Are you running a digital marketing agency but feel like you need some advice? The Masters of Marketing Agency Podcast features veteran marketing agency owners who share their experiences, mistakes, and successes along their journey. Join host Josh Hoffman and make sure you have a notebook as he digs deep so you can learn more about what veteran agency owners know.
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Let’s dig into the digital depths with Michael Fleischner, a seasoned SEO navigator, as he reveals how to keep agencies afloat amidst changing tides, from the surging waves of LLMs to the calm shores of client communication. Tune in for an episode brimming with actionable strategies, personal sea tales, and the undercurrents of agency life.
Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
22:47 - The problem is that today, and as you mentioned over the last year, people are going directly to ChatGPT to ask and answer questions. They're not going to Google, or at least not in the same way. And that's why Google's really, I think, sprinting to try to catch up with AI overviews and changing some of the results and how they're created. But you know, ultimately it's kind of like saying, oh, no one will ever unseat Facebook yet Facebook is unseating itself through Instagram, and TikTok is replacing Facebook. So we have these, these visions of grandeur around some of the typical search behaviors because we've operated that way for so long.
36:40 - And that's kind of the manic depressive nature of agency ownership. And it's not for everybody. You know, again, I've been around long enough to know that all you can do is continually focus on delivering quality results for your customers. And you can do that, and they may still leave, you may not do that, and they stay, but you really have to, again, from my perspective, make sure that you're delivering the best quality and you're engaging in this idea of fair exchange or abundance exchange on a regular basis. And that's it. There's really no more to it. But over time, you know, the good news is you do get accustomed to, it's kinda like Game of Thrones when you're kind of getting into the characters initially, you quickly realize don't get attached to any of the characters, right? Like it's kind of the same dynamic.
21:37 - I've been in the SEO business, but it's longer than most. And this one is different. And what I mean by that is, when I started out almost 20 years ago, the way that SEO was changing was more an evolution, not a sea change, which is happening here. The evolution was, oh, this is what you needed to do to rank, oh, this is what you need to do to rank differently. Oh, this is a different kind of ranking. You know, now we have images showing up in search, so on and so forth, right? So like there was all this evolution happening in the world of search and it created a really cool dynamic for us and our clients. It helped kind of expand content generation and creating different types of digital assets, building authority, doing all these fun, exciting projects for clients, really to get them to show up in search results.
30:40 - Because LLMs, right now, they're inherently lazy. At least that's my perspective. They're not going even though it says, you know, taking a minute to think longer or deep research or yeah, they're just scanning more websites. But AI, but Google does that through AI as well. So it's, it's nothing, quote unquote new, but it is an advancement in terms of search behavior and how these machines return information.
31:44 - Because we're now so used to, I remember like I had to, I took a course to learn how to use Google properly, how to properly think about crafting the search term or question or whatever it was down to get down to relevant results instead of thousands. And now a lot of that's gone away because you could just chat with GPT, and if you took a wrong turn, you naturally, as if you're talking to a person, ask the right question and get into that depth. What's becoming really interesting is once you get someone to your place, your site where wherever it is that you have them, that you want to have them learn more about your company and convert, they're still gonna have those same questions.
Navigating the Creator Economy: Tech, Tactics, and Triumphs
Episode 107
Tuesday, December 2, 2025 • Duration 40:39
Dive into the bustling intersection of influencers and innovation with James Michalak, CEO of NeoReach. Discover how a blend of top creators, cutting-edge tech, and insightful market data can lead to transparent, scalable marketing success, no matter the budget. Join us for a spirited talk that unravels the essence of being a creator in today's complex digital landscape.
Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
11:20 - There's things that look good, like, you know, you have the concept of a 10-foot car, you know, 10 feet away. It looks fine. We had a 10-foot business for a little while, right? So it's taking a look at those things and saying, Ah, I could probably make that better. Or, oh, we should focus some time and attention here to improve that process, improve that, you know, customer service, whatever. So yeah, I do a lot of that. It gets me in trouble both at home and in the business. But you're not, you're not moving forward unless you're making things better or trying to break stuff.
Journeys in Journaling: Unlocking Process & Recovery
Episode 98
Monday, May 19, 2025 • Duration 37:33
Join us as we unravel the gripping world of behavioral health with Gary Garth, who has transformed personal loss into a mission for systemic change. Expect raw insights on creating life-improving habits, profound industry processes, and the long-term recovery road, all in this intense yet enlightening episode.
Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
20:54 Because we all know, like you, you don't wanna be the the richest man in the graveyard, right? Or, you know, you don't want to be have, have no friends, no love, no connection. So I'm, I, for me it's, that's important. And so it starts with these exercises and then it segments into, okay, if you wanna accomplish this, what kind of rituals do you need to establish your morning ritual, your evening ritual, and how do you plan for your week? We all know like, if you don't schedule it, it doesn't get done. So it's kind of like, let me have this planner that's offline that integrated with all your notifications and apps, et cetera, that you can just sit and look at and reflect and that journal and put some thoughts into, if I wanna be here in one year, what does that look like? Where am I right now, what I need to do to get to that point? And you know, I always tell people it's just a, it's just a tool. Nothing is ever gonna be perfect. You look at mine, you're like, well, what the heck's wrong with this guy? It goes up and down and right and left. But it's, that's the journey. And that's the value that you are conscious and aware and working on yourself, I think.
Influencers Vs. User Generated Content with Hamsah Ahmed
Episode 8
Tuesday, October 25, 2022 • Duration 27:48
Hamsah Ahmed runs her own marketing agency that hypes brands up with the right content, influencer marketing, digital marketing, and user-generated content.
Hamsah focuses on working with non-profits and small agencies to build their brand into something people desire to associate themselves with. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency:
The benefits of working with non-profits and small agencies.
How to measure how well a post is performing.
How to get customers in different countries.
The difference between working with small businesses rather than big businesses.
How the pandemic has changed small business behavior.
How to Create a Casino Marketing Plan with CMS Group’s Rick Campbell
Episode 7
Tuesday, October 4, 2022 • Duration 30:33
Rick Campbell is an innovative, results-producing casino marketing executive with a proven track record of success developing and leading comprehensive casino marketing strategies that exceed business goals and objectives for very successful companies.
Rick has expertise in directing the creation of marketing tools and steering the execution of marketing, and he has demonstrated success in driving growth in targeted markets through the implementation of key projects. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency:
How to get the first customers for your agency.
The benefits of starting a company with a team.
The difference between marketing for casinos compared to other industries.
How brands work together during campaigns.
Different tools you can use to pull data points.
The issue with automating casinos.
How to create a marketing plan.
How to know when to hire more staff.
What makes a good casino marketer.
The benefits of running analysis on your performance.
Jason Piasecki is the Partner and CEO of Revel, a marketing agency that has grown hundreds of B2B brands.
Jason focuses his attention on the unique challenges B2B companies have in growing their business and develops individualized strategies and tactics that deliver measurable results that meet unique business goals. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency:
How baseball relates to business.
What it’s like starting a marketing agency.
How Jason got his first customers for his marketing agency.
The difference between B2B and B2C marketing.
How call to actions differ between B2B and B2C marketing.
The services Revel provides to help businesses with their marketing.
Tools that analyze marketing success.
How marketing trends have changed since Covid.
How to know whether it’s the right time to hire or not.
Direct Mail and Re-target Marketing with DirectMail 2.0’s Brad Kugler
Episode 5
Monday, June 6, 2022 • Duration 30:51
Brad Kugler has a passion for leading and growing businesses and has been the CEO at DirectMail 2.0 for over 5 years, where they provide a marketing based solution designed to track clients direct mail campaigns and enhance the overall result through cross-channel marketing. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency:
What DirectMail 2.0 does and how they help organizations with their marketing efforts.
The amount of touchpoints it takes to generate a sale.
The benefits of marketing on multiple different platforms.
What makes direct mail such an effective marketing technique.
How to get the location data of your website’s visitors.
The power of re-target marketing.
How Brad started his own marketing agency and got his first customers.
The high failure rate in marketing and the need there is for persistence.
The benefits and downsides of focusing on a narrow niche.
Tools you can use to test different marketing channels.
How Networking Helped Laura Meyer Start Her Journey with Amazon and Build Envision Horizons
Episode 4
Monday, May 9, 2022 • Duration 33:46
Laura Meyer is the Founder & CEO of Envision Horizons and an eCommerce agency specializing in working with Amazon and Walmart. She has also built an Amazon analytics platform. On this episode, we’ll discuss:
How she applied what she learned in college to her work life and started her agency
How Laura got into digital marketing and started her agency.
How she got her first customer.
Differentiating a good client vs one that isn’t a good fit
What it’s like to get into Amazon and how it’s different than other e-commerce channels
The key difference between branding for retail versus e-commerce.
What Laura thinks people do wrong with data.
The tools she uses at her agency and how she manages hiring
Cross-functional Experience in Digital Marketing with W Ventures’ David Warschawski
Episode 3
Monday, April 18, 2022 • Duration 33:55
David has been a business owner-operator and investor for more than 20 years and is a professor at Johns Hopkins University.
David spends his time both as the CEO & Founder of Warschawski, the number one rated U.S. marketing communications agency, and is the Managing Director & Founder of W Ventures a one-of-a-kind accelerator. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of The Masters in Marketing Agency:
How David has changed his teaching strategy as the industry has changed.
How David got started in digital marketing.
The importance of understanding how digital marketing works.
The difference between digital marketing and the rest of the marketing field.
The benefits of hiring professionals with cross-disciplinary expertise.
How David got his business started from scratch.
What marketing firms lack when it comes to focusing on ROI.
The difference between working with large established brands and smaller growing brands.
How to Use Data In Your Marketing Campaign with Janet Driscoll Miller
Episode 2
Friday, April 8, 2022 • Duration 30:27
Janet Driscoll Miller has been the President and CEO of Marketing Mojo for over 15 years and is the author of ‘Data First Marketing’.
She is an expert in search engine optimization, digital advertising management, and data analytics and measurement. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of The Masters in Marketing Agency:
Why it’s good to ask digital marketing candidates if they are analytical or creative.
How digital marketers can switch from a tactical focus to a strategic focus.
Using skillset badges to empower employees professional development.
How to use data to inform the way your campaigns are run.
How data is used differently across departments.
Helpful tools to share and understand data.
Common mistakes marketers make when looking at data.
The clients Janet works with and how she got her first client.
How to start your own agency and the benefits of having your own business.
What a ‘returnship’ is and how it can help people get back in the workforce.
28:07 - I think that the creator economy is still ripe for a complete rollup. I think what we're seeing from a perspective at the macro level right now is driven by agency holdcos that are like, oh shit, we need this capability. We're just gonna bring it in-house so we can, you know, charge out the wazoo for it and add in hourly rates and stuff. But for us, we've looked at it differently still through the lens of like roll-up strategy in the sense that there is a huge competitive landscape out there. Any individual or like single aspect of the creator economy has hundreds of organizations trying to figure it out.
14:27 - I think everyone is swimming in the direction of continuing to service brands 'cause that's where at least the short-term dollars are. We're kind of going against the current, and we are focusing, I would say probably 80% of our attention now on the creators themselves. So building out tool sets for them to be more dangerous with their brand deals, building out ways for them to get paid more easily to do all the back office menial BS work that they don't really want to do. That's part of an activation. And then leaning into AI to make all that happen. 'cause the holy grail for us is being able to be that self, you know, full self-service aspect for creators to where we are also leveraging the data that they provide us to make informed decisions on the managed services side and possibly even use that to dictate where the creator economy is going.
27:01 - If it's hurting creators more than it's hurting my team. We're doing the creator thing first, 'cause at the end of the day we're in service of them. They're the reason we exist, and our entire value proposition moving forward is built around them. So like how can I be a hypocrite and focus on us first rather than trying to, to make life easier for them in any way that we can. Whether or not it's like payment processing, it's new tool sets, different data sets, jumping on the phone and just answering questions, all that kind of stuff.
41:27 - Cause what we see all the time, even with the creators that we represent as licensed talent managers, brands, lowball, right? Brands have, they've got a bottom line that they need to preserve. So they're not coming out with their best and brightest or their best offer out of the gate. They're probably asking for way too much in terms of content or requirements from the creator as well. And these, the creators were looking to service, they're amazing, but they're not as well versed in how to negotiate with a big brand or even a smaller one, how to advocate for themselves. So this is us taking data, and backing that up, and putting an AI agent in their corner.
24:55 - So I think you can do several things. You can have constant reminders, reinforcement, like a planner. Another, another big thing I think is like, expression, birds of a feather flock together, surround yourself with the right, setting, the right people that you can feed off. I'm the same way. I'm very, I'm drawn to energy. So, you know, I like to, if I am around people that are disciplined, motivated, determined, I may be not sharing their exact view on things, but you know, it stimulates me and inspire me in the right way. So if you have that opportunity, you should embrace it. But I always tell people, like sometimes people write me, they bought the planner, they're like, I'm here.I'm living in this neighborhood somewhere that I have never even been and I don't have that opportunity. I'm like, you have the internet, my friend, or you have books. Start reading some self, some biographies and start reading and so you can get inspired in a lot of different ways and just program your mind and look at it like a muscle. It takes time basically.
45:43 - I'm selling my shares, stepped out. I was like, shit, am I making a mistake? But I took that money and then I said, I'm gonna go out and change these statistics. 'cause I was looking into the market and I don't know if you know, but you know, because of social media and the whole trajectory of how everything is going, I think there's a lot of people that feel lost and one out of three Americans actually has, or even worldwide and I think, but America specifically is one out of three has some sort of mental challenge and suicides is at an all time high, especially with teenagers that have a teenage daughter. So, you know, it just freaked me out. I looked into the statistics of addictions, you know, with the opiate crisis and it's basically at a state that it kills more people than car crashes and homicides and everything combined. Basically you take all that and it's still the number one killer and it doesn't get any attention in the media. And then I was like looking at my friends and like, what kind of options would they have had? And then I learned that less than 10% of the 24 million Americans alone they have, that are struggling, that are suffering with some sort of addiction, less than 10% gets treatment. And I start wondering why is that.
29:42 - Even one year I was like a platinum member with Tony Robbins. But the whole point was, I remember I was this setting and he was like talking about these drivers of we have as people, right? One is, you know, certainty that we need certainty and then there's uncertainty as a second, you know, driver feeling there is significance, which is for me was always very important. You gotta achieve this and love and connection. But it's just like when you really wanna get fulfilled and what could be that lasting driver for your discipline is when you get tapped into the grow and the give. Because when you start growing as an individual, as a professional, as a, then all of a sudden you start, you feel motivated, that fuels your motivation even further. And then when you have the opportunity, the blessing, the privilege to actually give that back to somebody, then it's really rewarding because then when you're demotivated at some point, like, you know what, there's a lot at stake here. I'm actually helping other people. I have a lot employees here. We're helping a lot of clients. And then that can refuel your discipline. So I think if you can get beyond yourself and use those four first for about I'm safe or I need sobriety, I'm bored, I want to feel significant or had love of connection or draw. If you get beyond your ego, beyond that I just say grow and give. That helps with the drive and motivation.
39:55 - So I said the same way, you know, you have to have the right strategy, the right processes, then back the tools with it. And then the people's gotta be trained on that. When you have all of that in place, that's when you get the consistent results. And it's just a very tricky industry I'm in. So it's maybe, I think that's why so many people, some there's not a lot of marketing agencies, for example, cater to this vertical because you got legit script, you got hipaa, HIPAA regulations. There is constantly new leg legislation on like changes in the market. And it's very difficult. So clients, prospective clients come to us, say, Hey, want Google ads? I want this cost per patient. And I say like, before we even go anywhere, we have to have this process go through that calculator. I have to ask you all these questions. I'm not trying to interrogate you, I'm just trying to identify what you're doing. Right. What are you not doing? So we can calculate, start with the end goal, calculate backwards, say how can we hit that decide cost per acquisition, for example. And then we have to look at all those different factors and the clients that are savvy, that are data-driven, that appreciate, you know, the detail. I think we work great with them. We haven't had a cancellation, I think in like 18 months.
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