themselves to keep their team onboard. But normally, I have trained editors – and I think what you said before, audio versus video is very, very forgiving.

ESPREE: Completely.

ROB: If there’s a glitch in the middle of a word, it’s remarkable. You can just highlight it, delete it, and it sounds great all of a sudden, whereas if you did that with video it would look insane.

ESPREE: Totally, completely. And there’s so much that goes into video, from lighting, color correction, angles, audio. There are so many variables, you just cannot get away with high quality video if you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s a huge learning curve.

The main components of a podcast – and again, I can dig into this deeper in a different conversation – are the tracks: is each person’s voice being recorded on a separate track or is everybody’s voice on the same track? How does it sound, the mic that you’re using? Are you doing it remotely or in person? Because that will have an impact on your equipment decisions. Things like that. But there’s just so much more that goes into editing and shooting video.

ROB: As you mentioned, all the information is out there. Everything is essentially figureoutable. I think there’s a book to that effect. I first figured out how to record live because I was at the Social Shakeup Conference and I saw somebody there recording live, and I just walked up to them and asked them, and because they’d done it enough, they had a page that listed all their gear, and they had affiliate links.

Normally I don’t even click on affiliate links because I’m kind of ornery about that, but I totally clicked their affiliate links. It was something done with a mix of generosity and sharing, and if they get a few bucks, to your point, for that Snowball mic or for the Zoom recorder that we use when we’re in person, who am I to be upset about that?

ESPREE: Yeah, totally. But I don’t have an affiliate link for you. [laughs]

ROB: Maybe another revenue stream there.

ESPREE: Yeah, it’s something I’ve thought about. It’s one of the many things that still is on my to-do list for way too long.

ROB: But you’re figuring it out step by step. How did you make that jump? I think a lot of agencies, marketers, organizations develop a competency without taking it to the next level. You went from creating podcasts to training people to do podcasts. How did you evolve into that shift?

ESPREE: I think it’s a few things. One, I was just asked by several people. I got into podcasting in 2013, when it wasn’t a thing and it wasn’t cool. It didn’t start to become more – I mean, obviously podcasting has been around for several years, way before that, but it just became this mainstream thing in the last few years.

In 2013, it wasn’t on the radar. In 2014, it started to bubble up on the radar because of the StartUp podcast. Then Serial came out, so then the mainstream news started talking about podcasting, and it was a domino effect from there.

At that time, I think it was just supply and demand. [laughs] Even today, it’s supply and demand. People have a really hard time finding any indie production companies for podcasts, so I get a lot of inbound on that because I’ve been creating my show for several years. You can’t find a lot of people who have been both producing and hosting for several years. Maybe they just started 10 episodes ago or something. I have hundreds and hundreds of episodes done and distributed. So sometimes it’s just getting there early.

Now my “why” is interesting. I get asked a lot to teach. Initially I did it just for the community so that they can learn and express themselves, but I found that it was really exciting to be a part of their journey in creation and to really help facilitate them creating something meaningful so it’s not just another audio file, but it’s something people feel mentally subscribed to. That’s been great.

So I do a couple things, whether I’m teaching classes for the general assemblies of the world or USC and organizations like that or I’m doing semi-private masterclasses that are a month-long immersive, and I meet with a small group of people and I have expert guest speakers on. It’s just really, really fun. So I’ve really enjoyed it. That’s why I do it, because I love it and love being a part of their journey.

ROB: There’s so many cool little hidden skills in there. I think you’re able to keep going on a podcast because of that rhythm that you put into your life overall. I think people might not think entirely – you’re based in the Los Angeles area, and that’s content city. That has to partly pervade who’s interested in talking to you.

When I look at how you’ve picked up these skills along the way, one skill you picked up that I think a lot of people would look at with some jealousy is you have figured out how to be selected as a speaker at South by Southwest. That’s where we originally intended to speak in person. How did you figure out that process? I know people who have been trying for years and can’t sort it out. I imagine you did it one step at a time.

ESPREE: Honestly, I feel like I got – what’s that saying? “Where hard work meets luck and opportunity” or something like that, or preparedness? I’ve bene working so hard for so many years. I started going to South by as a journalist, and then I became a speaker at South by – I don’t remember what year, but I’ve given many talks there and performed the podcast live and led meetup groups.

But the meetup groups I’ve led have been the podcasters meetup, and like I said, in 2013 no one cared. I said I would do this thing; I was the only person offering myself up to do this thing. Or maybe there weren’t a lot of people. And the talks that I’ve given have ranged from anything from in the early days it was more on entrepreneurship, and now, again, podcasting.

It’s just about demonstrating where my unique value proposition is, the unique insights, the energy that I bring to the table as a speaker, what makes me a speaker that stands out amongst the rest. So just really think about that for yourself. What is an interesting angle? Actually, I think I’ll do a thing for you in a second, just for your audience, so you can have a little sampling of what that sounds like.

The last thing is performing my podcast live at South by Southwest. I performed the Women in Tech podcast live last year and then also this year. Again, it’s over time, establishing myself as a podcaster, my relationships, the audience that I have. The purpose and mission of why my content exists in the first place is very clear.

It’s just this stew of hard work, and then it’s the luck of being noticed. Sometimes you can even manipulate being noticed. I should say positively manipulate, meaning that you’re doing enough outreach, that you’re using programs like Pipedrive and Contactually to make sure that you’re continuously doing your outreach. That’s maintaining your relationships.

My mom comes from an entertainment background, and she always said – it was her or maybe my grandmother who said “the squeaky wheel gets the oil.” So when she talks about being in the entertainment business, she says they’d cast the people who called last because that’s the person that was on the top of their mind. I’m like, that’s really interesting.

And it’s true; the more you’re on the top of people’s minds, in a non-annoying way, the more they’ll think of you when there’s an opportunity. The more you make yourself helpful – I was featured in Forbes randomly, and the reason I was featured in Forbes, that feature happened because I was doing an interview I think a year or a year and a half before, and the interview went something like 3 hours late. So I was just sitting in a waiting room for several hours. I never complained and I just chilled there and I was nice about it.

Then the person who kept coming back in to apologize to me was so grateful that I did that that when there was the opportunity for Forbes, I was the first person that was thought of. Just because I waited in a chill manner. [laughs]

ROB: Which anybody can do.

ESPREE: Totally. So it’s like, how are you showing up to life in unique ways that make you stand apart? If it’s okay with you, Rob, I’m going to do a quick thing. I’m going to show you how I start my speaking engagements and my podcast, because it’s not this tone of voice. Is that okay with you? Can I do that?

ROB: Run with it.

ESPREE: Okay, cool. Everybody watch your eardrums just a little bit. I’m going to hold the mic a little bit away because I don’t know the levels of how we’re recording right now. But this is what it sounds like, and the reason why I’m sharing this with you is because this is what sets me apart and makes me a unique speaker and podcaster. I’d say the thing that sets me apart is my energy when I show up to the stage.

Three… two… one…

“Welcome back to the Women in Tech podcast, celebrating women in tech around the world! So excited for our next guest here today. Welcome…” and then you say the person’s name. But that’s just crazy, right? That’s out of nowhere. Where it’s inspired from is growing up, I was super into wrestling. [laughs]

ROB: Yes, it sounds like wrestling. [laughs] That’s amazing.

ESPREE: I was super into wrestling and I loved the wrestlers being announced onstage, and then I was really into Steven Tyler’s stage performance and how he would really be into the mic and really be energized. So that’s why when I do my podcasts and my interviews, I stand. You never see people stand when they’re doing it. I stand. And I do it for a lot of other reasons too, because of your vocal cords. Onstage, I stand. Sometimes I’ll kick my shoes off. I’ll never stand behind a podium.

There’s just all sorts of techniques. My friend Mark, who actually built the YouTube Player, gave me the best speaking advice. He said, “People don’t remember what you say; they remember how you made them feel.” I think about that with my podcast. I think about that onstage. How am I making everyone feel? Are they feeling the way I intend for them to feel? And if not, what do I need to do?

When I show up that way, the guest feels more energized, the audience feels more engaged, and to the event organizer, I’m a unique speaker that brings something different to the table.

ROB: Absolutely. I love it. We have a wrestling announcement right here on the podcast. [laughs] I think you mentioned something that is really key that would be easy to get lost in the mix. You mentioned staying on people’s minds in an un-annoying way. I think we are in a very perhaps more challenging moment for that, where people who don’t have that skill may be a little bit lost. We are sheltering in place right now in our homes to avoid getting and spreading the coronavirus. What you can’t count on is bumping into somebody in the halls, in a restaurant you usually run into, at a networking event.

How do you think about staying on people’s radar in an un-annoying way? Because quite often, I think people give advice of sending a link – and you actually did send me a very good link in our chat – but I think there are often times where that can feel still very inauthentic and people can tell. You’re still just sending them a link because someone told you to send them a link to stay on their radar.

ESPREE: A hundred percent. I think there’s a lot of different ways, and we need to find the tools that are right for our own personalities. The kind of things that I look at – one of them, the first thing I want to say, there’s a tool called Bombbomb which does video messaging. It’s really great to make something a bit more personal, to show somebody that you care.

I find that even when I send a Bombbomb video, if I don’t say the person’s name, they may think that I created it for a lot of people. I remember I made one for even my friend, who’s also a customer, one time. She said, “You know, it was until you said my son’s name, I thought it was a video for everyone.” It’s really interesting to me because it was personalized.

There’s tools – like I said, Contactually. There’s a ton of other tools. I know Tim Ferriss uses Evernote a lot. I don’t necessarily know if he uses it for maintaining follow-up, but Evernote is a great tool. There’s WorkFlowy. There’s different programs that will spit out who you haven’t followed up with lately. LinkedIn is such a powerful resource for all of us.

I think it’s about really thinking, who do you want to connect with? Why do you want to connect with them, and how often? And are you tracking that follow-up? I use a CRM system called Pipedrive, and like I said, I’m a huge fan of Contactually as well. I think Contactually is just a great follow-up tool. I’ve heard good things about Nimble.

You could find out what’s going on in someone’s life via Twitter, via Instagram, via Facebook. Really paying attention to their social networks. I call it ego marketing. It sometimes sounds like a bad thing, but all of us – all of us – we operate on our egos. We feel like the world is revolving around us at all times. “What’s that person thinking of me? What’s that person doing,” blah, blah, blah, me, me, me.

If you all of a sudden come to someone and say, “I watched your talk online,” and say the specific talk, and then say what you got out of it and maybe a timestamp, it is just so clear that that is about them.

The kind of messages I can’t stand – because I get an abundance of inbound messaging for the Women in Tech podcast, or even one yesterday, perfect example, the We Are LA Tech podcast. Someone messaged me asking to be on the show and they weren’t in Los Angeles. If they knew the show, they’d know every single episode is from someone in Los Angeles. So obviously you don’t care. You’re just mass mailing.

With Women in Tech, I’ll get messages about the controversial topics someone could talk about, and if they knew the show, they’d know we do no controversy, no politics. So it tells me that you really don’t care. I’m just some name on your list.

So when you’re thinking about follow-up, you want to think about: who do you want to follow up with and why? What’s a meaningful way to follow up with them? And then tracking that follow-up.

And not following up too much. Another example is somebody followed up with me three times in one week, and I hadn’t seen any of the messages. Then on the third message they said, “I know you’re probably getting annoyed with my messages” – which just shows me it’s an automated system. “You’re getting annoyed with my messages,” and the truth was I hadn’t even seen the other two. My response back was, “One, I’m not interested, and two, I recommend you not follow up in such a short period of time.” [laughs]

Imagine if I’m giving a talk, if I’m at South by Southwest this week, I am not really on email or paying attention. If you follow up three times this week, during this particular phase of my life, the chances of me seeing them is so low. That’s why it’s way more effective to follow up 3 weeks to a couple months apart. But just really be sincere in why you’re even following up with the people in the first place.

ROB: If you’re following up 3 weeks or 3 months or anything like that, also, you have to have a mindset where you’re playing the long game. You’re not playing the short game where it’s “How many times can I message you in 2 weeks and then either ignore you or maybe you’ve answered me.”

ESPREE: Right.

ROB: If someone looks at the Women in Tech podcast, I think one thing they’ll realize is, number one, your level of commitment there. I think I’m seeing over 400, almost 450 episodes. But also, I think they’ll notice that you do the work, and you do the work authentically.

What I mean by that is you’re not just cherry-picking and trying to ladder up to the biggest name. You have some names on the podcast that are known, but you also have – again, in this theme – people that your listeners might not know but they should. It looks to me like quite often you are going far and wide. You’re doing the work of actually reaching out to people across the world, and probably even going there to have those conversations.

ESPREE: Rob, I love how you did your homework. [laughs] You would be an email that I would open, because that is so spot-on. I get a lot of messages from a lot of super fancy people, thinking that they’re just entitled to be on the show. My personal excitement is sharing a story of a woman that normally doesn’t have access. I’ve traveled to Bosnia; recently I was in Kazakhstan. I’ve traveled to over 100 countries just to celebrate these women in tech in person, share their stories, be in their culture.

People say, “Why not just do remotely?” I wouldn’t see the bullets in the buildings on the streets of Bosnia if I wasn’t in Bosnia, understanding that the girl I’m interviewing, as a child, she had to be in a bomb shelter to be safe from the war. These are just things you don’t get on a 1-hour Skype call or something like that.

So really discovering all these magnificent women in tech around the world, giving them the opportunity – I’m really proud that the Women in Tech podcast is, for the majority of guests, the first podcast they’ve ever been on. It just blows my mind. And it’s not necessarily even, by the way, Rob, that these people aren’t seasoned; they’re just not the internet celebrities of the world. They’re not the Gary Vaynerchuks. [laughs]

Then I also have the more well-known people, as you mentioned, and I’m excited to share their stories as well. But my “why” in doing the show is not for social status. It’s not to look good. It’s really to be this bridge for women in tech around the world to be able to discover the resources and mentorship that they need to accelerate.

Hearing stories of how women have pulled over to write notes, listening to the episodes, or shared the stories with their family, or investors have reached out to them because they’ve been on the show – truly social impact. It’s amazing. So it’s not about “do I look the coolest?” It’s about “am I creating the biggest impact?”

ROB: That resonates completely with who you are and what you want to accomplish. I think it’s also a little bit of a secret – and it’s not a secret because we’re talking about it, but candidly, it makes booking a podcast a lot easier when you’re booking people who are interesting and have a story, but it is their first podcast. They say yes a lot more.

ESPREE: Oh yeah, I’m sure. Well, the one thing about women in tech – yes, I think your point is accurate, and, unfortunately, with women in tech – a lot of people ask me, “What’s the biggest commonality of all the women in tech that you’re met with?” They’re expecting some technical answer. Unfortunately, the biggest commonality is that I think as a culture, oftentimes we feel we’re not enough.

So I will get women who will say “I don’t think I’m good enough for your show” or “I haven’t spoken before” or something. Then it’s my responsibility as a person who wants to be empowering to give them the level of confidence, and also to say, “Listen, I wouldn’t be picking you unless I thought you were good enough to be on the show, so how about I make the decision on that?” [laughs]

I’ve had a couple people not want to be interviewed because they’re scared, but yes, you are absolutely right that it’s going to be a lot easier. You’re also right that it’s a huge pain point in the podcasting industry for new podcasters, or even a lot of seasoned podcasters, to get yeses from guests. It’s a huge pain point. It is one that I do not have, and maybe that contributes to it, you’re right.

ROB: And you do in-person a lot, which always helps with that rapport. It would be great if we were, but that’s not an option right now. We’re not getting on planes right now.

ESPREE: Totally.

ROB: That is okay. We’ll hope that we can meet up at South by Southwest next year, perhaps.

ESPREE: A hundred percent.

ROB: Espree, when people want to check out all the things that you’re doing, where should they look to find you?

ESPREE: Man, if only I had been smart enough to have one link that says all the things. [laughs] Honestly, look me up on LinkedIn, Espree Devora on LinkedIn. Add me there. It’s also Espree Devora on all social – on Instagram, on Twitter, on Facebook. I do really engage on Twitter. And check out the podcasts, WeAreLATech.fm and WomeninTech.fm.

ROB: It’s all those little things. You put in the work on the domains too.

ESPREE: Yeah.

ROB: Fantastic. You’re consistent on the brand. Espree, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It’s been a true joy to get to know you a little bit, and I know our audience has enjoyed your challenging example of just doing one more thing each day and how that carries through in everything you do.

ESPREE: Thank you so much for having me, Rob. This has been great. I’m happy that you made it remote and we were able to make this happen.

ROB: That’s great. Be well.

ESPREE: Bye.

ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Oliver and his brother started Kemweb in 1998, providing coding for other agencies and then livestreaming the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000. Three years ago, frustrated with being a tech-supply company, they took their technical expertise and redefined their business as a full-service digital agency, . offering results-driven web design, online marketing, social media marketing, PR, consulting, podcasting, video production and hosting services.

Today, Kemweb’s 35 developers, art directors, social media experts, and performance team workshop with clients to discover their needs. Kemweb customers range from B2B small and medium sized companies to fast moving consumer goods suppliers. Oliver credits his agency’s success to curiosity and agility, and a change in its approach to potential customers.

A lot of companies will pitch what they can do for customers, without first finding out what the customers need, saying, “We can do this . . . and this . . . and this. What do you want?” Companies may think about “What are we offering? What kind of service?” – but fail to ask, “Why are we doing it? Why should our customers believe the things we’re doing?” 

Finding the answer to those last questions was pivotal in driving the Kemweb’s approach to its own customers. Business consulting is rare in Germany . . . and it’s one of the things that is an intrinsic part of today’s Kemweb process. Oliver suggests that you have to drive a lot deeper than the “easy questions” to discover what actions will best serve a client’s needs.

Kemweb now begins a client business relationship with a workshop/consultation utilizing Strategyzer’s Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas to map out a business’s knowledge, unsnarl its inherent complexity, and structure a customer-centric solution, with a focus on communicate the messages their clients want to communicate. 

Sean notes that there are cultural differences between businesses in Germany and those in the U.S. For instance: German business owners have greater fear of change and new ways of doing things. Legalities differ as well: Data protection laws are more stringent in the U.S. Sean explains that the linear career process in Germany also affects the way people think. After finishing a German citizens finish their education, they take an apprenticeship, then go to a company and move up the ladder within that company. 

Oliver was supposed to serve as a mentor at South by Southwest 2020 in Austin, TX, but the COVID-19 pandemic changed all that. He believes that, “This is a special period in time (that) forces people to be more courageous and to try out new things.” He feels that it is important for businesses to work together – to help the customers with their businesses and to help them survive. “We have to take care of each other . . . worldwide,” he says

Sean recommends looking at today’s challenges as an opportunity to spend more time with family or to online to learn new skills – just use your time. He is using his time in quarantine to set up an English-language Kemweb landing page.

Oliver and Sean can be reached on the social media channels or on the company’s website at: www.kemweb.de. They have a German-American podcast, Robot Spaceship, at www.robotspaceship.com,. described as an industry-leading, European podcast network with a focus on technology, culture, innovation and living the digital lifestyle. (You may need to understand a little German.)

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m joined today by Oliver Kemmann, Owner and Founder at Kemweb in Mainz, Germany, and also Sean Earley, the New Business Development Manager for the firm. Why don’t you gentlemen start off by telling us about Kemweb and where Kemweb excels?

SEAN: You go.

OLIVER: Maybe I start. [laughs] I founded Kemweb together with my brother about 20 years ago, so 1998, in a time without smartphones, in a time without Facebook and YouTube. We were pretty much doing some coding for other agencies. We started also with livestreaming in the year 2000 for the Olympic Games in Sydney, so we were quite tech-related.

As time passed by, we started to ask questions. How can we get away from being this tech supply company and how can we find our own customers? So we started to talk about digital communication and how we could help people out there to succeed in their special business by using modern digital technology.

This is what we’re doing today. We have about 35 people in the agency and we have developers and we have art directors and we have a social media team and a performance team. We do workshops and stuff to find out what the business is all about and how we can help, and then we set up the channels where we can communicate to the target groups of our customers.

We think in stories and experience, talking about the stories our customer wants to get communicated, and we develop the experience on different channels and different devices. This is what we’re doing.

ROB: A lot of firms I think start off in that mode where they are taking downstream work from other agencies, other firms, but now it sounds like you have a better idea of who your direct customer is. What sort of company and perhaps focus or stage of company is that now?

OLIVER: There’s not one special kind of customer we are serving. We have a lot of B2B business. In Germany, we have a lot of small and medium sized companies. They’re doing a lot of engineering stuff, or small producing companies. Usually they are not very familiar with classic marketing topics and how they could use digital communication to sell their products and services.

But we also have, for example, fast moving consumer good customers and help them, for example, with social media campaigns. So it is very widespread, actually, the customers we are serving. It’s quite exciting. What do you say, Sean? [laughs]

SEAN: Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head there. I think from my point of view, I come from a background – it’s a little bit different in Germany than it is in America. In Germany people have a linear process; they go to school, they do an apprenticeship, they go to a company, and they stay there in that skill range, and they just move up the ladder.

In the States, as you all probably know, we work all kinds of jobs before we actually start our career. I’ve done all kinds of different things. I’ve worked in all kinds of different jobs. Lots of different agencies, consulted, tech, gaming. One of the things that I have seen is that there’s always differences in everybody’s needs as a business, but when it comes to marketing specifically, there’s a lot of things that everybody needs. It really gets down to that value point, that use case that everybody needs, what is the problem that they have and how we can provide a solution.

I think a lot of agencies particularly get a pitch and they go to a client and they say, “We can do all this stuff. What do you want?” When I started working with Kemweb, Ollie and I had a talk and it was like, that’s exhausting. It’s counterintuitive to what we want to do, and it’s kind of counterintuitive to what the client needs because there are specific things that clients need.

So we tried to refocus our strategy a little bit to work with clients to figure out exactly what they need first before we say “We’ll take your 200,000 euro budget and we’ll give you one or two or three things. What do you want?” We really try to focus in on the needs of the client and give them exactly what they need, and at the same time try to explore other areas to try to explore new places ourselves internally and externally so we can provide lots of services to clients.

But at the same time, we really like to consult first and then give them what they need, and not just “here’s your website, have fun with it.” Sometimes they say they want a website and they don’t really need a website, so it’s important to talk to people first. That’s where the workshop and consulting come in.

ROB: Got it. I think there’s subtlety in the details there. You’re not just talking about doing a bunch of discovery, if I’m hearing you correctly. You’re actually talking about entering into a business relationship sooner with the client, where you have a process around a workshop, where you have a consulting arrangement rather than doing a bunch of unpaid discovery on an RFP. Is that what you’re getting at?

SEAN: Exactly.

ROB: Very cool. What does a workshop look like for you?

OLIVER: I’m a fan of a company called Strategyzer. It originated in Switzerland. These guys developed some canvas thing called the Business Model Canvas and the Value Proposition Canvas. I guess you’re familiar with this.

Our approach in the workshops is something Sean said. As a consultant, my job is to get the complexity out of the things. I’m taking all the knowledge the customer has and I’m structuring it in these canvases. This leads us to a very structured way, and at this point we start to look at our customer’s customer, so it’s very customer-centric.

This leads us to exactly the customer pain we’re addressing and what the customers are really looking for. Most of the time, it’s the first time our customers have thought about their own purpose or why they’re doing what they’re doing. Most of them are coming from the “what?” – “What are we offering? What kind of service?” But not “Why are we doing it? Why should our customers believe the things we’re doing?”

This is what we do in the workshops. We try to get all the information from the customer and structure it down in canvases, and then we find the channels and we find the customer groups we should address first.

ROB: That’s probably been a part of your own journey as well. Business Model Canvas, anybody can google it. You’ll find it, you’ll pull it up. I feel like that tool flows from left to right, where it does flow into how everything leads in to the customer so you know what you’re doing, but let’s all tie that through to the customer.

You probably had a little bit of your own journey on that as you transitioned from being a subcontractor coding shop to pursuing your own customers. What did that journey look like where you started to realize what the direct customers needed and you started to be able to pull away from taking parts of projects from other people?

OLIVER: Good question, actually. Or the right question. When we started 2 or 3 years ago to find this way for ourselves, we always were communicating the “whats,” what we were doing. Websites, apps, firms. This is what every other agency is doing, too. They say what the output is.

Then we started to dig deeper and find out, what are we good for? What has brought my brother and me to the point of founding a company or agency? Curiosity and agility are what’s driving us. What we are doing now is we’re very much curious about our customer’s business. If we fully understand what the customer is doing and what the customer needs, then we can help. This was the turning point in our own company history, when we found out that.

ROB: That seems like a neat intersection because you’ve not only found this curiosity for what they’re doing, you’re aligning this tool. You have a tool that actually facilitates your own curiosity that aligns the customer to where they’re actually getting value out of the discovery process, unless they can pay you for it. You’ve aligned the customer and value for them with who you are in your own curiosity, it sounds like.

OLIVER: Yeah. In Germany, at least, it’s not very common that you do some kind of business consulting thing in a web project, for example. Most people, after the workshop, say, “This was a business consulting, what you’re doing.” They start to look differently at their own business, at the company. In Germany, we’re far behind you guys in the States where digital transformation is concerned. Most of the companies are very slow in changing things.

The owner-driven companies really are shy to start changes, so they want someone who says, “Everything is okay. We have this web project, for example,” and you give them the money and it’s ready by the 1st of June or so, and then you don’t have to think about it.

SEAN: I would just interject and say culturally, working in the States and in Germany, there’s a lot of hyper-focusing on details here. There’s also a lot of different rules when it comes to things like data protection, so there’s a lot of hesitancy in a lot that goes on here as well. Especially with some sort of new and innovative tech project, a lot of people are like, “We can’t even legally do that.”

When it comes to things like sales funnels and where you store your customers’ data, it’s a whole other story over here, so it’s not just – they’re behind in their desire, but I think also they’re behind because there’s a hesitancy to want to try because sometimes it’s difficult to make those steps. So I think it’s a 50/50. There’s innovation and there’s also limitation. For us, we try to find a happy medium in there. Sometimes you have to talk a lot about that as well.

ROB: In terms of adjustments, we were originally scheduled to have this conversation in person, in Austin, Texas at South by Southwest, and as we are in the midst of this global coronavirus pandemic, we’re all doing this interview from home. I’m in a closet, to be candid. It’s a different thing.

But just for a moment, Oliver, you were invited to be there as a mentor. Is that something you’ve done before at South by Southwest?

OLIVER: No, actually not. [laughs] I’ve been in Austin for the last 3 years, and last year I met some guy from Denmark and he was a mentor last year. He explained what he was doing there, and I thought it was interesting, so maybe I could help young people with my different perspective I bring as a German. Maybe I do look differently on things. On the other hand, I’ve been self-employed or an entrepreneur for more than 20 years. So maybe I can help some people. I just filled out the form and they picked me. [laughs] But I can’t tell you what it’s like because I didn’t do this before. Maybe I will do it next year.

SEAN: Ollie and I are both big music fans, and I actually played in a band at South by Southwest before. He was like, “Have you been to South by Southwest?” I was like, “Yeah, musically,” but the whole tech thing – and he was so excited. I was like, oh man. I felt so bad when they cancelled that.

He was like, “What am I going to talk about now?” I was like, “You’re a German guy there. You’ve got to talk about German topics.” I think that’s stuff people want to know about. There’s a whole different perspective there. It’s not just tech in general. A lot of people talk general tech, but there’s a lot of cultural differences in the tech industry here that I think he could really have provided. But I guess we have the internet now to communicate.

ROB: Yes. People can reach out when they hear this and we can all talk in our closets. Or maybe we’ll be out of our closets by the time we get this out there. Did they give you visibility into people signing up to talk to you and what they wanted to talk about? Or is it more so that you show up and people show up and go from there? How is that structured?

OLIVER: I can’t tell you. [laughs] We had a slot somewhere in a hotel for an hour I guess, or an hour and 50 minutes. I had 17 fans on the app, so 17 people were bookmarking me. Actually, I can tell. I guess you have to reserve a slot, but actually, I can’t tell you if anybody already had the slot reserved.

ROB: We’re right here in the middle of March. At this juncture, as you are talking to your customers and potential customers and that sort of thing, how is the current state of things affecting both their mindset and maybe even how they do workshops? Are your workshops normally in person and you’re planning for how to do them online? How is that changing your own business and your customer mindset?

OLIVER: Wasn’t it Macron, the French president, who said we are at war? [laughs] It’s changing everything right now. We were well-prepared, actually. Sean, 2 weeks ago, said, “This is getting really bad, so we’d better be prepared.” We tried to get all our people home office ready 2 weeks ago when it just started to get really bad.

But I have tons of customers who were not prepared for that. They’re not even prepared to get their people in the home office, and they didn’t think what they could do in this time. To be honest, I think this will not be a thing for 2 weeks or 3 weeks. I guess we’re talking about months or years if this is getting better.

We should for sure find very fast things we can change to have a workshop by Zoom or Teams and so on, but I can work with my customers even if they are not in the room. It’s a little bit different, so I need my customers to be courageous enough to take such a step. I have a lot of customers who say, “Let’s postpone the workshop and meet in 2 or 3 weeks. This can wait.” [laughs] I say, “Okay, go for it.”

But on the other hand, there are a couple of people from the consulting business who were already setting up their remote setup. I can film the canvas and I can put the post-its there by myself. The important thing for me is to get all the information from my customers. They are driving this process, so I need all the information, and I can structure it at home in my closet. [laughs]

My impression – maybe, Sean, you have your own opinion about this – I think people are getting aware. This is a special period in time, and not many people have experienced what we are experiencing right now. This forces people to be more courageous and to try out new things. This is my impression.

SEAN: Yeah, I would just say that we were lucky to have enough time to try to be proactive and plan for it. Kemweb has a lot of experience in livestreaming and webinars as a core business, so it wasn’t anything new to go remote. Since we do a lot of consulting for how to become more digital, it was not a scary concept for us. It was more about organization.

We’ve noticed a lot of people who weren’t ready, who are reaching out and trying to get an idea of what they can do to get ready, and I think it’s also important for any business who does have any sort of strategic advantage – at this point, it’s not about competition anymore. This is a global problem that nobody’s ever dealt with, so I think we’re just trying to take the opinion of let’s try to be as helpful as we can. Let’s be a resource for people. Let’s do some consulting for people just so they can figure out what to do, much less take action on it.

Everybody has different problems, but we have CEOs and managers, and everybody is quarantined in their house, worrying about their business. Some people are losing their business as we speak, and some people are like, “I need to figure out how to conduct business when we’re here. How do we do this?”

Luckily, we’ve just been in a position to be able to help people. For me, that’s the most important thing. Just making sure businesses are running, people are being as successful as they can with the limitations, and hopefully when we get through this, everybody’s going to be in a better place and not a much worse place.

ROB: Right. That’s an advantage I think you have in being strategic. I was talking to a client yesterday, an agency, and they have one client who’s in travel, and they’re very large, so that client is rightly putting a lot of initiatives on hold. But I think everybody has an inclination towards timidity in this moment. One of their clients was a beer company, and they said, “Should we cut back?” They said, “No, you can be bold right now.”

SEAN: If you’re not Corona. [laughter]

ROB: Yes, for sure. I see it in my own feeds. People are talking about going out and buying beer right now. I think they look forward to it. So there are opportunities.

OLIVER: That’s what’s different between Germans and Americans. Germans are buying toilet paper and noodles. [laughs] The French are hamstering red wine, and you guys go for beer.

SEAN: The German term for prepping is hamstering, so there’s a lot of hamster memes going on in Germany. [laughs]

ROB: I had no idea. I’ve learned something there as well. Oliver, some people’s agencies that we talk to are brand new, and some folks have been running them for a while. If you were in the U.S., we would probably talk about the 9/11 situation here. But you did navigate through the global financial crisis 13 years ago. What are some lessons that you may have encountered from that time that have helped you as you’re looking at this new set of circumstances that is resetting global markets and making people worry a little bit?

OLIVER: What we learned – our luck in this crisis 13 years ago was we had customers from all kinds of business areas. We were not only doing business with banks. So we survived it quite well, actually, but only because we had a widespread portfolio of customers. This is what we kept all the way from then to now.

I guess this is also what maybe, or hopefully, will help us through this crisis too. We have also customers from the tourist business, so we’re doing a lot of event stuff. Like Sean said, maybe now some livestreaming things. These companies are dying while we’re talking. They’re losing all the events, like South by, for example. All the catering people, our customers from catering. We have other customers from the public sector, for example, and we have customers from the hygienic field selling soaps. I think this is what we learned. Don’t focus too much on one specific branch.

13 years ago, we were a much younger company. There were just a couple of people there. Actually, we were not flying high enough to be hit very strongly by the crisis 13 years ago, so it’s hard for me to compare it this way. Sean, do you have a point here?

SEAN: I wasn’t with the company at the time, but I think just from experience and being in Germany at the time, it’s similar in that there are companies that get financially hit and they’re going to go down. There’s nothing they can do. There’s other companies that get hit hard, but they try to climb up. I think at this point, everybody is struggling and everybody is needing to be loud. Everybody is needing to communicate and reach out.

Kemweb did video production, they did web production, so they had a rounded base of services that they could offer. If you have a diversified portfolio, then you can be agile with your approach to lots of clients. I think that’s one of the reasons Kemweb has been able to be successful for so long through these ups and downs, at least in my opinion. Unless you know a secret I don’t know. [laughs] That’s just my outside opinion.

OLIVER: Yeah, that’s right. Maybe you know the new book by Simon Sinek, The Infinite Game. When I read this book, I didn’t know up to the point I read the book we are in this infinite game. Since we are helping our customers, or trying to help our customers to succeed in a digital world – we did this for 20 years, actually, and every disruption or every crisis forces us to be inventive and to question our own work all the time.

We did this for the last 20 years, and we came out stronger. So I guess he’s right in his book. If you don’t reach finite goals, to be the best in town or whatever, then you will find new approaches even for your customers, and you learn from every punch you get. You’re learning.

I think this is what we learned over the years. For example, when all the streaming was Flash – maybe your younger listeners remember, there was a software called Flash. Steven Jobs decided – all the streaming things we did were running on Flash from one day to the other. Nobody actually was using Flash, so our streaming business was down within a couple of months, for example.

But you start finding workarounds and finding new solutions and stuff like this. If you get used to this, if you are not scared by disruptive changes – I guess such a crisis is a very, very disruptive change to everything. It’s even a threat to your health, so this is a different problem. People are now really scared about their health, not only business-wise, but family and personal health-wise. So this is a different situation we have right now.

ROB: That’s a great point. With The Infinite Game, the objective, the point that Sinek makes is that this is not a chess game that you can win or lose. The goal is to keep playing the game. I think it could even be possible in this moment to take more encouragement. You mentioned Flash – Flash, for people who don’t remember, was made by Adobe. It was Adobe’s attempt to control the browser.

SEAN: It was Macromedia and then it was Adobe, I think.

ROB: Yeah. When Apple came out against Adobe, that was a specific headwind against Adobe, and a big part of their strategy and a big part of their business. They moved out of trying to control the browser into a bunch of other things. There’s a lot of big companies that just take up space and are hard to admire, but Adobe, with having the primary paid enterprise for analytics up against Google Analytics, with the way they’ve managed to turn their creative suite into a subscription business, they really have figured out how to keep playing the game.

I think anybody who’s listening probably has even more of an advantage now because Adobe had a specific headwind; this is a headwind that we all have. Everyone’s fighting this at the same time. So it’s not just you. People are going to win here, and I think it can be Kemweb and it can be anyone else who’s listening, if they figure out how to keep playing the game well.

SEAN: Yeah. I’d look at this as an opportunity. You can look at it as negative as you want, you can get depressed about it and you can sit there and pout, or you can really try to think of the positive ends. For me, just being able to take time to spend more time with the kids when they’re home, or to be able to teach them from home how I want to, or to be able to go online and spend my time with a course, learning something new – you’ve got to take this as positive as you can.

You have to utilize your time. Everybody in the world is confined to their homes at this point, or almost, so do what you can do to benefit from that situation. I think that’s really what you’ve got to do here. I think you will benefit in some way as long as you see it as a positive thing.

OLIVER: I would like to bring up another point. It’s actually about solidarity. We all have to take care of each other and the other companies. If our customers die, for example, we won’t be able to do business after the crisis with them. So we also have to put up plans where we can help our customers not just on the business, but on the survival side of things.

So maybe this will make people think about things they’ve done before or ways they saw things before. Right now we have to take care of each other worldwide, actually.

ROB: Yeah, it has definitely taken that longer approach of, for people who are young, to say, “You may be young and you may not be likely to get sick, but what about someone else’s parent, grandparent?”

SEAN: We’re getting up there.

ROB: What about us on this call? Take care of us too. But really, how to think beyond yourself I hope is a lesson we can carry forward a little bit longer than just the memories of this unusual season.

Oliver, Sean, when people want to track you guys down, when they want to find Kemweb, where should they go to find you?

OLIVER: They should go to the internet, this new thing, you know? [laughs]

ROB: That’s all we got. That’s all we got right now.

OLIVER: You’ll find us on the social media channels. We have our own podcast, actually, which is a German-American podcast form, and it’s called Robot Spaceship. You need to understand a little German. I’m speaking German and Sean is speaking American English. But you’ll find us on the web, www.kemweb.de.

SEAN: Kemweb.de, and that’s www.robotspaceship.com for the podcast.

OLIVER: Sean is using his quarantine to set up an English landing page. [laughter] Isn’t it, Sean?

SEAN: It is. There’s so much translation that happens. There’s so much work. [laughs] I need to take a vacation from working because I’ve got so much work to do. [laughter]

ROB: I think we’ll all be looking to help the travel industry rebound in a little bit when we can all come out of our holes. Oliver, Sean, thank you for coming on. Thank you for sharing at this time. It’s good to be able to connect over audio, at least, and share some of your learnings, lessons, and growth with the world.

SEAN: Thank you.

OLIVER: Thank you for the invitation. Great experience for us.

ROB: Thank you so much. Maybe in Austin next year.

SEAN: Definitely.

OLIVER: For sure.

ROB: Let’s work that out.

SEAN: Fingers crossed.

OLIVER: On 6th Street. [laughs]

ROB: All right, thanks, guys. Bye bye.

Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Laurie Keith is Vice President of Media, Social & Emerging for the Ad Council, “where creativity and causes converge.” The Ad Council, a non-profit organization, coordinates “contributing partners” to address the most important issues in the US and globally, including social and environmental concerns and national crises. 

Laurie started her career working with big media agencies, but her heart was in her volunteer work. Joining the Ad Council in 2010 allowed her to meld her love for media strategy and planning with her passion for social good. Today, she manages the organization’s relationships with major media, tech, and entertainment companies, including large tech platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Apple, Amazon, Pinterest, Reddit, eBay, and Twitch. 

Since its start in 1942, the Ad Council has, over the years, produced many iconic messages. Two of the earliest were: “Loose lips sink ships” (a wartime reminder that divulging sensitive information could result in American deaths) and Smokey Bear, (who always seemed to be saying, “Only YOU can prevent forest fires.”) Other iconic messages include: “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk,” Crash dummies, and the current “Love has no labels.”

In this interview, Laurie explains how the Ad Council’s partnership model works and how it has grown: 

Nonprofit and government agency “issue experts” need help to communicate critical messages to their target audiences. 

• U.S. creative agencies (and the Ad Council’s Creators for Good team) donate time to develop creative strategy and content 
• The Ad Council deploys this information to media volunteers
• The media volunteers provide pro bono digital “real estate” – the platform

Today, these large media companies often contribute on creative side as well, honing material to produce platform-optimized messages.

Before the COVID-19-precipitated cancellation of the South by Southwest 2020 conference, Laurie was scheduled to moderate a panel, “Marketing in the Age of Digital Community,” exploring the power and rise of digital communities. Here, Laurie discusses the power of Reddit, a community where anonymity opens the opportunity for people to more freely talk about sensitive issues, and the potential gains (and caveats) for brands that decide to work in that space. 

Laurie talks about how the Ad Council’s current “Alone together” message, encourages social isolation to slow the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic while communicating that doing so brings people into a “group” taking action together. Alone. But not alone. Laurie says she has been thrilled with the level and depth of brand involvement in communicating COVID-19 information to various audiences.

Laurie can be reached on Twitter @lauriekeith, on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/adcouncil, and on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-advertising-council/. The Ad Council offers an audio/video/print “finished content” COVID-19 information toolkit for people or organizations with outreach capabilities at: coronavirus.adcouncilkit.org. 

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m excited to be joined today by Laurie Keith. She’s the Vice President of Media, Social & Emerging for the Ad Council based in San Francisco, California. Welcome to the podcast, Laurie.

LAURIE: Thank you so much for having me.

ROB: It’s fantastic to have you here. I think a lot of people, the name “the Ad Council” is familiar to them, but they might not be able to tell you off the top of their heads what it is, how it operates, what the deal is. I think people don’t even realize how many iconic campaigns the Ad Council is associated with. So why don’t you give us the big picture of the Ad Council and what the Ad Council excels in? 

LAURIE: Of course. We like to say the Ad Council is where creativity and causes converge, put simply. We are a nonprofit organization. We’ve been around since 1942, and we bring together unique convening partners from the creative minds in advertising, media, technology, in order to address the nation’s most important causes.

We convene all of the partners that we have in all of those industries to tackle the country’s toughest issues. We are a national nonprofit, so we’re really focused on issues at home. Of course, if there’s an issue of global importance, we also will take those on as well.

It’s a really unique intersection in that we’re able to work with the nonprofits and government agencies – they really act as the issue experts – and our “clients” – the media, technology, marketing industries – in an effort to get these critical messages out there to the audiences that we’re trying to reach. And then the advertising creative industry are really tasked with developing and coming up with the creative that you see out there.

As you alluded to, we have created some of the most iconic campaigns in advertising history, from “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk” to Smokey Bear. Our most iconic campaign right now I think is “Love has no labels.”

We really are the convener, as I said earlier, to bring everyone together so that we can make sure we’re getting these critical issues out there. 

ROB: For sure. And even I believe going all the way back to Rosie the Riveter, at the origin? Is that right?

LAURIE: That was up for debate for quite a long time. [laughs] I don’t think we can claim that one, but our very iconic campaign was “Loose lips sink ships” back in World War II era. That was I think one of our first campaigns, along with Smokey Bear.

ROB: Crash Test Dummies, McGruff, do you get to claim those?

LAURIE: Yep, Crash Test Dummies, McGruff the Crime Dog. Those are also our iconic campaigns. I should mention we have a long history of creating campaigns in times of national crisis. I just mentioned World War II; we had a big September 11th “I am an American” campaign. Also, any time there’s a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy.

And of course, our most recent efforts that we have on the ground right now to spread awareness on the slow of the spread of coronavirus, COVID-19. We’re currently spinning on all cylinders getting those messages out to the public.

ROB: It’s quite a charge to make these memorable and meaningful campaigns. I don’t think a lot of people would think about having interesting and memorable government advertisements, but yet that is a place that the Ad Council has absolutely excelled. Let’s dig a little bit into your own journey. How did you come to be at the Ad Council in the role that you are in now?

LAURIE: In my role as Vice President of Media, focusing on social and emerging, I really work in this unique intersection of the tech media industry, and I manage our relationships with major media, tech, and entertainment companies, using their platforms to develop largescale, innovative, social good partnerships.

I oversee our partnerships with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Apple, Amazon, Pinterest, Reddit, eBay. I’m always worried like I’m missing someone. Twitch is a big one. A lot of the large tech media platforms really fall under my huge umbrella.

Your question was how I got here. Prior to the Ad Council, joining 10 years ago, I worked at big media agencies. I started my career at Starcom MediaVest Group in Chicago, and then I moved to Los Angeles, where I worked for Mindshare, working on the Ford Automotive account, and then moved over to Initiative, where I worked on the Carl’s Jr./Hardees QSR account.

I reached a point in my career 10 years ago where – I went to school for advertising, I went through the media track; I really loved media. I’ve always been super interested in media as an industry. I was really enjoying the strategy that went behind building a media plan, understanding the specific targets and how they’re consuming media and what we need to do creatively in order to get the message in front of them at the right time so they’re going to take the call to action that we need them to take.

But my client at the time, as I was going through this life shift, was a fast food restaurant. So, I was realizing I was doing such cool, innovative partnerships – I did one of the first text messaging campaigns for Carl’s Jr./Hardees – but I was not really passionate about the brand that I was working on. It was like getting men 18-49 to continue to eat fast food hamburgers.

I was also doing a lot of personal volunteering and helping out a lot in my local community in Los Angeles. I reached a point where I was like, how do I work in social good and help people, but also continue to work in advertising and media? Because I love how this industry is constantly changing and there’s new technologies coming out all the time. So, I was trying to figure out how to bridge the two together.

It was a long journey, which I won’t get into on this podcast, but I ended up getting accepted to the United States Peace Corps, and I was thinking about going to – they wanted to send me to Kazakhstan to do youth and community development, and I was going to be the only Peace Corps volunteer. My parents are usually really excited about all of my adventures and ideas, but they were like, “Is that really what you want to be doing?” I was at the point in my career where if I were to leave to do something like, it would probably drastically change the course of my career.

That was when I found the Ad Council. I was driving down La Cienega in LA. I was driving down a street that I normally wouldn’t have been, but I was on jury duty during this time, so I was doing a lot of things and doing a lot of soul-searching, trying to figure out my next steps. I passed this billboard, and it was right after the Haiti earthquake, and it was a partnership that the Ad Council had with the Red Cross. It said “text (whatever) to donate to the Red Cross to help with the Haiti earthquake efforts.”

It was just one of those lightbulb moments. I’ve had a couple in my life, and I’m grateful that the Ad Council really came to me in this way. It was like, “Who is the Ad Council? Maybe you should look into what they’re doing. Clearly, they have this big billboard on La Cienega, and maybe they’re a company that you should look into.”

Everything just was clockwork after that. I reached out to the person that ended up becoming my boss and let them know that this was really my passion. My passion was social good, but my talent, so to speak, was media strategy and planning, and “I would love to come in and talk to you.” That turned into an informational interview, which turned into they were looking for someone with exactly my experience, which was local and national media strategy.

Also, at the time in 2010, Ad Council was really starting to build out their partnership model. Of course, we’ve always worked off of a donated media model, and we run all of our PSAs through donated media, which we’re so grateful to get from the industry. But at the time, the partnership model – which is “How do we develop custom content together? How do we bring in a measurement study? How do we develop an innovative product that can help get the message out there?” – that was when they were starting to think in that vein, and that was really what I wanted to be doing for them.

So it was just a perfect timing situation. The job was in New York City, and I was really excited about the opportunity to live in New York City and jump-start my career there. I took the job about 4 months later and have been with them for the last 10 years and have really, like I said, grown the digital/social/emerging part of the Ad Council, which has been really the highlight of my career.

ROB: That’s such a fascinating transition to bring you out to the West Coast again and really to identify – it seems like a lot of the technology opportunity – is it really donated media from them as well? Just as perhaps airtime on radio and on television would be donated, these platforms may also donate part of their own real estate to these causes?

LAURIE: Yeah. Every time you see an Ad Council PSA advertisement, whether it’s in your Instagram feed, whether it’s on a billboard on the highway, whether it’s on the radio or a podcast that you’re listening to, all of that is donated to the Ad Council, which I think puts us in a really unique position because we’re able to get our messages out there on all these different platforms. It’s really the generosity of the media community that allows us to do that.

So yeah, it’s a very unique model. I think it’s also a testament to the relationships that we have with these media companies that when we do need to get messages out there, they’re raising their hand and they want to support it. It’s a really great place to be.

ROB: Wow. For them to donate that time, there has to be an element of trust that what they’re going to be using that airtime, that screen space for, is going to be of excellent quality. Who actually creates the campaigns and creates the content? Are they also donating their time?

LAURIE: That’s a great question. The creative is really twofold, and I feel like it’s one of the things that keeps evolving. Traditionally . . . our traditional model is that the advertising agencies in the U.S., the creative agencies in the U.S. – we call them volunteer agencies, and they will donate their time pro bono to develop the creative strategy and come up with the actual creative idea that we then deploy and put out there in the media.

I feel like more and more, especially with the accounts that I manage, the media companies themselves not only want to donate the media, but they also want to be very heavily involved in the creative process. Facebook has Facebook Creative Shop, Pinterest has their own creative team, Snapchat has their own creative team.

So oftentimes media companies will also step up and say, “Listen, we want to donate X amount of media, but we also want to work with our creative team to develop a custom filter or come up with a new video social campaign that is very specific to this platform.” And we welcome those opportunities. Obviously, these media companies know what creative is going to perform best and what the best ways are to reach audiences on their platform, so we welcome that.

Oftentimes we do work with media companies, and they will donate their time to develop content similar to advertising agencies. But of course, our agency model is very strong because there’s so many media companies out there and so many ways to reach people through multiple media channels that it’s important for us to have face-to-face campaign creative and have creative that’s ready to get out there on any platform at any given time.

ROB: That makes a lot of sense. I can definitely see, especially in your department, when you’re dealing with these technology companies, even the way they would execute a campaign, they would probably like to execute it in a way that is very native to each platform that they’re on in a way that might make the entire campaign different.

LAURIE: Yeah. I should also add we have a whole department at the Ad Council called Creators for Good. Again, it’s another small and mighty team, but they are working with talent. Anyone from digital talent, digital creator influencer, to celebrity talent, comedians, musicians. They also develop content for us and their voice, lending their talents to get these critical messages to the public.

It’s great. We have basically content coming in from all different directions in order to get the messaging out there.

ROB: Perfect. I think very relevant to this, you were prepared at South by Southwest to be a part of a talk called “Marketing in the Age of Digital Community.” That’s very relevant, I think, to this conversation. What was going to be in that talk? And maybe we’ll get a chance to hear it if it comes out in digital format later.

LAURIE: Yeah. It was a panel that I put through. I was planning to be the moderator, and it was with Will Cady, the Head of Brand Strategy at Reddit, Addie Marino, who’s the Global Prototype Lead at the Creative Shop Studio I just mentioned – we work with them – over at Facebook, and then Adam Warrington, who is the Vice President of Better World, the CSR arm of Anheuser-Busch.

The panel was going to be focused on the power of digital communities and also the rise in digital communities. 81% of companies, up from 67% in 2012, report that they have a community-centric approach to marketing. And then at the same time, there’s been a significant increase in the number of internet users that engage in online forums, blogs, subreddits.

Reddit did a study called “The Era of We,” and it went from 72% of global internet users saying that “yes, I engage in these online communities” and that has increased to 76%. It’s this really interesting phenomenon that more and more people that are active internet/social media users are part of some type of community. Maybe they’re part of one, maybe they’re part of several.

And at the same time, companies that are starting out or companies that are evolving are making sure that they have a community-centric strategy. We basically designed a panel around that, and as a brand, how do you authentically insert yourself into let’s say a subreddit community that has millions of followers and people that are really passionate about an issue? You as a brand have a big stake in the ground, and how do you enter that community but then also do it in a very authentic way to where the people in that community are really receptive?

That was another part of the panel, too. Reddit did a separate study that found that 82% of community users are receptive to brands participating, and they really respect when brands make an effort. So this whole idea of – this is a huge marketing opportunity for brands to come in and insert themselves into these communities, but doing it in an authentic way that really fares well for your brand.

Of course, brands have a lot of guidelines on how they can show up and what they can say and do. How do you do that in a space that is very authentic? You don’t want to stand out. You don’t want to do anything that could make you come across as you don’t know what you’re talking about.

So it was a really awesome panel that we had designed to talk about this, because I think a lot of brands are trying to figure out how to enter this space.

ROB: An interesting panel for that. I would say perhaps Reddit is the place you can insert yourself into community and be most quickly corrected if you have done so in a way that is not right for that community.

LAURIE: Yes, absolutely. I think Reddit is also super unique – and we were going to talk about this in the panel, too – just the anonymous nature of the platform. A lot of people are joining subreddits, but they don’t reveal their real person, whereas on a Facebook, you are showing up as who you are.

I think what makes Reddit so special is that you can be part of this community, but not have to reveal who you really are. From an Ad Council perspective, we’ve found this to be really powerful for campaigns like our Youth Suicide Prevention campaign, like holding a Reddit AMA and reaching out to different communities to get people to talk about the issue of mental health that maybe in a public setting, that’s difficult to talk about. It’s a sensitive subject.

So we are able to see a lot of success in raising awareness on our campaigns when we do it in a really unique way on Reddit.

ROB: Reddit is certainly, by contrast, also a place where if you do things right, the rewards are tremendously rich and robust. I think maybe relevant to that, you’re at an intersection that is very interesting today amidst this COVID-19 crisis. At the Ad Council, I believe the day that we’re recording this, there’ve been a couple of new ads that have come out.

I think when you’re talking about digital platforms, often younger audiences might be some of the folks who feel like they have the least to worry about with this COVID-19 crisis. How is the Ad Council working into this crisis and getting what messages out to the right places?

LAURIE: It’s a great question, and thank you for asking. We have a huge campaign, and it has a lot of legs. We actually announced our campaign on March 19th, and we are working in partnership with the White House, the CDC, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to develop this largescale national PSA campaign in order to get messages to the public.

To your point, there are a lot of different targeting sets of people that we’re trying to reach. We have a lot of different campaigns under this one COVID-19 umbrella, so to speak. We worked with NBCUniversal. They created a series of videos, TV, and digital and social graphics both in English and Spanish that are reaching the high-risk populations as well as the general public. Those ad sets talk about the steps that people can take to protect themselves.

Then separately, we worked with ViacomCBS and really leveraged their portfolio of brands to develop a multiplatform PSA campaign that targets more of the Gen Z/Millennial, younger, low-risk, I think we’re calling them – like the 16- to 35-year-olds that might be a carrier or might have had the coronavirus but had mild symptoms, but of course, are a carrier of the virus and can spread it quickly.

That campaign is called Alone Together. We’re partnering with Twitter, we’re partnering with Snapchat, we’re partnering with TikTok, all of the targeted media platforms, to really bring light to that campaign. It’s also social and talent led, so we have a bunch of celebrity talents that have lent their voice to get the message out there, of course. They’re really big on social platforms, so partnering with them was really important for the campaign.

In addition to that, we also just launched new PSAs that feature the Surgeon-General, Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci, the health officials that really get the message out there on social distancing. Those are also targeted to the low-risk group of Americans.

And we have more and more, it seems like every day, more and more media companies coming to the table. We’re now working with The Atlantic’s internal creative studio to develop customized digital creative. iHeartMedia just raised their hand and they’re going to be developing audio and radio spots. Wall Street Journal, I just heard this morning, and Hearst are going to be developing custom print.

And then of course, the partners that we work with out here in San Francisco, our social and emerging media partners, have all – we basically reached out and asked for their support, and every single one of them is stepping up, whether that be through donating a significant amount of media to get these already-created assets out there to developing custom content.

Snapchat, their creative team is developing custom filters as well as designing some new creative that will live within their app. We’re partnering with TikTok and some celebrity, talent-led creative. Reddit is doing something really unique in that we’re doing a trending takeover on their front page, and we’re also going to be developing custom content with them.

I could talk forever on all the companies that have stepped up, but it’s really been an industry-wide effort to not only develop content that reaches these very specific audiences, but donating media and each platform lending their own creative team to make sure that we’re getting this message out there in the way that their audience is going to consume it best.

It’s been definitely the highlight of my career in these last 10 years I’ve worked with the Ad Council. We always take the call. We take the call when there’s a national crisis and a national emergency. I never thought in a million years that we would be dealing with this in our country, but it’s so amazing to work at a company like the Ad Council that is really on the frontlines on this communication and media strategy in order to get people to do what we need them to do.

ROB: You must really feel like this is such an opportunity to actually – I think more tangibly. Many of your campaigns have been out there to save lives, even going back to “Loose lips sink ships” or the Crash Test Dummies. I just think there’s something a lot more tangible about the immediate opportunity here. I’m amazed you can keep all of that that you just shared even in your head.

LAURIE: [laughs] It’s hard.

ROB: How do you think about organizing moving parts and partners with so many different campaigns in flight, so many different placements in flight, different contexts?

LAURIE: Thankfully, we have such an incredible team at the Ad Council. Our media team at the Ad Council is really broken out in that we have different specialties and different focus areas. Of course, our team in San Francisco, we’re really focused on social and emerging media companies. Anything we’re doing with any of those companies, we’re really leading the charge in developing those partnerships.

We have another team that’s focused on audio and podcasts. We have another team that’s focused more on TV and radio. We have a whole team of people that are working tirelessly with all of their partners in order to get the message out there. And then, of course, we have our talent team that’s leading the talent-led efforts. We have our campaign teams that are in charge of managing the relationships with the CDC and the White House.

It honestly is a whole team effort. It really makes me take a step back and go, wow. I’m happy to be where I am during this crisis. Ad Council, we have the convening partners of the industry to enable us to do this. I’ve got to say, it’s really awesome that we have a system set up for when there is a crisis and that we can get the messages out there so quickly across the entire industry.

ROB: It sounds like you’re saying there’s a value of specialization, but there’s also a value of coordination and having the right people in the right seats and enough of them to make sure this whole thing works together.

LAURIE: Totally.

ROB: You have the quantity and the talent. Perfect. In these moments of crisis, one thing I saw maybe right around the time that cities were beginning to lock down – there are always loud voices on Twitter, but I saw very intelligent people who were calling out and calling on some of these – probably companies you work with, the Facebooks, the Twitters of the world, and saying, “Why aren’t you helping? Why aren’t you getting the word out?”

What do people not realize is going on behind the scenes? Because I’m sure they’re talking about it. When these companies are thinking but haven’t quite acted yet, what’s going on behind the scenes that people might not appreciate about these companies?

LAURIE: I think that’s why we at the Ad Council work directly with our PR communications team, because it is important for us to get the message out there that these companies are standing up. I know we just came out with a press release last Monday talking specifically to the tech community and what they’re doing to step up.

You just mentioned Facebook and Twitter; they’re both doing a lot for our campaigns. Facebook is donating a significant amount of media for us to get the message out there, and Twitter is developing a custom emoji that will show up any time someone types with the hashtag “#alonetogether.”

It’s important for us to get the message out there that these media companies are stepping up, and we do that through a press release so that we can make these announcements and so the press can write about it. Obviously, sometimes that’s not happening at the same exact time these questions are being asked, like, “Why aren’t these companies stepping up?” But we were able to turn around a press release within a matter of 3 days.

I think these companies, beyond what they’re doing with the Ad Council, I’m reading every day – Apple just created a COVID-19 special section. Facebook has a COVID-19 special section. I know Twitter does as well. So I know beyond just what they’re doing with the Ad Council and helping us get these messages to the public, I do think a lot of them are doing way more beyond that. They’re actually using their product to get the message out there as well.

I don’t know if that helps answer your question, but we try to raise awareness on the fact that they’re supporting through the press that we put out there.

ROB: It’s yet another example, I think, of the high-level, three-dimensional chess that you all have to play that very few people have to do. There’s a PR dimension to what you’re doing, but very rarely do you see such a deep level of also execution, also distribution, also partnering and coordinating, all within one organization. I think it’s a tremendous amount to appreciate.

LAURIE: It’s a well-oiled machine. [laughs]

ROB: [laughs] It sounds like it, especially to be all virtual now. Laurie, when you are looking at the future, what’s coming up for the Ad Council and for the industry that you are excited about?

LAURIE: It’s a big question. For me personally, where I sit at the Ad Council and focusing on social and emerging media and having a pulse on the frontier of what’s happening and where we should really be inserting ourselves, there’s a couple things I think that I’m excited about.

We’re talking to some companies right now on the idea of a virtual concert where you essentially can join virtually, whether you have a VR headset or you just – you don’t need a VR headset to join; you can also just join and experience it from your regular desktop or mobile phone.

This idea that we can bring thousands if not millions of people together in a virtual space, share our messaging, whether that be – I think we’re talking about bringing in some artists, some talent – but really getting everyone in a virtual space. Obviously it’s hard in person. There’s a lot of logistics that go into actually planning a physically live event.

But the idea of being able to pull something off like this in a virtual space and have different messaging points, different levers that we can pull, whether that’s getting a reward within the experience or maybe collecting user-generated content where people can share their own experiences as it relates to that issue – of course, there’s a donation stream, if we wanted to raise money for a specific nonprofit.

So I’m really excited about that potential, especially after we’re living in this COVID-19 space where there is so much happening in a virtual world. I’m excited to see where Ad Council can take that, especially with our partners like Twitch and other leaders that are really driving the VR space.

And then I think separately, it’s this whole idea of purpose-driven marketing. I think we’re going to see more and more brands really step up and make sure that they stand for something that’s beyond just the product that they’re selling and going beyond just their pocketbooks and giving money to causes – which of course is super important, but how can they actually develop unique experiences that happen in the communities of people that follow them and help make the world a better place through the causes that they care about?

I think you’re going to see more and more companies step up. Of course, that’s an exciting opportunity for the Ad Council as well because we work with so many brands that sit on our board of directors, so how can we really play a part there, knowing that Ad Council invented this model of purpose-driven marketing back in 1942? How can we work together?

We have a separate arm at the Ad Council that is focusing on this as a revenue stream. It’s called Ad Council Edge, really helping brands and other nonprofits with their purpose-driven marketing strategy. So I’m really excited to see how that will play out over the next couple of years.

ROB: It’s amazing to see so much agility in a nearly 80-year-old organization. You mentioned VR there for a moment; I believe you’ve done some speaking and thinking on VR, but then you overlaid that onto our current moment. How much of things that you’ve seen and thought about in VR do you think are getting jammed into our lived experience of normal work and life right now? What’s stuff we’ve talked about for VR that just became life all of a sudden?

LAURIE: I went to F8 last year and they talked a lot about the Facebook Watch platform, and they showed an example of – it was two women. Her mother lived in Australia and she lived in Los Angeles, and they were watching Red Table Talk through their VR, like Oculus headsets, sitting in their living room, watching the show together and commenting.

This whole experience of, okay, we’re not physically together, but we are physically together because we are watching this and feeling this through this virtual experience.

I see that, especially in where we are sitting right now with this shelter in place and people staying at home, this whole idea of watch parties and watching comet together and being able to respond in real time – just like you would if you were sitting in a living room with someone watching a show together. You might pause it and say, “Oh my gosh, what did you guys think about that?” or what have you. I see this really starting to pick up in a virtual space, being able to watch content together, experience content together.

And then when we get out of this space and we eventually can get back to our normal lives and be together again in community with each other, I can see brands taking advantage of this whole – we have this online world, this online community, we’re doing something together online, but then facilitating how those online connections can live out in the real world and in real life.

I’m interested to see how brands will really scale that. I think we’ll see more of these online-meets-real-life experiences happening.

ROB: Fascinating. It will be interesting to see the before and after around this forced technology adoption. People are learning things they probably would have not learned for 5 years right now. It’ll be fascinating to see what that means for the community that you are involved in and the companies you are working with.

LAURIE: Absolutely, yeah. It’s a huge opportunity for virtual companies and really digital companies that are thinking in this way to really take advantage of this time and figure out how they can evolve their products to fit in this space.

ROB: That’s all brilliant. Laurie, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and for sharing. I think we all learned a great deal. When people want to find and connect with you, where should they look for you?

LAURIE: I’m pretty active on social media. That should not surprise you. [laughs] My Twitter is just my name, which is @lauriekeith. I’m always welcome to be hit up on Twitter through DMs. That’s probably the best way to reach me. And then I did want to also plug our Coronavirus Toolkit, if I can.

ROB: Absolutely.

LAURIE: For anyone that’s listening to this podcast and has the ability to reach people, we have a toolkit set up. It’s coronavirus.adcouncilkit.org, and you will find everything from all of our PSAs to our social media assets to sample television and audio scripts if you want to develop your own content. I just wanted to make sure I plugged that, because I know a lot of people and companies are trying to figure out how they can help. I think it’s a good one-stop shop of how to get our assets and get them out there.

ROB: Super solid. Thank you so much, Laurie.

LAURIE: Thank you so much. Hope you have a good one.

ROB: You too. Bye bye.

Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Caren Carrasco is Senior Partner at Benjamin David Group, a 4-year-old marketing consultancy that excels at digital marketing – in particular, website creation, branding, content strategy, social media, email marketing, and paid media. Benjamin David group works with a wide range of clients, from startups focused on getting their Series A, others with their first infusion of venture capital, to larger, more mature corporations like Cirque du Soleil. The objective? To help their clients get fast, profitable growth. 

Many clients are B2B. Benjamin David Group provides strategy, with a focus on figuring out how to get traction fast, and supplies the team to make it happen – either by handing off the strategic plan to the client’s team or by facilitating the hiring of an appropriate team. “It doesn’t make sense to pay a consultant to execute,” Caren says, except maybe at the very beginning when the marketing structure is not yet established. To maintain close contact, at least one member of Caren’s agency will work in-office at the client’s site.

Except COVID-19 has changed things up. Caren explains how BDG is handling the imposed transition to virtual, the continued importance of weekly contact with their clients, the impact of an established and clear cut workflow, and why detailed meeting documentation is especially critical at this time. 

Caren started her career in loyalty and email marketing, and worked in a variety of industries. At Luxury Retreats, a villa rental company headquartered in Montreal, she drove customer journeys, learned “fast and agile” marketing, and worked closely with Salesforce. Salesforce invited her and her Luxury Retreat co-worker, Benjamin David, to speak at Connections 2014 on building effective client life-cycle programs, engagement strategies, and campaign automation. Realizing the depth of their knowledge, Ben and Caren decided to form a marketing consultancy, and set up their first office . . . in a local Starbucks.

(This year, Salesforce Connections 2020, originally scheduled in Chicago for May 4 through May 6, will be a virtual experience.)

In this interview, Caren introduces a powerful market targeting tool, RFM database segmentation. RFM identifies different buyer groups so that marketers can apply group-specific strategies and optimize repeat business. RFM is an acronym for recency, frequency, and monetary – where recency is how recently the buyer made a purchase; frequency is the number of times the buyer has purchased; and monetary is the dollar value of the purchase. Each category of buyer type needs to be approached in a way congruent with their buying history.

Caren admits that BDG does not provide all the services a client might need. Instead, they work with a network of trusted partners, many of them curated through networking at industry events. Over the past 4 years, the agency has actually invested in 8 of its clients, through either sweat equity or capital investment. This type of partnering is something BDG would like to further explore since a client’s success then becomes BDG’s success. 

Caren and Ben can be reached on the company website at: www.benjamin-david.com or on LinkedIn.

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Caren Carrasco, Senior Partner at Benjamin David Group based in Montreal, Canada. Welcome to the podcast, Caren.

CAREN: Thank you, Rob.

ROB: Fantastic to have you here. Why don’t you kick us off by telling us about Benjamin David Group and where your firm excels?

CAREN: Sure. Benjamin David Group, we’re a marketing consultancy based in Montreal. We do everything that has to do with digital marketing, from website creation, branding, content strategy, social media, email marketing, paid media. We excel at those verticals.

Our clientele can go from bigger corporations like Cirque du Soleil, which is a very well-known brand, or we also work with startups. The startup scene in Montreal and Toronto is very big right now, so we find a niche to work with funded startups – startups that are either chasing a Series A or that just got funded and they need a marketing arm to execute and start having traction. So, we help them with their marketing efforts.

We have been in business for about 4 years now, and we’re a team of marketing consultants. Our main goal is to help our clients with fast, profitable growth – not only to help them grow, but do it as fast as we can. That’s a little bit of the nature of the startup clients that we have. They need to show results fast.

ROB: Now more than ever, startups are asked to actually prove that their economics are good, and it sounds like you have this sweet spot where you’re coming in in that in-between time where there is something there, there is something worth marketing and something to prove, still. They’re not at the point maybe past a Series B, C, D, E, whatever, where they would bring in a CMO and a bigtime team.

When they’re looking to get to that Series A, what are some of the key metrics that you’re driving and some of the key channels that are working for them to get there?

CAREN: We work with quite a few B2B clients. What we focus on at the very beginning is to really set up a model where we can track what is the recipe to start growing. The recipe will have a mix between paid media, of course content will be present everywhere, but our first approach is to try to understand the formula to start driving traction, either through account-based marketing or gaining leads through gated content on different platforms. We actually act as their de facto CMO. We not only bring the strategy, but we also bring the muscle, the team to execute.

Once we find that formula, we have two approaches. Either we hand the strategy to our client so that they can execute with their team, or we can take the executive with us and help them through the hiring process so that at some point, once they have their marketing team, we can hand that execution to them because it doesn’t make sense to pay a consultant to execute. It makes sense at the very beginning when you’re creating the pillars and having the foundation of your marketing practice, but after that, our goal is to really make our client autonomous, and they can use us for direction and strategy. That’s a little bit of our approach.

ROB: You mentioned the CMO. Probably not typically a full-time CMO, but probably a lot of times actually a fractional marketing team. So, I’d imagine there’s a point where you are incrementally replacing yourselves, and sometimes you’re able probably to bring – do you have one super marketer that’s assigned to a client? Or are you giving them a thin slice of a full-on marketing team? Maybe two, three, five people, where they couldn’t imagine having five full-timers on staff, but with you, they get a piece of five different expertises that they wouldn’t have.

CAREN: Exactly. We have a few clients on that model, and it’s very effective for them because, to your point, they’re not getting only one person. They’re getting a fraction of our team.

Another thing that we do with our clients is that we have an office presence with them. We make sure that we have a seat in their office so that we can be with them, and it’s not a remote collaboration; we’re actually there to be part of the key decisions, to also train their future team if they’re at the point of hiring. It’s a very, very effective model, and it helps fast-track things and make sure that we’re aligned with our business objectives.

ROB: The in-person model is definitely a differentiator, and I think it probably distinguishes you from people who might even outsource a lot of their execution to maybe somewhere far away. It’s often so beneficial to have someone who understands intrinsically the context of the company, the context of the location, and relationships with the team.

Originally, you and I were scheduled to meet up in Austin, Texas for South by Southwest, and as everyone is probably well aware by now, that was cancelled. That in-person conversation for us was cancelled. I’d imagine some of your in-person conversations – perhaps all of them – have also been cancelled and that seat at the office is empty along with the rest of them.

How have you thought about adapting that personal integration into the team operating in this coronavirus, social distancing, remote working environment?

CAREN: Specifically, for South by Southwest – and this is a small collaboration that I did with another company through a webinar – there’s still so many things that we can do even if events have been cancelled. We still have access to the attendee list for, for example, South by Southwest or any event. So, I think companies can still try to make those meetings happen, just not personally, but virtually. So that’s one way you can still get the advantage of the whole event.

With our clients, we’re keeping the communications fluid through the tools that we have. We’re making sure that every week, we’re in touch with them. Because it’s a situation that is not only on our side, but on their side as well, it has been very positive, the transition of not being in office, but making sure that we are online and available through different platforms and making sure that we have touchpoints with them.

Actually, one of the things that we have at BDG is that we work with Jira and Confluence and we make sure that every single thing that happens for an internal meeting/external meeting, it’s documented in meeting notes. That way, even if you’re not physically there or if there’s a meeting that was held between certain people, we make sure everyone is in the loop by giving access to those meeting notes. So far, with this whole crisis, I think we have managed well with our clients.

ROB: That’s really interesting. Jira and Confluence are pretty sophisticated and capable tools. Kind of a Basecamp on steroids sometimes.

CAREN: Yeah. Thanks to us being very diligent on having our setup with those tools, it’s actually how and why we are well-positioned to work remotely with our clients because we have a very clear workflow and process and methodology. So, I’m happy that we put that in place so that now we can actually work efficiently remotely.

ROB: Excellent. You mentioned that you started BDG around 4 years ago. Tell me about that origin story. How did you come to start a business that you’ve now been glad to grow and work with some really excellent clients?

CAREN: My expertise as a marketer was with loyalty and email marketing specifically. I worked in different industries, from luxury travel to loyalty. I worked at Aeroplan, which is the loyalty program of Air Canada. Here in Montreal, I worked at Luxury Retreats, which is a villa rental company that got acquired by Airbnb a couple of years ago.

I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to work at a startup at Luxury Retreats and go through what it means to work fast and agile and where speed is everything. That’s where I met my co-founder, Benjamin.

We were very knowledgeable in everything that has to do with the customer journey and lifecycle. We worked closely with Salesforce. At the time it was ExactTarget. The people at Salesforce were very impressed with the way we were driving customer lifecycles with Luxury Retreats, to the point that they invited us to Connections and to give speaking sessions in Indianapolis and to basically speak to their clients about everything that they can do from a marketing automation standpoint.

At that point, I think it was the very beginning of thinking that we could actually have a practice out of consulting, because we were very knowledgeable in everything that has to do with customer journeys. At that point, Ben had been at Luxury Retreats for 16 years, and I was working by that time at Aeroplan. At some point we got together and he was the one approaching me to say, “Caren, let’s create a consultancy on marketing. We’re very knowledgeable.” At the time I was like, “How are we going to find clients? How do we grow this?”

So, we started together. I quit my job. We started working at a Starbucks, no office. Fast forward 4 years, we’re a team of 20 consultants and we have big clients such as Cirque du Soleil and a very healthy pipeline. It was an interesting decision, but it was very rewarding to see how based on the knowledge you have and the expertise, you can actually build a business out of it and grow it.

ROB: Congratulations on all of that. It seems like a lot of your success is rooted in some very – I see with Jira and Confluence, and then also with ExactTarget, there’s this deep technical competency that seems to resonate throughout and elevates the work to a level of consultancy and not just some sort of lightweight content shop.

Now, what I’d like to dig into that goes even deeper to that technical capability is you have prepared presentations on something called RFM segmentation. Tell us what RFM segmentation is, what we need to know, and how we should be deploying it.

CAREN: When we worked at Luxury Retreats and the reason why Salesforce was very impressed about what we were doing in marketing automation and lifecycle journeys was the segmentation that we put behind it. Basically, RFM segmentation is a way for you to segment your database and monetize it and get the most out of repeat business.

This is a model that is very easy to implement for businesses for retail and travel. Basically, what you’re trying to do is have a very specific strategy for people that have purchased with you one time or more than one time and have a different approach for each one, because you shouldn’t be targeting in the same way a first-time buyer as a three-time buyer. That will help you with your incentive strategy, how you give up promotions, how you incentivize your database to keep buying more.

RFM stands for recency, frequency, and monetary – recency, how recently the purchase was; frequency, how many times the buyer has purchased; and monetary, the value. In a nutshell, you assign scores from let’s say 1 to 5 to one of those dimensions, and you will have different clusters of segments that you can target differently.

Think about having a big grid of different segments where you are going to have your VIPs, which are the 5-5-5s. Let’s say someone that made a purchase yesterday over $1,000 and they have purchased more than three times. The way you target a 5-5-5 is very different than the way you target a 1-1-1, someone that maybe had purchased over a year ago for a very low amount of money and they just purchased once.

This really helps you focus your efforts and understand how you should be moving your low-engaged segments through your high-engaged segments. It’s a very, very strategic and detailed approach, and it’s a methodology that we have put in practice with different clients, as I was saying, in the retail and travel industry with very good results in terms of repeat business.

ROB: I think that makes sense, and it makes even more sense with your background in loyalty because as I think about you talking about a 5-5-5, I think about the different airline status programs, even some credit card programs. It seems like there are entire programs, your Delta Platinums and Diamonds and I don’t know how high it goes, that are all about capturing the brain of a 5-5-5.

CAREN: Exactly. Also, because you don’t have infinite budget to give incentives to everyone, that’s why the RFM segmentation helps to put exactly where you should be putting your efforts. And at the same time, not everything is going to be a monetary incentive.

Sometimes recency, like the time where you’re targeting someone, is the variable that will make you move the needle. Through analysis, you can understand when is the right time to send a communication – for example, an email – to a customer that just made a purchase for the first time so that you can convince them at the right time to make the second purchase. It’s not about maybe the incentive, but to understand that, for example, on Day 72, that’s where your database is the perfect timing to trigger a second purchase.

ROB: Very interesting. Does this have any applications then into something like a Cirque du Soleil or even into some of the startups that you work with?

CAREN: Yeah, absolutely. We implement it on different clients. Any type of business that has a repeat behavior that it’s a product or a service that you can buy over and over again can use RFM segmentation.

ROB: So if you’re in something like Cirque du Soleil, you might know that someone’s going to buy every time you come to town or they’re going to buy – I don’t even know if there are higher packages available that you can get them into. But you could actually design marketing around the knowledge that someone’s definitely going to go and what they’re going to buy, versus they might come let’s say every couple of years.

CAREN: Exactly. It’s the same thing as in travel, for the travel industry. Depending on your niche, you know when is the right time for someone to start thinking of their next travel. Because you know that information, which is your recency factor, you know exactly the right time to push for the next trip.

At the same time, for most of the businesses that I have been working with, there is a truth in the data, which is once you convert a first-time buyer into a second-time buyer, you basically have them for life. If you make sure that you convert a one-time to a two-time, to get them to repeat to three times, four times, depending on your industry, is not that difficult.

The big step that you have to focus on at the beginning of the program is how you make a first-time buyer buy a second time. After that, if you give good service and the product is good, they’re going to be happy and they’re going to keep buying from you. So that’s what I usually recommend to our clients and where we usually focus at the beginning, to transform the first-time buyers into second-time buyers.

ROB: Suppose you’ve solved the initial part of getting somebody to be a repeat buyer. Are there industries where you can actually impact the recency, frequency, or monetization of the customers? It seems like in some cases, particularly in travel, moving someone up from a one, a two, to three, to four, to five on the monetization scale, for instance, would be a real game-changer for a business.

CAREN: Exactly. For example, if you master the recency and frequency and now you are close in the window for them to book faster and you’re making them book with you multiple times, then you're viable to start to tackle monetary, how you can get them to spend more money with you. And there’s different marketing strategies that you can do around that.

ROB: What’s an example of a way you might be able to move somebody up the monetization or frequency scale, for that matter?

CAREN: We did a very interesting promotion once at Luxury Retreats. We were giving free flights to anyone that would be booking for a certain period of time for certain locations. It was a very interesting way to move people, first of all from first-time buyers to repeat buyers, and also to increase their monetary value because we needed to lock them for a certain number of nights.

That promotion turned out to be one of the most successful promotions in this particular niche. This is luxury travel. So, you’re getting a free flight, and the gain for the company is right away because you’re not putting money upfront. You’re only giving away the incentive once they book with you. That’s a promotion that is still alive, and it was very, very successful from an RFM perspective because we were tackling the three variables at a time.

ROB: That’s fascinating. It seems like in the case of luxury travel, in particular, one of the things you may be able to do is actually change someone’s concept of themselves as being the sort of person who does this sort of travel. If you can get them to think of themselves that way, it probably becomes something that feeds itself a little bit.

CAREN: Yeah. In particular with luxury travel, incentives have a different take because those are brands that don’t get discounted. It’s a luxury item, so you don’t offer discounts. Everything that you’re offering them, either to book faster or to increase the basket size, is actually on giving them a better experience, to upgrade their experience, to give them something more. So it’s a different way to see the incentive and how you can make them increase their monetary value.

ROB: Fantastic. Caren, when you think about your 4-year journey so far building Benjamin David Group, what are some things that you might do differently if you were starting over? Some lessons learned, if you will.

CAREN: I think as we positioned ourselves as a growth partner of our clients, one of the things that we have been doing – it’s not something that I would do differently, but I think it’s knowledge that I wish I’d had since Day 1: to build a network of trusted partners that I can always go to, to enhance the service that I provide to my clients.

Just to give you an example, we don’t provide PR services. We’re very focused on digital marketing. But we have a lot of clients that at some point, because of the different marketing strategies that we have with them, there’s a right time for them, for example, to engage with a PR agency. Sometimes we don’t have the right partner to send to our clients.

So I think to have a very strong network of different service providers that don’t necessarily have to do with my core business, but that I can always give to my clients so that they can continue with that execution is something that I would like to have curated faster during this journey.

ROB: What have you found to be some of the keys to establishing those connections? It sounds like you have a lot of that in place now.

CAREN: A lot of these connections and partnerships that we have developed right now have been based off networking, to be honest. In every event and every opportunity that we attend, there are other players attending there.

Just to give you an example, at South by Southwest, there are multiple agencies going there. Myself, I was booked pretty much the whole week with other agencies where my services are complementary to them or where they actually complement my services. So the best way we have curated those relationships has been through networking.

ROB: I think another question that comes into play with that sort of partnership is: how do you think about, when you’re working with a client, whether that relationship is an introduction and a referral or whether it’s a white label service or just generally provided under the scope of BDG?

CAREN: The way that we have managed, it depends on the needs of the client. Also, it depends on our direction on the overall service. Sometimes we just connect the client with the service provider and they can work with them directly and do whatever they need to do. But there are other instances where it makes sense for us to be involved, just to give direction to this third party, and then they will be working with us behind the scenes and we will be assisting them with the direction and getting all the information from the client, and then we’re able to brief the third party.

So it really depends on the mandate and also where the client sits, where they want to move forward. But both angles have worked with us.

ROB: I can imagine some startup where you are the entire marketing arm of the organization, they probably just want you there to solve any marketing problem possible and to bring solutions to the table. Is that part of the mix?

CAREN: Exactly, and that’s a big difference. For example, I’m just thinking from a startup. That’s the difference between hiring for example five different freelancers – let’s say that a startup goes, "I'm going to hire someone for social media, someone for SEO, someone for email marketing,” and so on; the client will still have to have someone to manage those five professionals and make sure that people are not working in silos and bring them all together with the direction.

The difference with us is that we are that connection. We have the team and we have the specialists. The client just needs to make individual connections with the specialist because everything is centralized through our service. I think that’s a big advantage for us to work in that way, mostly with our startup clients.

ROB: Caren, what do you think is coming up next for BDG that we should be looking forward to, or maybe some lines of service that you're doing where you see some trends emerging?

CAREN: Other things I would do at BDG – we do digital marketing, but we also have a small venture arm. Whenever it makes sense for us, we do invest in some of our clients in a mix between sweat equity and capital. That’s something that we would like to explore even more. We have made eight investments during these past 4 years.

Moving forward in 2020-2021, we really want to keep developing that ability to invest in companies where we provide the marketing services, but because we're also investors of the company, the dots are aligned, so our clients’ success will be also our success. We want to keep exploring and get deeper into our investment arm.

ROB: Very good. Any of those companies that we should be looking out for that you'd like to plug while we're chatting?

CAREN: Absolutely. One of the companies that we're very, very proud of how they have success – it’s a marketplace. They’re called GoMaterials. Basically it's a marketplace between landscapers and vendors. We have been helping them since Day 1. It’s a very, very interesting concept. They are disrupting an industry that is very old-fashioned, where everything is done through paper, and they’re bringing technology to the industry, which is where they are succeeding in the space. So that’s one of our investments that we’re very, very proud of.

ROB: Very, very interesting. That is probably a hot one right now, at least where we are in Atlanta. Landscaping is considered one of those necessary services where business is going to keep on humming except for maybe some people would pull back. But at the same time, probably having an online service to handle some of the logistics is better than going in person for a lot of people.

CAREN: Absolutely. They have a platform where everything is centralized, so it's going to be a big, big change for the industry. The way that we provide and we support them is we have very good experience with marketplaces. Back at Luxury Retreats, it was basically a marketplace between the hosts and the guests. They're basically doing the same thing, but for landscapers.

All industries that have been managed in an old-fashioned way, whoever can disrupt that and bring technology and make that marketplace unified has a winning angle to gain that market, and that’s what they’re doing.

ROB: Fantastic. Caren, when people want to find you and want to find Benjamin David Group, where should they look?

CAREN: Our website, www.benjamin-david.com. Also, we're very, very active on LinkedIn. I would say that our main focus in terms of content is through LinkedIn. So either our website or our LinkedIn page. That’s where they can find us.

ROB: Fantastic. Caren, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, and best wishes to you and BDG, and hopefully we can connect up in person at your first South by Southwest in 2021. Hopefully we can make that happen.

CAREN: Absolutely. Thank you, Rob, for the invite.

ROB: Thank you so much.

Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Carlos Gil is CEO of Gil Media, a digital media company that specializes in video production, influencer marketing, social media community management, talent management, and content marketing. Carlos is a first generation Latino marketing executive, award-winning Snapchat storyteller, and author of a recent bestseller: “The End of Marketing: Humanizing Your Brand in the Age of Social Media and AI,” available on Amazon. He presents bilingual keynotes at major marketing industry events.

In this interview, Carlos reviews his unconventional path to success, the importance of passion, and the long-term humanizing person to person linkage that creates business opportunities. There are no shortcuts. He believes the strength of a company is in its employees. He hopes his book will help companies future-proof their brands and their businesses for the long term.

In 2008, Carlos lost his job in the financial industry – the same day that he joined LinkedIn. A couple of days later, he started an online LinkedIn group job board, JobsDirectUSA.com., and promoted awareness through social media (which was in its infancy). He learned how to build relationships through social media and enabled thousands of mid- to senior-level career professionals to find jobs. Harvard Business Review, Inc. Magazine, Mashable, Social Media Examiner and numerous trade publications featured his work with this startup. In 2010, Fast Company recognized him as one of the Top 50 “Most Influential People Online”.

Carlos worked for a couple of grocery stores chains, developing their social media platforms, before joining LinkedIn to run social media for their Sales Solution business unit. His personal brand grew as he was repeatedly tapped to speak at marketing industry conferences. 

Carlos took one final corporate job with BMC Software because he wanted the opportunity to work with Nick Utton. Used to battling the status quo in highly-structured hierarchies, Carlos had been frustrated by bureaucratic foot-dragging when he tried to get things done. Nick taught Carlos to “Fail fast, learn from that failure, and keep moving forward to what does work.” Carlos says that it is important, wherever you are in your career, that you have a leader who really supports you.

Today? A best selling book . . . A résumé showing over a decade of experience running digital and social media marketing for enterprise brands . . . A highly-successful agency working with an amazing roster of enterprise clients . . . Worldwide speaking engagements. For a man who dropped out of high school, got his GED, and jumped into an MBA program at age 30, Carlos has far exceeded expectations. He credits getting laid off in 2008 as the springboard for what has become an amazing track record of accomplishments. In the face of Covid-19, Carlos is one more entrepreneur re-inventing himself for these challenging times.

For those who have questions, Carlos can be reached at @carlosgil83 on Twitter and on Instagram. (Just let him know you heard him on Rob’s podcast), on LinkedIn, or by email . . . at carlos@gilmedia.co. To view Carlos interviewing his mentor, Nick Utton, (9/25/2018, topic  “How to Sell to a CMO and Marketing Truths with Nick Utton.”), see this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql733a53xa0

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Carlos Gil, CEO of Gil Media. He’s a keynote speaker, an author of the recent bestseller, The End of Marketing: Humanizing Your Brand in the Age of Social Media and AI, and he’s based in Miami, Florida. Welcome to the podcast, Carlos.

CARLOS: Hey, Rob. It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me on the show.

ROB: Sure, glad to have you here. Wish we were in person in Austin, Texas as we had planned, but the coronavirus had other plans. Why don’t you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself and your own journey into the world of marketing agency speaking origins?

CARLOS: My career in marketing actually started in 2008. I started my career in the early 2000s working in the finance and banking industry. It was right around the fall of 2008 that the banking industry took a turn for the worse. I was laid off. I was working for AIG at the time. The same day I lost my job is the same day that I joined LinkedIn.

To put it into context for everyone listening out there, the moment I lost my job, hundreds of thousands of other Americans lost their jobs too, and the irony with what we’re seeing happening today in this current crisis is – It reminds me a lot of what I went through about 12 years ago, early on in my career. I joined LinkedIn the same day I lost my job, and I became really inspired to help others find work.

I knew that the likelihood of my finding a job in banking any time soon was probably not going to happen. It was looking really bleak. Within just a few days of joining LinkedIn, I became inspired to help others find jobs, so I started my first business, and that was an online job board.

Now, to put this in perspective for you, I was 25 years old at the time. I had no experience running a business. My parents are serial entrepreneurs, so I knew that entrepreneurship and running a business isn’t easy by any means. But the point where I was at in my career, where I didn’t have experience running a business, I didn’t have any seed money or real savings, and I definitely didn’t have experience building websites or coding – or marketing, for that matter – the cards were really stacked against me. But I was really passionate about helping others find work.

The first thing I did was I started up a group on LinkedIn called Jobs Direct USA, and then that group morphed into what was the basis for my online job board, and then eventually an events business. For about 3 years, I forced myself to learn how to use social media. Again, to put it in perspective, not having any real experience in corporate marketing at that point, social media was really new. We’re talking about the years of 2008, ’09, and ’10, when businesses weren’t really using Facebook and Twitter and even LinkedIn like they are today. I really learned how to use social media to form relationships, and it was those relationships that eventually helped me gain clients and grow my business and led me down this path of corporate marketing.

I ended up getting hired by one of my clients, Winn-Dixie, which is a supermarket chain based in Jacksonville, Florida, which is where I lived at the time. They ended up hiring me to start up social media for them in 2011. I was at Winn-Dixie for a couple of years; ended up going to another supermarket chain called Save-A-Lot in the Midwest, where I was the Director of Digital.

Then things really skyrocketed for me when I was hired by LinkedIn and relocated out to San Francisco to run social media for one of their business units. It was around that time that I worked for LinkedIn that I started getting hit up to speak at different conferences, Social Media Marketing World, South by Southwest, various industry conferences, and I started investing more into building a personal brand.

Fast forward to where I’m at today, which is 2020, like you mentioned before, I’ve got the bestselling book The End of Marketing, which came out at the end of 2019. I have an agency, Gil Media Co., and I have this great résumé which spans now over a decade running digital and social media marketing for various enterprise brands – and now I have the pleasure of working with an amazing roster of enterprise clients.

None of it would’ve been possible, Rob, without first of all losing my job in 2008 during a crisis and really turning to social media to brush myself off and build the brand that you see today, which is Carlos Gil. 

ROB: It’s quite a personal brand. A lot of people have probably heard you speak, seen you on conference rosters. It seems a fascinating theme in your journey is that when you have your back against the wall, you’re a guy that finds your way out.

One of the times I became aware of you was when you were running social media for BMC Software. BMC Software doesn’t resonate in most people’s minds as a titan in social media, but you had a lot of interesting things to talk about, and they probably to an extent had their back against the wall to figure out how to do something in social media. Not engaging was not an option, but I imagine figuring out how to engage was a real challenge for them.

CARLOS: I’m so glad that you brought up BMC, because BMC Software is the last corporate brand I worked for full-time as an employee. When I got hired by BMC, I was at this crossroads in my career. I went to go work for LinkedIn; LinkedIn was a great opportunity, but ultimately it wasn’t going to be the end-all, be-all for me. I was at this crossroad where I was like, do I go out on my own? Do I go work another gig?

The reality is that when you run social media for a brand – an enterprise brand like the Winn-Dixies, Save-A-Lots, BMCs of the world – it’s all the same job. Creating content, managing a community, influencer relationships. It’s all the same gig. It doesn’t really change outside of the logo that you represent.

What really steered me to go work for BMC was the CMO that hired me, Nick. He was a former CMO of MasterCard, worked for E-Trade, JP Morgan Chase – this is a guy that lives, breathes, and eats marketing, and I think it’s really important, regardless of what stage you’re at in your career, that you have a leader that really supports you.

If you have a boss, you should have a boss that supports your growth, supports your endeavors, and really is your champion internally. One of the challenges is there’s always this hierarchy that you have to work against. You’re constantly swimming against the current. You have all these ideas, like right now, a lot of clients are coming to me and they’re asking me about TikTok. So, I’m advising them on what they should or shouldn’t do. Any time there’s this emerging new channel, a lot of marketers are eager to jump on that channel, and then they’re met with resistance.

Whereas my boss at BMC, Nick, understood that if you want to constantly evolve, you need to be trying new things, and if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. You fail fast was his mantra, and you learn from that failure and then you keep moving forward to what does work. What I enjoyed about working at BMC in the 2 years I was there is that as an employee, they really gave me full autonomy to do my job.

And now, as a business owner, it’s that autonomy that was given and that leadership that I was surrounded with that’s really helped me and my business, imagining the employees that I have and really growing my business with the mindset that employees are our greatest asset. It’s not the products, it’s not the services, it’s not the logo, but it’s the employees that make us who we are.

Going back to at BMC, which is very much B2B focused from a marketing standpoint, relationships are paramount. My mantra, Rob, before I turn it back over to you, is in this world of marketing that we’re in today, you don’t need to have the most followers. You don’t need to have the most engagement. But what you do need to have is an engaged community of customers, clients, and fans – even if it’s five people.

ROB: Indeed. That’s quite a range, going from Winn-Dixie, which is a consumer brand that is for everybody within the region of that grocery store chain – I spent middle and high school in Tampa, Florida; I know Winn-Dixie well, a lot of my high school friends worked there – to BMC, which is enterprise software. And it’s not even – Zoom is having this moment because everybody needs to talk to everybody. BMC is not in a moment where everybody is still going to need it. Certain people are still going to need it.

I think it flows nicely into your book. One of the themes of your End of Marketing book is really knowing where your target customer is. I think you’ve taken this lesson you learned in going so far between consumer and enterprise and taken a really good general lesson. It seems like maybe the book itself is some of these general lessons you’ve extracted that can apply to anyone. How do you think about that book in our current moment?

CARLOS: I don’t want this to come off as a cheap plug for The End of Marketing, but I think right now, humanizing your brand is going to be what keeps your brand in business. It’s something that throughout my book and even throughout my keynotes now, I state upfront the reason why I wrote the book in the first place is to help future-proof your brand and your business for the long term.

When I started writing The End of Marketing at the beginning of 2019, at no point did I ever think a year into being a published author, there would be coronavirus or I’d be quarantining and staying at home. But the premise of The End of Marketing and the methodology behind how you market as a human versus as a brand is that at the end of the day, people relate to people. Since the beginning of time, people do business with who they want to do business with, who they like, who they trust. For example, you had never heard of me, seen me speak, or even like what I have to say, you wouldn’t invite me on your podcast.

It’s that basic. It’s that simple. And it’s not a hard methodology, but I think marketing has become so fragmented and marketers themselves have gotten so far away from the basics, and we get so wrapped up with having that content constantly flowing out – I refer in The End of Marketing, my book, to social media and the internet being this noisy digital ocean. And it is, because we’re constantly facing this pressure to have to push out content. We’re constantly looking at metrics. We’re constantly comparing our wins and our highlights to someone else’s wins and highlights.

At the end of the day, if you focus on reaching individual people like a human being, not as a brand, over time they will show love for you. They will show an affinity for you. And that is how you grow your business. It’s one person at a time. It’s one-to-one marketing; it’s not one-to-many.

ROB: It’s awesome how that probably ties straight back to that job board that you built, because you didn’t set out to build a job board for the world. You were in a moment – and you were in finance; people may not remember just how bad it was to be in finance in 2008. It would be like being in a restaurant for this month when everything’s shut down. You can’t go out and get a restaurant job right now in this coronavirus pandemic.

But you started block by block, person by person, connecting people to each other, connecting people to jobs, also in a very human business in Winn-Dixie. It now probably is tying right into the work you’re thinking about for brands now, helping them realize how human they need to be in this moment.

CARLOS: Yeah. I’m so glad that you brought that up. It’s funny because I’m here thinking, maybe I need to dust the cobwebs off my Jobs Direct USA business plan and maybe bring it back. It’s hard times right now. You’ve got a lot of people in hospitality that are being hit hard by this crisis.

You’ve got a lot of people all over the board – I was just sharing this with you before we jumped on here; as a speaker, my entire business has been wiped out for probably all of 2020. Yes, conferences are saying they’re going to reschedule, yes, they’re saying they’re looking into other plans, but the reality is that we’re in this for the long haul.

I think what’s most important for anyone that’s sitting out there listening to this is that you start thinking about how you’re going to get to the other side. I will tell you this: the Great Recession, 2008, ’09, ’10, were some of the worst years of my life financially speaking, but what it did help me do is first of all build character because I was able to survive it and get through it, and that in itself helps you build tough skin in other scenarios throughout life.

But really what it helped me do is acquire knowledge, and it helped me acquire experience. I think that’s one thing that a lot of people don’t realize. Right now, even though times are bleak and tough, you have all this time on your hands that you can be using to learn something, whether it’s reading a book, whether it’s going on LinkedIn Learning – if you want to look me up there, I have courses on LinkedIn Learning – whether its going on YouTube and watching and consuming.

This is a prime opportunity for you to enrich your mind and allow that enrichment to be able to carry you on to what you’re going to do on the flipside of this crisis.

ROB: Indeed. It’s hopefully a time where people figure out to watch more than just Netflix. Now, we were originally scheduled to meet up in person in Austin. You were going to be at South by Southwest as a mentor and also at the LinkedIn Studio there, providing a talk on the future of work. Share with us a little bit what you were intending to speak of in that talk, and even maybe some additional things – how you’re thinking it may have evolved since then.

CARLOS: I was going to be first of all doing mentor sessions at South by Southwest. Throughout this recording, I want to make myself available to anyone out there, whether you were going to attend South by Southwest or not. If you want to meet with me one-on-one, if you’ve got any questions, I’m really easy to find. You can go to @carlosgil83 on Twitter as well as on Instagram. Just let me know that you heard me on Rob’s podcast. Again, any questions I can answer for you, any advice that you need, marketing-related, crisis-related, whatever it might be, let me know.

But going back to South by Southwest, besides the mentor sessions I was going to do, I was also going to speak at LinkedIn’s activation there called the LinkedIn Studio. It was going to be on the future of work. A lot of what I was going to talk about wasn’t so much the technology aspect, because I think we all get it that work, whether coronavirus happened or not, eventually was going to move more to this virtual world that we’re seeing happening right now, using tools like Zoom and Skype and Slack and other tools out there.

But I think, again, my piece is you don’t need a college degree from Harvard in order to get the really sexy brand marketing job or agency job. You don’t need to have all this formal education in order to be able to run your own business, because I myself am a high school dropout that has a GED. I myself didn’t go to college until I was 30 years old and I got into an MBA program.

My point that I’m trying to make, Rob, is that you need to be able to get the basics and actually implement the basics and keep moving forward and keep learning and keep growing, and you do that by getting the opportunities that come your way and making the best of them.

Relationships are paramount. I wouldn’t be on this podcast right now, I wouldn’t have the career I have, if it wasn’t for the relationships I started building in 2008 as a result of a job loss. Again, when I think of future of work, I think it’s not going to be based on where you went to school. It’s going to be based on not just who you know, but who knows you. That’s where personal branding is paramount.

It’s funny because I am a big proponent of personal brand, hence why I’ve invested so much into my own personal brand. Your personal brand is your new résumé. When people think about doing business with you, what they’re going to do is google you, and within a few seconds they’re going to learn everything that they need to know based on what Google gives them. And if you don’t have a presence online, it’s going to make it hard for people to be able to find you.

Case in point, going back to the agency world, I run a successful agency that I started 3 years ago when I left my corporate job. I do very little business development. I do zero traditional business development from the standpoint of cold calling, pitching, RFPs. I participate in zero RFPs. The way that I’ve been able to grow Gil Media is through the content I create that lives through my personal brand channels.

So think of my personal brand. Everything that you see on my Instagram, my YouTube, Twitter, even Facebook and LinkedIn – it’s all funnel. That’s to create that top of the funnel awareness, as we call it in the B2B world, and then as you subscribe to my content – and you subscribe by hitting a “follow” button – then at that point, I’m able to get you hooked. You’re able to see who I am as a real person. You’re able to see how I speak. You’re able to learn a couple nuggets from me.

That is something I’ve found is the way to circumnavigate the traditional business development activities to be able to get business.

ROB: Perfect. One thing I wonder about a little bit – a lot of the people listening who are in the marketing agency world, and even with our own clients, when I think about our clients, I think about a person, I think about a name, I think about a relationship. And I think that’s true easily on the consumer side and easily on the enterprise side, where the deals are large.

Then there’s I think this middle that can be somewhat mechanistic, the world of hundreds of outbound cold emails and SDRs and that small- to mid-scale SaaS play. When you’re thinking about a brand in that kind of market, where people show up and put in the credit card, how do you think about humanizing and making that sort of brand personal in marketing?

CARLOS: I think you still need the emails just to keep your name on the radar and stay in front of people. You still need to be out there, all over social media. Again, like I said before, social media and the internet is a noisy digital ocean. These aren’t my rules; I just play by the rules of the house, if you will.

But I’d say one-to-one interaction is where it’s at. If you have someone that you want to do business with right now, or if you have a general idea of the type of client it is that you’re trying to reach, your objective is to get in front of that person, one way or another – whether it’s an email, a Facebook ad, or a direct message on Twitter or Instagram.

Where most people mess up is they’re relying on LinkedIn and they’re running ads and pumping out content on LinkedIn, and they’re spamming, quite frankly, through direct message, everyone that they can on LinkedIn. Here’s what I can tell you as someone that has worked at LinkedIn as an employee and teaches on LinkedIn’s platform: LinkedIn is a phenomenal directory to find who it is that you want to do business with. But it’s not where you go to actually network.

What you need to do is to see if the individual that you’re looking to do business with is on Twitter or if they’re on Instagram. If they’re on one of those platforms, or both, follow them. Consume their content for a period of time so you know what they’re into. You want to know what their hobbies are, what their interests are, and you want to organically form a relationship with them.

The reality is that when you talk about any sizable business deal, whether it’s SaaS, agency work, whatever it might be, people are not going to meet you on the first date and agree to do business with you. And they’re definitely not going to sign off on a high 5- or 6-figure or 7-figure deal with you just because you direct messaged them on a social network.

It takes time to build that relationship. That’s real talk. And I can tell you for a fact that I’ve never messaged someone out of the blue and all of a sudden they’re like, “Hey, here’s a 6-figure deal for Gil Media!” It just doesn’t work that way.

But what I will tell you is a good strategic path is think of all your prospects as seeds in a garden. Right now, I can tell you that I’ve got dozens of seeds that have been planted over the last several years, and even before that, when I was still working in corporate marketing and I knew eventually I was going to go out on my own. Those seeds you plant in the garden, and as you engage, as you mature the relationship, that harvest starts to bloom. Some of those trees grow bigger than others. Some of those trees sprout dollars on the branches. Some of them just stay as little buds, little bushes.

But my whole point I’m trying to make is that you need to really think about going wide and also going deep – going wide in terms of you want to be able to have a lot of prospects, but you also want to go very deep with the relationships and not think about relationships as being transactional. When you start thinking about relationships as being about money and transactions, at that point you don’t have a relationship. You just have a transaction.

In this market, especially this market now where people are going to be tighter with budgets, I’m telling you, the relationship is going to be worth gold.

ROB: So true. I think sometimes the thought leadership we get is from companies that are in a hot category. If you are out there selling marketing automation and everyone feels like they have to have a marketing automation or maybe two of those, then maybe you can get by with being a little bit transactional. But unless you’re selling toilet paper right now, you probably can’t be very transactional. It seems like very much a time to plant rather than to harvest, except in very rare situations.

But as you’re talking, I’m listening and it sounds like – I get what you’re saying about planting seeds, but casting a wide net while planting seeds sounds overwhelming. How do you think about relationship across a wide range of people that you’re working to build real, authentic relationships with, but recognizing that it’s going to take some time?

CARLOS: It’s removing the transaction out of the relationship altogether. It’s actually connecting and forming an authentic and organic relationship, asking someone, “How are you? How are you weathering the storm? How’s your company doing? Is there anything that I can do for you? Hey, I work for this company; I’m not really trying to sell you anything, but I just want you to know that I exist.”

The irony in all this is that since we started this crisis, since work from home became a thing, I haven’t sent out one email yet. I haven’t sent out any piece of communication selling anything to anyone. Yes, I had an email that went out letting people know that my book is on sale on Amazon, and yes, I’ve got this course on LinkedIn that you can watch, but in terms of actually selling agency services, nothing’s gone out.

I told my team, “You know what? Let’s chill. Let’s not be aggressively pitching to anyone, and let’s let the game come to us.” No kidding, in the last 2 weeks, I can’t tell you how many CMOs, CEOs, C-suite executives have been hitting me up personally to help them with their crisis comms plan on social – what to say on social, do an audit, review. It’s crazy what happens when people don’t perceive you as being the cheesy salesman and instead they perceive you as the good guy, the advocate that’s here to help them.

I think regardless of where you sit in an organization, whether you’re an account executive, a sales rep, a CMO, owner – whatever your role is, make business about the relationships and the people that you’re truly trying to serve and not about the transaction. When you start operating with that mentality, you’re going to see how business is going to start coming your way when you least expect it.

ROB: That’s perfect. When I think about what you have done yourself, when your name shows up in their inbox, without you saying a thing about your business, they already know who you are and what you can do for them. They have a sense of brand, of what you can do there. But it’s also worthless without the staying on their radar part.

I know for myself, when I think about partners we have, people we work with, people we go in together on deals and help serve customers – the ones I think about are the ones who have spoken to us most recently, and it’s not the folks that say, “Hey, just checking in.” It’s the folks I’ve built a relationship with but have also stayed on my radar so that I remember them, so that when an opportunity crosses the path that I can’t do myself, I pick up the phone and I talk to them. So it is that planting and that harvesting. It really makes sense.

How do you think about avoiding that “just checking in” dynamic? I think right now, “How are you?” is perfect. We are all I think looking for someone to tell how we are with trust. How do you think about that when it’s less obvious? How do you keep that relationship? Because people will tell you, “Find this article, send it to them” – sometimes it still I think feels kind of fake, cheesy, and forced.

CARLOS: That’s such a good question. I think in this market right now, we operate with a servant mindset. It’s about giving, not taking. The more that you give, the more it’ll pay itself off tenfold. It’s using social media to listen to what people are saying. It’s going in the right groups, running the right searches, paying attention and swooping in with solutions to people’s problems.

I’ll give you an example. I have a lot of downtime right now. Because I have that downtime, I’m looking to make use of that downtime. One of the objectives on my plate is getting on more podcasts. I didn’t go out and run an ad on Indeed or LinkedIn or even post some looking for a virtual assistant; instead, I just went on Twitter and I ran a search for people that do VA work. I was able to connect with someone right away – and again, it’s different because I’m not selling anything to them. On the flipside, I want to give them money so they can do work for me.

What I’m trying to say is those are the type of opportunities that happen when you, in this case, have a solution to someone’s need or someone’s problem.

ROB: And you’re probably also getting more inbounds right now, which probably helps tip your own brain on what to be thinking about. When there’s an uptick in the data on something technical, there’s an uptick in the human factor of that as well.

CARLOS: Yeah, 100%. It goes back to what I said earlier. We’re all people, we’re all in this together, and at the end of the day, people do business with who they like and who they trust. Regardless of what services it is that you sell, your objective as a salesperson, as someone who’s trying to drive and increase revenue, is to be able to connect your buyers with solutions to their problems.

This is probably not the best time to be cold calling and cold pitching and hard selling, but this is the time to be connecting with those individuals and just get on their radar.

ROB: Absolutely. One thing we’re definitely seeing, if you look in the tea leaves – we’ll email a certain number of people every week to look at future bookings for the podcast, and I can tell you, it’s typically cold contact. A lot of people will say yes because they want these conversations, they want to share their journey, they want the exposure. But I’ll tell you, the accept rate is basically double what it was 3 weeks ago. The information is there in the detail. I like how you talk about these searches and these platforms and LinkedIn as the tools to help you understand how to be a better human to other humans.

CARLOS: Yeah, 100%. Podcasting especially right now, it’s really high. I’m sure that between last month and this month, you’re going to see a big increase in downloads, subscribers, and listens because you’ve got more people that are tuning in. You’ve got more people that need content to consume that’s not just news and doom and gloom.

I think right now, podcasting is a blue ocean. If you can find your niche, you can carve a lane for yourself in that niche, and you can find ways to monetize with, again, brands or advertisers that normally are trying to get in front of a certain audience, and they’re finding ways to pivot or reallocate their budget. If you’re able to bring a specific audience, then man, a podcast could actually be quite beneficial from a revenue standpoint.

ROB: Absolutely. Carlos, you shared earlier a very generous offer to connect with listeners. Remind us all, when we want to go out there and find you – other than obviously your immediately findable personal brand – what’s the best way for folks to connect with you? You said @carlosgil83 on Instagram, Twitter. Google you, I’m sure they’ll find you. Anything else?

CARLOS: You can connect with me on LinkedIn. You can also send me an email, which is carlos@gilmedia.co.

ROB: Perfect. Thank you so much, Carlos. You have dropped gold. I know you’re sowing seeds for a tremendous future already in the midst of all this, so congrats on being ahead of the game there.

CARLOS: Thank you so much for the opportunity.

ROB: Thank you.

Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Mathew Sweezey is the Director of Market Strategy for Salesforce, a company best-known for providing and supporting a cloud-based, cross-departmental customer-relationship-management solution. Salesforce has expanded its offerings to include a broad range of integrated service, marketing, sales, front end, and back end business software. Mathew is an award-winning marketer, podcast host, technology pioneer who writes about consumer behavior, media theory, and new marketing strategies. His publishing credits include AdAge, Brand Quarterly, VentureBeat, Forbes, The Observer, and The Economist. 

Twelve years ago, Mathew started a marketing technology company that provided online lead generation. This failed experiment provided him with a valuable education. He joined another startup, Pardot, and initiated its thought-leadership practice. Like a string of ever small fishes being consumed by ever bigger fishes, ExactTarget acquired Pardot and then SalesForce acquired ExactTarget, with Mathew maintaining his ever-expanding role as each-organization’s marketing thought leader – exploring the future of marketing. What he learns is communicated internally to guide company direction, externally to customers to help them “better their businesses,” and even worldwide to conference attendees in his keynote presentations.

Mathew is the author of “Marketing Automation for Dummies: (2014) and, just-released this year, “The Context Marketing Revolution: How to Motivate Buyers in the Age of Infinite Media” (Harvard Business Press). Mathew started writing this book long before the world heard of Covid-19. As companies reel from the overnight environmental changes wrought by this virus, his message is acutely “on target” . . . suddenly the whole world has had to figure out a new way to interact. In this interview, he discusses the changes marketers will need to make to meet the challenges of a “changed environment.” 

Mathew spent 5 years researching over 20,000 global consumers and over 20,000 brands and then looked at the general marketplace. He reminds us that, when we have a specific environment, we play a game that fits that environment. When the environment changes, the game, likewise, must change. 

Mathew says that today’s consumers produce the largest amount of noise (their devices are second). He believes the consumer now controls the environment, which changes marketing’s requirements dramatically. Marketing is no longer just a message . . . it is an experience. Purchases now are not just a single “click-here-and-buy decision,” but rather a process of guiding a customer along a curated journey. To “cut through the noise,” companies will need to be agile, distribute marketing functions throughout the organization, build strong relationships with their customers, master internal alignment, continue to invest in strategy, and experiment and adapt rapidly. 

From all this research, Mathew believes he has identified the key to the success of today’s high-performance marketing organizations . . . executive buy-in to this “new idea of marketing.” With the Covid-19 challenge, he would like to help people understand what we should be thinking about, how we plan a road for recovery, and how, specifically, we deliver moving forward. Context, he says, is a “significant part of what consumers are going to demand.”

The Salesforce website is:  https://www.salesforce.com/. Mathew can be reached on Twitter at: @msweezey. To schedule time to talk with him one-on-on-one, reach out to him on LinkedIn. “The Context Marketing Revolution: How to Motivate Buyers in the Age of Infinite Media,” is available on Amazon.

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Mathew Sweezey. Mathew is the Director of Market Strategy for Salesforce. He’s an accomplished public speaker, podcaster, and author of the forthcoming book, The Context Marketing Revolution, published by Harvard Business. Welcome to the podcast, Mathew.

MATHEW: Rob, it’s so great to be here and talk with you again.

ROB: For sure. For those who don’t know, Matthew and I go back a little ways from Atlanta; he has since moved on to the beach, basically, I think. But I think that actually transitions well to you telling us a little bit about yourself, your journey, and what might be called a dream job for a marketer.

MATHEW: Myself, just a guy that loves marketing, let’s start there. The journey really on this current path started, I don’t know, 12 years ago when I had a startup. We were a marketing technology company. Essentially, we’re doing online lead generation, lead arbitrage for an SEO term.

That then ran for about 2 years. Lost a lot of money, learned a lot of stuff. Shut that down and went to work for another startup, which became a great success, out of Atlanta, Pardot. I was Employee 13. I helped grow that company up, and then we were acquired by another company called Exact Target, and I transitioned to the thought leadership team there. I had started the thought leadership practice at Pardot, and then we continued that at Exact Target.

Then we were acquired by Salesforce, and then that led me to the thought leadership side of Salesforce, which is where I reside now. I’m really focused on the future of marketing and on that POV for the organization. So that’s the nutshell of where I came from and what I do.

ROB: That’s a pretty awesome journey. Very few people get to take that rollercoaster ride from 13 people to acquired, acquired, public company now. I think unless people are really deep into enterprise marketing stacks, they might find it counterintuitive to have strong marketing thought leadership within Salesforce. There’s that typecast view of Salesforce, obviously, on the sales side because sales is in the name.

But tell me a little bit about how even with the acquisition, marketing has come to the forefront of Salesforce and how Salesforce as a whole thinks about marketing, and then within the marketing cloud and where that’s leading.

MATHEW: Marketing is a wide, wide, wide swath. The larger the organization you are, the more facets and the more things it comes to represent. Really at the heart of all of our marketing is helping us connect companies with their customers in new and better ways.

Most people know us as the CRM platform. Yes, that’s definitely where we started; now we’re the number one provider of probably 5 or 6 different business software categories, from service, marketing, sales, there’s frontend, backend – there’s a whole platform and range of things. That’s a large swath.

Where my role fits in is helping on two fronts, really diving into looking at what the future looks like to help roll that back in to internal insights as to what we should be thinking about moving forward, and also then helping roll that information and those insights directly to our customers through one-on-one meetings, through lots of different formats, as well as then writing an onstage presence in traditional conferences and keynotes.

For us, marketing is a wide range of things. You can look at the brand aspects, the one-to-one aspects, the events. There’s so many different facets. But really the heart of all of that is helping our customers be better at business and really helping them connect to their customers.

ROB: That’s such a good big picture view. You mentioned conferences. We were originally supposed to meet up in person in Austin, Texas for South by Southwest. You were going to hop on up and give a talk, talking about this new book that you’ve got coming, The Context Marketing Revolution.

Amidst the disappointment of not meeting up and South by Southwest being cancelled in this COVID-19 crisis that we are in the middle of, give us the picture of the context marketing revolution and some of what you were excited to share but didn’t get to, but you can get to now.

MATHEW: Part of my job is doing a lot of research. Over the past 4 or 5 years now, we’ve really done a lot of research looking into the key traits of high-performing organizations. That’s based on multiple largescale surveys, doing both surveys from consumer sides, brand side – we’ve looked at 20,000+ consumers globally, about 20,000+ brands over the past 4 years globally, and then combining that with looking at the marketplace at large.

What I was realizing was there was something that was fundamentally different going on, and a lot of people were simply missing the boat. That’s really where this idea of context marketing revolution comes in. It’s two basic aspects.

One is the basic concept that the idea we have of marketing, we can no longer iterate upon because it was an idea that we created at a different point in time, and marketing is a game that we play given the specifics of an environment. It’s game theory. Given an environment, we play a specific game. When the environment changes, we have to change that game.

The environment has changed so much that we have to change the very fundamental idea of what this thing marketing even means. This means a whole new role, scope, and function, not just how we take that thing we know and apply new things to it. So that’s where the word “revolution” comes in.

Then the idea of context is essentially the antithesis of attention. The old foundation of marketing was let’s grab someone’s attention and come up with some creative way to get them to do what we want them to do. The reality is, now that the entire environment is controlled by the consumer, and to reach them you have to go through multiple layers of AI, through multiple channels – all consumers now, all purchases, are journeys – what we must realize is, one, breaking through, now the foundational element is context, helping them accomplish a goal in a moment.

Two is that to motivate a decision, now all decisions are considered, so now our goal must not be to get them to take the final action, but simply guide them to the next step and continue to do that multiple times, and that is how we motivate modern consumers to act.

Looking at all of that and taking in the big scale, that was the big thing I was hoping to write about in the book, to show the number one key trait that high performers have right now, high-performing marketing organizations, is executive buy-in to a new idea of marketing. It’s not new marketing ideas; it’s a radically new idea. That’s what I was so excited about to get out with this book.

Then this whole thing happened, and now this book is even more relevant because the things that we may not have thought about – we’re talking about radical change in the marketplace. A lot of people say, “Yeah, that may affect your demographic, but not my demographic.” The reality is, the entire world was forced into a new way of connecting and communicating overnight.

My father is 75 years old, doesn’t know how to use a smartphone; is now having to do Bible studies via Zoom over a smartphone and figure that out overnight. Large scales of the population are going to be operating and expecting different things, and they’re going to expect us to accomplish their goals in hand. I’m going to stop with that and turn it back over to you, Rob.

ROB: Especially in this moment, people don’t even know what they want. They don’t know what they need. We’re all a little bit discombobulated and need someone who cares about our lives, who actually thinks about what we need rather than someone who is going to tell us what we need. There’s some stuff you just can’t tell people they need, and there’s some ways you need to tell them differently.

You were scheduled to speak at a conference, go on a book tour – all of that is necessarily in the trash, but you still have a book coming out. How have you even thought about remixing the book launch process amidst this change?

MATHEW: Yeah, it’s difficult. I think the number one thing I can do is no one cares that you have a book, right? It’s like, “Cool, you’ve got a book coming out.” No one cares. We all have problems. We’re all trying to figure out how we take what we were planning on doing and either salvage those efforts or redo those efforts. So everyone’s got a lot of work on their plate, and it’s happening rapidly fast.

The best thing that I can help people do right now is understand, number one, what we should be thinking about, and number two, how we then plan for a road for recovery. The good part is context is a part of both of those answers. It’s not the only answer, but it’s definitely a significant part of what consumers are going to demand, and then the specifics of how we deliver that moving forward.

What I’ve done is set up personal time. I’ve opened up my personal calendar to anybody. In fact, there’s a post that went up in LinkedIn this morning that says if you want to schedule time with me, I’m more than happy to have any of these conversations with just you one-on-one – this is not a webcast; let’s just talk one-on-one. So I’m trying to do those efforts.

Definitely reaching out personally to everyone in my network to ask for a hand, let them know what I’m helping out with, so that if anyone that they know needs that help, they can get that information to them, as well as saying, “Hey listen, I need a hand too. If you could simply let one other person know about this, that would be a big help to me right now.”

Those are the ways that I’m trying to pivot in this current time, as well as just continue to transition a lot of the other efforts from physical to virtual and just take the rest day by day, like everyone else.

ROB: Right. It’s definitely been a reset, and I think it’s been really helpful, because I had to go into my own business to reach out to some people that I’d worked with before about maybe working together again on some things. In the first couple of days after everybody went remote and everybody shut down business as usual, I struggled a little bit. I said, what is the appropriate way to even reach out to these people?

It’s human, and it’s also realizing that even in this disruption, there are still ways – we all need help, and some of that help is business, and we all need to be thinking about how to help each other rather than how to sell each other stuff. It’s actually a really good reminder, I think.

MATHEW: Yeah. If we look just as a basic roadmap – in the book, I talk about the 5 elements of context: available, permission, personal, authentic, and purposeful. If we ground our efforts in those 5 elements, we will be fine moving forward.

Available. How do we make sure the information and our help is in the way that they want it and where they want it? If they’re asking questions, we need to make sure we have answers for those questions and that they’re easy to find. That means a single central source of information.

Starbucks is doing a great example of this right now. They’ve got a page of how they’re moving everything that they can do in one place. From a business standpoint and a marketing standpoint, we must do this not only for our customers; we also must do this for our partners and all stakeholders at large, as well as our employees.

When we’re communicating with people, we need to make sure we have the permission to communicate with people and that we’re using that permission appropriately. There was a great comic that came out today from Tom Fishburne – he’s a comedian, he’s a comic. The comic is there’s this person reading an email and they turn to their spouse on the couch and say, “Hey, this is great. The company we haven’t heard from in 5 years just reached out to let us know how they’re going to do things during this current crisis.”

It’s like, if people aren’t engaging with you for 5 years and you’re now reaching out to them, they probably don’t care. You’re probably just now spamming them and flooding their inbox and probably just causing things they don’t want.

Then we continue down. It’s personal. It’s not just how personalized we can take a mass message and personalize mass messaging; it’s how personally can we actually deliver that message? Human to human, how many people can we connect together? That’s really one of the big things we’re finding. People are learning to connect without us in new ways. They are easily being able to make connections via all types of new methodologies – working from home, and we talked about Zoom, we talked about all these other things. We need to also be a part of that, whether that is us connecting our advocates to other people, whether that’s us connecting our employees and delivering these messages.

Then finally, the last two, authentic and purposeful. These messages have to be authentic. What we need to think about in that word is empathy. We have to be empathetic. And to be empathetic, that means you have to have constant conversations with your audience to know what is empathetic right now, and that’s going to change day to day. You need to be having conversations with them to find out what those things are.

The last element is purposeful. We need to find ways that are purpose-driven, and there’s tons of examples right now. One, you could simply find a new way to use your products. You could come up with purpose-driven efforts.

Nuun is doing a great example. They’re creating care packages. If you’re not familiar with Nuun, if you’re an adventure athlete or an athlete, Nuun is a thing we drop in water that’s full of electrolytes to keep us going. But who needs to keep going right now are healthcare workers, so they’re asking their audience, “Tell us who your healthcare workers are so we can send them care packages.” Lessonly created a coloring book so parents that are working from home can simply print out a coloring book for their kids to play with, to help keep them busy.

Chipotle is focusing on safety. They’ve created new ways to ensure that the delivery food is tamper-proof. They’ve enhanced the functionality to know where your order is to make sure that this whole delivery to home is a seamless and as best an experience as it can be at the current point in time.

If we can ground our efforts in those 5 things, we will be contextually marketing and will be poised to break through and still drive growth during this current point in time.

ROB: Right, and it’s all super necessary. The available, personal, permission, purposeful, authentic – if you’re missing some of those elements, if you’re not authentic, if you’re not purposeful right now, it’s going to come across very, very wrong in the moment of what people are dealing with. If you’re not thinking about the personal, where people are and why you need to communicate a message of food safety – because you could copy Chipotle’s message and it still wouldn’t necessarily resonate, depending on who you are.

As we’re sitting here and looking at perhaps an accelerant for some of this revolution – or maybe it’s even a necessity more than ever – when did this revolution start, and what fueled the growth and tipping over of the revolution?

MATHEW: The revolution is a direct response to a market change, and that market change is the fundamental aspect. This is like hardcore, fundamental scientific theory of what we should be thinking about. It’s media strategy, media theory. Essentially what we look at is, who does the media environment operate for?

There was a specific date I was able to find out through research. Up until 2009, we lived in a world that was specific. It was called a limited media environment, and that means media was limited in three specific factors: creation, distribution, and access. Given those factors, it operated for brands. We were the ones who had the capital to break through. We could pay to have content created; we could pay to have content distributed, as well as there was a limited amount of content, so the noise we had to break through was a certain type and a certain way. It created a certain game.

But then you start thinking about, what happened when consumers started to be able to create their own content? That really started back with the invention of email, and it’s continued forward and has exacerbated over time. We don’t really think about how radical today is from 2007, but it’s radical.

Just think about this: the amount of data we create per day today is 500 times more than the amount of day we created per day in 2007. The amount of mobile connections is 30 times greater than in 2007. The largest human gatherings are 100 times that size. We have 1.6 billion daily active users on Facebook. That’s 800 times the size of what it was in 2007. It’s a radically different era.

What we live in now is the infinite media era, and that’s what really is causing this revolution, because now the entire environment operates for the individual. The consumer is the largest creator of noise; number two is their devices. So how we as marketers break through is radically different. And then because there’s infinite information, how they make decisions is radically different. That is the cause of this revolution. It’s really a shift in media environments, from the limited media era to the infinite media era.

What we see now is just an exacerbation of these things. Now consumers’ lives – what I say is the tinder was there. All of these elements were there and the change was happening, but what happened is this current scenario sparked that tinder, and it went wildfire. Populations that would’ve taken 5-10 years to really adapt to these changes had to adapt overnight, and they just adapted. That’s really where the revolution came from and what’s driving this.

ROB: That makes sense. It went from very slow, to your point, to very fast. There was a time of television monoculture, of three national networks. What I hear you getting at is the filter was the media, and now the filter is all the way down to the person. And we had a couple of middle roads there. We had cable, and cable got more and more and more cable, so you were a little bit of a filter, but the brands still had access to shoot content through a cannon at you. Now it really is each person can turn you on or turn you off as a marketer. It’s getting more and more overwhelming.

MATHEW: Yeah, and increasingly so, the consumer doesn’t have to, because the environment is doing it for them. That’s really the underlying factor we need to think about. Between you and them in any medium is a layer of artificial intelligence, and that AI is optimizing for the context of the moment. That’s why context is the foundational element.

Look at anything. If you do a Google search, we can all ask the same question, but we will all receive a different answer based on us in context – who we are, where we are. If we look at a social media feed, they’re not chronological feeds. They’re contextual feeds that AI is optimizing for whatever you’re going to engage with most, which is the most contextual thing for you in that moment.

You start to look at how modern media formats operate – TikTok doesn’t even have timestamps on posts. You can resort and resift infinitely, and you never even think about time. It’s only to the context of the moment. The time doesn’t matter.

That’s really the underlying thing we have to think about. Context is what now the modern environment operates for. And if you can’t create that, you’re going to be filtered out. The environment is going to filter you out on its own because it’s optimizing for the individual, not optimizing for the brands.

ROB: That’s fascinating even to think about TikTok. I’m not certainly in the core demographic of TikTok, and I hadn’t even noticed the timestamp, but it does make sense because within that platform, there are hashtags and there are memes and there are moments, and that’s the context. The context is not the time; the context is did you catch the wave when it was going through the platform, or were you late? Or did you happen to make content that intersects with something 4 months from now and then you’re back in context, you’re back relevant. The algorithm may even resurface you. Is that the direction?

MATHEW: Exactly right.

ROB: Right on. A lot of our audience for this podcast is in the marketing agency world, and I’m sure plenty of agencies intersect with your world; I’m sure you speak to plenty of people. One of the things I think may be starting to tip over now is there are some very traditional structures for teams that work on brands, that work on marketing content. How do you think we’re going to need to change the structure of those teams, the composition of those teams as we are heading into this context world, this revolution, where we can’t ignore and we can’t just make a content pipeline the same way?

MATHEW: There’s lots of answers to this question. There’s lots of factors. The easy answer is the top of the line is agile. We all have to change the way that we structure and think about work, and that means really moving to an agile format. That’s the simple answer, and essentially that just means data-driven and iterative at a very high level. You can go very specific and say agile organization, agile agency, agile workflow.

The second is the concept of distributed marketing job. There used to be the concept that the marketing department was the department who created marketing. That’s not true anymore because marketing is no longer just a message. Marketing is now an experience, and if all departments now have customer-facing experiences, we must realize that all of these people are now marketers.

If we’re thinking about this from a brand standpoint, now what we must have is a distributed marketing role. What I believe is going to be happening is we’re going to find citizen marketers. The term “citizen” essentially means any person that’s not an expert in a field being enabled by artificial intelligence to be about 90% proficient as a trained expert.

So what we’re going to find is we’re going to be able to empower just about anybody inside an organization with technology and artificial intelligence to allow them to be hyper-efficient marketers. That’s how we’re going to see marketing distributed across the organization.

What that means is now who runs marketing needs to be elevated, and there needs to be a CXO or CGO – chief experience officer, chief growth officer – who’s monitoring all these experiences and optimizing for the most efficient customer journey that optimizes for the best experience. So those are a couple of ways I think we’re going to start to see things change in terms of the way that we work and how we operate.

ROB: Really, really interesting. One thing that I think about is you talk about people creating content. Obviously, as we can see from Instagram and TikTok and YouTube and all of that, the quality of content that an individual can make is ever escalating. There are one-person teams that can do amazing things, and because of that it’s efficient for them to target perhaps a very small or giant audience in a large and interconnected world.

But within that context of increasing content quality and volume, what then is the place for people who are still trying to deploy very large, ambitious projects to create content, to create relevant messages for people? How can they think about that? Is there a budget that can be too big in this new era?

MATHEW: Let’s tackle the first one. I don’t think there’s ever a budget that can be too big. We can always find ways to do more stuff and test new ideas. But I think what we need to really think about is it doesn’t matter if you’re going to create something small or create something big. The whole point is the modern media environment operates for the individual. If you are thinking about creating something and then trying to come up with a creative way to put that in the marketplace, you’re fundamentally flawed in your strategy to begin with. We must realize how to work with our audience, not how we work on our audience.

There’s a major problem we’re going to face, and that is the content conundrum – because like you said, if an individual now can create content at such a high level, who are we competing with? We are now competing with an infinite amount of people, creating an infinite amount of content. That radically changes how we think about content creation, in two ways. One, how much we have to create. I firmly believe that we’re going to have to move into a fast advertising and fast content model, just like fast fashion has moved into a fast fashion model.

Delta, great example. You get on a Delta flight, you don’t see the exact same Delta safety video every time. Every month they put a new safety video on. Why? Because it’s empathetic. We must realize that we can’t put one storyline out into a marketplace and expect that to keep people’s interest over a period of time when their normal marketplace is rapidly changing by the moment. We’re going to have to move to a new model.

There’s two ways that we can do that. One is super agile methods; the other is by working with our marketplace. Look at brands like Coca-Cola or Daniel Wellington. Daniel Wellington, the startup watch brand, sells $100 million of watches; 99.5% of the content about that brand that lives on Instagram was not created by the brand. 80% of the social content about Coca-Cola, not created by Coca-Cola.

We need to come up with ways to work with our audiences to help create this content and get it out there. If it’s not done with them, it’s done on them, and no one wants things forced upon them.

ROB: We used to have that ability to force things upon people, more or less, right?

MATHEW: Totally. That was the whole point of the limited media era. It was a monopoly, and we had control. That’s why those ideas that we had came about. But those no longer work. New environment, new games.

ROB: It seems like when you think about a big film, the ceiling now is higher than it used to be, but I think the floor is also lower. If I summarize some of what I’m hearing you say, the consumer has a higher ability to say “no” than ever before to a Batman movie – you name it. You can push a Batman movie and people can say, “We don’t care.” We can say no, the information travels instantly, and people will say “We don’t want to see that.” Whereas you could’ve had a good week or month at the box office before. They can just go turn on TikTok instead, thank you very much.

MATHEW: The hobby of hobby, right? How many hours are people spending watching YouTube videos about how to do hobbies and never doing those hobbies? There was a great piece on the radio this weekend about that.

ROB: As you’re thinking about the brief or maybe not brief trough that we’re in right now, where everybody’s cutting back their expectations for the second quarter of the year, and as you’re thinking about what will emerge on the other side, whether it’s a few weeks or a few months ahead, what do you think – obviously you have this context message, but tactically, what do you see emerging that’s going to be the DNA of the strongest products, firms, and teams coming out of where we are?

MATHEW: There’s going to be a couple of basic things that people are going to have to have moving forward. One is the brands that have the best communication with their stakeholders and customers right now are going to be positioned to be the best moving forward. The question is, what do we do? If you don’t have a daily conversation with people and understand how their lives are changing, how their buying processes are changing, how their needs are changing given the current situation, you won’t have the right answer.

To know what to do, you simply have to talk to those people. Whether that’s through daily calls, whether that’s through weekly calls, you need to have them. Once again, they have to happen across your stakeholders, your partners, your vendors, your agencies that you work with, as well as your customers. You’ve got to have that information to know what to do and how to respond. So that’s going to be a key thing.

The second thing is that we have to realize that even in downturns, there’s still a couple of things that we must do. You must have the best internal alignment. You must master internal alignment. There’s been a big trend that we’ve all been working towards removing silos, but still the reality is that there’s a lot of companies where silos still exist. This is a massive problem because currently, if you’ve got different departments talking about different ways of dealing with this scenario, you can imagine how that’s going to resonate inside your marketplace. You need to master internal alignment.

Second is excel at stakeholder continuity. Third is we need to continue to invest in strategic efforts. When you look at what happens during downturns and during times of crisis, the brands that rebound the fastest and rebound the highest continue to invest in strategic efforts. That means right now, if you’re thinking about, “Should we be changing and investing in new technology to give us new capabilities?”, you probably shouldn’t put those on the back burner because once we come out of this, those are going to be critical. If you’ve implemented them and understood them now, you’ll be poised to use them best when you can coming out.

The fourth is rapid experimentation. Those companies that are experimenting rapidly with what we should be doing and then rolling those learnings back into their standard programming are going to be succeeding faster than anyone else.

I see it as a combination of those things that we need to be doing to sustain and rebound quickest.

ROB: Perfect. Mathew, very exciting with the book coming out. Very exciting when we let you back outside to go talk to people in public. When people want to find you and learn more about what you have to say and maybe even connect with you on some of these chats, how should they go find you?

MATHEW: I’d say the best place is probably LinkedIn. You can follow me on LinkedIn. I publish a lot of stuff on LinkedIn. And then Twitter. It’s @msweezey on Twitter. Those are really my two channels. You can find me there; you can catch up with all my information.

ROB: That’s perfect. Go find Mathew. He’s a great follow. He’s a great person too, so if you get a chance to see him in person, you should definitely get to know him there as well. But you can also catch him online or maybe catch him on a boat. They still letting you out on a boat?

MATHEW: I think, but all the boat ramps are closed.

ROB: [laughs] Tough times. We’ll look forward to brighter days, and thank you so much for sharing. I think there’s a lot to be bright about right now.

MATHEW: Hey, man, thanks for having me.

ROB: Take care.

Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Jessica Rhodes is Founder and Co-owner of Interview Connections, the first and leading podcast booking agency. The beginning? Jessica started working from home as a virtual assistant, booking her father on podcasts, so he could get exposure to his target audience and amplify his brand . . . without a lot of travel. Then added companies.

While many of her clients think they would like to be on “big-name” podcasts, Jessica feels it is important for them to be strategic about where they “spend their time” and about getting on the right shows. Rather than using a “shotgun” approach, entrepreneurs will be far better served if they can get on shows where they will be addressing 500 of their best potential clients. Most of her bookings are for mid-range shows . . . with a few hundred up to a thousand super-targeted listeners.

Jessica’s co-owner, Margy Feldhuhn, started at Interview Connections as a contractor in 2016 and hired on as the first employee in 2017. A year later, on the occasion of Margy’s first annual review, Jessica made her a co-owner. The “fit” was that good. The company hit its first 7-figure year in 2019.

Jessica notes that podcasts are not an effective marketing strategy if they are intermittent. Podcast interviews need be part of long-term marketing strategy – done with consistency and momentum. Jessica recommends doing an interview a week, 4 weeks a month, year over year. 

Advantages of podcasting: 

• Podcasts will “live” indefinitely – as long as people continue to search for what you teach.
• Backlinks between the websites of interviewers and interviewees boost SEO rankings. 
• Interviews increase a podcast guest’s credibility and help establish him or her as a leading expert.
• Podcasts attract qualified leads in a way very different from other marketing strategies

Effective podcasting is not about the ego. It’s really about “relationship-building and getting in front of the right audiences.”

Jessica believes it is very important to have clear, written systems in place before you hire someone for a new position. it’s easy to train and onboard them. Interview Connections has a full-time staff of employees. Jessica believes the full-time staff is cheaper because contractors:

• Will constantly demand more money as they gain the skills you teach them
• Leave for another job or for vacation at will, providing no consistency for your clients
• Take the skills you taught them to your competition. 

Podcasting is growing every year. Jessica recommends people guest on podcasts before they “start their own show,” just to figure out where your podcast fits in.

Jessica can be reached on her agency’s website at: https://interviewconnections.com/ or by texting the word “GROUP” to 38470. You will receive a link to Interview Connections’ free Facebook group, Guest Expert Profit Lab.

Vic Drabicky is the Founder and CEO of January Digital, a digital marketing agency and consulting firm focused on luxury, retail, and beauty. January Digital is dedicated to comprehensive digital planning and execution, encompassing paid search, paid social, programmatic media buying, and SEO. With a wealth of industry experience exceeding two decades, Vic has previously worked with renowned brands such as Nike, Neiman Marcus, Staples, and Michael Kors.

Jason Ciment, is CEO of GetVisible, a consultancy and digital agency that builds websites, drives traffic to websites through search engines and social media channels, and provides digital reputation management services. 

Most of the agency’s 10 employees started their careers as professionals working in businesses other than marketing. Jason, himself, started as a CPA/real estate specialist in a big accounting firm. He went back to school to study law, worked a summer with a large clothing factory in Sri Lanka, and spent time in the NYC rag trade before he finished his law degree. What then?

Time to start a business. 

Jason launched Magmall, an ecommerce business selling magazine subscriptions, in 1997, and dug into pre-Google search engine optimization. (Early Google became one of his clients.) Over the years, GetVisible added a new skillset every couple of years: service business website development, pay-per-click ads, social media services, reputation management, LinkedIn-associated services, and email marketing. Each time the company decided to offer a new service, it hired someone who already had the needed expertise and introduced them to the organization’s philosophy and its Assessment Toolbox Methodology, a means of discovering a client’s customers and where on the digital landscape they are to be found. 

Jason admits that the company is relatively small. Leveraging limited assets is important. A big question and challenge is always: How can they stretch a dollar and produce a higher ROI with a lower cost? 

A few innovations . . .

• GetVisible has never had a sales force. Jason feels that salespeople focus on sales; he wants to focus on client outcomes. 
• GetVisible uses a what Jason refers to a “transparent contract,” a flat fee, six-month contract that, rather than tallying up a total of separate service, targets producing a client’s desired results and itemizes how the client’s money has been allocated. 
• The agency implemented a simplified wireframe process to increase WordPress site development efficiency, promote intra-page symmetry, and get early client involvement and buy-in. 

Jason believes a website needs to answer 3 questions: : What is it that you do? Who do you do it for? Why are you better than anyone else?

Get Visible builds healthy online branded Google and Bing search reputations for its clients. But, what can be done when a company gets damaging listings, bad news, or bad reviews? 

There’s the clean way and the not-so-clean way of removing someone’s “bad news” from the internet. The “not clean” way is to actually try erase the bad thing that is damaging a client’s website, not an easy thing to do. The clean way? GetVisible creates a flood of “good news” content for its clients. This more current information pushes the bad news down the page. Good news won’t make “the bad stuff” disappear completely, but the bad stuff will become obsolete and irrelevant. 

Jason can be contacted on his company’s website at GetVisible.com, or through his LinkedIn profile, where those interested can sign up for his “secret newsletter.” His first book, I Need More Clients: Digital Marketing Strategies That Grow Your Business (Amazon, 2016), has straight five star reviews. 

Blake Akers is the owner of Webology, a digital marketing agency that started by “knocking on the doors” of local small and mid-size businesses. The company focuses on using Google for organic and paid search, providing scientific SEO, testing, and data analysis on the organic side and split testing ad campaigns within paid search.

Today, the agency takes its focused expertise and works regional verticals, e.g. roofing and niche legal firms – companies that typically have a high cost per click and a high per lead value . . . companies where Webology, because of its tight industry focus, knows the business.

Webology’s intention is to work exclusively with one company in a vertical in a geographic market. Blake claims that, if you know how to rank a local roofing company website, you get a lot of leads on the search engine results page (SERP) – those from organic search and those from the Maps Pack (3-pack). The Maps Pack is the group of up to 3 businesses that appear in a box at the top of the page, after the advertisements. The Maps Pack is a valuable piece of real estate . . . studies suggest if a the SERP has a local pack, that local pack will get the majority of the clicks, but the Maps Pack alone will get over 40 percent of the total clicks.

How did Blake get Webology so well-launched in such a short period of time (3 years)?

Branding.

Blake researched SEO to figure out what it took to rank a website locally and get leads for small- to mid-size businesses. . . starting with his company. He asked some critical questions:

How do we write really, really good copy that sells, but also checks off all the boxes in regards to competitor averages?

How do we enhance a page for users and still fit the averages that Google is looking for?

He started getting some answers when he reviewed everyone else’s “best practices.” But, the true answers did not come to light until after he dove deep into data science, assessed competitor averages, and identified and implemented advanced SEO strategies. This knowledge gave him the tools to help his own company grow . . . and a product he could sell to his clients. He has used his own company website a number of times to beta-test new ideas that later get rolled out to customers.

If there is one thing he would change back at the start, Blake says he would have gone after more client reviews and worked even harder at building up his brand. Today, he is a lot more proactive about reaching out to his clients and interviewing them to get those valuable endorsements.

To contact Blake, visit his company’s website at: https://webology.io/, email him directly at: blake@webology.io., or ask general questions at: info@webology.io.

Melissa DiGianfilippo, Co-founder and President of Public Relations, Serendipit Consulting, Scottsdale, AZ

Melissa DiGianfilippo is Co-founder and President of Public Relations for Serendipit Consulting, a full-service marketing, PR, and creative agency.

In this interview she talks about the questions she asks to suss out what each client truly needs – as opposed to what they think they need: What’s the goal? Is it storytelling? Is it brand awareness? What’s unique about the brand? Does the company have sales goals? What Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are important? Once needs are established, what services does a client need? Media relations? Digital marketing? Zocial media? Content creation? Do they need everything?

Melissa believes that “all marketing tactics are moving in the direction of measurability.” Serendipit customizes its PR services: strategizing placement timing and geography. Melissa explains that they are “looking for a lift in traffic” at the time a TV segment airs and afterward. TV segments, difficult to track in themselves, are reposted and shared on social media. Trackable links help customers to understand the value of PR placement and the role of social amplification in strengthening placement impacts. Did the placement drive a direct increase in any of the tracked KPIs?

Melissa believes thought leadership and subject matter expertise are the most powerful kind of PR. If one thought leader in an organization is good, “more than one” can highlight a company’s diversity. Being featured on a consistent basis – in national broadcast or news or print, local markets, and industry-related publications – and talking about trends, forecasting, and your personal story may not produce immediate results. But this kind of exposure will, over time, drive influence for your brand, establish you as a credible thought leader, and boost KPI results.

Melissa credits Entrepreneur Organization with contributing to her company’s success. After 11 years in business, Serendipit has over $4 million in annual revenue, high profitability, 30 employees, and a culture she describes as “enviable.”

Melissa is candid about her company’s mistakes. A few years back, when the company decided it wanted to go to “the next level,” they hired an expensive “expert” to lead the charge. BIG MISTAKE. Nine months of BIG MISTAKE. Melissa says that owners need to know that they don’t need to hire a high-ticket “name” to pull an organization up. Employees have the capability, within themselves, to grow their skills and ramp up an organization. A structured commission program has proven to be win-win . . . for employees, for clients, for business partners, and for the agency.

Another mistake? Melissa and Co-founder, Alexis Krisay, love business development. Melissa warns that when agency owners sell to customers, they may tend to sell themselves and not their agencies. Which is what Melissa and Alexis did. Then, when the “unknown” Serendipit team started working these projects, clients were not happy. Weren’t Melissa and Alexis supposed to be leading the initiative? Today, Melissa and Alexis bring the teams in early during the sales process.

Melissa can be found on her company’s marketing-education-content-rich website at: www.serendipitconsulting.com, by following @serendipit on Instagram (or for Melissa’s longform stories, @melissadflip on Instagram), or on LinkedIn.

Location 3, is a digital marketing agency that “delivers enterprise-level strategy with local market activation. In its 20th year in business, the Google-Analytics Certified agency works primarily with franchisors to understand their business objectives and facilitate enterprise strategy alignment and with individual franchisees, to promote hyper-local-level marketing activation. Services include business listing management, SEO, data and analytics, and driving new revenue through paid search, paid social, local programmatic buys – and anything else that makes sense for boosting local level revenue. 

How big is the franchise market? Alex notes that over 50% of all US retail locations are part of a franchise organization. Only about 30% of the approximately 750,000 franchise locations in this country are in fast food/casual dining. Almost anything, Alex explains, can use the franchise model. Location 3 focuses less on fast food and more on services or franchise systems with measurably higher customer lifetime values.

In this interview, Alex explains how Digital marketing at the local level is interesting, but also complicated. Unlike direct mail, where someone can walk into a store with a traceable coupon, programmatic vendors (e.g., Google and Facebook) can claim, based on their technology, that someone saw or engaged with your ad or website on their platform, and ended up in your location. When promotions are on multiple platforms, how does one tell which one actually drove the store visit? And how should the proportion of spend be tweaked to maximize revenue growth? To facilitate optimal decisions, Location 3 provides franchisees with full turnkey campaigns across a broad variety of platforms, tracks return on ad spend, and shares that information with it clients with full transparency.

Location 3 developed a franchisee-facing software platform, LOCALACT, which serves as a hub of local digital data. Franchisees can use this tool to see their local page analytics, how their local Google My Business is performing, and where their traffic is coming from; respond to reviews; and buy additional media. 

Alex can be reached on his company’s website at: https://location3.com/, on YouTube, or at 820 16th St. Suite 300, Denver, CO 80202.

You can always check out our website. We’re very active. We have a pretty active YouTube account. We put up some video content. We go to pretty much every franchise tradeshow that’s out there, so if you’re in the franchise space and we haven’t met you, I’m sure we will soon. Very active in that community, the tradeshow community. If you’re ever in Denver, we’re right on 16th Street Mall right downtown.

Ten years ago, when the real estate bubble finally burst, Jeff Pulvino closed his decade-old real estate investment company and sweated through the “Now What?” people face when they find themselves out of a job. Social marketing was in its infancy. Jeff pivoted his company, and, using the strengths of its internal marketing department, jumped into Facebook marketing, and, ultimately, built a full-service digital marketing agency. It was not an easy climb.

Eight years into agency life, Jeff realized that, without a strategic plan, the agency was just “marketing in the dark,” and often failing to deliver what customers wanted and expected – a specific goal had never been communicated. Today, most of their 4- to 5- year-long client relationships start with a marketing strategy workshop, a 30-day, low-level engagement where the parties can mutually get to know each other, discuss objectives and strategies in depth, and determine if there is a “fit.”

Jeff explains that “most entrepreneurs, business owners, and established businesses come . . . for marketing, but they have no real defined marketing strategy.” As an additional challenge, these clients often come to Boost when declining sales have left them strapped for cash. They may know the results they want . . . and desperately need to survive. They may even by hyper-focused on some particular technology, but often fail to have an understanding of realistic timelines.

Boost Media Group takes a step back, looks at the realities of cash flows, calculates how long it will take to generate a return on investment, and then crafts programs that address a client’s current cash needs and long-term growth objectives. Starting with this workshop session has exponentially increased Boot’s close rate and its ability to attract new customers. One of Boost Media Group’s sub-brands, Fitness Media, helps “big name clients” in the fitness industry develop their funnels and monetize their brands.

In this interview, Jeff identifies some of Boost’s keys to success. In the early years of the agency, he focused on sales. Over time, he has learned that it is not about how much the agency sells . . . it’s more important to make sure clients are a good fit. He credits having a robust technology stack of project management tools, templates, and proven processes . . . and iteratively improving those processes to meet the needs of his employees, clients, and his company . . . to being able to consistently deliver great results.

Boost recently acquired another agency, SearcherMagnet, which is “highly specialized in direct response lead acquisition.” Jeff says that acquiring another company brought with it experienced, high-level, passionate team members that Boost never would have been able to hire. He looks forward to expanding more this way in the future.

Jeff can be reached on his company’s website at: https://boostmediagroup.com/, by phone, on Live Chat, or by filling out a Contact Us form.

John Hernandez is Owner and Partner at On Advertising, a marketing and advertising agency that has, over the past 26 years, rebranded itself, leveraged “new identities,” survived a recession, and increased and changed its client base. 

In this interview, John talks about his company’s “humble beginnings” and reveals the strategic decisions that helped it grow.

Ron Meritt, a television meteorologist, started NPR Public Relations in 1993 as a side gig. He provided traditional PR for nonprofit organizations . . . working out of his house with 1 client. 

In 2002, John accepted Ron’s invitation to join the business and quit his job at the television station. They took out an SBA loan to cover payroll, rebranded the company as PRfect Media, and offered a flat fee “one-stop-shop for everything” marketing solution for small businesses. In addition to traditional marketing services – billboards, TV, radio, PR, and support – they utilized video, a technology application new for marketing. John’s television-world experience – in graphic design and in scripting, shooting, and editing video – provided a differentiating and cost-saving advantage for both the agency and its clients: They didn’t need to hire outside firms for those services. 

Six or seven years ago, the agency was doing a lot of non-traditional work, but people on the outside perceived them as a traditional PR firm. What to do? 

How about doing the same thing the agency would do for its clients?

John and Ron tasked the agency’s employees to rebrand the company and On Advertising was born: The employees set the color palette, the logo, and the brand. In a bold move, the agency took out a revolving loan and relocated the company from a commercial building in the Phoenix suburbs to a downtown high-rise, putting their signage on a street with heavy traffic all through the day. That move almost doubled their business: they were now visible, accessible, and re-defined. 

John says On Advertising has two growth strategies: to build the business organically and to expand its client base and capabilities through mergers and acquisitions. The agency still maintains its revolving credit line to even out the cash flow and to facilitate these acquisitions and mergers. 

John lists a number of keys to On Advertising’s success:

He believes the company gets traction as long as it treats itself as a client: spending money on itself; boosting its website presence, Google Analytics, and social media presence; and embracing media marketing technology.

He emphasizes that it is as critically important to have “trustworthy team members on the outside” (CPA, attorneys, PEO) as it is to have good employees. 

And, to weather a recession, as this company did in 1987-88: John recommends developing multiple streams of income. 

John can be reached on his company’s website at: https://onadvertising.com/

What kind of marketing agency picks Wichita, Kansas – a city very close to the geographic center of the
continental United States, for its headquarters?
How about an agency with 4 media buyers, providing everything marketing from traditional media buys
to a full-range of digital services including online presence and reputation management, and serving an
extremely diverse clientele.
What kind of employees would choose to work for such an out-of-the-way agency?
Could be people who enjoy a slower pace, a shorter work week, a culturally-rich/affordable life-style,
extended benefits, and a five- or ten-minute commute to the office.
Advantage Marketing strategizes with diverse client companies about what needs to happen with their
businesses, collects a “lot of information,” and develops a “lot of data” to determine when and where to
place ads to reach the target client base. Customized, multiplatform marketing initiatives blend
traditional marketing with newer, “personalized” digital plans. “bridging from one media to the next.”
Cori outlines a number of promotional targeting strategies she is excited about for the coming year. As
an example, she expects a “boom” in OTT (over the top/subscription) and DTV-connected television,
which allows focused zip code and contextual targeting and cross-device matching.
Cori started her career as a sales rep in broadcast television. After 5 years, she joined an agency. After
five years there, still not “settled,” she started Advantage Marketing. Her partner, Amy Hoefer, who has
a background in cable television, joined the agency in a year later. Cori believes that an in-depth
understanding of media buying planning has been critical to her agency’s growth and that it is important
to establish and document processes to ensure scalability and continued organizational success
In this interview, Cori explains the process she used to grow her agency fast – and increase its service
offerings at the same time. In 2017, four years after agency started, Cori and Amy decided the best way
to “grow” would be to acquire another agency. It wasn’t something they wanted to do “on the fly.”
They selected a “great accountant” and a “great attorney,” discussed with them their goals and
objectives, and targeted a successful company whose owner wanted to retire. They signed the
necessary non-disclosure agreements and requested and reviewed the company’s client list and
financials. Advantage had the capital to purchase the agency, but Amy has had a number of
entrepreneurship classes, done a lot of research, and learned this: “Don’t spend your own money. Get a
loan.” Makes sense. A “loan” leaves an intact “cushion” for dealing with daily business expenses.
Cori took an SBDC (Small Business Development Center) Emerging Leaders Program last year to learn
more about scaling her business, planning growth, and getting the agency’s processes documented and
in place. She relies on the SBA (Small Business Association) for valuable information on how to run her
business and, interestingly, still gets periodic mentoring from the woman who owned the agency she
bought.
Cori can be reached on social media, on her company’s website at: https://admarkict.com/ 0r by phone
at: 316.729.0500.

Josh Belhumeur is Managing Partner at Brink, a creative group that uses culturally relevant art content and experiences through a variety of initiatives to engage audiences and build brands for products, political candidates, and progressive causes. 

In this interview, Josh explains how his agency, which started as three guys in a Tucson garage doing web development, evolved into a full-service, “all things media, all things internet, all things digital” agency with attitude and two physical locations. Only recently has the leadership at Brink started to understand who they are, who they want to be, and what they want to create . . . and it is the nexus between brand development and socially-responsible advocacy.

A consultancy branch of the organization works with C-suite level executives to discern product market fit and develop an organization’s ability to innovate. An indie film “wing” distributes about 150 titles worldwide and on subscription platforms. 

On the agency side, client-focused teams (a UX lead, an art lead, a producer, and a strategist)

1. Help brands identify their purpose and bring that purpose to market 
2. Produce excellent, timely, relevant, and digitally-rooted creative work

Josh joined Brink (2006) to work on strategy and business development. He moved to Washington, D.C. to expand the agency’s client base and found “a lot of government, a lot of politics, a lot of advocacy” and a lot of “learning.” In Washington, organizations often align under the same brand – a for-profit, a nonprofit, and a super Political Action Committee – separate entities, but run side by side. This provides the flexibility for the organization’s “branches” to have separate missions and do different things while utilizing the same internal knowledge and resources.

Brink grew up with the internet. Around a year and a half ago, troubled by the power of the internet to distort truth, Brink launched a 501(c)(3), now managed by Josh’s partner, to address what Josh refers to as the 4 destructive forces of the internet/ social media:

1. The filter bubble: Social media platforms will push content to you that matches your beliefs. You are more likely to interact with this content. They make more money
2. The sensationalist skew: People are more likely to react to the outrageous. Again, more money
3. Binary thinking: Digital platforms will push people into little boxes. If Facebook senses you are considering buying a home, its algorithms will push content related to home-buying.
4. Unclear authority: The proliferation of fake news makes it hard to know who and what to believe. 

The goal of the Brink Foundation is to educate people on these four destructive forces and then target messages to offset the harmful effects of the internet and reduce political polarization. Knowing their “purpose” has lost clients for Brink . . . but gained new clients who are better aligned with the agency’s interests. Win-win.

Brink’s unique value ad? The ability to work with brands, introduce activism, help them brands guild out activism programs, and unify that activism into their brand strategy. According to Josh, “Being an activist brand is the strongest way you can find a tribe.”

Josh can be reached on his agency’s website at: https://brink.com/ , where you will find information on the agency, the consultancy, their films, and the Brink Foundation.

Mike Stratta founded Arcalea on the idea that digital marketing and advertising should be objective, not subjective. In this interview, Mike talks about the importance of focus: on a very deep and narrow skillset, on a limited niche of (service) industry clients, on engendering a great company culture, and on hiring great people. 

Mike built Arcalea’s service offerings around the things he really loved to do. Arcalea provides comprehensive quantitative analysis and implements tactics based on that analysis and how brands are positioned online. Mike believes it takes significant due diligence to prevent scope creep from paralyzing the creative process. Arcalea stays out of the creative arena by cultivating relationships with partner agencies to provide clients with creative content.

Mike thinks that it is essential for any business to ask itself, “What can we provide at such a depth that we differentiate ourselves from our competition?” . . . and “How can we provide a higher level of service than others in our same space?” Companies that fail to build a deep enough or wide enough economic moat risk becoming price-driven commodities. 

When Mike started Arcalea, he had already built and sold an agency, but one that dealt with blue-chip companies. He tells his audience that, “When working with those big brands, you are just a commodity” and explains how these giants put the squeeze on small agencies to provide more at a cheaper price . . . because they can always find someone else to do the work. 

Today, his agency serves companies with $5 million to $500 million in revenue . . . where the agency can work directly with the C-Suite decision-makers and the client base is more nimble and responsive to changes in direction than larger organizations or subsidiaries of those larger organizations. Mike’s ideal customers are those who are a cultural match for Arcalea: the ideal relationship is one of appreciation/ advocacy/ trusted partner – and he definitely eschews being a “vendor” because vendors are commodities.

Critical to long-term success? Mike says, “Hire slow. Hire the person who sees more in the future of the position than you do. Hire the person who will be a 10x game-changer.” Then, he says, “Lock them down with a cultural fit and cultural environment and even more pay than you first intended so they will never want to leave, no matter how much someone else offers them.”

Mike also addresses the difficulty of implementing policies in a period of fast growth, as his company experienced when it grew 2800% over a period of three years and made position #149 the very first year it qualified for the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing privately held companies in the U.S. Whew!

Mike can be reached on his company’s website at https://arcalea.com/ or on LinkedIn.

Michael Boychuk is the CCO and Co-founder of Little Hands of Stone, a creative agency and Ad Age Small Agency Newcomer of 2020. Michael has nearly 30 years of industry experience, working for notable firms like WongDoody, SK+G Advertising, and Leo Burnett. Before LHoS, Michael helped build Amazon’s D1 internal creative agency as the North American Executive Creative Director. He leveraged his talents and leadership expertise to spearhead four Super Bowl campaigns and the rebranding that shifted Amazon’s identity toward the globally-recognized standalone smile. Michael also helped launch Amazon’s first Prime Day global campaign — the largest annual worldwide retail event.

Matt McCain is a Co-founder of Little Hands of Stone, an award-winning creative agency based in Seattle. Matt’s career began with WongDoody, where he spent 16 years and eventually became the Creative Director of the copywriting team. Before founding LHoS, Matt worked as a freelancer, offering his talents and expertise as a creative director and copywriter for prominent companies including REI, Hub Strategy & Communication, and Amazon.

Greg Keating is Agency Operations Manager and Business Development Lead at Hangar12, a fully remote, digital marketing agency that has been in Greg’s family in one form or another for 3 generations, and transitioned from brick-and-mortar to fully remote in 2015. 

After a college internship his father arranged at what is today Hangar12 (No, thank you!), Greg started his career in production supply chain management, doing supply chain and marketing analytics, and “proving himself” in massive companies (Coca-Cola and Ecolab). His father, Kevin, again tapped him a few years ago. What to do?

Greg’s father, Kevin, whose original career choice had been to work in Parks and Recreation in Irvine, California, likewise, had been tapped by his father in 1988 (Greg’s grandfather had joined the agency in 1981). Greg’s father joined the agency and worked there for 12 years before he purchased it in 2000. 

Granddad worked there, Dad owned it . . . Greg took a second look, and, amazed at how far the agency had come – from the in-store shopper marketing cardboard cutouts he saw when he was growing up to today’s digital and social media marketing – and fell in love.

Hangar12, renamed 1n 2012 in honor of his grandfather’s WWII Air Force service, is somewhat Chicago-centric, but staff are located throughout the Midwest. The agency provides consumer packaged goods clients in the food and beverage space with a consumer-first approach, in-house creative teams, omnichannel activations, and a focus on measurement. 

What makes Hangar12 great? Greg believes the remote business model enables his team to deliver “quality marketing campaigns faster than anyone else,” utilizing digital, social media, consumer promotions, and shopper marketing. And LOTS of video. Remote employees work when they feel they can be most productive (which improves efficiency) and log their time on daily timesheets, “meeting,” as needed, by phone or email. Getting campaigns running fast makes for happy clients and reduces the delay in marketing effort revenue recognition. 

Greg notes that ecommerce and the rise of Amazon have challenged brick-and-mortar retailers to stock new brands and unknown products, even before a full marketing plan is in place. Why would stores do this? Brick-and-mortar businesses, especially grocery stores, having been stagnant area for so long, are now scrambling to find the next “hot item,” to get on the “front end” of a trend, to stock a product before the competition does, or, even, to become an exclusive vendor for a “unicorn” product. Once a start-up’s product is “on the shelves,” stores are demanding that these brands “prove” that they are putting in the marketing effort that justifies the placement . . . which is when the startup brand goes looking for what Hangar12 can do.

Greg can be reached on his agency’s website at: Hangar-12.com or by email at: greg.keating@hangar-12.com’

Verne Harnish, founder of the world-renowned Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) and CEO of Scaling Up, a global executive education/ coaching company, has spent the past three decades helping companies scale up. Credentials?

• 15-year chair/instructor at EO's "Birthing of Giants" CEO development program (held at MIT) 
• Authored best-seller, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits (published in 2002 and translated into 9 languages)
• Authored Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It and the Rest Don’t (published in 2014 and winner of 8 major international book awards)
• Grew Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) to over 14,000 members worldwide 
• Chairs annual ScaleUp Summits (in collaboration with Bloomberg) and grew Scaling Up to over 180 partners on six continents)

Verne, citing John D. Rockefeller’s biography, Titan, believes that hyperfocus is critical to business success. He gave the example of Arnie Malham, a longstanding EO member, who wanted to be a marketing/ advertising agency. Focus? Advertising and marketing for law firms. More focus? Personal injury law firms –Intense focus? Personal injury law firms in NFL cities, large cities with the sophistication of billboarding and radio. Hyperfocus? To work for one personal injury law firm per NFL city, making a simple promise: “I’m going to make you No. 1 in that market.” Then, provide a 100% solution.

In this interview, Verne talks about the four numbers it takes to grow a company: revenue, gross margin, profit, and cash – each significant at a different growth stage. 

• From startup to that first million dollars, the most important number is revenue. It’s not about fixing the logo or the website, Verne says, just “Sell like hell,” and then when you get to a million, fix those other things.

• From a million to $10 million, the most important thing is cash . . . because growing 10x will take a lot of cash. The cash model, the timing of incoming and outgoing cash, has to work.

• From $8 or $10 million to $40 million, gross margins are critical. As companies start adding middle management and infrastructure, costs will increase, and gross margins will start to slip.
• When a company is at the $30-40 million level, the most important number is profit consistency, because that is what the market expects.

At the organizational level, Verne claims there is one routine that will drive things further faster than any other – daily meetings to ensure organizational alignment on the task that needs to be done that day.

Verne invests privately in a number of scale-ups and is a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians – so business-wise, or recreationally . . . he spends a lot of time doing “magic.” He available on his company’s website at Scalingup.com, on the company’s new media site at Scaleups.com, and by email is verne@scalingup.com.

Malinda Gagnon is CEO and Co-founder of Uprise Partners, a consulting firm / investment firm that provides full-cycle go-to-market and deep technical delivery. Uprise can help launch and grow a business fast: whether they are a startup, launching a new product, or entering a new market. Whatever it is, Uprise teams can help companies “just blow it up” into something bigger.

Anchoring on a company’s brand promise, Uprise brings in efficient, results-driven SWAT teams of focused experts who have fast-growth, go-to-market capabilities: to build anything; to implement sales and marketing programs; to do branding; and to build, select, compile, and integrate technical solutions. Uprise applies agile methodology to everything it does, always asking: “What can we launch that makes the most impact, as quickly as possible?” 

Uprise may not have traditional agency/client relationships—its focus is on a mission to help business founders from areas that are underserved – minority founders, women founders, founders in rural areas or markets lacking a vibrant entrepreneurial culture and support system. If Uprise finds a small company they want to invest in, they will put “skin in the game,” take equity in the company, and bring on the skills that will help the company grow. 

Malinda spoke at Hubspot’s Inbound 2019 on the topic of compassionate commerce – “the art of selling what truly helps the customer.” The challenge? To be able to “talk about compassion in a way that people feel comfortable about it in a professional setting.” 

Malinda describes the more-commonly referenced empathy as the first step toward compassion: empathy is the ability “to walk a mile in someone’s shoes, see the world through their eyes.” The next step toward compassion is “to understand the most fundamental motivator a customer has – their emotions. Critical to getting to that level of understanding? Map emotions to every stage of that customer journey and address those emotions, both positive and negative. You only reach compassion when you understand the customer and “have a deep desire to help.”

Malinda can be found on her company’s website at uprisepartners.com of by email at: malinda@uprisepartners.com. She and her husband/co-founder also have a tech-oriented podcast called Data Myths, available “everywhere.”

Daniel Harmon is Chief Creative Officer of Harmon Brothers, an ad agency most famous for the Squatty Potty Pooping Unicorn. The agency mixes two areas of concentration: traditional direct response advertising (asking for an immediate sale) and branding (where the goal is to evoke a positive customer brand response and promote brand loyalty.) 

Clients come to Harmon Brothers when their product has a more complex or difficult story . . . or even one that touches on societal taboos, but Harmon has to be sold on a company’s product before they will take on that company as a client. Daniel believes that comedy is a good for simplifying complex ideas, and “making the boring interesting and the controversial safe.” In this interview, Daniel also discusses the techniques and importance of ad testing. The quality of creative is important, but Daniel believes distribution is key.

Before the Harmon brothers became Harmon Brothers, they worked at Orabrush, which was founded by Daniel’s brothers when they took an old man’s floundering idea for a tongue cleaner (for bad breath), created a promotional video, and aired it on YouTube. Orabrush was the first product on YouTube’s ad platform that produced a positive ROI. 

A hundred or so videos later, Poo Pourri, seeing the Orabrush campaign success, contacted the brothers. They left Orabrush and went to work on the Poo-Pourri campaign, strategizing around their kitchen table, thinking that they would become part of the company. When Poo-Pouri started talking campaign contract, the Harmon brothers had to be something with a name . . . so the Harmon brothers became Harmon Brothers – we can change it later (but they didn’t). When the Poo-Pourri campaign exploded, people started talking about the Creative agency Harmon Brothers. Surprise! “I guess we’re an agency.”

They puttered . . . until Squatty Potty came along in 2015. Harmon Brothers created a “Rainbow Pooping Unicorn” video featuring a plush baby unicorn that pooped rainbow-colored soft-serve ice cream. The video went viral, with over 50 million Facebook/YouTube views that year. Squatty Potty sales shot up to over $15 million. A plush Squatty Potty Dookie the Pooping Unicorn? Just what every young child wants for Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza? Maybe not . . .

Daniel spoke at Hubspot’s Inbound 2019 on the topic: “Create Ads that Sell.” He emphasized the importance of comedy and “brand” characters in advertising to get people to emotionally connect with a brand and putting really good sales principles into direct response campaigns.

The Harmon Brothers collaborated with veteran author Chris Jones to lay out the company’s key creative/ culture/ process/ partnership principles. The resulting book, From Poop to Gold: The Marketing Magic of the Harmon Brothers, is available on https://harmonbrothersbook.com/from-poop-to-gold25696414. 

Daniel can be reached on his company’s website at: Harmonbrothers.com/. The company also has a podcast which can be accessed from that site. On “From Poop to Gold” podcasts, entrepreneurs/ creatives/ marketers tell stories about how they’ve turned bad situations into something positive – inspiring for everyone, whether in the industry or not.

Wendy Pease is President of Rapport International, an agency that specializes in multilingual marketing, translating messages and meanings in over 200 languages – in any format, including blog posts, audio content, video, print, and multilingual chat. Wendy bought Rapport in 2004, because the fit seemed right with her interests. Over 15 years, it has maintained the same depth of languages and increased staff, revenue, and its focus on marketing. Rapport International is a Hubspot Partner

In this interview, Wendy explains that interpretation is for the spoken word what translation is for the written word. Translation, especially in marketing, is not done “word for word.” It needs to be culturally adapted and capture the meaning of the message. To ensure quality and to address this broad range of languages, Rapport International contracts with independent bilingual translators who specialize in writing for different markets and purposes.

Fifteen years ago, companies in English-speaking countries expanded internationally by exporting to companies in other English-speaking countries. Company websites opened markets across language, cultural, and geographical boundaries. Companies became “accidental exporters” when orders started coming in from other countries.

A reactive response to interest from other countries? Start marketing in any country that “self identified” as being a potential market. 

A better way? Wendy believes it is important to ask, “What is the corporate strategy?” “What is the marketing strategy?” And “How is multilingual communication going to support that strategy?” If a company only wants to sell certain products in a certain country, they don’t need to translate everything about all the rest of their products. A landing page can be used to test new market.

Wendy identified quite a few multilingual challenges: Keyword selection. Effective communication when a language does not have an equivalent word for critical product descriptor. Dealing with the approximately 3,000 new words added to a language each year. Marketing and inbound’s increasing complication and specialization, content management issues, and providing it all in the needed languages.

Wendy can be reached on her company’s website at www.rapporttranslations.com or on LinkedIn: Wendy Pease at Rapport International.

Alita Harvey-Rodriguez is Managing Director of MI Academy, which offers customized team training programs for businesses interested in “transformative growth” and increasing leads, sales, and customer loyalty. Alita talked about how she started her company . . . and then, on evaluating what she was doing (consulting), determined she was not making the difference she wanted to make (changing the way companies worked). “Don’t Fall in Love with an IDEA,” she warns. “Fall in Love with the SOLUTION – and drive toward that solution. Ideas change all the time.” Yes, the solution has to be “feedback-driven.”

Alita believes innovation has to connect with a customer’s heart. It’s all about “the heart, the mind, the wallet,” she says. Companies have to understand, in depth, who their customers are, before they can roll out an incredible, seamless digital marketing, customer experience – with no “disconnects.”

MI Academy starts with a discovery process – asking its clients about 63 questions across different business units – in order to understand a company’s business, skill sets, tech stacks, and customers; how it uses data to drive decisions; and how to iteratively improve processes and customer experience within that organization – and then provides customized transformational training focused on improving all of the customer touchpoints in the organization.

Alita spoke at Hubspot Inbound 2019 on “The Loyalty Agenda.” She presented a 4-part loyalty program formula based on the philosophy of slowing down (to assess the company, its business, and its market) to speed up (by enabling the company to make better decisions, restructure operations, and change how it listens to and interfaces with its customers). In taking the time to understand their customers and create personalized, seamless experiences, brands pursue customer loyalty and can “carve out brand niches in tough markets."

Alita is contributing a chapter on sustainable digital marketing practices to an upcoming book. She believes companies need to innovate internally in order to stay on top of customers’ needs.

Alita can be found on her company’s website at: www.milkit.com.au. Her personal email address is: Alita@milkit.com.au

Duff Ferguson is Partner and Founder of Amplitude Digital, a PPC and SEO digital marketing agency, Google and Facebook Partner, and three-time recipient of the Tech Innovator Award.

When Duff started what is today Amplitude Digital about 15 years ago, it provided general branding and marketing services. In 2015, it pivoted to focus on digital marketing, advertising, organic search, and e commerce, specifically on how clients could increase advertising spend, increase traffic, build their presence in online organic search . . . and then get a multiple return on that spend. Amplitude Digital compiles and analyzes “big data,” develops strategies, and strives to deliver first-page online rankings, breakthrough traffic, and high-performing ads. Typical clients are ecommerce companies selling packaged consumer goods on such platforms as Amazon, Google search, Bing, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Amplitude Digital maintains a 95% client retention rate.

Duff feels that Amplitude Digital is able to produce reliable, consistent results for its clients because the company:

• knows how to build reliable information from digital data,
• understands how digital bidding systems and online algorithms work,
• develops dependable “white hat” SEO optimization strategies,
• creates well-run, efficient pay-per-click systems . . .
• and is able to identify and undo legacy “stuff” that is creating penalties and problems for companies.

Duff believes that what he calls “Real Talk” is critical to online success, and notes, in particular, these site components:

• listing, title, and description quality;
• sizing charts;
• pictures; and
• brand store information.

He notes that these are ingrained in today’s Amazon and Google algorithms, but, for long term success, companies will need to develop their own platforms so that they have the ability to control their data and know their customers (audience demographics).

The easiest way to find out about Amplitude Digital is on its one-page overview site at https://amplitude.digital/. His company’s primary website is: https://amplitudeagency.com/

Matt Johnson is Founder and CEO of Pursuing Results, a podcast production agency that works with emerging thought leaders – business coaches and consultants. Using a detailed process, Pursuing Results helps clients launch their brands, executes and distributes its clients’ weekly video podcasts, and promotes thought-leader business growth. His “specialized assembly line” produces consistently high-quality, on time podcasts. Matt focuses on a narrow product/client niche, because he believes that, of all the content marketing things he used to do, podcasting produces the most growth and the most leads for his clients. 

Matt believes that, in order to influence people to trust you and to take action, podcasts have to be structured in a particular way. In this interview, Matt outlines three things that turn a podcast from entertainment into a platform for leadership:

1. Seeing is Believing: Podcasts should be conversations with other influential people. When people see that you are recognized as a leader in your “area,” they will believe you are a leader in your area.
2. Share Client Successes: Feature conversations around your (past or current) client’s successes. Put at least some focus on how the work you are doing (or have done) for them contributes to their success. 
3. Go solo: Matt says, for a thought leader, having a podcast is akin to leading a church. If you are a leader in that church, you should be capable of delivering a sermon in that church.

How to develop solo topics? Matt works with his clients to help them identify their beliefs, values, and opinions – breaking down their holistic viewpoint into small chunks, each of which can be used as a solo episode topic. The sweet spot is to “go solo” every third or fourth episode.

How to keep the podcast momentum going and score some “quick wins”:

1. Be strategic about whom you interview – make sure you have a good message-to-market fit
2. Genuinely enjoy the interview conversations and the relationships you are building with your guests 
3. Work behind the scenes to turn those relationships into a strategic referral network.

Matt attributes a good part of his (and his client’s) podcast success to the system he built around the process – and provides tips on strategic process-building and building checklists. He recommends that people who are considering starting a podcast . . . get interviewed themselves to nail down their message and what they want to talk about. How to get featured? A good start would be Matt’s website at: http://howtogetfeatured.com.

Matt can be reached on his company’s website at: http://pursuingresults.com, where listeners can learn about his production service; on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/microfamous/, and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/microfamous/. Matt will be launching a book, Microfamous™ in the near future.

Mary Grothe is the CEO of Sales BQ, a a relatively “young” organization that works with companies to rebuild, scale, and empower their underperforming sales departments. A typical client might have 5 to 7 salespeople reporting directly to the CEO. Last year, Sales BQ rebuilt the sales departments for 42 companies. Mary, an experienced sales dynamo, known for exponentially exceeding quotas, says BQ, behavioral intelligence, or behavioral quotient, is about making the decision every single day to show up and give it everything that it takes to perform at one’s highest ability.

Under a 6-month contract, Sales BQ functions as a company’s “VP of Sales” and rebuilds the sales department in 3 phases. 

1. Evaluate and transform the infrastructure. Analyze the established set up, systems, processes, the types of roles, compensation modeling, territories, and CRM. Build a playbook. 
2. Assess the talent. Provide field sales coaching and training to enable the team to execute to their highest ability. Recruit new talent to grow the team or replace “pruned” personnel.
3. Appraise and correct environmental problems. Mary does not believe that sales professionals need to be told what they need to do to do better so much as management  should treat its salespeople the way they need to be treated in order to excel.

Does the process work? 

Eighty-five percent of their clients renew the 6-month contract and continue working with Sales BQ for a full year. The ones that don’t.? Mary says they are “crushing it” and don’t need Sales BQ anymore.

Mary classifies sales reps into three personas, based on their motivational drivers:

1. 87% of top performing sales reps are intrinsically motivated, people who are “fed” by recognition, feelings of self-worth, and self-competition.
2. Extrinsically motivated sales reps are focused on money and love to strive for targeted goals.
3. Altruistic sales reps care more about their clients than they do about recognition or making money. These individuals would be better placed in an account management or customer service role.

In this interview, Mary offers tips on effective sales techniques and the effective uses of LinkedIn. She can be found on LinkedIn and on her company’s website salesbq.com, where her company’s blog and Quota Crusher Podcast reside. The Quota Crusher Podcast is also on YouTube. 

Nancy Harhut is Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer of HBT Marketing. In this interview, she talks about the how her company utilizes behavioral science and marketing best practices to change how people make purchasing decisions. 

Social scientists and behavioral economists have found that people often make decisions by defaulting to “hardwired” behaviors, rather than by thinking things through. Although there are hundreds of behavioral science/decision science principles, HBT Marketing focuses on the “Human Behavior Triggers” that will effectively increase the likelihood that people will do what marketing clients want them to do. But, it is not just about organizational profitability. Nancy emphasizes that it is equally important that these “human behavior triggers” get people to make the decisions that are good for them.

Nancy discusses a powerful pricing strategy, which she calls the “gravitational pull of the magic middle.” If marketers have a low-priced price widget, they need to have a high-priced all-the-bells-and-whistles widget at a price they would rarely expect to get, and then place their ideal target price widget in the middle. Many people will look at the “economy-priced” widget as being of marginal utility . . . and if the high-priced widget is out of their range, they will target the middle-priced widget. Another principle: Social scientists have found that we place greater value on things that we already own. In elucidating this principle, Nancy provides an example of how strategic phrasing can be used to increase sales.

Nancy spoke at HubSpot’s Inbound 2019 conference on “5 Decision Science Secrets That Make It Easy to Get the Online Behavior You Want,” outlining 5 Human Behavior Triggers that she felt would be most useful for marketers:

1. Availability bias: People will judge the likelihood of an event happening based on how readily they can recall a relevant example.
2. Social proof: When people don’t know what to do, they look to others, particularly others like them, and follow their lead.
3. The scarcity principle: If something is readily available, people may or may not be interested. If “supplies are limited,” people are more likely to buy, because they don’t want to miss the opportunity.
4. Commitment and consistency: Once someone makes a decision, they tend to remain consistent with it when future opportunities arise.
5. Choice architecture: The way choices are presented influences the decisions people make about those choices.

Nancy provides detailed illustrations of each of these principles. She recommends making it easy for people to do what you want them to do, but to never force them into a box. Allow them to “opt out.”

Nancy can be found on Twitter, @nharhut, on Facebook and LinkedIn at: Nancy Harhut, and on her company’s website at: http://www.hbtmktg.com/.

Rob Kischuk is the Founder and CEO of Bellwood Labs, an on-demand software solution that helps companies develop software from concept to final product. In addition to his development skills, Rob is also a team and relationship builder. He was inspired to start Bellwood Labs to fill the gap between businesses' challenges, objectives, and software products. Rob is a three-time founder and CEO of software tools designed for marketers, including Converge and PerfectPost, and is a mentor at Techstars, a company helping startups with technology, scaling, and product management and strategy. He’s also shared his marketing and leadership skills as a member of Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association’s board of directors.

Marc Ensign is the Big Cheese at LoudMouse, a personal branding agency for speakers, authors, coaches, entrepreneurs and artists. 

A musician by training, Marc dreamed of performing on Broadway. He created a strong personal “brand,” wrote articles for music industry magazines, interviewed and forged relationships with a lot of performers. As a skilled bass player, Marc eventually “got the Broadway gig,” not by touting his amazing bass playing, but by promoting his ability to imitate a wide variety of styles. Supporting, rather than competing against, other professional musicians, Marc substituted for regular Broadway show band members who, for whatever reason, needed “a night off.” His full time Broadway career ended up lasting 10 years.

In 2001/2002, while working as a musician in the evenings, Marc dabbled in web design during the day. A big and lucrative assignment from American Express’s Travel + Leisure Magazine turned Marc’s “pajamas as business casual” web design company into a marketing agency – overnight. A decade later, he felt lost.

In this interview, Marc outlines three elements for building a successful personal brand.

1. Identity. Be clear on who you are. Communicate “who you are” in a way that really connects with people in an authentic way.
2. Visibility. Be able to communicate the message of “who you are” with visual elements: Your font/color/ logo/ website/ social media platforms/ pictures/ headshots. These elements have to be congruent with each other – and consistent.
3. Authority. Are you positioned as an industry expert/leader/podcaster interviewee? When people `think of your industry, regardless of size, do people think of you? Did you write the book on the most important thing or a new groundbreaking innovation?

Dani Buckley is the General Manager of LeadG2, an 100% remote inbound marketing and sales enablement agency, which focuses on sales results for B2B and B2C companies that have complex, multi-channel sales processes. 

LeadG2 started in 2011 as sales consulting firm that needed to generate leads for its business. Its first clients were media companies that owned television and radio stations . . . and needed to get advertisers.

In the past, B2B sales professionals have tended to have a lone wolf mentality . . . sales didn’t “count” unless the salesperson independently discovered and chased down a lead. Dani feels it is important to change that culture, to supplement cold calling and outbound prospecting with inbound and lead gen.

Dani defines sales enablement as “whatever you need to do to help your salespeople sell smarter and faster.” She spoke at Hubspot Inbound 2019 on “How to Build a Sales Play in 30 Minutes or Less.” In this Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast, she provides a brief overview of the process of developing a sales play:

1. Develop a strategy by extracting the best knowledge and information from your leadership and your salespeople and from industry best practices and sales best practices 
2. Create a simplified process that outlines the five things salespeople need to do to identify quality prospects
3. Identify the technologies and tools salespeople need
4. Determine the content and resources salespeople need
5. Plan the rollout
6. Provide training

LeadG2 builds robust customized “thick stack” sales playbooks for its clients, using PowerPoint so that sales managers can easily update the material. LeadG2 recommends that companies store their most up-to-date sales playbook versions where they are easily accessible by the sales team – where they would normally put stuff in the cloud.

Dani also references Donald Miller’s StoryBrand and the “hero’s journey. She emphasizes that, in messaging and in content development, you/your company is not the hero . . . your customer is the hero. 

LeadG2’s parent, the Center for Sales Strategy, is a 36-year-old sales consulting and sales leadership training company. A brand-new sister company, Up Your Culture, focuses on helping companies improve company culture and employee engagement.

LeadG2 is on Twitter and Facebook. The company website is: https://leadg2.com. Dani is on Twitter @daniobuckley and LinkedIn.

Dale Bertrand is President and Founder of Fire&Spark, a marketing agency focused on ecommerce, and especially ecommerce SEO: product page optimization, ecommerce site link-building, and delivering technical SEO and site speed solutions on a variety of ecommerce platforms. Deep technical skillset.

People today may avoid link-building because Google has a history of penalizing dubious link-building practices in. However, link-building is more valuable than ever is because Google depends on links to rank content. 

Dale recommends earning links through posting remarkable content, being/doing/saying something remarkable, or using targeted outreach or targeted syndication. He notes that email does not work as well as in the past because of the low open rate. 

What he has found to work the best is to build relationships and then leverage those relationships for links. Lead a movement, he says. Take a position on a current issue in your market, interview people, and use those interviews (and the relationship that comes from the interview process) to build links.

Dale presented “Link-building Isn’t Dead: The Most Important SEO Strategy in 2019 That You Can’t Ignore” at HubSpot’s Inbound 2019 in Boston, MA.

He can be reached on his company’s website fireandspark.com, with the “and” spelled out, “ in the middle or by email at: dale@fireandspark.com